action as one man by a national cause and the bond of clanship. Nor do we find in these songs the same power of association, the thrill of a name, whether of place or family, and the strong love of locality which is so marked in border-music, and which gives to it such a truly Scottish and national character. The most characteristic feature in the so-called patriotic songs of the Irish is the spirit of rebellion, and to this spirit it must be allowed they owe their fascination. We may not be in sympathy with the sentiment of "The Wearing the Green," but we cannot deny its inspiration, or be insensible to the swing and fire of the music. But if we analyze this fascination, taking the words and music together, we find that the sentiment belongs to the nature of a grievance (Paddy's peculiar prerogative), stated with all the eloquence and pathos of the Celt, rather than to a genuine feeling of patriotism and nationality, nourished on the memory of great deeds in the past, and strengthened by determined action in the present. Of aspiration we find ample evidence, but of cohesion of purpose and unity of sentiment in action little or nothing. Some patriotic songs there are, however, which, treating as they do of a remote period in Irish history, do not come under the category of rebel airs, and which breathe a noble spirit of heroism and martial daring, and are animated by that fearless indifference to danger which has given to our army such splendid Irish soldiers. Such a song is "The Battle of Argan Mor," a very old melody set to words of Ossianic tradition. There is a strange wild exultation about this air, characteristic of lawless primitive times and of a people of daring instincts and of fierce fighting proclivities. Another beautiful martial song is "The Return from Fingal," a stately spirited measure, expressive of mingled triumph and sorrow. Songs like these and "Awake, awake, Fian na," and "The Sword" are charged with fire and enthusiasm, and move with an imperious rush of feeling that is very inspiring.

In the Irish dirges and laments there is great similarity to the music of the West Highlands, only the Irish music having been written in most instances for the harp (which has all the notes of the voice) is a music of full and sweet harmonies, and has not the omissions and deficiencies of the pentatonic scale in which all music for the pipes was written, While the melancholy of the Celtic people finds adequate expression in these laments— plaintive, wailing airs, something between

recitative and melody-another and not less characteristic side of the Irish temperament is very truthfully illustrated in their songs of humor. About these there is an inimitable raciness, a fresh and sparkling wit, a spontaneous ring of chaff and fun, with a dash of chivalrous sentiment, and an airy lightness which gives to them the unmistakable Hibernian accent, and to which there is no exact counterpart in the songs of England or Scot. land.-Saturday Review.

ELECTRIC MESSAGES WITHOUT WIRES.-The promise of electrical communication between two distinct points without the agency of an intervening wire is being fulfilled with startling rapidity and almost incredible success. The wonderful capacity of the invisible electric energy for leaping across a gulf of air miles in width, and unerringly delivering its message, is almost daily enlarging its functions. Inductive electricity, as it is called, which thus finds the atmospheric air or the ether a sufficient conductor for its purposes, and was a few years since but little more than a theorem of the laboratory and the classroom, has now become a momentous fact in civilization and commerce. It is only four years since we recorded as a remarkable triumph the feat of telegraphing to and from railway trains in motion by a parallel telegraph line. In this instance, it may be remembered, the electric message jumped across a distance of some twelve feet, without any connecting wire, and this achievement on the Lehigh Valley Railroad was the theme of considerable jubilation throughout the American Continent. To-day English electricians at Cardiff and elsewhere are easily transmitting electric messages across a wireless distance of three miles, without any sign of approaching the limits of the electric function in this direction.-Leisure Hour.

AN EGYPTIAN QUEEN.-Luckily for us, Hatesu not only built her temple, but wrote, carved, and painted thereon the most charming and detailed history of her great trading expedition. From beginning to end it was an exceedingly prosperous business. Much barter and exchange took place-one may guess with distinct advantage to the Egyptians. The ships returned laden with gold, incense, slaves, ivory, and ebony. Then Hatesu had a glorious time; a great national festival began, the great queen sat on her golden throne and all the treasures were poured out at her feet.

All this is recorded in a series of wonderful bas reliefs at Deir-el-Bahari, the great temple Hatesu built opposite Thebes. No other temple in Egypt is at all like it; it is built in a series of terraces hewn out of the hill side, and along the front run a series of marvellous carvings cut in a beautiful white sandstone. They anticipate those days long after, when the navy of Tarshish " came once in three years laden with gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks." Everything is here except the peacocks. Below, in the water, are carved many of the fish of the Red Sea, and so true to nature are they that each species can be identified, including a sole with one eye bigger than the other, which folks learned in such matters say shows a keen eye for nature. I dare say Hatesu had naturalists and artists attached to her court, and sent them with her expedition to Punt. She merely anticipated the voyage of the Challenger by a few thousand years. Along with the treasures came the Queen of Punt and many chiefs, and did hom. age to the royal Egyptian. Hatesu has represented the rival queen as a hideous dwarf, hunchbacked and distorted. (Did not Cleo. patra describe Octavia as "dwarfish"?) This may be feminine spite, or merely that the court artist found it easier to draw a sole than a woman. Never was a commercial transaction recorded in so picturesque a fashion. one is to enter into trading relationship with one's neighbors, this is the spirit to do it in, and Hatesu's method of recording it seems infinitely superior to dull charter-parties, bills of lading, and Custom House routine. But now trouble was awaiting Hatesu. For fifteen years she reigned magnificently, keeping her young half brother, Thotmes III., in subjection. Now the youth had grown to man's estate. He was a lad of very different metal from that other brother whom Hatesu swept away at the beginning of her reign. With the exception of Rameses II., he was destined to be the greatest of all Egyptian kings. For seven years they reigned together, but Hatesu still claimed the foremost place, and her name always stands first in the State records. Seven turbulent years, one fancies, and then the great queen disappeared; not a word, not a hint comes to us from tomb or temple. As she was but forty years old, it seems likely that there was meted out to her the same mea. sure that she dealt to Thotmes II. Directly the end came, her successor erased her name from all her monuments, and viciously hewed and hacked at the records of her greatness.

If

Here and there, however, her cartouches are merely disfigured, not obliterated, and the name of the great queen still holds a prominent place on the long roll of Egyptian his. tory.

Hatesu did not attempt to surpass the unsurpassable, but she discovered work to do of a distinct character, and there, to this day, amid those acres of ruins, she sat up the finest obelisk in the world. I should like to say the highest, too, but the authorities cannot agree even on a simple point like this. One would think any fool could measure an obelisk. however, it is variously estimated at 108 feet 10 inches, 97 feet 6 inches, and 92 feet. Anyway, it is the most beautiful obelisk in the world, and when one sees that wonderful pale rose-colored shaft outlined clear against the radiant sky, one thanks Amen Ra and all the gods that it has not been carted off to rot beneath the smoky skies of London, Paris, or New York. It weighs 3673 tons. I give this vulgar fact to enable you to understand the difficulties of dealing with such a mass. It is poised on its base with the most exquisite precision exactly in the very axis of the temple. Originally there were two, but the other is shattered to fragments. Wonderful beyond all wonders is the cutting of the hieroglyphics upon it deep, sharp, and absolutely true. They record that "She, Hatesu, the Mistress of the Diadems, whose years do not wither, erected this monument to her father." (One never knows exactly what Shakespeare did or did not know, but I suppose we may safely say he certainly could not read Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is strange, however, that in describing his Cleopatra-who was a weak version of Hatesu-he uses these very words, 'age cannot wither her." Is the "long arm of coincidence" long enough to reach back to 1600 B.C.?) She then covered the entire obelisk with gold, "that it might shine over both lands like the sun's disk, pure gold taken from the chief of the nations." Furthermore, she records how the whole of this magnificent business was carried through "in seven months from the very beginning when first hewn out of the quarry in the mountain." How often, as the royal lady swept past in her chariot, she would be gladdened by the sight of her great obelisk flashing back the burning rays of the sun! Deep in its base she carved the triumphant statement that " never, since the creation of the world, has anything been made equal to those things set up by the child of the sun, Hatesu."-Cornhill Magazine.

It was my honorable duty to read an English essay on "The Renaissance," in the theatre at Oxford, on the 17th of June, 1863. At that time confused and erroneous views were common as to the meaning of the term Renaissance, and as to the importance of the historical period which it denotes. Even so able a thinker as G. W. F. Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, passed from the Middle Ages to the German Reformation with three pages of transition, in which he superficially alluded to the revival of learning, the efflorescence of the fine arts, and the discovery of America. Hegel, apparently, had not grasped the revolutionary character of humanism; its reaction against mediæval methods of thinking; its preparation of modern scientiac criticism. But what re

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vealed a deeper want of insight into the subject, was his failure to perceive that the Reformation owed its force as an intellectual movement apart from mere revolt against ecclesiastical corruption-to the New Spirit of independence which had been liberated in Italy by the Renais

sance.

During the last thirty years rapid advance has been made toward a true knowledge of the Renaissance. A group of eminent writers in France, Germany, England, and Italy have devoted their best energies to investigating its origins in the Middle Ages, explaining the conditions of its development, and analyzing its specific character. Yet I feel that we are still very far from being able to give a plausible theory of the causes which produced

this reawakening of the human mind, or to define with absolute precision what was its vital essence.

What I wrote in my early youth returns to my memory now; and I do not seem able, after thirty years of searching, to yield a better account of the aetiology of the Renaissance than I did then. Then I introduced my treatment of the subject with remarks upon the abyssmal deeps of national personality, and the inscrutability of laws which govern human development, adding:These remarks, if generally true, may be applied with special significance to the age of the Renaissance-that mighty period of dissolution and reconstruction, of the reabsorption of old material, and of the development of new principles, of discoveries and inventions mutually strengthening one another, and tending to diffuse and render permanent the power of man. If we ask, what was the Renaissance? the lovers of art will answer that it was the change produced on painting, architecture, and sculpture, by the study of newly recovered antiques; nor will they agree about the value of this change; for some deplore it as the decadence of true inspiration, others hail it as the dawning of a brief but glorious day. The scholar means by the Renaissance that discovery of ancient manuscripts and that progress in philology which led to a correct knowledge of classical literature, to new systems of philosophy, to a fresh taste in poetry, to a deeper insight into language, and, finally, to the great Lutheran schism and the emancipation of modern thought. The jurist understands by the term a dissolution of old systems of law based upon the False Decretals, the acquisition of a true text of the Corpus Juris, and generally the opening of a new era for jurisprudence. Ask the historian of political Europe what marked the age of the Renaissance, and he will talk of the abolition of feudalism, of French interference in Italian affairs, of the tendency to centralization, of the growth of great monarchies, and of diplomacy, which was the instrument by which kings established their supremacy, and wrought out their schemes of self-aggrandizement. Besides, we hear of the discovery of America, and of the exploration of the East; the true

system of the world is explained by Copernicus; Vesalius teaches us how man is made; printing, engraving, paper, the compass, gunpowder, all start suddenly into being to aid the dissolution of what is rotten and must perish, to strengthen and perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet, if we rightly consider the question, we shall find that neither one of these answers, nor yet indeed all of them together, can adequately explain the multiplicity and apparent incongruity of those phenomena which made the interval between 1450 and 1550 the most marvellous period that the world has ever known. In the word Renaissance, or palingenesis, in the idea of Europe arousing herself from the torpor of trance and incubation which weighed upon her for ten centuries, we detect a spiritual regeneration, a natural crisis, not to be explained by this or that phenomenon of its development, but to be accepted as a gigantic movement for which at length the time was come, which had been anticipated by the throes of centuries, which was aided and extended by external incidents, and which still continues to live and move and expand within us, by virtue of its own power, and of the marvellous mechanical inventions that preserve to us inviolably each onward step in its progress toward maturity."

It may be impossible to analyze the causes which produced this re-awakening of intellectual energy. But it is not beyond the scope of criticism to sketch out its essential character, and to describe the main conditions under which it was effected. In the first place, we must bear steadily in mind the fact that the Renaissance was, above all things, a spiritual process, a reacquisition of mental lucidity and moral independence after centuries of purblind somnambulism. For this reason, I have elected to define the genius of Renaissance as the New Spirit; and I propose to consider, as broadly and generally as possible, what were the leading characteristics of this New Spirit.

Antecedent circumstances, affecting the whole of Europe in varying degrees, rendered the emergence of spiritual liberty possible. These were the absorption of the Teutonic barbarians into a common political system, at the head of which stood the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire; the assimilation of

one religious creed by all parts and parcels of the European community; the definition of those integers as separate nationalities, with languages of their own, and similar monarchical institutions; the possession by them all of one learned language in the Latin tongue; finally, the gradual relaxation of the mediaval dualism of Church and Empire, and the high degree of autonomy and social comfort attained by the Italians. The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance may be found not only in her favorable geographical and economical conditions, but also in her unbroken connection with the antique past, her intolerance of feudalism, and her essentially mundane temperament. The power of the Empire had been sapped by its localization in Germany, by the rivalries of monarchies and republics claiming independence, and by the fierce war waged against the House of Hohenstauffen through successive papacies. The authority of the Church had been weakened by her Avignonian exile, by the councils of Constance and Basle, by Wycliffe and the Lollards in England, by the Hussites in Bohemia, by the heretics of Provence, the Paterines of Italy.

The Occidental nations, in the last years of the Middle Ages, had thus attained a point at which, without being conscious of a coming change, they were ready to enter upon a new epoch of civilization. We might compare them to a liquid mass of molten metal at the moment when it is about to settle down and solidify. When that happens, it is not the whole mass which suddenly becomes stationary, but the curdling process begins in what may be called the most propitious quarter. Here a crust or a cake forms, and this acts like a nucleus for the surrounding fluid substance, Something of the same sort occurs in all processes of crystallization or gelation. These analogies are clearly defective; for what took place at the beginning of the Renaissance ought properly to be compared to organic rather than to solidifying change. We could perhaps discover a better metaphor in embryology, appealing to that speck in the ovum out of which the complex vital structure has to be evolved. However, let that pass. In the phenomenon with which we are now occupied, the propitious quarter, the nucleus of the ovum, was Italy. The reasona for this priority of the Italians have

been already assigned. They never broke with the Roman past. They absorbed the Ostrogoths and Lombards. They resisted feudalism. They kept their language close to Latin. Their cities bore antique names, and abounded in monuments of the classical past. They created the Roman Church, and at the same time they were the least imposed on by its spiritual pretensions. Farther than all the sisternations, they had advanced upon the path of material and social prosperity. They held the trade of the world in their grasp. They lived in diplomatical and commercial relations with the East, which was only known to Englishmen and Franks and Germans as the land of hated unbelievers. They owned no allegiance to kings, and were loosely bound together in a mesh of independent, mutually repellent and attractive city-states. It devolved upon them therefore to revive the positive and plastic genius of the antique world, and by combining this with what remained alive of medievalism, to give form and substance to that hybrid which I have called the New Spirit.

These considerations help us to understand the importance of the Emperor Frederick II. in the history of the Renaissance; the hatred with which he inspired orthodox Christians; his precocious prefigurement of the coming epoch. I must repeat that the Renaissance was essentially intellectual-an outburst of mental and moral independence. The first and leading note of it is the reassertion of the individual in his rights to think and feel, to shape his conduct according to the dictates of his reason. The resurgence of personality in the realm of thought lies at the root of the whole matter. In the sphere of action, personality played freely enough throughout the Middle Ages. But men were agreed then to accept a certain system of thought, elaborated mainly by Churchmen. Dominant conceptions prevailed. We have the spectacle of whole nations in movement toward the Holy Land, governed by a romantic idea, We have the no less instructive spectacle of Henry of England doing penance at the shrine of Becket, of Henry of Germany kneeling in the snow at Canossa. But now comes Frederick II., the most mundane and humane of rulers, so far as we can judge him through the mists of prejudice and calumny: also the most