against hope, telling ourselves tales of the signalling we had heard from the prisoners beneath our feet, and fondly deluding ourselves with the idea that, as they had a sufficiency of food and water, they must be safe. Only a few men could work at once in the confined space of the shaft, and their task was one of excessive peril. They hung suspended by ropes in the depths of the pit, with water pouring incessantly upon them, with the crumbling sides of the shaft continually giving way, threatened at every moment by a terrible death, but not for a single instant by day or night desisting from their efforts. In the mean time, all England was thrilled with the story of the imprisoned miners, and shared in the suspense which chained the wives and mothers of the captives to the pit-heap, day after day throughout that week of anguish. It was in the dead of the winter night that those of us who stood upon the platform at the mouth of the pit learned the dreadful truth. A sharp signal had been given from below, and at once the sinkers working in the shaft had been drawn up. For a moment we hoped that the signal meant that the lost had been recovered, and our hearts beat quickly with joyous anticipation. But too soon the bitter truth was made clear. As the sinkers were brought to the surface, it was found that all were unconscious, and we knew that they had succumbed to the deadly gases of the mine. Restoratives were at hand, but before they could be applied to the victims, the master-sinker, Coulson by name, whose own son was among the men lying on the pit-heap unconscious, stooped and kissed his boy, and then calmly took his place in the dangling noose, and bade them lower him into the shaft. There was not one of us who would have given sixpence for his life at that moment. That has always seemed to me to have been the bravest deed I ever witnessed. When Coulson disappointed our fears by coming back to the surface alive he told the awful tale. The obstruction had been at last removed, but "the pit was foul," and we knew that it held none but the dead. As I look at the place on this bright July day of 1896, I find it difficult to realize all the horrors of which I was a witness here forty years ago. Yet I can still see the uncoffined dead being brought to bank -twenty hours being occupied in that task alone. I can recall the smile of peace which rested upon every grimy face; ay, and I recollect the tears with which the brave men who had gone down into the depths of the pit told me of how they had found the victims sitting in long rows side by side, waiting for the help which was to come too late, and of how the fathers had their boys folded in their arms, whilst brothers and friends sat with clasped hands, in patient silence. One slight record of the captivity was left in the shape of a cheap memorandum book, in which one of the prisoners had pencilled a few words telling of the prayer meeting that had been held and the "exhortation" that had been given in the early hours of their imprisonment. But the record broke off little more than four-and-twenty hours after the closing of the shaft, and we comforted ourselves with the thought that their agony had been brief, as their end was undoubtedly painless. Away yonder stands the grey tower of Earsdon Church, steeped in the summer sunlight. At its foot, in one vast common grave, lie the two hundred men and boys who died thus in the New Hartley Pit in January, 1862. I can still see the long procession of coffins being carried between the leafless hedges. I seem to hear again the wail of the old hymn, “O God, our help in ages past," which filled the air as the whole manhood of the village of Hartley was borne to the tomb. It is haunted ground, truly, on which I stand; and I realize afresh not only the perils and heroism of the miner's daily life, but the fact that the man who, after the lapse of a generation, revisits the home of his youth, must of necessity sojourn among ghosts. WEMYSS REID. From The Fireside Magazine. Strangely fanciful and astonishingly, recommended. Patients were advised to wear a hyæna's skin or a young wolf's skin, in which the root of gentian had been enclosed, or sometimes a dog's tooth was fastened in a leaf and tied round the patient's arm. A tale is told of some priests belonging to a certain church of St. Lambert in a city of Picardy who undertook to cure hydrophobia in a very special manner. When a sufferer was brought to them they cut a cross in his forehead; they then burnt a piece of the saint's robe, laid it upon the part that had been bitten, sewed up the wound, and applied a plaster. After this operation the patient was put on a diet of hard-boiled eggs and water. If he failed to recover within the space of forty days, he was regarded as incorrigible; they bound him hand and foot in his bed and smothered him. One heroic remedy mentioned by Pliny was to salt the flesh of a mad dog and eat it. The head of a dog powdered was also considered efficacious. Cheese made of goat's milk, mixed with wild marjoram was sometimes prescribed. A common practice was to plunge the patieut into cold water-sea water, if possible. The case is related of a girl who, suffering from the fearful malady, was repeatedly plunged into a tub of water in which a bushel of salt had been dissolved until she became insensible; then she was left in the tub, propped against the sides. At length she re gained her senses, and found herself not only able to look at the water, but even to taste it. No little capital was made out of this cure. Vinet's Statue at Lausanne.-After long and only partially explained delay, his native country, Switzerland, is preparing to honor the memory of Vinet by a memorial in Lausanne, where he passed most of his life. It is now above half a century since the good man and great theologian died. He was one of the chief founders of the Free Church of Switzerland, a worthy colleague of Malan and Merle d'Aubigné, and the true successor of Zwinglius in modern times. At his death funds were raised for erecting a suitable memorial, and the sum has since reached the amount of 40,000 francs. Several memorial tablets have been erected by his loving pupils or the admirers of his works, but now the rulers of the Canton de Vaud have resolved to have a statue in their capital of the man whose memory they have always honored. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of the LIVING AGE CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 15 cents. And the golden-green wide reaches of plain, From the tall grass, waving its russet plumes High over their heads- One by one, along the path Wrapped in their white cloths, they come, Fleet-footed, slender, soft-eyed, Where the silver mists lay curling all night With heads like a black lamb's fleece, in the hollows. He has drunk up the mists-he has wak ened the folk Where the round huts nestle amid the All round couch the mountains As the golden sunlight creeps downwards along their flanks Nguwi, black, lowering sphinx-like over the plain, And craggy Lipepete And forest-clad Bangala, Nearer and nearer And, hark, the flute-notes in between, And Dzonze, where the lions live-a Shrill and sweet as a warbling bird shapeless, rounded mass And Mvai's trifid granite peak- Bush And Chirobwe, far away The children are coming! Sapphire-blue, beautiful, with one sharp And Mbuya, lissom and laughing-eyed, midmost crag, Ever finger-like, pointing upward. Over the plain they come, Along the narrow paths Untouched by wheel or hoof Trodden smooth by countless bare feet, Where the fisi, passing in the night, Has left his foot-pri. With the plump brown shoulders and the From Blackwood's Magazine. FOR THE LAST FIFTY YEARS. Paris has been the heart of France since Louis XI consolidated a kingdom. But the Revolution-the Revolution par excellence changed all former conditions. Under the old régime the grands seigneurs crowded to the court from the country to rival each other in the race to ruin. But only the men of the bluest blood and the highest pretensions were welcomed to the Louvre or the royal chateaux, although each of the seigneurs had his followers or parasites, whom he sought to advance. Each province had its parliament and its governor, who held the little court which sufficed for local ambitions. There the poorer noble or the well-born hobereau could cut a certain figure, and hope for a place or a sinecure suited to his station. There was a local noblesse of the robe, with a host of hangers-on, and besides the multiplicity of minor official appointments which have always existed in France, there were openings for men of brains and cupidity as intendants to administer the domains of the absentees,-to grind the vassals, to exact the corvées, and to take heavy toll for themselves in the shape of commission and douceurs. That state of society was swept away by the Revolution. In those times of turmoil and terror, when the democratic caldron boiled over, the hereditary aristocracy disappeared, and the places they had filled were left vacant. Society was shaken to its foundations, and a new world had come up, with the general levelling of classes, where everything was thrown open to talent, energy, selfconfidence, and audacity. The map of France was remodelled; the provinces, with their semi-independent satraps, who squandered their revenues in a sort of semi-Oriental state, gave place to departments administered by préfets, appointed and directed by a central authority. Then the gravitation towards centralization in the capital became inevitable, and t enceforth Paris has been the happy huntingground of adventurers of every kind, and, as we might add, of every nation. We are not sketching the recent political history of France. We shall only remark, by way of introducing Captain Bingham's suggestive "Recollections," that the government has oscillated between democracy and dic tatorships since the assembling of the States-General and the collapse of the old régime. The coups d'état of Fructidor and Brumaire had prepared the way for Louls the autocracy of Napoleon. XVIII. accepted the constitutional charter drawn up and submitted by an elected Assembly, and Charles X. was sent into exile for tampering with that essential title of the Restoration. Louis Philippe, who might have done better for himself and his family had he been wise enough to insist on a regency and the rights of the young Duke of Bordeaux, was the "King of the who elected to dismiss him in his turn French" and the chosen of the people, when he outraged democratic susceptibilities. The prince president, when he violated his sacramental oath and terrorized the Boulevards with a butchery, pleading Hugo's åvάyêη and sought absolution in an appeal to the imperative stress of circumstances, democracy, whom he hoped to master when the reins of government were held firmly in his hands. Again he had recourse to the same expedient of the shaken and his popularity endangered plebiscite, when his power had been by the Mexican fiasco and his mismanagement of foreign affairs. Since that gentlemen of the pavement approprimemorable day of September, when the ated power, what we may call the constitutional democracy has had tion of the interval of Parisian anarchy everything its own way, with the excepunder the Commune, which was the most fundamentally democratic development of all. adventurers; and it is perhaps the surParis is the most inviting field for qualities of a really great nation, that est proof of the vitality and sound France has not only survived the 1 Recollections of Paris. By Captain the Hon. D. Bingham. Chapman & Hall, 1896. |