On the one side, with ear close to the grate, is a round, smoothly developed Italian head, with that rather tumid outline of features which one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth. Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone through with. Evidently, he is puzzled and half-contemptuous at the revelations which come through the grating in hoarse whispers from those thin, trembling lips. That other man, who speaks with the sweat of anguish beaded on his brow, with a mortal pallor on his thin, worn cheeks, is putting questions to the celestial guide within which seem to that guide the ravings of a crazed lunatic; and yet there is a deadly, despairing earnestness in the appeal that makes an indistinct knocking at the door of his heart, for the man is born of woman, and can feel that somehow or other these are the words of a mighty agony.

He addresses him some words of commonplace ghostly comfort, and gives a plenary absolution. The Capuchin monk rises up and stands meekly wiping the sweat from his brow, the churchman leaves his box, and they meet face to face, when each starts, seeing in the other the apparition of a once well-known countenance.

"What! Lorenzo Sforza!" said the churchman. "Who would have thought it? Don't you remember me?"

"Not Lorenzo Sforza," said the other, a hectic brilliancy flushing his pale cheek; "that name is buried in the tomb of his fathers; he you speak to knows it no more. The unworthy Brother Francesco, deserving nothing of God or man, is before you."

"Oh, come, come!" said the other, grasping his hand in spite of his resistance; "that is all proper enough in its place; but between friends, you know, what's the use? It's lucky we have you here now; we want one of your family to send on a mission to Florence, and talk a little reason into the citizens and the Signoria. Come right away with me to the Pope."

"Brother, in God's name let me go! I have no mission to the great of this world; and I cannot remember or be called by the name of other days, or salute kinsman or acquaintance after the flesh, without a breach of vows."

"Poh, poh! you are nervous, dyspeptic; you don't understand things. Don't you see you are where vows can be bound and loosed? Come along, and let us wake you out of this nightmare. Such a pother about a pretty peasant-girl! One of your rank and taste, too! I warrant me the little sinner practised on you at the confessional. I know their ways, the whole of them; but you mourn over it in a way that is perfectly incomprehensible. If you had tripped a little,—paid a compliment, or taken a liberty or two,—it would have been only natural; but this desperation, when you have resisted like Saint Anthony himself, shows your nerves are out of order and you need change."

"For God's sake, brother, tempt me not!" said Father Francesco, wrenching himself away, with such a haggard and insane vehemence as quite to discompose the churchman; and drawing his cowl over his face, he glided swiftly down a side-aisle and out the door.

The churchman was too easy-going to risk the fatigue of a scuffle with a man whom he considered as a monomaniac; but he stepped smoothly and stealthily after him and watched him go out.

"Look you," he said to a servant in violet livery who was waiting by the door, "follow yonder Capuchin and bring me word where he abides.—He may be cracked," he said to himself; "but, after all, one of his blood may be worth mending, and do us good service either in Florence or Milan. We must have him transferred to some convent here, where we can lay hands on him readily, if we want him."

Meanwhile Father Francesco wends his way through many a dark and dingy street to an ancient Capuchin convent, where he finds brotherly admission. Weary and despairing is he beyond all earthly despair, for the very altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of a serpent in his ear.

But he is sent for in haste to visit the bedside of the Prior, who has long been sick and failing, and who gladly embraces this opportunity to make his last confession to a man of such reputed sanctity in his order as Father Francesco. For the acute Father Johannes, casting about for various means to empty the Superior's chair at Sorrento, for his own benefit, and despairing of any occasion of slanderous accusation, had taken the other tack of writing to Rome extravagant laudations of such feats of penance and saintship in his Superior as in the view of all the brothers required that such a light should no more be hidden in an obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give light to the faithful in all parts of the world. Thus two currents of worldly intrigue were uniting to push an unworldly man to a higher dignity than he either sought or desired.

When a man has a sensitive or sore spot in his heart, from the pain of which he would gladly flee to the ends of the earth, it is marvellous what coincidences of events will be found to press upon it wherever he may go. Singularly enough, one of the first items in the confession of the Capuchin Superior related to Agnes, and his story was in substance as follows. In his youth he had been induced by the persuasions of the young son of a great and powerful family to unite him in the holy sacrament of marriage with a protegee of his mother's; but the marriage being detected, it was disavowed by the young nobleman, and the girl and her mother chased out ignominiously, so that she died in great misery. For his complicity in this sin the conscience of the monk had often troubled him, and he had kept track of the child she left, thinking perhaps some day to make reparation by declaring the true marriage of her mother, which now he certified upon the holy cross, and charged Father Francesco to make known to one of that kin whom he named. He further informed him, that this family, having fallen under the displeasure of the Pope and his son, Caesar Borgia, had been banished from the city, and their property confiscated, so that there was none of them to be found thereabouts except an aged widowed sister, who, having married into a family in favor with the Pope, was allowed to retain her possessions, and now resided in a villa near Rome, where she lived retired, devoting her whole life to works of piety. The old man therefore conjured Father Francesco to lose no time in making this religious lady understand the existence of so near a kinswoman, and take her under her protection.—Thus strangely did Father Francesco find himself again obliged to take up that enchanted thread which had led him into labyrinths so fatal to his peace.

* * * * *



METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

V.

It is in the search after the true boundaries and characteristics of orders that we may expect the greatest advance by the naturalists of the present day; and yet there is now much discrepancy among them, some mistaking orders for classes, others raising families to the dignity of orders. This want of agreement in their results is not strange, however; for the recognition of orders is indeed exceedingly difficult. If they are, as I have defined them, groups in Nature founded upon a greater or less complication of structure, they must of course form a regular gradation within the limits of their class, since comparative perfection implies comparative rank, and a correct estimate of these degrees of complication requires an intimate and extensive knowledge of structure throughout the class. There would seem to be an arbitrary element here,—that of our individual appreciation of structural character. If one man holds a certain kind of structural characters superior to another, he will establish the rank of the order upon that feature, while some other naturalist, appreciating a different point of the structure more highly, will make that the test character of the group. Let us see whether we can eliminate this arbitrary element in our estimate of these groups, and find any mode of determining orders that shall be unquestionable, and give us results as positive as a chemical analysis according to quantitative elements. I believe that there are such absolute tests of structural relations. It is my conviction, that orders, like all the other groups of the Animal Kingdom, have a positive existence in Nature with definite limits, that no arbitrary element should enter into any part of our classifications, and that we have already the key by which to solve this question about orders.

To illustrate this statement, I must return to the class of Insects. We have seen that they are divided into three orders: the long cylindrical Centipedes, with the body divided throughout in uniform rings, like the Worms; the Spiders, with the body divided into two regions; and the Winged Insects, with head, chest, and hind body distinct from each other, forming three separate regions. In the first group, the Centipedes, the nervous system is scattered through the whole body, as in the Worms; in the Spiders it is concentrated in two nervous swellings, as in the Crustacea, the front one being the largest; and in the Insects there are three nervous centres, the largest in the head, a smaller one in the chest, and the smallest in the hind body. Now according to this greater or less individualization of parts, with the corresponding localization of the nervous centres, naturalists have established the relative rank of these three groups, placing Centipedes lowest, Spiders next, and Winged Insects highest. But naturalists may, and indeed they actually do, differ as to this estimation of the anatomical structure. Have we, then, any means of testing its truth to Nature? Let us look at the development of these animals, taking the highest order as an illustration, that we may have the whole succession of changes. All know the story of the Butterfly with its three lives, as Caterpillar, Chrysalis, and Winged Insect. I speak of its three lives, but we must not forget that they make after all but one life, and that the Caterpillar is as truly the same being with the future Butterfly as the child is the same being with the future man. The old significance of the word metamorphosis—the fabled transformation of one individual into another, in which so much of the imagination and poetical culture of the ancients found expression—still clings to us; and where the different phases of the same life assume such different external forms, we are apt to overlook the fact that it is one single continuous life. To a naturalist, metamorphosis is simply growth; and in that sense the different stages of development in animals that undergo their successive changes within the egg are as much metamorphoses as the successive phases of life in those animals that complete their development after they are hatched.

But to return to our Butterfly. In its most imperfect, earliest condition, it is Worm-like, the body consisting of thirteen uniform rings; but when it has completed this stage of its existence, it passes into the Chrysalis state, during which the body has two regions, the front rings being soldered together to form the head and chest, while the hind joints remain distinct; and it is only when it bursts from its Chrysalis envelope, as a complete Winged Insect, that it has three distinct regions of the body. Do not the different periods of growth in this highest order explain the relation of all the orders to each other? The earliest condition of an animal cannot be its highest condition,—it does not pass from a more perfect to a less perfect state of existence. The history of its growth is, on the contrary, the history of its progress in development; and therefore, when we find that the first stage of growth in the Winged Insect transiently represents a structural character that is permanent in the lowest order of its class, that its second stage of growth transiently represents a structural character that is permanent in the second order of its class, and that only in the last stage of its existence does the Winged Insect attain its complete and perfect condition, we may fairly infer that this division of the class of Insects into a gradation of orders placing Centipedes lowest, Spiders next, and Winged Insects highest, is true to Nature.

This is not the only instance in which the embryological evidence confirms perfectly the anatomical evidence on which orders have been distinguished, and I believe that Embryology will give us the true standard by which to test the accuracy of our ordinal groups. In the class of Crustacea, for instance, the Crabs have been placed above the Lobsters by some naturalists, in consequence of certain anatomical features; but there may easily be a difference of individual opinion as to the relative value of these features. When we find, however, that the Crab, while undergoing its changes in the egg, passes through a stage in which it resembles the Lobster much more than it does its own adult condition, we cannot doubt that its earlier state is its lower one, and that the organization of the Lobster is not as high in the class of Crustacea as that of the Crab. While using illustrations of this kind, however, I must guard against misinterpretation. These embryological changes are never the passing of one kind of animal into another kind of animal: the Crab is none the less a Crab during that period of its development in which it resembles a Lobster; it simply passes, in the natural course of its growth, through a phase of existence which is permanent in the Lobster, but transient in the Crab. Such facts should stimulate all our young students to embryological investigation as a most important branch of study in the present state of our science.

But while there is this structural gradation among orders, establishing a relative rank between them, are classes and branches also linked together as a connected chain? That such a chain exists throughout the Animal Kingdom has long been a favorite idea, not only among naturalists, but also in the popular mind. Lamarck was one of the greatest teachers of this doctrine. He held not only that branches and classes were connected in a direct gradation, but that within each class there was a regular series of orders, families, genera, and species, forming a continuous chain from the lowest animals to the highest, and that the whole had been a gradual development of higher out of lower forms. I have already alluded to his division of the Animal Kingdom into the Apathetic, Sensitive, and Intelligent animals. The Apathetic were those devoid of all sensitiveness except when aroused by the influence of some external agent. Under this head he placed five classes, including the Infusoria, Polyps, Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins, Tunicata, and Worms,—thus bringing together indiscriminately Radiates, Mollusks, and Articulates. Under the head of Sensitive he had also a heterogeneous assemblage, including Winged Insects, Spiders, Crustacea, Annelids, and Barnacles, all of which are Articulates, and with these he placed in two classes the Mollusks, Conchifera, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda. Under the head of Intelligent he brought together a natural division, for he here united all the Vertebrates. He succeeded in this way in making out a series which seemed plausible enough, but when we examine it, we find at once that it is perfectly arbitrary; for he has brought together animals built on entirely different structural plans, when he could find characters among them that seemed to justify his favorite idea of a gradation of qualities. Blainville attempted to establish the same idea in another way. He founded his series on gradations of form, placing together, in one division, all animals that he considered vague and indefinite in form, and in another all those that he considered symmetrical. Under a third head he brought together the Radiates; but his symmetrical division united Articulates, Mollusks, and Vertebrates in the most indiscriminate manner. He sustained his theory by assuming intermediate groups,—as, for instance, the Barnacles between the Mollusks and Articulates, whereas they are as truly Articulates as Insects or Crabs. Thus, by misplacing certain animals, he arrived at a series which, like that of Lamarck, made a strong impression on the scientific world, till a more careful investigation of facts exposed its fallacy.

Oken, the great German naturalist, also attempted to establish a connected chain throughout the Animal Kingdom, but on an entirely different principle; and I cannot allude to this most original investigator, so condemned by some, so praised by others, so powerful in his influence on science in Germany, without attempting to give some analysis of his peculiar philosophy. For twenty years his classification was accepted by his countrymen without question; and though I believe it to be wrong, yet, by the ingenuity with which he maintained it, he has shed a flood of light upon science, and has stimulated other naturalists to most important and interesting investigations. This famous classification was founded upon the idea that the system of man, the most perfect created being, is the measure for the whole Animal Kingdom, and that in analyzing his organization we have the clue to all organized beings. The structure of man includes two systems of organs: those which maintain the body in its integrity, and which he shares in some sort with the lower animals,—the organs of digestion, circulation, respiration, and reproduction; and that higher system of organs, the brain, spinal marrow, and nerves, with the organs of sense, on which all the manifestations of the intelligent faculties depend, and by which his relations to the external world are established and controlled: the whole being surrounded by flesh, muscles, and skin. On account of this fleshy envelope of the hard parts in all the higher animals, Oken divided the Animal Kingdom into two groups, the Vertebrates and Invertebrates, or, as he called them, the "Eingeweide und Fleisch Thiere"—which we may translate as the Intestinal Animals, or those that represent the intestinal systems of organs, and the Flesh Animals, or those that combine all the systems of organs under one envelope of flesh. Let us examine a little more closely this singular theory, by which each branch of the Invertebrates becomes, as it were, the exponent of a special system of organs, while the Vertebrates, with man at their head, include all these systems.

According to Oken, the Radiates, the lowest type of the Animal Kingdom, embody digestion. They all represent a stomach, whether it is the simple sac of the Polyps, or the cavity of the Acalephs, with its radiating tubes traversing the gelatinous mass of the body, or the cavity and tubes of the Echinoderms, inclosed within walls of their own.

The Mollusks represent circulation; and his division of this type into classes, according to what he considers the higher or lower organization of the heart, agrees with the ordinary division into Acephala, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda.

The Articulates are the respiratory animals in this classification: they represent respiration. The Worms, breathing, as he asserts, through the whole surface of the skin, without special breathing organs, are the lowest; the Crustacea, with gills, or aquatic breathing organs, come next; and he places the Insects highest, with their branching tracheae, admitting air to all parts of the body. The Vertebrates, or Flesh Animals, with their four classes, represent the Bones, the Muscles, the Nerves, and the Organs of Sense.

This theory, according to which there are as many great divisions as there are structural systems or combinations of systems in the Animal Kingdom, seemed natural and significant, and there was something attractive in the idea that man represents, as it were, the synthetic combination of all these different systems. Oken also, in his exposition of his mode of classification, showed an insight into the structure and relations of animals that commended it to the interest of all students of Nature, and entitles him to their everlasting gratitude. Nevertheless, his theory fails, when it is compared with facts. For instance, there are many Worms that have no respiration through the skin, while his appreciation of the whole class is founded on that feature; and in his type representing circulation, the Mollusks, there are those that have no heart at all. It would carry me too far into scientific details, were I to explain all the points at which this celebrated classification fails. Suffice it to say that there is no better proof of the discrepancy between the system and the facts than the constant changes in the different editions of Oken's own works and in the publications of his followers founded upon his views, showing that they were themselves conscious of the shifting and unstable character of their scientific ground.

VI.

What, then, is the relation of these larger groups to each other, if they do not stand in a connected series from the lowest to the highest? How far are each of the branches and each of the classes superior or inferior one to another? All agree, that, while Vertebrates stand at the head of the Animal Kingdom, Radiates are lowest. There can be no doubt upon this point; for, while the Vertebrate plan, founded upon a double symmetry, includes the highest possibilities of animal organization, there is a certain monotony of structure in the Radiate plan, in which the body is divided into a number of identical parts, bearing definite relations to a central vertical axis. But while all admit that Vertebrates are highest and Radiates lowest, how do the Articulates and Mollusks stand to these and to each other? To me it seems, that, while both are decidedly superior to the Radiates and inferior to the Vertebrates, we cannot predicate absolute superiority or inferiority of organization of either of these groups as compared with each other; they stand on one structural level, though with different tendencies,—the body in Mollusks having always a soft, massive, concentrated character, with great power of contraction and dilatation, while the body in Articulates has nothing of this compactness and concentration, but on the contrary is usually marked by a conspicuous external display of limbs and other appendages, and by a remarkable elongation of the body,—that feature characterized by Baer when he called them the Longitudinal type. There is in the Articulates an extraordinary tendency toward outward expression, singularly in contrast to the soft, contractile bodies of the Mollusks. We need only remember the numerous Insects with small bodies and enormously long wings, or the Spiders with little bodies and long legs, or the number and length of the claws in the Lobsters and Crabs, as illustrations of this statement for the Articulates, while the soft compact body of the Oyster or of the Snail is equally characteristic of the Mollusks; and though it may seem that this assertion cannot apply to the highest class of Mollusks, the Cephalopoda, including the Cuttle-Fishes with their long arms or feelers, yet even these conspicuous appendages have considerable power of contraction and dilatation, and in the Nautili may even be drawn completely within the shell. If this view be correct, these two types occupy an intermediate position between the highest and the lowest divisions of the Animal Kingdom, but are on equal ground when compared with each other.

But is there a transition from Radiates to Mollusks, or from Articulates to Vertebrates, or from any one of these divisions into any other? Let us first consider the classes as they stand within their divisions. We have seen that there are three classes of Radiates,—Polyps, Acalephs, and Echinoderms; three classes of Mollusks,—Acephala, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda; three classes of Articulates,—Worms, Crustacea, and Insects; and, according to the usually accepted classification, four classes of Vertebrates,—Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia. If there is indeed a transition between all these classes, it must become clear to us, when we have accurately interpreted their relative standing. Taking first the lowest branch, how do the classes stand within the limits of the type of Radiates? I think I have said enough of these different classes to show that Polyps as a whole are inferior to Acalephs as a whole, and that Acalephs as a whole are inferior to Echinoderms as a whole. But if they are linked together as a connected series, then the lowest Acaleph should stand next in structure above the highest Polyp, and the lowest Echinoderm next above the highest Acaleph. So far from this being the case, there are, on the contrary, many Acalephs which, in their specialization, are unquestionably lower in the scale of life than some Polyps, while there are some Echinoderms lower in the same sense than many Acalephs. This remark applies equally to the classes within the other types; they stand, as an average, relatively to each other, lower and higher, but considered in their diversified specification, there are some members of the higher classes that are inferior in organization to some members of the lower classes. The same is true of the great divisions as compared with each other. Instead of the highest Radiates being always lower in organization than the lowest Mollusks, there are many Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins higher in organization than some Mollusks; and so when we pass from this branch to the Articulates, if we assume for the moment, as some naturalists believe, that the Mollusks are the inferior type, the Cuttle-Fishes are certainly very superior animals to most of the Worms; and passing from Articulates to Vertebrates, not only are there Insects of a more complex organization than the lowest Fishes, but we bring together two kinds of animals so remote from each other in structure that the wildest imagination can scarcely fancy a transition between them. A comparison may make my meaning clearer as to the relative standing of these groups. The Epic Poem is a higher order of composition than the Song,—yet we may have an Epic Poem which, from its inferior mode of execution, stands lower than a Song that is perfect of its kind. So the plan of certain branches is more comprehensive and includes higher possibilities than that of others, while at the same time there may be species in which the higher plan is executed in so simple a manner that it places their organization below some more highly developed being built on a lower plan. It is a poor comparison, because everything that God has made is perfect of its kind and in its place, though relatively lower or higher; yet it is only by comparison of what is after all akin,—of mind with mind,—even though so far apart as the works of the divine and the human reason, that we may arrive at some idea, however dim, of the mental operations of the Creative Intellect.

It is, then, in their whole bulk that any one of these groups is above any other. We may represent the relative positions of the classes by a diagram in which each successive class in every type starts at a lower point than that at which the preceding class closes. Taking the Polyps as the lowest class of Radiates, for instance, its highest animals rise above the lowest members of the Acalephs, but then the higher members of the class of Acalephs reach a point far above any of the Polyps,—and so on.

RADIATES. MOLLUSKS. ARTICULATES. VERTEBRATES. Mammalia. Echinoderms. Cephalopoda. Insects. Birds. Acalephs. Gasteropoda. Crustacea. Reptiles. Polyps. Acephala. Worms Fishes.

If this view be correct, it sets aside the possibility of any uninterrupted series based on absolute superiority or inferiority of structure, on which so much ingenuity and intellectual power have been wasted.

But it is not merely upon the structural relations established between these groups by anatomical features in the adult that we must decide this question. We must examine it also from the embryological point of view. Every animal in its growth undergoes a succession of changes: is there anything in these changes implying a transition of one type into another? Baer has given us the answer to this question. He has shown that there are four distinct modes of development, as well as four plans of structure; and though we have seen that higher animals of one class pass through phases of growth in which they transiently resemble lower animals of the same class, yet each one of these four modes of development is confined within the limits of the type, and a Vertebrate never resembles, at any stage of its growth, anything but a Vertebrate, or an Articulate anything but an Articulate, or a Mollusk anything but a Mollusk, or a Radiate anything but a Radiate.

Yet, although there is no embryological transition of one type into another, the gradations of growth within the limits of the same type and the same class, already alluded to, are very striking throughout the Animal Kingdom. There are periods in the development of the germs of the higher members of all the types, when they transiently resemble in their general outline the lower representatives of the same type, just as we have seen that the higher orders of one class pass through stages of development in which they transiently resemble lower orders of the same class. This gradation of growth corresponds to the gradation of rank in adult animals, as established upon comparative complication of structure. For instance, according to their structural character, all naturalists have placed Fishes lowest in the scale of Vertebrates. Now all the higher Vertebrates have a Fish-like character at first, and pass successively through phases in which they vaguely resemble other lower forms of the same type before they assume their own characteristic form; and this is equally true of the other great divisions, so that the history of the individual is, in some sort, the history of its type.

There is still another aspect of this question,—that of time. If neither the gradation of structural rank among adult animals, nor the gradation of growth in their embryological development gives us any evidence of a transition between types, does not the sequence of animals in their successive introduction upon the globe afford any proof of such a connection? In this relation, I must briefly allude to the succession of geological formations that compose the crust of our globe. The limits of this article will not allow me to enter at any length into the geological details connected with this question; but I will, in the most cursory manner, give a sketch of the great geological periods, as generally accepted now by geologists. The first of these periods has been called the Azoic or lifeless period, because it is the only one that contains no remains of organic life, and it is therefore supposed that at that early stage of the world's history the necessary conditions for the maintenance of animals and plants were not yet established. After this, every great geological period that follows has been found to be characterized by a special set of animals and plants, differing from all that follow and all that precede it, till we arrive at our own period, when Man, with the animals and plants that accompany him on earth, was introduced.

There is, then, an order of succession in time among animals; and if there has been any transition between types and classes, any growth of higher out of lower forms, it is here that we should look for the evidence of it. According to this view, we should expect to find in the first period in which organic remains are found at all only the lowest type, and of that type only the lowest class, and, indeed, if we push the theory to its logical consequences, only the lowest forms of the lowest class. What are now the facts? This continent affords admirable opportunities for the investigation of this succession, because, in consequence of its mode of formation, we have, in the State of New York, a direct, unbroken sequence of all the earliest geological deposits.

The ridge of low hills, called the Laurentian Hills, along the line of division between Canada and the States was the first American land lifted above the ocean. That land belongs to the Azoic period, and contains no trace of life. Along the base of that range of hills lie the deposits of the next great geological period, the Silurian; and the State of New York, geologically speaking, belongs almost entirely to this Silurian period, with its lowest Taconic division, and the Devonian period, the third in succession of these great epochs. I need hardly remind those of my readers who have travelled through New York, and have visited Niagara or Trenton, or, indeed, any of the localities where the broken edges of the strata expose the buried life within them, how numerous this early population of the earth must have been. No one who has held in his hand one of the crowded slabs of sand—or lime-stone, full of Crustacea, Shells, and Corals, from any of the old Silurian or Devonian beaches which follow each other from north to south across the State of New York, can suppose that the manifestation of life was less multitudinous then than now. Now, what does this fossil creation tell us? It says this: that, in the Silurian period, the first in which organic life is found at all, there were the three classes of Radiates, the three classes of Mollusks, two of the classes of Articulates, and one class of Vertebrates. In other words, at the dawn of life on earth, the plan of the animal creation with its four fundamental ideas was laid out,—Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates were present at that first representation of life upon our globe. If, then, all the primary types appeared simultaneously, one cannot have grown out of another,—they could not be at once contemporaries and descendants of each other.

The diagram on the opposite page represents the geological periods in their regular succession, and the approximate time at which all the types and all the classes of the Animal Kingdom were introduced; for there is still some doubt as to the exact period of the introduction of several of the classes, though all geologists are agreed respecting them, within certain limits, not very remote from each other, according to geological estimates of time.

RADIATES. Polyps. Acalephs. Echinoderms. T Present,......... ......... ........... ...... E R Pliocene,........ ......... ........... ...... T I Miocene,......... ......... ........... ...... A R Eocene,.......... ......... ........... ...... Y S Cretaceous,...... ......... ........... ...... E C Jurassic,........ ......... ........... ...... O N Triassic,........ ......... ........... ...... D A Permian,......... ......... ........... ...... R Y Carboniferous,... ......... ........... ...... P R Devonian,........ ......... ........... ...... I M Silurian,.....Polyps. Acalephs. Echinoderms... A R Azoic. Y

MOLLUSKS. Acephala. Gasteropoda. Cephalopoda. T Present,......... ......... ........... ...... E R Pliocene,........ ......... ........... ...... T I Miocene,......... ......... ........... ...... A R Eocene,.......... ......... ........... ...... Y S Cretaceous,...... ......... ........... ...... E C Jurassic,........ ......... ........... ...... O N Triassic,........ ......... ........... ...... D A Permian,......... ......... ........... ...... R Y Carboniferous,... ......... ........... ...... P R Devonian,........ ......... ........... ...... I M Silurian,.....Acephala. Gasteropoda. Cephalopoda. A R Azoic. Y

ARTICULATES. Worms. Crustacea. Insects. T Present,......... ......... ........... ...... E R Pliocene,........ ......... ........... ...... T I Miocene,......... ......... ........... ...... A R Eocene,.......... ......... ........... ...... Y S Cretaceous,...... ......... ........... ...... E C Jurassic,........ ......... ........... ...... O N Triassic,........ ......... ........... ...... D A Permian,......... ......... ........... ...... R Y Carboniferous,... ......... .........Insects.. P R Devonian,........ ......... .................. I M Silurian,.....Worms. Crustacea............... A R Azoic. Y

VERTEBRATES. Fishes. Reptiles. Birds. Mammalia. T Present,......... ......... ......... ........ ....... E R Pliocene,........ ......... ......... ........ ....... T I Miocene,......... ......... ......... ........ ....... A R Eocene,.......... ......... ......... ..True Mammalia. Y S Cretaceous,...... ......... ......... ........ ....... E C Jurassic,........ ......... ......... ....Marsupials.. O N Triassic,........ ......... .......Birds.............. D A Permian,......... ......... .......................... R Y Carboniferous,... ......Reptiles...................... P R Devonian,........ .................................... I M Silurian,.......Fishes................................ A R Azoic. Y

If such discussions were not inappropriate here from their technical character, I think I could show upon combined geological and zoological evidence that the classes which are not present with the others at the beginning, such as Insects among Articulates, or Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia among Vertebrates, are always introduced at the time when the conditions essential to their existence are established,—as, for instance, Reptiles, at the period when the earth was not fully redeemed from the waste of waters, and extensive marshes afforded means for the half-aquatic, half-terrestrial life even now characteristic of all our larger Reptiles, while Insects, so dependent on vegetable growth, make their appearance with the first forests; so that we need not infer, because these and other classes come in after the earlier ones, that they are therefore a growth out of them, since it is altogether probable that they would not be created till the conditions necessary for their maintenance on earth were established. From a merely speculative point of view it seems to me natural to suppose that the physical and the organic world have progressed together, and that there is a direct relation between the successive creations and the condition of the earth at the time of those creations. We know that all the beings of the Silurian and Devonian periods were marine; the land, so far as it existed in their time, was a great beach, and along those shores, wherever any part of the continents was lifted above the level of the waters, the Silurian and Devonian animals lived. Later, in the marshes and the fern-forests of the Carboniferous period, Reptiles and Insects found their place; and only when the earth was more extensive, when marshes had become dry land, when islands had united to form continents, when mountain-chains had been thrown up to make the inequalities of the surface, were the larger quadrupeds introduced, to whose mode of existence all these circumstances are important accessories.

But while all the types and most of the classes were introduced upon the earth simultaneously at the beginning, these types and classes have nevertheless been represented in every great geological period by different sets or species of animals. In this sense, then, there has been a gradation in time among animals, and every successive epoch of the world's physical history has had its characteristic population. We have found that there is a correspondence between the gradation of structural complication among adult animals as known to us to-day, which we may call the Series of Rank, and the gradation of embryological changes in the same animals, which we may call the Series of Growth; and there is also a correspondence between these two series and the order of succession in time, that establishes a certain gradation in the introduction of animals upon earth, and which we may call the Series of Time. Take as an illustration the class of Echinoderms. The first representatives of this class were a sort of Star-Fishes on stems; then were introduced animals of the same order without stems; in later periods come in the true Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the highest order of the class, the Holothurians, are introduced only in the present geological epoch. Compare now with this the ordinal division of the class as it exists today. The present representative of those earliest Echinoderms on stems is an animal that upon structural evidence stands lowest in the class; next above it are the Comatulae, corresponding to the early Echinoderms without stems; next in our classification are the Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the Holothurians stand highest, on account of certain structural features that place them at the head of their class. The Series of Time and the Series of Rank, then, accord perfectly, and investigations of the embryological development of these animals have shown that the higher Echinoderms pass through changes in the egg that indicate the same kind of gradation, for the young in some of them have a stem which is gradually dropped, and their successive phases of development recall the adult forms of the lower orders. Take as another illustration the class of Polyps. First in time we find a kind of Polyp Coral, one among the early Reef-Builders, who built their myriad lives into the solid crust of our globe then as their successors do now. These old Corals have their representatives among the present Polyps, and from their structure they are placed lowest in their class, while the embryological development of the higher ones recalls in the younger condition of the germ the same peculiar character. I might multiply examples, and draw equally striking illustrations from the other classes; and though these correspondences cannot be fully established while our knowledge of the embryological growth of animals is so scanty, and information about their geological succession, yet wherever we have been able to trace the connected history of any group of animals in time, and to compare it with the history of their embryological development and their structural relations as they exist to-day, the correspondence is found to be so complete that we are justified in believing that it will not fail in other instances. I may add that a gradation of exactly the same character controls the geographical distribution of animals over the surface of the globe. Here again I must beg my readers to take much of the evidence, which, if expanded, would fill a volume, for granted, since it would be entirely inappropriate here. But I may briefly state that animals are not scattered over the surface of our globe at random, but that they are associated together in what are called faunae, and that these faunae have their homes within certain districts—called by naturalists zooelogical provinces. The limits of these provinces are absolutely fixed, in the ocean as well as on the land, by certain physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their rank, their growth, and their succession in time;—the law which distributes animals in successive faunae, and in accordance both with their relative superiority or inferiority, and with the physical conditions essential to their existence, being the same as that which controls their structural relations, their embryological development, and their succession in time.

What, then, does this correspondence between the Series of Rank, the Series of Growth, the Series of Time, and the Series of Geographical Distribution in the life of animals teach us? Surely not that the connection between animals is a material one; for the same kind of relation exists between lower and higher animals of one type or one class to-day, in their structural features, in their embryological growth, and in their geographical distribution, as we trace in their order of succession in time; and therefore, if this kind of evidence proves that the later animals are the descendants of the earlier in any genealogical sense, it should also prove that the animals living in one part of the earth at present grow out of animals living in another part, and that the higher animals of one class as it exists now are developed out of the lower ones. The first of these propositions needs no refutation; and with regard to the second, all our investigations go to show that every being born into the world to-day adheres to its individual law of life, and though it passes through transient phases of growth that resemble other beings of its own kind, never pauses at a lower stage of development, or passes on to a higher condition than the one it is bound to fill. If, then, this connection is not a material one, what is it?—for that such a connection does exist throughout the Animal Kingdom, as intimate, as continuous, as complex as any series which the development theorists have ever contended for, is not to be denied. What can it be but an intellectual one? These correspondences are correspondences of thought,—of a thought that is always the same, whether it is expressed in the history of the type through all time, or in the life of the individuals that represent the type at the present moment, or in the growth of the germ of every being born into that type to-day. In other words, the same thought that spans the whole succession of geological ages controls the structural relations of all living beings as well as their distribution over the surface of the earth, and is repeated within the narrow compass of the smallest egg in which any being undergoes its growth.

* * * * *



THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

Deem not the ravished glory thine; Nor think the flag shall scathless wave Whereon thou bidd'st its presage shine,— Land of the traitor and the slave!

God never set that holy sign In deathless light among His stars To make its blazonry divine A scutcheon for thine impious wars!

And surely as the Wrong must fail Before the everlasting Right, So surely thy device shall pale And shrivel in the Northern Light!

Look, where its coming splendors stream! The red and white athwart the blue,— While far above, the unconquered gleam Of Freedom's stars is blazing through!

Hark to the rustle and the sweep, Like sound of mighty wings unfurled, And bearing down the sapphire steep Heaven's hosts to help the imperilled world!

Light in the North! Each bristling lance Of steely sheen a promise bears; And all the midnight where they glance A rosy flush of morning wears!

Yon symbol of your Southern sky Shall surely mean but grief and loss; Then tremble, as ye raise on high, In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!

O brothers! we entreat in pain, Take ye the unblessed emblem down! Or purge your standard of its stain, And join it with the Northern Crown!

* * * * *



CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD.

Once upon a time, Mr. Smith, who was seven feet in height, went out for a walk with Mr. Brown, whose stature was three feet and a half. It was in a distant age, in which people were different from what they are now, and in which events occurred such as do not usually occur in these days. Smith and Brown, having traversed various paths, and having passed several griffins, serpents, and mail-clad knights, came at length to a certain river. It was needful that they should cross it; and the idea was suggested that they should cross it by wading. They proceeded, accordingly, to wade across; and both arrived safely at the farther side. The water was exactly four feet deep,—not an inch more or less. On reaching the other bank of the river, Mr. Brown said,—

"This is awful work; it is no joke crossing a river like that. I was nearly drowned."

"Nonsense!" replied Mr. Smith; "why make a fuss about crossing a shallow stream like this? Why, the water is only four feet deep: that is nothing at all!"

"Nothing to you, perhaps," was the response of Mr. Brown, "but a serious matter for me. You observe," he went on, "that water four feet deep is just six inches over my head. The river may be shallow to you, but it is deep to me."

Mr. Smith, like many other individuals of great physical bulk and strength, had an intellect not much adapted for comprehending subtile and difficult thoughts. He took up the ground that things are what they are in themselves, and was incapable of grasping the idea that greatness and littleness, depth and shallowness, are relative things. An altercation ensued, which resulted in threats on the part of Smith that he would throw Brown into the river; and a coolness was occasioned between the friends which subsisted for several days.

The acute mind of the reader of this page will perceive that Mr. Smith was in error; and that the principle asserted by Mr. Brown was a sound and true one. It is unquestionable that a thing which is little to one man may be great to another man. And it is just as really and certainly great in this latter case as anything ever can be. And yet, many people do a thing exactly analogous to what was done by Smith. They insist that the water which is shallow to them shall be held to be absolutely shallow; and that, if smaller men declare that it is deep to themselves, these smaller men shall be regarded as weak, fanciful, and mistaken. Many people, as they look back upon the sorrows of their own childhood, or as they look round upon the sorrows of existing childhood, think that these sorrows are or were very light and insignificant, and their causes very small. These people do this, because to them, as they are now, big people, (to use the expressive phrase of childhood,) these sorrows would be light, if they should befall. But though these sorrows may seem light to us now, and their causes small, it is only as water four feet in depth was shallow to the tall Mr. Smith. The same water was very deep to the man whose stature was three feet and a half; and the peril was as great to him as could have been caused by eight feet depth of water to the man seven feet high. The little cause of trouble was great to the little child. The little heart was as full of grief and fear and bewilderment as it could hold.

Yes, I stand up against the common belief that childhood is our happiest time. And whenever I hear grown-up people say that it is so, I think of Mr. Smith, and the water four feet deep. I have always, in my heart, rebelled against that common delusion. I recall, as if it were yesterday, a day which I have left behind me more than twenty years. I see a large hall, the hall of a certain educational institution, which helped to make the present writer what he is. It is the day of the distribution of the prizes. The hall is crowded with little boys, and with the relations and friends of the little boys. And the chief magistrate of that ancient town, in all the pomp of civic majesty, has distributed the prizes. It is neither here nor there what honors were borne off by me; though I remember well that that day was the proudest that ever had come in my short life. But I see the face and hear the voice of the kind-hearted old dignitary, who has now been for many years in his grave. And I recall especially one sentence he said, as he made a few eloquent remarks at the close of the day's proceedings.

"Ah, boys," said he, "I can tell you this is the happiest time of all your life!"

"Little you know about the matter," was my inward reply.

I knew that our worries, fears, and sorrows were just as great as those of any one else.

The sorrows of childhood and boyhood are not sorrows of that complicated and perplexing nature which sit heavy on the heart in after-years; but in relation to the little hearts that have to bear them, they are very overwhelming for the time. As has been said, great and little are quite relative terms. A weight which is not absolutely heavy is heavy to a weak person. We think an industrious flea draws a vast weight, if it draw the eighth part of an ounce. And I believe that the sorrows of childhood task the endurance of childhood as severely as those of manhood do the endurance of the man. Yes, we look back now, and we smile at them, and at the anguish they occasioned, because they would be no great matter to us now. Yet in all this we err just as Mr. Smith the tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown. Those early sorrows were great things then. Very bitter grief may be in a very little heart. "The sports of childhood," we know from Goldsmith, "satisfy the child." The sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. I think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear, as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his biography. When five years old, he got hold of the gun of an elder brother and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the little boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters the following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun:—"Oh, Jamie, think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, and my heart is broken!" Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied that for all the remainder of his life he never could feel as he had felt before he touched the unlucky weapon. And looking back over many years, most of us can remember a child crushed and overwhelmed by some trouble which it thought could never be got over; and we can feel for our early self as though sympathizing with another being.

What I wish in this essay is, that we should look away along the path we have come in life; and that we should see, that, though many cares and troubles may now press upon us, still we may well be content. I speak to ordinary people, whose lot has been an ordinary lot. I know there are exceptional cases; but I firmly believe, that, as for most of us, we never have seen better days than these. No doubt, in the retrospect of early youth, we seem to see a time when the summer was brighter, the flowers sweeter, the snowy days of winter more cheerful, than we ever find them now. But, in sober sense, we know that it is all an illusion. It is only as the man travelling over the burning desert sees sparkling water and shady trees where he knows there is nothing but arid sand.

I dare say you know that one of the acutest of living men has maintained that it is foolish to grieve over past suffering. He says, truly enough in one sense, that the suffering which is past is as truly non-existent as the suffering which has never been at all; that, in fact, past suffering is now nothing, and is entitled to no more consideration than that to which nothing is entitled. No doubt, when bodily pain has ceased, it is all over: we do not feel it any more. And you have probably observed that the impression left by bodily pain passes very quickly away. The sleepless night, or the night of torment from toothache, which seemed such a distressing reality while it was dragging over, looks a very shadowy thing the next forenoon. But it may be doubted whether you will ever so far succeed in overcoming the fancies and weaknesses of humanity as to get people to cease to feel that past sufferings and sorrows are a great part of their present life. The remembrance of our past life is a great part of our present life. And, indeed, the greater part of human suffering consists in its anticipation and in its recollection. It is so by the inevitable law of our being. It is because we are rational creatures that it is so. We cannot help looking forward to that which is coming, and looking back on that which is past; nor can we suppress, as we do so, an emotion corresponding to the perception. There is not the least use in telling a little boy who knows that he is to have a tooth pulled out to-morrow, that it is absurd in him to make himself unhappy to-night through the anticipation of it. You may show with irrefragable force of reason, that the pain will last only for the two or three seconds during which the tooth is being wrenched from its place, and that it will be time enough to vex himself about the pain when he has actually to feel it. But the little fellow will pass but an unhappy night in the dismal prospect; and by the time the cold iron lays hold of the tooth, he will have endured by anticipation a vast deal more suffering than the suffering of the actual operation. It is so with bigger people, looking forward to greater trials. And it serves no end whatever to prove that all this ought not to be. The question as to the emotions turned off in the workings of the human mind is one of fact. It is not how the machine ought to work, but how the machine does work. And as with the anticipation of suffering, so with its retrospect. The great grief which is past, even though its consequences no longer directly press upon us, casts its shadow over after-years. There are, indeed, some hardships and trials upon which it is possible that we may look back with satisfaction. The contrast with them enhances the enjoyment of better days. But these trials, it seems to me, must be such as come through the direct intervention of Providence; and they must be clear of the elements of human cruelty or injustice. I do not believe that a man who was a weakly and timid boy can ever look back with pleasure upon the ill-usage of the brutal bully of his school-days, or upon the injustice of his teacher in cheating him out of some well-earned prize. There are kinds of great suffering which can never be thought of without present suffering, so long as human nature continues what it is. And I believe that past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results so great. You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though it be summer now, if your blighted evergreens remain as their result and memorial. And the man who was brought up in an unhappy home in childhood will never feel that that unhappy home has ceased to be a present reality, if he knows that its whole discipline fostered in him a spirit of distrust in his kind which is not yet entirely got over, and made him set himself to the work of life with a heart somewhat soured and prematurely old. The past is a great reality. We are here the living embodiment of all we have seen and felt through all our life,—fashioned into our present form by millions of little touches, and by none with a more real result than the hours of sorrow we have known.

One great cause of the suffering of boyhood is the bullying of bigger boys at school. I know nothing practically of the English system of fagging at public schools, but I am not prepared to join out and out in the cry against it. I see many evils inherent in the system; but I see that various advantages may result from it, too. To organize a recognized subordination of lesser boys to bigger ones must unquestionably tend to cut the ground from under the feet of the unrecognized, unauthorized, private bully. But I know that at large schools, where there is no fagging, bullying on the part of youthful tyrants prevails to a great degree. Human nature is beyond doubt fallen. The systematic cruelty of a school-bully to a little boy is proof enough of that, and presents one of the very hatefullest phases of human character. It is worthy of notice, that, as a general rule, the higher you ascend in the social scale among boys, the less of bullying there is to be found. Something of the chivalrous and the magnanimous comes out in the case of the sons of gentlemen: it is only among such that you will ever find a boy, not personally interested in the matter, standing up against the bully in the interest of right and justice. I have watched a big boy thrashing a little one, in the presence of half a dozen other big boys, not one of whom interfered on behalf of the oppressed little fellow. You may be sure I did not watch the transaction longer than was necessary to ascertain whether there was a grain of generosity in the hulking boors; and you may be sure, too, that that thrashing of the little boy was, to the big bully, one of the most unfortunate transactions in which he had engaged in his bestial and blackguard, though brief, life. I took care of that, you may rely on it. And I favored the bully's companions with my sentiments as to their conduct, with an energy of statement that made them sneak off, looking very like whipped spaniels. My friendly reader, let us never fail to stop a bully, when we can. And we very often can. Among the writer's possessions might be found by the curious inspector several black kid gloves, no longer fit for use, though apparently not very much worn. Surveying these integuments minutely, you would find the thumb of the right hand rent away, beyond the possibility of mending. Whence the phenomenon? It comes of the writer's determined habit of stopping the bully. Walking along the street, or the country-road, I occasionally see a big blackguard fellow thrashing a boy much less than himself. I am well aware that some prudent individuals would pass by on the other side, possibly addressing an admonition to the big blackguard. But I approve Thomson's statement, that "prudence to baseness verges still"; and I follow a different course. Suddenly approaching the blackguard, by a rapid movement, generally quite unforeseen by him, I take him by the arm, and occasionally (let me confess) by the neck, and shake him till his teeth rattle. This, being done with a new glove on the right hand, will generally unfit that glove for further use. For the bully must be taken with a grip so firm and sudden as shall serve to paralyze his nervous system for the time. And never once have I found the bully fail to prove a whimpering coward. The punishment is well deserved, of course; and it is a terribly severe one in ordinary cases. It is a serious thing, in the estimation both of the bully and his companions, that he should have so behaved as to have drawn on himself the notice of a passer-by, and especially of a parson. The bully is instantly cowed; and by a few words to any of his school-associates who may be near, you can render him unenviably conspicuous among them for a week or two. I never permit bullying to pass unchecked; and so long as my strength and life remain, I never will. I trust you never will. If you could stand coolly by, and see the cruelty you could check, or the wrong you could right, and move no finger to do it, you are not the reader I want, nor the human being I choose to know. I hold the cautious and sagacious man, who can look on at an act of bullying without stopping it and punishing it, as a worse and more despicable animal than the bully himself.

Of course, you must interfere with judgment; and you must follow up your interference with firmness. Don't intermeddle, like Don Quixote, in such a manner as to make things worse. It is only in the case of continued and systematic cruelty that it is worth while to work temporary aggravation, to the end of ultimate and entire relief. And sometimes that is unavoidable. You remember how, when Moses made his application to Pharaoh for release to the Hebrews, the first result was the aggravation of their burdens. The supply of straw was cut off, and the tale of bricks was to remain the same as before. It could not be helped. And though things came right at last, the immediate consequence was that the Hebrews turned in bitterness on their intending deliverer, and charged their aggravated sufferings upon him. Now, my friend, if you set yourself to the discomfiture of a bully, see you do it effectually. If needful, follow up your first shaking. Find out his master, find out his parents; let the fellow see distinctly that your interference is no passing fancy. Make him understand that you are thoroughly determined that his bullying shall cease. And carry out your determination unflinchingly.

I frequently see the boys of a certain large public school, which is attended by boys of the better class; and judging from their cheerful and happy aspect, I judge that bullying among boys of that condition is becoming rare. Still, I doubt not, there yet are poor little nervous fellows whose school-life is embittered by it. I don't think any one could read the poet Cowper's account of how he was bullied at school, without feeling his blood a good deal stirred, if not entirely boiling. If I knew of such a case within a good many miles, I should stop it, though I never wore a glove again that was not split across the right palm.

But, doubtless, the greatest cause of the sorrows of childhood is the mismanagement and cruelty of parents. You will find many parents who make favorites of some of their children to the neglect of others: an error and a sin which is bitterly felt by the children who are held down, and which can never by possibility result in good to any party concerned. And there are parents who deliberately lay themselves out to torment their children. There are two classes of parents who are the most inexorably cruel and malignant: it is hard to say which class excels, but it is certain that both classes exceed all ordinary mortals. One is the utterly blackguard: the parents about whom there is no good nor pretence of good. The other is the wrong-headedly conscientious and religious: probably, after all, there is greater rancor and malice about these last than about any other. These act upon a system of unnatural repression, and systematized weeding out of all enjoyment from life. These are the people whose very crowning act of hatred and malice towards any one is to pray for him, or to threaten to pray for him. These are the people who, if their children complain of their bare and joyless life, say that such complaints indicate a wicked heart, or Satanic possession; and have recourse to further persecution to bring about a happier frame of mind. Yes: the wrong-headed and wrong-hearted religionist is probably the very worst type of man or woman on whom the sun looks down. And, oh! how sad to think of the fashion in which stupid, conceited, malicious blockheads set up their own worst passions as the fruits of the working of the Blessed Spirit, and caricature, to the lasting injury of many a young heart, the pure and kindly religion of the Blessed Redeemer! These are the folk who inflict systematic and ingenious torment on their children: and, unhappily, a very contemptible parent can inflict much suffering on a sensitive child. But of this there is more to be said hereafter; and before going on to it, let us think of another evil influence which darkens and embitters the early years of many.

It is the cruelty, injustice, and incompetence of many schoolmasters. I know a young man of twenty-eight, who told me, that, when at school in a certain large city in Peru, (let us say,) he never went into his class any day without feeling quite sick with nervous terror. The entire class of boys lived in that state of cowed submission to a vulgar, stupid, bullying, flogging barbarian. If it prevents the manners from becoming brutal diligently to study the ingenuous arts, it appears certain that diligently to teach them sometimes leads to a directly contrary result. The bullying schoolmaster has now become an almost extinct animal; but it is not very long since the spirit of Mr. Squeers was to be found, in its worst manifestations, far beyond the precincts of Dotheboys Hall. You would find fellows who showed a grim delight in walking down a class with a cane in their hand, enjoying the evident fear they occasioned as they swung it about, occasionally coming down with a savage whack on some poor fellow who was doing nothing whatsoever. These brutal teachers would flog, and that till compelled to cease by pure exhaustion, not merely for moral offences, which possibly deserve it, (though I do not believe any one was ever made better by flogging,) but for making a mistake in saying a lesson, which the poor boy had done his best to prepare, and which was driven out of his head by the fearful aspect of the truculent blackguard with his cane and his hoarse voice. And how indignant, in after-years, many a boy of the last generation must have been, to find that this tyrant of his childhood was in truth a humbug, a liar, a fool, and a sneak! Yet how that miserable piece of humanity was feared! How they watched his eye, and laughed at the old idiot's wretched jokes! I have several friends who have told me such stories of their school-days, that I used to wonder that they did not, after they became men, return to the schoolboy spot that they might heartily shake their preceptor of other years, or even kick him!

If there be a thing to be wondered at, it is that the human race is not much worse than it is. It has not a fair chance. I am not thinking now of an original defect in the material provided: I am thinking only of the kind of handling it gets. I am thinking of the amount of judgment which may be found in most parents and in most teachers, and of the degree of honesty which may be found in many. I suppose there is no doubt that the accursed system of the cheap Yorkshire schools was by no means caricatured by Mr. Dickens in "Nicholas Nickleby." I believe that starvation and brutality were the rule at these institutions. And I do not think it says much for the manliness of Yorkshire men and of Yorkshire clergymen, that these foul dens of misery and wickedness were suffered to exist so long without a voice raised to let the world know of them. I venture to think, that, if Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh had lived anywhere near Greta Bridge, Mr. Squeers and his compeers would have attained a notoriety that would have stopped their trade. I cannot imagine how any one, with the spirit of a man in him, could sleep and wake within sight of one of these schools without lifting a hand or a voice to stop what was going on there. But without supposing these extreme cases, I can remember what I have myself seen of the incompetence and injustice of teachers. I burn with indignation yet, as I think of a malignant blockhead who once taught me for a few months. I have been at various schools; and I spent six years at one venerable university (where my instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. I have observed (let me say) that masters and professors who are stupid themselves have a great preference for stupid fellows, and like to keep down clever ones. A professor who was himself a dunce at college, and who has been jobbed into his chair, being quite unfit for it, has a fellow-feeling for other dunces. He is at home with them, you see, and is not afraid that they see through him and despise him. The injustice of the malignant blockhead who was my early instructor, and who succeeded in making several months of my boyhood unhappy enough, was taken up and imitated by several lesser blockheads among the boys. I remember particularly one sneaking wretch who was occasionally set to mark down on a slate the names of such boys as talked in school; such boys being punished by being turned to the bottom of their class. I remember how that sneaking wretch used always to mark my name down, though I kept perfectly silent: and how he put my name last on the list, that I might have to begin the lesson the very lowest in my form. The sneaking wretch was bigger than I, so I could not thrash him; and any representation I made to the malignant blockhead of a schoolmaster was entirely disregarded. I cannot think but with considerable ferocity, that probably there are many schools to-day in Britain containing a master who has taken an unreasonable dislike to some poor boy, and who lays himself out to make that poor boy unhappy. And I know that such may be the case where the boy is neither bad nor stupid. And if the school be one attended by a good many boys of the lower grade, there are sure to be several sneaky boys among them who will devote themselves to tormenting the one whom the master hates and torments.

It cannot be denied that there is a generous and magnanimous tone about the boys of a school attended exclusively by the children of the better classes, which is unknown among the children of uncultivated boors. I have observed, that, if you offer a prize to the cleverest and most industrious boy of a certain form in a school of the upper class, and propose to let the prize be decided by the votes of the boys themselves, you will almost invariably find it fairly given: that is, given to the boy who deserves it best. If you explain, in a frank, manly way, to the little fellows, that, in asking each for whom he votes, you are asking each to say upon his honor whom he thinks the cleverest and most diligent boy in the form, nineteen boys out of twenty will answer honestly. But I have witnessed the signal failure of such an appeal to the honor of the bumpkins of a country school. I was once present at the examination of such a school, and remarked carefully how the boys acquitted themselves. After the examination was over, the master proposed, very absurdly, to let the boys of each class vote the prize for that particular class. The voting began. A class of about twenty was called up: I explained to the boys what they were to do. I told them they were not to vote for the boy they liked best, but were to tell me faithfully who had done best in the class-lessons. I then asked the first boy in the line for whom he gave his vote. To my mortification, instead of voting for a little fellow who had done incomparably best at the examination, he gave his vote for a big sullen-looking blockhead who had done conspicuously ill. I asked the next boy, and received the same answer. So all round the class: all voted for the big sullen-looking blockhead. One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead's right fist. I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he had sought to tamper with justice and right. Addressing the blockhead, amid the dead silence of the school, I said: "You shall not get the prize, because I can judge for myself that you don't deserve it. I can see that you are the stupidest boy in the class; and I have seen reason, during this voting, to believe that you are the worst. You have tried to bully these boys into voting for you. Their votes go for nothing; for their voting for you proves either that they are so stupid as to think you deserve the prize, or so dishonest as to say they think so when they don't think so." Then I inducted the blockhead into a seat where I could see him well, and proceeded to take the votes over again. I explained to the boys once more what they had to do; and explained that any boy would be telling a lie who voted the prize unfairly. I also told them that I knew who deserved the prize, and that they knew it too, and that they had better vote fairly. Then, instead of saying to each boy, "For whom do you vote?" I said to each, "Tell me who did best in the class during these months past." Each boy in reply named the boy who really deserved the prize: and the little fellow got it. I need not record the means I adopted to prevent the sullen-looking blockhead from carrying out his purpose of thrashing the little fellow. It may suffice to say that the means were thoroughly effectual; and that the blockhead was very meek and tractable for about six weeks after that memorable day.

But, after all, the great cause of the sorrows of childhood is unquestionably the mismanagement of parents. You hear a great deal about parents who spoil their children by excessive kindness; but I venture to think that a greater number of children are spoiled by stupidity and cruelty on the part of their parents. You may find parents who, having started from a humble origin, have attained to wealth, and who, instead of being glad to think that their children are better off than they themselves were, exhibit a diabolical jealousy of their children. You will find such wretched beings insisting that their children shall go through needless trials and mortifications, because they themselves went through the like. Why, I do not hesitate to say that one of the thoughts which would most powerfully lead a worthy man to value material prosperity would be the thought that his boys would have a fairer and happier start in life than he had, and would be saved the many difficulties on which he still looks back with pain. You will find parents, especially parents of the pharisaical and wrong-headedly religious class, who seem to hold it a sacred duty to make the little things unhappy; who systematically endeavor to render life as bare, ugly, and wretched a thing as possible; who never praise their children when they do right, but punish them with great severity when they do wrong; who seem to hate to see their children lively or cheerful in their presence; who thoroughly repel all sympathy or confidence on the part of their children, and then mention as a proof that their children are possessed by the Devil, that their children always like to get away from them; who rejoice to cut off any little enjoyment,—rigidly carrying out into practice the fundamental principle of their creed, which undoubtedly is, that "nobody should ever please himself, neither should anybody ever please anybody else, because in either case he is sure to displease God." No doubt, Mr. Buckle, in his second volume, caricatured and misrepresented the religion of Scotland as a country; but he did not in the least degree caricature or misrepresent the religion of some people in Scotland. The great doctrine underlying all other doctrines, in the creed of a few unfortunate beings, is, that God is spitefully angry to see his creatures happy; and of course the practical lesson follows, that they are following the best example, when they are spitefully angry to see their children happy.

Then a great trouble, always pressing heavily on many a little mind, is that it is overtasked with lessons. You still see here and there idiotic parents striving to make infant phenomena of their children, and recording with much pride how their children could read and write at an unnaturally early age. Such parents are fools: not necessarily malicious fools, but fools beyond question. The great use to which the first six or seven years of life should be given is the laying the foundation of a healthful constitution in body and mind; and the instilling of those first principles of duty and religion which do not need to be taught out of any books. Even if you do not permanently injure the young brain and mind by prematurely overtasking them,—even if you do not permanently blight the bodily health and break the mind's cheerful spring, you gain nothing. Your child at fourteen years old is not a bit farther advanced in his education than a child who began his years after him; and the entire result of your stupid driving has been to overcloud some days which should have been among the happiest of his life. It is a woful sight to me to see the little forehead corrugated with mental effort, though the effort be to do no more than master the multiplication table: it was a sad story I lately heard of a little boy repeating his Latin lesson over and over again in the delirium of the fever of which he died, and saying piteously that indeed he could not do it better. I don't like to see a little face looking unnaturally anxious and earnest about a horrible task of spelling; and even when children pass that stage, and grow up into school-boys who can read Thucydides and write Greek iambics, it is not wise in parents to stimulate a clever boy's anxiety to hold the first place in his class. That anxiety is strong enough already; it needs rather to be repressed. It is bad enough even at college to work on late into the night; but at school it ought not to be suffered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every day in a state of nervous tremor, he may be in the way to get his gold medal, indeed; but he is in the way to shatter his constitution for life.

We all know, of course, that children are subjected to worse things than these. I think of little things early set to hard work, to add a little to their parents' scanty store. Yet, if it be only work, they bear it cheerfully. This afternoon, I was walking through a certain quiet street, when I saw a little child standing with a basket at a door. The little man looked at various passers-by; and I am happy to say, that, when he saw me, he asked me to ring the door-bell for him: for, though he had been sent with that basket, which was not a light one, he could not reach up to the bell. I asked him how old he was. "Five years past," said the child, quite cheerfully and independently. "God help you, poor little man!" I thought; "the doom of toil has fallen early upon you!" If you visit much among the poor, few things will touch you more than the unnatural sagacity and trustworthiness of children who are little more than babies. You will find these little things left in a bare room by themselves,—the eldest six years old,—while the poor mother is out at her work. And the eldest will reply to your questions in a way that will astonish you, till you get accustomed to such things. I think that almost as heart-rending a sight as you will readily see is the misery of a little thing who has spilt in the street the milk she was sent to fetch, or broken a jug, and who is sitting in despair beside the spilt milk or the broken fragments. Good Samaritan, never pass by such a sight; bring out your two-pence; set things completely right: a small matter and a kind word will cheer and comfort an overwhelmed heart. That child has a truculent step-mother, or (alas!) mother, at home, who would punish that mishap as nothing should be punished but the gravest moral delinquency. And lower down the scale than this, it is awful to see want, cold, hunger, rags, in a little child. I have seen the wee thing shuffling along the pavement in great men's shoes, holding up its sorry tatters with its hands, and casting on the passengers a look so eager, yet so hopeless, as went to one's heart. Let us thank God that there is one large city in the empire where you need never see such a sight, and where, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectually; and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas Guthrie! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little children as I can think of. What curious things they are able to seek amusement in! I have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized possession. I have seen a grave little boy standing by a broken chair in a bare garret, solemnly arranging and rearranging two pins upon the broken chair. A machine much employed by poor children in country places is a slate tied to a bit of string: this, being drawn along the road, constitutes a cart; and you may find it attended by the admiration of the entire young population of three or four cottages standing in the moorland miles from any neighbor.

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You will not unfrequently find parents who, if they cannot keep back their children from some little treat, will try to infuse a sting into it, so as to prevent the children from enjoying it. They will impress on their children that they must be very wicked to care so much about going out to some children's party; or they will insist that their children should return home at some preposterously early hour, so as to lose the best part of the fun, and so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of their young companions. You will find this amiable tendency in people intrusted with the care of older children. I have heard of a man whose nephew lived with him, and lived a very cheerless life. When the season came round at which the lad hoped to be allowed to go and visit his parents, he ventured, after much hesitation, to hint this to his uncle. Of course the uncle felt that it was quite right the lad should go, but he grudged him the chance of the little enjoyment, and the happy thought struck him that he might let the lad go, and at the same time make the poor fellow uncomfortable in going. Accordingly he conveyed his permission to the lad to go by roaring out in a savage manner, "Begone!" This made the poor lad feel as if it were his duty to stay, and as if it were very wicked in him to wish to go; and though he ultimately went, he enjoyed his visit with only half a heart. There are parents and guardians who take great pains to make their children think themselves very bad,—to make the little things grow up in the endurance of the pangs of a bad conscience. For conscience, in children, is a quite artificial thing: you may dictate to it what it is to say. And parents, often injudicious, sometimes malignant, not seldom apply hard names to their children, which sink down into the little heart and memory far more deeply than they think. If a child cannot eat fat, you may instil into him that it is because he is so wicked; and he will believe you for a while. A favorite weapon in the hands of some parents, who have devoted themselves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ancestors. I am reminded of the woman mentioned by Sam Weller, whose husband disappeared. The woman had been a fearful termagant; the husband, a very inoffensive man. After his disappearance, the woman issued an advertisement, assuring him, that, if he returned, he would be fully forgiven; which, as Mr. Weller justly remarked, was very generous, seeing he had never done anything at all.

Yes, the conscience of children is an artificial and a sensitive thing. The other day, a friend of mine, who is one of the kindest of parents and the most amiable of men, told me what happened in his house on a certain Fast-day. A Scotch Fast-day, you may remember, is the institution which so completely puzzled Mr. Buckle. That historian fancied that to fast means in Scotland to abstain from food. Had Mr. Buckle known anything whatever about Scotland, he would have known that a Scotch Fast-day means a week-day on which people go to church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would give the body the mastery over the soul; it would make a man so physically uncomfortable that he could not attend with profit to his religious duties at all. I am aware, Anglican reader, of the defects of my countrymen; but commend me to the average Scotchman for sound practical sense. But to return. These Fast-days are by many people observed as rigorously as the Scotch Sunday. On the forenoon of such a day, my friend's little child, three years old, came to him in much distress. She said, as one who had a fearful sin to confess, "I have been playing with my toys this morning"; and then began to cry as if her little heart would break. I know some stupid parents who would have strongly encouraged this needless sensitiveness; and who would thus have made their child unhappy at the time, and prepared the way for an indignant bursting of these artificial trammels when the child had grown up to maturity. But my friend was not of that stamp. He comforted the little thing, and told her, that, though it might be as well not to play with her toys on a Fast-day, what she had done was nothing to cry about. I think, my reader, that, even if you were a Scotch minister, you would appear with considerable confidence before your Judge, if you had never done worse than failed to observe a Scotch Fast-day with the Covenanting austerity.

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But when one looks back and looks round, and tries to reckon up the sorrows of childhood arising from parental folly, one feels that the task is endless. There are parents who will not suffer their children to go to the little feasts which children occasionally have, either on that wicked principle that all enjoyment is sinful, or because the children have recently committed some small offence, which is to be thus punished. There are parents who take pleasure in informing strangers, in their children's presence, about their children's faults, to the extreme bitterness of the children's hearts. There are parents who will not allow their children to be taught dancing, regarding dancing as sinful. The result is, that the children are awkward and unlike other children; and when they are suffered to spend an evening among a number of companions who have all learned dancing, they suffer a keen mortification which older people ought to be able to understand. Then you will find parents, possessing ample means, who will not dress their children like others, but send them out in very shabby garments. Few things cause a more painful sense of humiliation to a child. It is a sad sight to see a little fellow hiding round the corner when some one passes who is likely to recognize him, afraid to go through the decent streets, and creeping out of sight by back-ways. We have all seen that. We have all sympathized heartily with the reduced widow who has it not in her power to dress her boy better; and we have all felt lively indignation at the parents who had the power to attire their children becomingly, but whose heartless parsimony made the little things go about under a constant sense of painful degradation.