to a place we have near town on Saturday where there is a very nice piece of water, indeed, some people call it a lake. My boys wanted to skate, but that I would not permit."

"You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent," said Lothair, "no skating." Or once more, a piece of raillery from "Vivian Grey:

gossip," for the bad listener in “Lothair,” "I think we want more evidence of a the "Midland sea," for the Mediterranean change. The vice-chancellor and I went down in "Tancred" and "Venetia;" the figure of unbuttoning one's brains, and the jingle "plundered and blundered," of Coningsby," the "heresy of cutlets," from "Venetia," the "ortolans stuffed with truffles and the truffles with ortolans" from "Endymion," the "confused explanations and explained confusions," from " Popanilla." The terms "stateswoman and "anecdotage," "melancholy ocean" and "Batavian grace," remind us that Benjamin Disraeli is the son of an author he has himself portrayed as sauntering on his garden terrace meditating some happy phrase.

It still remains for us to advert to the wit of sustained sparkle rather than of sudden flashes. Of this there is an admirable specimen in "Tancred." Lady Constance is alluding to "The Revelations of Chaos," a tract on evolution.

"... It shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing could be so pretty. A cluster of vapor-the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese churned into light. You must read it; it is charming."

"Nobody ever saw a star formed," said Tancred.

"What a pity, Miss Manvers, that the fashion has gone out of selling oneself to the devil."

"Good gracious, Mr. Grey!"

"On my honor I am quite serious. It does appear to me to be a very great pity; what a capital plan for younger brothers. It is a kind of thing I have been trying to do all my life, and never could succeed. I began at school with toasted cheese and a pitchfork." Or the report of the debate in the House of Lords " imposing particularly if we take a part in it."

Lord Exchamberlain thought the nation going on wrong, and he made a speech full of currency and constitution. Baron Deprivyseal seconded him with great effect, brief but bitter, satirical and sore. The Earl of Quarterday answered these full of confidence in the nation and himself. When the debate was getting heavy Lord Snap jumped up to give them something light. The Lords do not encourage wit, and so are obliged to put up with pertness. But Viscount Memoir was very statesmanlike and spouted a sort of universal history. Then there was Lord Ego, who vindicated his character when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives because his auditors could not understand his acts.* Or the comparison of the Tories who supported Peel in his defection to the converted Saxons by Charlemagne : Everything is

Perhaps not; you must read the Revelations. It is all explained. But what is most interesting is the way in which man has been developed. You know all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First there was nothing, then there was something, then I forget the next. I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came, let me see, did we come next- Never mind that

we

came, and the next change there will be some-
thing very superior to us, something with
wings. Ah! that's it, we were fishes, and I
believe we shall be crows. . . .
proved by geology, you know.
development; we had fins, we may have
wings.'

This is

This passage is not only wit, but humor also, according as we regard the speaker or the speech, and as both combined as in fact " Westoriental," irresistible. Or again, Herbert in "Venetia :

"I doubt whether a man at fifty is the same material being that he is at five-and-twenty." "I wonder," said Lord Cadurcis, "if a creditor brought an action against you at fifty for goods sold and delivered at five-and-twenty one could set up the want of identity as a plea in bar; it would be a consolation to an elderly gentleman."

...

When the emperor appeared, instead of conquering he converted them. How were they converted? In battalions chronicler informs us they were converted in terly impossible to bring these individuals battalions and baptized in platoons. It was utfrom a state of reprobation to one of grace with a celerity sufficiently quick.t And last, though decidedly not least the dictum of Mendez Pinto:

Or the lady's reasoning on the Gulf the divergencies of opinion on the litStream theory, —

This expression is Beethoven's.

The Young Duke.

† Speech on the Repeal of the Corn Laws, May 15, 1846.

erary merit of Lord Beaconsfield-and | cal. Nor is the least enduring of the this rests with the best critic, posterity - wreaths heaped upon his bier that he it is at least unquestionable that in wit always, and in the best manner, amused and humor he never flags. There are us while he instructed, and instructed us those who have called him dull, and they while he amused. are dullards. The Boeotians could hardly His wit and his humor offer a complete have proved fair judges of Aristophanes. refutation to the Shakespearian adage, But our object in this article has been "When the age is in the wit is out," for to vindicate a much higher honor for Lord he preserved them youthful as a septuaBeaconsfield than any such mere clever-genarian, and they in requital shall preness. We have endeavored to prove that not only does he "sparkle with epigram and blaze with repartee" of unusual brilliance, but that his humor, necessarily hampered as it was by his surroundings and his aims, can boast keen insight and original manipulation; that the bizarre and the frivolous is the mere froth on its surface unessential and evanescentand that as a wit and a humorist he is now, by the prerogative of death, classi

serve his memory ever vivid and vigorous. "Alas! poor Yorick, where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table in a roar?" may exclaim one who discerns only in Lord Beaconsfield the court jester. Our rejoinder shall be that of truth and reverence,

He being dead yet speaketh.

WALTER SYDNEY SICHEL.

MIND IN WORK. - Medical men see a great | deal of life, and nothing strikes the observant family practitioner more than the number of feeble, sauntering, and loitering minds with which he is brought into contact. No inconsiderable proportion of the common and some of the special ailments by which the multitude are affected may be traced to the want of vigor in their way of living. The human organism is a piece of physico-mental machinery which can only be successfully worked at a fairly high pressure. It will almost inevitably get out of gear if the propelling force is allowed to fall below a moderately high standard of pressure or tension, and that degree of tension cannot be maintained without so much interest as will secure that the mind of the worker shall be in his work. It is curious to observe the way in which particular temperaments and types of mental constitution are, so to say, gifted with special affinities, or predilections for particular classes of work. The men who work in hard material are men of iron will, which is equivalent to saying that the men of what is called hard-headed earnestness find a natural vent for their energy in work that requires and consumes active power. On the other hand, the worker in soft materials is commonly either theoretical or dreamy. There is a special type of mental constitution connected with almost every distinct branch of industry, at least with those branches which have existed long enoug to exercise a sufficient amount of influense on successive generations of workers. We are all familiar with what are called the racial types of character. It would be well if sme attention could be bestowed on the industrial types, both in relation to educational policy and the study of mental and physicalts in health and disease.

Lancet.

THE Times Bucharest correspondent describes a curious result following the recent earthquake which passed under that city. The soil of Bucharest is a rich, black, porous vegetable mould, very springy under pressure, and carriages passing in a street cause a strong vibration in the adjacent houses. The Grand Hôtel Boulevard, however, was an exception to this general rule, and in the correspondent's room, facing the principal street, on which there is a heavy traffic, he never could feel any sensible effect from passing vehicles. During the recent earthquake the windows and crockery in less massively constructed buildings rattled very sensibly, whereas there was no audible sound produced in the hotel mentioned. Since the earthquake shock, however, this state of things has changed entirely, and every vehicle passing the hotel causes vibration in the whole building. The singular part of this change consists in the fact that the effect produced by the vehicle is precisely the same as that accompanying the earthquake. It is not a jar as previously produced in other buildings, but a sawing motion similar to that described in the correspondent's telegram relating to the late shock of earthquake. This movement is so great as to cause pictures to sway backwards and forwards on the walls, and it is equally perceptible in the rear corner rooms farthest from the street. The hotel is of brick, covered outside with mastic, which would show at once any crack in the walls. He has carefully examined the exterior of the building and there is not a crack in it. Hence, he thinks, this change in the solidity of the structure appears to be due to some effect produced in the earth underneath the building by the shock of earthquake.

Fifth Series,

Volume XXXV.

}

No. 1934.- July 9, 1881.

From Beginning,

Vol. CL.

CONTENTS.

I. THE REVISION OF THE NEW Testament, . Macmillan's Magazine,

II. THE SHUT-UP HOUSES, .

III. SIR HENRY TAYLOR ON CARLYLE'S "REMI-

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which a corn of wheat dies, and by dying becomes capable of bringing forth much fruit. At all events, if "gospel" has the negative defect of suppressio veri, it is at least free from the far graver fault of suggestio falsi.

THE REVISION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. "ONCE more the quiet years, from their long slumber leap," and England, after a silence of ten generations, is engaged in revising her Bible. Between 1526 and 1611 new translations, partial or It is not so with an allied term, "relicomplete, were constantly coming forth. gion." Whatever may be the etymology From 1611 down to very recent times, of the Latin religio and. Max Müller there was nothing of the kind. The Au- agrees with Cicero in deriving it from thorized Version seemed to share the im-re-legere, the opposite of negligere, to exmutability of the solar system; partly, no doubt, because it was an authorized version —or rather was supposed to be so, for, as a matter of fact, it never was formally authorized either by crown or Parliament, or convocation and partly perhaps because, of the two parties which so long divided the Church, the one was less occupied with the words of the Bible than with the formularies derived from them, while the other regarded those words with an exaggerated reverence which would have shrunk from the idea of amendment as a profanation. Is the present movement a sign that these two great parties have somewhat modified their views, or that their exclusive domination is no more? However this may be, it affords a fitting occasion for recalling some of the leading points in the history of our English Bible.

And first, as to the name. It may be asked, What's in a name? but every one who has reflected at all on the subject, knows how powerfully names may influence thought. The late Mr. Charles Buxton, in his "Notes of Thought," speaks of it as nothing short of a national calamity that the record of our Saviour's life and teaching should be designated by the word "gospel," a word which has to the mass of those who hear it no significance or "connotation,” instead of by the word "good tidings." Perhaps this is not a very strong case; for it may be maintained that "gospel" does carry with it a meaning to those who think at all; and further that to express any complex phenomenon of world-wide importance there must be one word set apart and withdrawn from its ordinary uses; that to fit it for its great mission it must pass through a process analogous to that by

press thoughtfulness, the opposite of carelessness - it will hardly be denied that in nine out of ten cases where it occurs it carries with it an evil flavor of unmanly fear, seeking refuge in slavish service. Tantum Relligio potuit suadere malorum is the line which it at once recalls to every scholar. And this even in its English form it has never quite lost. In the Bible, "religion" and "religious are very rarely used, and never in their best—if even in a good sense. Their distinctive use is as the equivalents of Opηoкeia and Opñoкos, as in James i. 26, 27, where the whole object of the writer is to impress on his disciples how unworthy of God is the idea of his service which underlies those words. And though "religion" is now enthroned on the lips and in the hearts of men as the recognized name for the highest aspiration of the human soul towards God, it is constantly betraying its meaner origin, not only in such phrases as 66 Sister in religion," "the religious order," "a religious," but also, though less obviously, in many oth ers, as when we speak of "the religious life," as something distinct from the godly, righteous, and sober life after which every true Christian strives. Who shall say how much in this case, as in others, the mortal word may have clogged the immortal thought; to how great an extent a good cause may have suffered from the imperfection of a watchword, misleading those within the camp as to the true strength of their position, and keeping out many who might have been within it?

The name "Bible," as applied to the Holy Scriptures, is perhaps open to some objection of a similar kind, as tending to make us forget their multifarious character; that what we are speaking of is not