Christian Fijians did not doubt, as we read | among our own kings. The most intertheir conduct, that the oracle had spoken, esting figure in Norman history, the Red did not question that they were defied, and King, in whom the wild force of will which defied by a god; but instantly, simulta- marked the whole line of Rollo seemed to neously, in the name of their new alle- have risen almost to insanity, had for sole giance, sent back the answering and defi- creed this notion of allegiance; and knowant shout,- "Wait till to-morrow!" "In ing nothing of loyalty except under its te domine speravi, non confundar," is feudal form, held that God was his suzetheir thought, and this not in the spirit of rain, with duties towards him. Mr. Langresignation, but in the spirit of one who ton Sanford, in his splendid sketch of relies implicitly on an all-powerful ally, the man, the best of many fine sketches, sure to take up his own quarrel and says:give them victory. The speed of their conversion makes no difference to the fulness of their belief. They have got this central idea firmly, as firmly as those Jews had it who, believing all the while that Baal was somewhat, hewed down his priests in the name of their own stronger as well as more legitimate Deity; as firmly as the early Christian doctors, who, believing that Jupiter and the rest were potent evil beings, loaded them with every form of insult and defiance. It is the scene on Carmel, where perhaps only Elijah rose above this state of mind, if even he did, the scene in the Mecca Holy of Holies when Ozza and Lat were hewn down, repeated in our own century, and among minds even less developed than those of the Jews or the Koreish. We do not say the Fijian chiefs have not imbibed also something of the faith of Christ and the spirit of his teaching. The evidence seems to show that they have, that they have at least comprehended that vengeance, the massacre of the unresisting, is not for his servants—except, of course, when it is necessary to support Turksbut it was not out of Christianity, but out of a new allegiance to a God mightier and more friendly than their gods of the day before, that they thundered back that defiance. That faith is their stronghold at first, just as it is the stronghold of low-caste Hindoos or blacks of western Africa, who, embracing it, under Mussulman teaching, start up in a day from feeble slaves into brave, resolute, and, above, all, self-respecting men. It is the complete transfer of allegiance which is the cause of the completeness of the Christian victory, and of course, though the allegiance is rarely changed again, backslidings on any other point are not only possible, but almost certain. There must have been many such instances among our Scandinavian forefathers since Olaf, in identically the same spirit, defied Thor; and one instance, strange to bizarrerie, has occurred I have no doubt that he believed thoroughly in the existence and power of God, beyond this he probably believed nothing. He had a thorough hatred and contempt for all the human apparatus of religion, and was disposed to stand on his own rights as king and man that he was responsible to God, if to no one even against Deity itself. He acknowledged else; but he had also a curious feeling of the responsibility of God himself to certain paramount rules of justice and injustice, to which they both owed allegiance. Perhaps he regarded God as his suzerain, just as he himself was the suzerain of his great nobles, and they again the immediate lords of their own vassals. But his suzerain must not do him to that suzerain. This may sound very like wrong, any more than he ought to do wrong impiety to many, but to Rufus it probably really meant something very different, though doubtless he took a malicious but foolish pleasure in enunciating it in the most offensive form, in order to horrify both clerk and layman. He looked upon virtue or abstinence from vice as a sort of feudal aid due by him to God as his suzerain, and to be withheld if had renounced temporarily his allegiance, as he had cause of grievance against him, and it was to be evaded as much as possible in the ordinary state of things. When during a severe illness he was led through the fear of death to choose an archbishop, he chose the one who appeared to be forced on him by the hand of God, and whom he regarded as the nominee of his irresistible suzerain; but he resented the necessity and the imposition all the same, and when the danger was over, and the zealous but injudicious archbishop urged will of God, his strange creed broke forth in on him to live more in conformity with the the startling rejoinder, "Hear, bishop, by the holy face of Lucca, the Lord shall find no good one in me for all the evil he has inficted on me!" We greatly fear that had the oracle proved right, and the Christians been defeated, a good many of the Fijians would have felt, at all events till further instruction had reached them, very much after the fashion of the Red King. GEORGE SMITH. From Nature. Assur-bani-pal," or Sardanapalus, transliterated and translated, a work which inTHE untimely death of Mr. George volved immense labor in the preparation Smith at the early age of thirty-seven, is of the text and the examination of variant a loss that can ill be repaired. Scholars readings. This was followed by an excelcan be reared and trained, but hardly more lent little pamphlet on the chronology of than once in a century can we expect a Sennacherib's reign and a list of the chargenius with the heaven-born gift of divin-acters of the Assyrian syllabary. About ing the meaning of a forgotten language the same time he contributed to the newlyand discovering the clue to an unknown founded Society of Biblical Archaeology alphabet. The marvellous instinct by a very valuable paper on "The Early Hiswhich Mr. Smith ascertained the substan- tory of Babylonia" (since republished in tial sense of a passage in the Assyrian in- "The Records of the Past"), as well as an scriptions without being always able to account of his decipherment of the Cyprigive a philological analysis of the words it ote inscriptions which had hitherto been contained, gave him a good right to the such a stumbling-block and puzzle to title of "the intellectual picklock," by scholars. The Cypriote syllabary as dewhich he was sometimes called. The pio- termined by him has been the basis of the neer of Assyrian research, and the deci- later labors of Birch, Brandis, Siegismund, pherer of the Cypriote inscriptions, he Deecke, Schmidt, and Hall. could be all the less spared at the present It was in 1872, however, that Mr. Smith moment, when a key is needed to the read-made the discovery which has caused his ing of those Hamathite hieroglyphics to which the last discoveries he was destined to make have given such an unexpected importance. name to be a household word in England. His translation of "The Chaldean Account of the Deluge" was read before the Society of Biblical Archeology on the 3d of December, and in the following January he was sent to excavate on the site of Nineveh by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph. After unearthing the missing fragment of the deluge story, he returned to England with a large and important collection of objects and inscriptions. Among these were fragments which recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties, a paper on which was contributed by the discoverer to the Society of Biblical Archæology. It was in connec Mr. Smith was born of poor parents, and his school-education was consequently broken off at the age of fifteen, when he was apprenticed to Messrs. Bradbury and Evans to learn the art of engraving. While in this employment he often stole half_the_time allowed for dinner for visits to the British Museum, and saved his earnings to buy the works of the leading writers on Assyrian subjects. Sir Henry Rawlinson was struck with the young man's intelligence and enthusiasm, and after furnishing him with various casts and tion with these chronological researches squeezes, through which Mr. Smith was that Mr. Smith's invaluable volume on led to make his first discovery (the date" The Assyrian Eponym Canon was writof the payment of tribute by Jehu to Shal- ten for Messrs. Bagster in 1875. Shortly maneser) he proposed to the trustees of afterwards he again left England to conthe Museum that Mr. Smith should be as- tinue his excavations at Kouyunjik for the sociated with himself in the preparation | trustees of the British Museum, and in of the third volume of the "Cuneiform spite of the difficulties and annoyances Inscriptions of Western Asia." This was thrown in his way by the Turks, he sucin 1867, and from this year Mr. Smith en- ceeded in bringing home a large number tered upon his official life at the Museum of fragmentary tablets, many of them beand definitely devoted himself to the study longing to the great Solar Epic in twelve of the Assyrian monuments. The first books, of which the episode of the deluge fruits of his labors were the discovery of forms the eleventh lay. An account of his two inscriptions, one fixing the date of a travels and researches was given in his total eclipse of the sun in the month Sivan" Assyrian Discoveries," published at the or May, B.C. 763, and the other the date of an invasion of Babylonia by the Elamites in B.C. 2280, and a series of articles in the Zeitschrift für Egyptische Sprache, which threw a flood of light upon later Assyrian history and the political relations between Assyria and Egypt. In 1871 he published "The Annals of beginning of 1875. The remainder of the year was occupied in piecing together and translating a number of fragments of the highest importance, relating to the Creation, the Fall, the Tower of Babel, etc. The results of these labors were embodied in his book, "The Chaldean Account of Genesis." tablets exceptionally trustworthy. It is From The Athenæum. BRITISH ASSOCIATION. AT a meeting of the British Association the president, Sir W. Thomson, in his opening address, said: The great value of these discoveries in- | the myriad clay fragments now in the duced the trustees of the museum to museum, while his keenness of vision made despatch Mr. Smith on another expedition his copies of the minute characters of the in order to excavate the remainder of Assur-bani-pal's library at Kouyunjik, and so complete the collection of tablets in the British Museum. Mr. Smith accordingly went to Constantinople last October, and after some trouble succeeded in obtaining a firman for excavating. He set out for his last and fatal journey to the East in March, taking with him Dr. Eneberg, a Finnic Assyriologue. While detained at Aleppo on account of the plague, he explores the banks of the Euphrates from the Balis northward, and at Yerabolus discovered the ancient Hittite capital, Carchemish a discovery which bids fair to rival in importance that of Nineveh itself. After visiting Devi, or Thapsakus, and other places, he made his way to Bagdad, where he procured between two and three thousand tablets discovered by some Arabs in an ancient Babylonian library near Hillah. From Bagdad he went to Kouyunjik, and found, to his intense disappointment, that owing to the troubled state of the country it was impossible to excavate. Meanwhile Dr. Eneberg had died, and Mr. Smith, worn out by fatigue and anxiety, broke down at Ikisji, a small village about sixty miles north-east of Aleppo. Here he was found by Mr. Parsons, and Mrs. Skene, the consul's wife at Aleppo, and a medical man having been sent for, conveyed him by easy stages to Aleppo, where he died August 19th. He bas left behind him the MS. of a "History of Babylonia," intended to be a companion volume to his "History of Assyria," published by the S. P. C. K. last year. Mr. Smith's obliging kindness was only equalled by his modesty. Shortly after his return from his first expedition he was showing the present writer some of the tablets he had found, when a lady and gentleman came up and asked various questions, to which he replied with his usual courtesy. They thanked him and were turning away when, hearing his name pronounced, the lady asked: "Are you Mr. Smith?" On his replying, "That is my name, madam," she exclaimed, "What, not the great Mr. Smith!" and then, like the gentleman with her, insisted upon having "the honor" of shaking hands with the distinguished Assyriologue, while the latter crimsoned to the roots of his hair. His loss is an irreparable one to Assyriology, even beyond his powers as a decipherer, as his memory enabled him to remember the place and nature of each of Six weeks ago, when I landed in England after a most interesting trip to America and back, and became painfully conscious that I must have the honor to address you here to-day, I wished to write an address of which science in America should be the subject. I came home, indeed, vividly impressed with much that I had seen, both in the Great Exhibition of Philadelphia and out of it, showing the truest scientific spirit and devotion, the originality, the inventiveness, the patient, persevering thoroughness of work, the appreciativeness, and the generous openmindedness and sympathy from which the great things of science comes. I wish I could speak to you of the veteran Henry, generous rival of Faraday in electro-magnetic discovery; of Peirce, the founder of high mathematics in America; of Bache, and of the splendid heritage he has left to America and to the world in the United States Coast Survey; of the great school of astronomers which followed Gould, Newton, Newcomb, Watson, Young, Clarke, Rutherford, Draper, father and son; of Commander Belknap and his great explo ration of the Pacific depths by pianoforte wire, with imperfect apparatus supplied from Glasgow, out of which he forced a success in his own way; of Capt. Sigsbee, who followed with like fervor and resolution, and .made further improvements in the apparatus by which he has done marvels of easy, quick, and sure deep-sea sounding in his little surveying ship "Blake"; and of the admirable official spirit which makes such men and such doings possible in the United States Naval Service. I would like to tell you, too, of my reason for confidently expecting that American hydrography will soon supply the data from tidal observations long ago asked of our government in vain by a committee of the British Association, by which the A tricity is to convey all the delicacies of quality which distinguish articulate speech, the strength of its current must vary continuously, and, as nearly as may be, in simple proportion to the velocity of a particle of air engaged in constituting the sound! The Patent Museum of Washington, an institution of which the nation is justly proud, and the beneficent working of the United States patent laws, deserve notice in the section of the British Association concerned with branches of science to which nine-tenths of all the useful patents of the world owe their foundations. I was much struck with the prevalence of patented inventions in the Exhibition; it seemed to me that every good thing deserving a patent was patented. I asked one inventor of a very good invention, Why don't you patent it in En amount of the earth's elastic yielding to He answered, "The conditions in England are too onerous." We certainly are far behind America's wisdom in this respect. If Europe does not amend its patent laws (England in the opposite direction to that proposed in the bills before the last two sessions of Parliament), America will speedily become the nursery of useful inventions for the world. I should tell you also of "Old Prob's" weather warnings, which cost the nation $250,000 a year. Money well spent, say the Western farmers, and not they alone. In this the whole people of the United States are agreed, and though Democrats or Republicans, playing the "economical ticket," may for half a session stop the appropriations for even the United States Coast Survey, no one would for a moment think of starving Old Prob;" and now that eighty per cent. of his probabilities have proved true, and General Myers has for a month back ceased to call his daily forecasts "probabilities," and has begun to call them indications, what will the Western farmers call him this time next year? But the stimu lus of intercourse with American scientific men left no place in my mind for framing or attempting to frame a report on American science. Disturbed by Newcomb's suspicions of the earth's irregularities as a timekeeper, I could think of nothing but precession and nutation, and tides and monsoons, and settlements of the equatorial regions and melting of polar ice. Week after week passed before I could put down two words which I would read to you here to-day, and so I have nothing to offer for my address but a review of evidence regarding the physical conditions of the earth; its internal temperature; the fluidity or solidity of its interior substance; the rigidity, elasticity, plasticity of its external figure; and the permanence or variability of its period and axis of rotation. As a result of this review, he found that certain reasonings which he had published regarding precession and nutation in a rigid shell filled with liquid were wrong. He had now worked out the problem rigorously, for the case of a homogeneous liquid enclosed in an ellipsoidal shell; and had obtained results, which were absolutely decisive against the geological hypothesis of a thin rigid shell, full of liquid. But interesting in a dynamical point of view as this problem of Hopkins's is, it cannot afford a decisive argument against the earth's interior liquidity. It assumes the crust to be perfectly stiff and unyielding in its figure, and this of course it cannot be, because no material is infinitely rigid. But may it not be stiff enough to practically fulfil the condition of unyieldingness? No, decidedly it cannot. On the contrary, were it of continuous steel and five hundred kilomètres thick, it would yield very nearly as much as a solid globe of indian-rubber, to the deforming influences of centrifugal force and of the sun's and moon's attractions. The supposition of a crust of such thickness as would be consistent with the actual amounts of precession and nutation, with a liquid interior, is disproved by observations of the tides, which show that there is no such flexibility in the shell as this supposition would require. The investigations of Adams and Dalaunay had shown that there was an apparent acceleration of the moon's mean motion, possibly due to a real retardation of the earth's rotation by tidal friction. Newcomb's subsequent investigations in the lunar theory have, on the whole, tended to confirm this result; but they have also brought to light some remarkable apparent irregularities in the moon's motion, which he believes to be really due to irregularities in the earth's rotational velocity. If this is the true explanation, it seems that the earth was going slow from 1850 to 1862, so much as to have got behind by seven seconds in these twelve years, and then to have begun going faster again, so as to gain eight seconds from 1862 to 1872. So great an irregularity as this would require somewhat greater changes of sea-level, but not very much greater, than the British Association committee's reductions of tidal observations for several places in different parts of the world allow us to admit to have possibly taken place. From The Economist. PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES. A PROLONGED and rather unprofitable controversy has been carried on in the Times as to the limits to which protection in the United States is likely to be carried, and the probable consequences, in the long run, of the system which the manufacturers of America have built up. Captain Galton, who has lately been visiting the Philadelphia Exhibition, was greatly impressed with the astonishing results there displayed of the progress of the manufacturing industries of the Union within the past twenty years. It is stated by Captain Galton, and confirmed by other witnesses, that the advance upon what was possible before the Republican party came into power, and protection was accepted as the official doctrine of the American government, is almost beyond belief. It is certain that at Philadelphia the representation of American industry outshone the inadequate exhibition of English and other European manufactures, and it is probably true that the mechanical genius and the commercial instincts of the American people, working in combination, have actually approached, and threaten to equal, the most admirable industrial efforts of the Old World. Captain Galton goes so far as to assert that British manufacturers have hopelessly lost their hold upon the markets of the United States. Other observers go further, and picture the disastrous consequences of the removal of protective duties in America, which will bring American manufactures into ruinous competition with us, we are told, in the open markets of the rest of the world. We think that all these apprehensions are either absolutely unfounded or grossly exaggerated. They point to an unsteadiness of conviction in the minds of the industrial classes in England, which would be dangerous were there ever to be-which is quite possible. a foolish democratic outcry among the English working-classes. Such fears may possibly do some good by making our manufacturers perceive the truth - already sufficiently obvious the industrial supremacy of this country cannot be preserved without continual efforts to improve the quality and cheapen the cost of manufactured articles; but they are much more likely to do mischief by suggesting impracticable or ultimately ruinous remedies. that What is the actual state of the case in the United States? American industries have vastly improved in the character of their products, and as this improvement |