The reader may gather from the perusal of the above desultory examples, selected from a mass of similar ones, some idea of the enormous amount of the funds, intended for benevolent purposes, which Christian men have bequeathed to the world; and they may perhaps serve to enlighten the curious observer on the subject of some of the unobtrusive phenomena which occasionally excite his admiration and arouse his conjecture. They are the silent charities of men in the silent land. How much good they do, and how much harm, and on which side the balance is likely to lie—these are questions which for the present we have neither time nor space to discuss.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Chambers's Pocket Miscellany, vol. iv.



LABOUR STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET.

The condition of the working-classes in this country is a subject of intense interest to all thinking men; but it is profitable as well as amusing to transfer our attention sometimes to the same portions of society in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the people are as busy as we are with their 'hand-workers,' and the questions of freedom of industry and general instruction are as warmly discussed as at home. We have now before us a little volume by the philosopher and historian, Zschokke, which, in the form of a fictitious narrative, treats very fully of the status of the mechanic in Fatherland; and we are tempted to cull a few extracts which may afford the reader materials for perhaps an interesting comparison.[3]

The real hero of the story is Hand-labour, and his progress is described throughout three generations of men. He is the Thought of the book, illustrated by adventure and vicissitude; living when the human agents die in succession; and leaving a distinct and continuous track in the reader's mind, when the names and persons fade or conglomerate in his memory. And yet some of these names and persons are not feebly individualised. The father, the son, and the grandson stand well out upon the canvas; and while the family likeness is strictly preserved from generation to generation, the men are seen independent and alone, each in his own special development. The patriarch was a travelling tinker, who wheeled his wares about the country in a barrow; and then, rising in the world, attained the dignity of a hawker, with a cart of goods, drawn by a little gray ass. His son Jonas trotted on foot beside him in all his journeys, dining like his father on bread and water, and sleeping in barns or stables. But when the boy was old enough, he was turned off to pick up his own subsistence like the redbreasts, the sparrows, and the woodpeckers. 'Listen, my lad,' quoth Daddy Thaddaeus; 'this is the spring. Look for sloes and elderberries, rose-leaves and others for ointment; marjoram, spurge, and thyme, wherever thou mayst and canst. These we will sell to the apothecaries. In summer, gather basketfuls of strawberries, bilberries, and raspberries; carry them to the houses: they will yield money. In winter, let us gather and dry locks of wool, for the saddlers and tapestry-makers, and withes for the basket and mat manufacturers. From the table of the bountiful God, a thousand crumbs are falling for us: these we will pick up. They will give thee cheese to thy bread, and a piece of meat to thy potatoes. Only get to work! I will give thee a little barrow, and a belt for thy shoulders.'

This was his first essay in business on his own account, and he worked hard and throve well. His separation from his father taught him how to stand on his own legs—an important piece of knowledge in a world that is as full of leave-takings as of meetings; and when they did come together, and the boy counted out his kreutzers, and the father patted him approvingly on the cheek, that boy would have changed places with no prince that ever sat on a throne. Jonas was at length apprenticed to a girdler, or worker in metals; and the old tinker in due time died, leaving his son the parting advice, to 'work, save, and pray,' and a box containing a thousand guilders.

Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself. He was now, by the rules of his guild, obliged to travel for improvement; he spent five or six years in going to and fro upon the earth, and then came back to Altenheim an accomplished girdler. To become a master, it was necessary to prepare his 'master-piece,' as a specimen of what he could do; and the task allotted to him was to engrave on copper, without rule or compass, the prince's family-crest, and then to gild the work richly. This accomplished, he was received into the guild of masters with much pomp, strange ceremonies, and old-fashioned feasting—all at the charge of the poor beginner. 'Without reckoning the heavy expenses of his mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child of very poor people, to help him. He would have been very glad to put the rest of his money out to interest again; but he had to provide the means of subsistence for at least one year in advance, for he had to begin with neither wares nor customers.'

Jonas now appears in the character of a lover, and his wooing is one of the most beautiful pictures in the book. His choice has fallen upon a servant-girl, whom he had known in boyhood.

'One morning, Master Jordan sent his apprentice with a message: "Miss Fenchel was to come to him directly: he had found a good place for her." Martha hastened thither gladly.

'"Hast thou found a place for me, dear Jonas?" asked she, giving him her hand gracefully. "Thank God! I began to fear becoming troublesome to our kind friends. Come, tell me where?"

'He looked anxiously into her joyous blue eyes; then, in confusion, down to the ground; then again upwards to the roof of the room, and round the four sides, as though he were seeking something lost.

'"Come, tell me, then?" repeated she. "Why art thou silent?"

'He collected himself, and began, hesitating: "It is—but Martha—thou must not be angry with me."

'In surprise, she smiled. "Angry with thee, Jonas! If I would be, and should be, could I be?"

'"Listen, Martha; I will shew thee—I must tell thee—I know a man anxious to have thy heart and hand—who—even who"——

'"O Jonas, reproach me rather, but do not make mockery of me, a poor maiden!" exclaimed she, shocked or hurt, while her face lost all its colour, and she turned from him.

'"Martha, look at me. He is assuredly no bad man. I will bring him to thee; I will give him to thee myself."

'"No, Jonas! no! From thee, least of all, can I receive a lover."

'"From me, least of all!" asked he with visible emotion. "From me, least of all! And if—I don't know—if I would give thee myself—Look at me, Martha! Tell me."

'Here silence ensued. She stood before him with downcast eyes and glowing cheeks, and played with her apron-string. Then, as if still doubting, she looked up again, her eyes swimming with tears, and said, with trembling lips: "What must I say, then?"

'Jonas took courage, and whispered, half aloud: "Dost thou love me with all thy heart?"

'Half aloud, Martha whispered back: "Thy heart knows it."

'"Canst thou be satisfied with dry bread and salt?"

'"Rather salt from thee than tears from me!"

'"Martha, I will work for thee; wilt thou save for me?"

'"I will be sparing in everything, except my own pains!"

'"Well then, darling, here is my hand! Take it. Wilt thou be mine?"

'"Was I not thine eight years ago and more? Even as a child? Yet no! It ought not to be, Jonas."

'Alarmed, he looked in her face, and asked: "Not be? and why?"

'"Think well over it, Jonas! Do thyself no injustice. I am a poor creature, without portion or property. Any other burgher's daughter in the town would be glad to give thee her hand and heart, and a good dowry beside. Thou mightst live much better."

'"Say nothing about that," cried Jonas, stretching out both his hands imploringly. "Be still: I shall feel that I am but beginning to live, if thou wilt promise to live with me."

'"Live, then!" said she, in blushing embarrassment, and gave him her hand.

'He took her hand, and at the same time clasped his bride to his bosom, that heaved with unwonted emotion. She wept on his breast in silent joy.'

We would fain, if we had room, add to this the marriage sermon, preached by the bridegroom, and well preached too; for Jonas had knowledge, although, as he said himself, he never found half so much in books as is lying everywhere about the road.

Martha was just the wife for the honest, sensible hand-worker; and as it frequently happens with such characters, his affairs prospered from the date of his marriage. He took a larger house in a better situation for trade; and having presented the useless 'master-piece'—which nobody would buy—to the prince, he was rewarded by the dignity of 'Master-girdler to the Court.' But still 'uprightly and hardily the court-girdler lived with his wife, just as before; active in the workshop and warehouse, at markets and at fairs. Year after year fled, though, before the last guilder could be paid off, of the debt on the house. Days of joy and of sorrow succeeded each other in turn. They were all received with gratitude to God—these as well as those.'

We now come hastily to the third generation; for Jonas had a son called Veit, who was first apprenticed to his father, and then sent to travel as a journeyman. The patriarch had had no education at all; Jonas had snatched at his just as opportunities permitted; but Veit went regularly through the brief and practical curriculum fitted for a tradesman's son. He was, consequently, better informed and more refined than either his father or grandfather; and spent so much time in gaining a thorough insight into the branches connected with his own business, that honest Jonas was quite puzzled. 'Where did the boy get all these notions?' said he. 'He did not get them from me, I'm sure.' Veit had a bad opinion of the travelling custom, and for these reasons: 'How should these men, most of them badly brought up, attain to any greater perfection in their business, if they have left home and school without any preparation for it? No one can understand, if his understanding has not been developed. From one publican they go to another, and from one workshop to another; everywhere they find the old common track—the mechanical, mindless life of labour, just as in the very first place to which they were sent to learn their trade. At most, they acquire dexterity by practice. Now and then they learn a trick from a master, or get a receipt, which had been cautiously kept secret; when possessed of this, they think something of themselves. Even the character of these ramblers is not seldom destroyed by intercourse with their fellows. They learn drinking and rioting, gambling and licentiousness, caballing and debating. Many are ruined before they return to their native place. Believe me, dearest father, the time of travel is to very few a true school for life; one in which, through frequent change of good and evil days, the head acquires experience, the thoughts strength and clearness, the heart courage, and reliance on God. Very few, even of those who bring a scientific education with them, can gain much of value for their calling in life; extend their views, transfer and apply to their own line of business the inventions and discoveries that have been made in other departments of art and industry.'

Jonas understood little of the refinements of his son, but he opened his eyes when Veit obtained a lucrative appointment in a large metallic manufactory, first in London and then in Paris. In a letter informing his parents of this good-fortune, were enclosed the whole of the savings from his salary. 'Master Jordan shook his head at this passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself—a simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary good-luck. These the bursch has!"'

After years of absence, the young man at last walks suddenly into the paternal home, on his father's birthday, and makes them all scream and weep with joy. '"Hark ye, bursch!" exclaimed Jonas, who regarded him with fatherly delight, "thou seem'st to me almost too learned, too refined, and too elegant for Veit Jordan. What turner has cut so neat a piece of furniture out of so coarse a piece of timber?"' His stay, however, was short. M. and Mme Bellarme (his employer at Paris) 'had been loth, almost afraid, to let him go. The feeble state of health of the former began to be so serious, that he durst not engage in the bulk of his affairs. In the space of a year, both felt so complete confidence in Veit's knowledge of business, and in his honour, that they had taken him as a partner in trade, and in the foundry. Henceforth, M. Bellarme contributed his capital only; Veit his knowledge, care, and industry.'

The reform of the guilds, and the establishment of a technological school for the young hand-workers—both through the instrumentality of Jonas—we have no room to touch; for we must say a parting word on the reunion of the family by Veit's return permanently from abroad. Notwithstanding the prosperity of the now old couple, 'everything, ay, everything, was as he had left it years ago—as he had known it from childhood—only Christiane not. There stood yet the two well-scoured old deal-tables, wrinkled, though, from the protruding fibres of the wood; there were the straw-bottomed stools still; and at the window, Mother Martha's arm-chair, before which, as a child, he had repeated his lessons; there still hung the same little glass between the windows; and the wall-clock above the stove sent forth its tic-tac as fastly as ever. Father Jonas, in his enlarged workshop, with more journeymen and apprentices, smelted and hammered, filed and formed still, from morning to night, as before. The noble housewife flew about yet busy as a bee: she had managed the housekeeping without a servant since Christiane had been grown up. And Veit came back with the same cheerful disposition that he had ever shewn. In the simply-furnished rooms which Martha had fitted up for him, in the upper storey of the house, he forgot the splendid halls, the boudoirs, and antechambers of London, Paris, and the Bellarme estate; the Gobelin tapestry, the gold-framed pictures; the convenience of elegant furniture, and the artificial delicacies of the table on silver-plate.' Assisted by the patronage of the prince, he established a great foundry in his native town, of ball and cannon, bronze and brass; and on his marriage with the aforesaid Christiane, the sovereign made him a handsome present, in a handsome manner, 'as a small token of his gratitude to a family that had been so useful to the country.'

In addition to the hand-workers' school, there now arose, under the auspices of this family, a training-school for teachers, a labour-school for females, and other establishments. The town was embellished; the land in the neighbourhood rose in value; uncleanliness and barbarism in food, clothing and houses, disappeared. 'Only old men and women, grown rusty in the habits and the ignorance of many years, complain that the times are worse; at the sight of a higher civilisation, they complain of "the luxury and the pride of the world now-a-days;" as superstition dies out, they complain of "human incredulity, and the downfall of religion." "The day of judgment," say they, "is at hand."

'But Master Jonas, when seventy years had silvered his hair, stood almost equal to a strong man of thirty, happy, indeed, by the side of the pious Martha, in a circle of his children and children's children, honoured by his fellow-citizens, and honoured by his prince. He often told the story of his boyhood, how he used to go about hawking with Father Thaddaeus the tinker; and his face glowed with inward satisfaction, when he compared the former period with present changes, in the production of which he could never have imagined he was to have so considerable a share. Then he used to exclaim: "Have I not always said it? Clear understanding only in the head, love to one's neighbour in the heart, frugality in the stomach, and industry in the fingers—then: HAND-WORK STANDS ON GOLDEN FEET."'

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Labour Stands on Golden Feet; or, the Life of a Foreign Workman, &c. By Heinrich Zschokke. London: Groombridge.



LORD ROSSE'S DISCOVERIES.

As Professor Nichol very truly remarks, 'investigation regarding such aggregations is virtually a branch of atomic and molecular inquiry,' with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust; organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be, something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like the infinite depth, and we knowing not precisely where we stand between the two immensities of depth and height! The shapes evolved by the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions—strange monstrosities we had almost called them—that are pictured on the background of the illustrations. One aggregation looms forth out of the darkness like the skeleton face of some tremendous mammoth, or other monstrous denizen of ancient times, with two small fiery eyes, however, gazing out of its great hollow orbits; another consists of a central nucleus, with arms of stars radiating forth in all directions, like a star-fish, or like the scattering fire-sparks of some pyrotechnic wheel revolving; a third resembles a great wisp of straw, or twist or coil of ropes; a fourth, a cork-screw, or other spiral, seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell—many of them scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they are engulfed. Thus has the telescope traced the 'binding' influences of the Pleiades, loosened the bands of 'Orion'—erst the chief nebulous hazy wonders, once and for all revealing its separate stars: and thus, in brief, has this wondrous instrument 'unrolled the heavens as a scroll.' Yet even these astonishing results are as nothing to the fact, that those fantastic shapes which it has revealed in the depths of this lambo of creation, are not shapes merely of the present time—that thousands of years have passed since the light that shewed them left the starry firmaments only now revealed—that the telescope, in short, in reflecting these astonishing shapes, deliver to the eye of mind turned inward on the long-stored records of a universal and eternal memory of the past, than to a mere eye of sense looking outward on the things of passing time!—The Builder.



SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.

I was going quietly to bed one evening, wearied by a long day's hunting, when, close to my feet, and by my bedside, some glittering substance caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up; but, ere my hand had quite reached it, the truth flashed across me—it was a snake! Had I followed my first natural impulse, I should have sprung away, but not being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or which way his head was pointed, I controlled myself, and remained rooted breathless to the spot. Straining my eyes, but moving not an inch, I at length clearly distinguished a huge puff-adder, the most deadly snake in the colony, whose bite would have sent me to the other world in an hour or two. I watched him in silent horror: his head was from me—so much the worse; for this snake, unlike any other, always rises and strikes back. He did not move; he was asleep. Not daring to shuffle my feet, lest he should awake and spring at me, I took a jump backwards, that would have done honour to a gymnastic master, and thus darted outside the door of the room. With a thick stick, I then returned and settled his worship. Some parts of South Africa swarm with snakes; none are free from them. I have known three men killed by them in one harvest on a farm in Oliphant's Hoek. There is an immense variety of them, the deadliest being the puff-adder, a thick and comparatively short snake. Its bite will kill occasionally within an hour. One of my friends lost a favourite and valuable horse by its bite, in less than two hours after the attack. It is a sluggish reptile, and therefore more dangerous; for, instead of rushing away, like its fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.—The Cape, by A. W. Cole.



LINES.

Ask me not with simple grace, Pearls of thought to string for thee; For upon thy smiling face, Perfect gems I see— In thine eyes of beauty trace Lights that fadeless be.

Bid me not from Memory's land, Cull fair flowers of rich perfume; Love will shew with trembling hand, Where far fairer bloom— Clustering on thy cheek they stand, Blushing deep—for whom?

Bid me not with Fancy's gale Wake the music of a sigh; From thy breath a sweeter tale, Silver-winged, floats by; Melodies that never fail, Heard when thou art nigh!

Ask me not—yet, oh! for thee Dearer thoughts my bosom fill, Dimmed with tears I cannot see To do thy gracious will: Take, then, my prayer—In heaven may we Behold thee lovelier still!

PERCIE.



ILLUSTRATIONS OF EXTREME MINUTENESS.

Dr Wollaston obtained platinum-wire so fine, that 30,000 pieces, placed side by side in contact, would not cover more than an inch. It would take 150 pieces of this wire bound together to form a thread as thick as a filament of raw silk. Although platinum is the heaviest of the known bodies, a mile of this wire would not weigh more than a grain. Seven ounces of this wire would extend from London to New York. Fine as is the filament produced by the silkworm, that produced by the spider is still more attenuated. A thread of a spider's web, measuring four miles, will weigh very little more than a single grain. Every one is familiar with the fact, that the spider spins a thread, or cord, by which his own weight hangs suspended. It has been ascertained that this thread is composed of about 6000 filaments.—Lardner's Handbook.

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