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GERMANY'S SUCCESS IN ALSACE-LORRAINE.

BY MR. SAMUEL JAMES CAPPER.

MR. CAPPER in the Contemporary Review gives a most interesting and useful survey of the present condition of things in Alsace-Lorraine. Mr. Capper spent many months in the conquered provinces at the time when they were the cockpit of the great Franco-German war. He has now revisited them after a space of a quarter of a century, and as he has an eye to see and the pen of a ready writer, he is able to furnish us with just the information which we want as to the state of things in the lost provinces. Mr. Capper, although a member of the Society of Friends, is under no delusion as to the irrevocable determination of Germany to hold on to these provinces until she has spent her last mark and her last soldier. Neutralisation would precipitate war, and the great rampart which the Germans have erected in the Reichsland will never be willingly surrendered to France. These words of Mr. Capper may be commended to those sentimentalists who are perpetually trying to promote peace by advocating propositions which lead directly to war:

If, then, it is vain, and even absurd, to look to the elimination of the danger of a great war, either by the restoration of the provinces to France, or by their neutralisation, thus forming a buffer-State between the probable belligerents, what alternative remains to us? First and foremost, to look the facts fairly and squarely in the face, and to realise that Alsace and Lorraine are at least as absolute and integral parts of Germany as Savoy and Nice are of France. When France and Europe recognise this certain truth, we shall have made a first step towards an era of peace.

We are all the more able to accept this postulate by the evidence which Mr. Capper brings to us as to the immense success which has attended the German policy in Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace, he says, has absolutely ceased to be French. The peasants are not dissatisfied; the wine-grower profits by being included in the German Zollverein; and the population generally, with the exception of a few handfuls in the large towns, recognise that the Germans are just and conscientious to a degree. They are saving money, and all that they desire is to be left alone. They dread war, and are settling down as fast as possible into contented subjects of the German Empire. The young men, even those who were born under the French Government, have openly asserted that they are no longer Frenchmen. Always German by race, descent and language, they now feel German not only politically, but also in feeling and in sympathy. Mr. Capper devotes some of his space in explaining the modified kind of Home Rule which has been established in Alsace-Lorraine. Of Lorraine Mr. Capper is able to give an even better account. What is true of the peasantry of Alsace is true of the peasantry of Lorraine. But the German language is spreading much faster in Lorraine than in Alsace. The reason for this is that the Alsatians stick to their patois, while the Lorrainers have to learn German, and the habitual use of pure German is causing the Germanisation of Lorraine to proceed much more rapidly than that of Alsace. Muhlhausen is the chief centre of French feeling in Alsace. So strong is this sentiment that Alsatian recruits when in German uniform are cut by their friends. The sentiment in favour of France in Alsace-Lorraine Mr. Capper does not rank above the Jacobite sentiment in Scotland a hundred years ago. The Burgomeister of Strasburg, who is at the Town Hall all

day and every day receiving citizens, told Mr. Capper that his French was growing quite rusty because he had scarcely any occasion to use it. To complete the good work which Germany has been engaged in since the war, Mr. Capper suggests that all exceptional and repressive legislation should be done away with and that the Home Rule of the Reichsland should be developed so as to make the Landes Ausschuss a Landtag like that of Prussia, Bavaria or Saxony. He would also like to see Alsace annexed to Baden, and Lorraine to Prussia. Mr. Capper's article will be received with a howl of indignation in France, but he sees things as they are, and we have reason to rejoice that the situation is so favourable.

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If your horse be resty so as he cannot be put forwards, then let one take a cat tied by the tail to a long pole: and when he [the horse] goes backward, thrust the cat within his tail where she may claw him: and forget not to threaten your horse with a terrible noise. Or otherwise take a hedgehog, and tie him strait by one of his feet to the inside of the horse's tail, that so he [the hedgehog] may squeal and prick him.

"Firearms were the rage of the day;" the sword was "quite a secondary weapon"; lances were out of fashion. The writer goes on to destroy some pet illusions about the famous Rupert charge. He says:

The ordinary cavalry attack was delivered by ranks; each rank fired its two pistols and filed or countermarched to the rear, leaving the next rank to do likewise. Anything more remote from " shock-action can hardly be conceived.

At Marston Moor . . . Rupert attacked [Cromwell] in front and flank, with the result that both sides "stood at sword's point a pretty while hacking one another." and evidently doing each other little harm; till Cromwell's men, probably from superior discipline, at last broke through.

Nor does it seem to us that, we are quite correct in looking upon Rupert as a kind of Murat, as the usual fashion is. Take for instance his attack at Naseby. He advanced up a slight incline, and he "came fast" as we are expressly told, probably at a trot. Ireton, who was opposed to him, also advanced down the hill. On seeing him, Rupert halted, thus giving Ireton the chance of plunging down upon him with irresistible force. But Ireton also halted in his turn, partly on account of "the disadvantage of the ground, partly to allow ,some of his troops to recover their stations." Had Rupert continued his advance he would have found Ireton in disorder; but as it was he gave him time to get his troops together. Then he charged Ireton and routed him. . . Altogether it seems to us certain that cavalry charges, in the sense of swift, sudden onslaught, were the exception in the Civil War.

Of the British cavalry soldier, as Cromwell originally made him, we should seek our ideas... not in modern pictures which make a cavalry action of the Civil War as headlong a matter as the charge of the Greys at Waterloo, but in the old pictures of Wouvermans, where the cavaliers caracole about firing pistols in each other's faces.

The writer concludes with "a lively picture of the new model trooper in his new red coat faced with his colonel's colours, his great boots and huge clinking spurs; a soldier before all things in spite of the text on his lips. It seems a far cry from this light cavalryman of the seventeenth century to the hussar of the present day, yet they may not be so distant after all."

HOW TO NATIONALISE THE RAILWAYS. MR. JAMES HOLE'S " Argument for State Purchase" of Railways is sympathetically epitomised in the Westminster Review by Mr. Hugh H. L. Bellot. The corrupt administration of the United States deters Mr. Hole from recommending State ownership in that country. He would replace the existing individualistic system by the institution of Trusts analogous to our Dock and Harbour Trusts. For the United Kingdom, in place of its present mixed system of individualism and State control, Mr. Hole offers two alternative schemes:

One is that proposed by Mr. A. J. Williams, M.P., of dividing "the English railways into five non-competing systems based on districts, each district having as its general manager one of the central board of management. A commencement might be made by putting the whole of the Irish railways into one group, and the Scotch into another. The ordinary railway board would become needless and a thousand railway directors be spared. The real railway board-that which actually governs-consists of the managers who meet in the clearing-house, and who settle rates and conditions of traffic. Each system would become a trust-like the Mersey Trust-conducted with no reference to private gain, but in the general interest alone.

The other alternative is State purchase on the Prussian system. . . . In 1892 the paid-up capital of the railways was stated at £897,472,000. If the shareholders received a Government Railway Stock securing them as much as they now receive, there is no doubt the large majority would prefer it. To prevent speculation, the basis should be that of earnings. . . . The management, says Mr. Hole, should be in an independent government department, comprised not of officials, but of railway men, and presided over by a railway man.

To the objection that State control is inefficient and extravagant, Mr. Bellot answers that the Prussian railways taken over by the State" are managed as efficiently as any other, and pay higher dividends than any other large system in the world." At present British "railways are managed by the rich for the rich."

THE LOCOMOTIVE OF THE FUTURE. LIMITATIONS to the increase of power in locomotives are considered by Mr. D. L. Barnes in the Engineering Magazine for June. He holds that "The limit of locomotive boiler-power is nearly reached at present, and, unless two separate grates are used, no more fuel can be burned on a locomotive than can now be burned with the largest grates we have in use. . . Two grates would require practically two boilers.

"A speed of one hundred miles an hour is possible now with light trains on straight track, and that is as fast as it will be safe to travel until better protection is given to trains while running." What is wanted is not high maximum speed but high average speed. This is a "real necessity, and can be obtained; for such service locomotives need power at starting and a larger boiler capacity for work on light grades." "The demand for quick runs over long distances will not be filled by building locomotives for excessive speeds, but by so arranging the time-tables and decreasing the curves, grades, and number of stops, that high uniform speeds can be maintained for considerable periods of time." Mr. Barnes thus sums up the situation:

We are now entering upon an era of change of motive power from steam directly applied, as in our present steam locomotives, to electric transference of power from a central station to moving trains. The change must necessarily go on slowly, commencing first with the suburban, switching, and elevated services, and finally beginning in main-line work where the traffic is crowded. The steam locomotive will not be altered much in appearance or power from the best of the present

designs, but improvements will continue in detail so long as it remains in use. We are nearly at the limit of economy with steam locomotives where there are large boilers and compound cylinders, and where the engineer and fireman are competent and the loads not excessive, and the maximum capacity is about as great in some cases as it is practicable to make it; hence, for higher efficiency and greatly increased hauling power at high speed, concentration of power is needed. So far as can now be seen there must be a stationary plant where power can be concentrated, and electricity seems the only practical means of transferring such concentrated power to moving trains.

SOAKING THE SOIL WITH LIGHTNING. NOVEL DANGER FROM THE ELECTRIC CAR.

ANOTHER Curious penalty of our growing civilisation is brought to light in Cassier's for June by Mr. J. H. Vail. We all know the touching faith which our fathers displayed in the sanitary receptivity of the ground beneath their cities, and can recall the reluctance with which they at last abandoned the cesspool system. We smile at their simplicity; yet it turns out that we are just as simple as they, though in another way. We have been saturating the soil of our cities, not with sewage, but with waste electricity. Says Mr. Vail:--

Destruction of gas and water pipes and underground metal work, generally due to the action of electric street railroad currents, is an evil of growing magnitude.

In the early days of electric railroad construction it was assumed by experts that the earth and the buried pipe systems would, when combined, form an ample return for the electric current. At that age of the art experts did not fully appreciate the immense quantities of current that would require to be carried, and therefore did not foresee that these currents when disseminated would produce the serious results that have been caused by electrolytic action on systems of pipes buried in the earth and owned by other companies. Frequent tests prove that the earth itself cannot afford the free path for the current that was anticipated. Earth conductivity has been over-estimated.

Within the past year strong evidence of damaging electrolytic action has been produced. In one case a section of iron water-pipe showed complete perforation, caused in four weeks' time. Lead coverings of telephone cables also show serious damage. In another case a plumber in a city in Pennsylvania was repairing a water-pipe in a house, and on breaking joint, an electric arc formed across the separating ends of the pipe.

In another place the return current formed an arc between a water-pipe and gas-pipe, burning a hole through the gas-pipe and setting fire to the gas.

Instances are numerous proving that the electric current is present on the gas and water pipes in buildings contiguous to electric railroad lines. Even those of us who are familiar with handling electric currents hesitate to draw a combination of electricity with our gas or water. We know that the gas and water pipes entering our houses may be charged with such a current, and that it only remains for the circuit to be completed by a possible accident through our bodies, or the occurrence of a fire by automatic action between vibrating pipes.

Mr. Vail explains the remedies he has devised :-

The only proper system is one that affords a well-insulated and complete metallic circuit of low resistance, that will give an ample path for the complete unrestricted circulation of the entire current from pole to pole of the dynamo, thus offering no inducement for the current to follow such conductors as gas or water pipes, but, as it were, actually robbing the earth of any desire to carry the current.

In other words, we must develop a drainage system for the worse than insanitary sewage of our electric railways.

THE SUBWAYS OF A GREAT CITY.

MR. J. J. WALLER, in Good Words, gives an account of the Parisian sewers, illustrated by diagrams of the interior of the main sewer in the Boulevard Sebastopol. The main sewers are eleven feet high and sixteen feet broad, and are constructed of solid masonry covered with cement. Workmen are continually working on them, and the water only rises to the sidewalks after a very heavy rainfall. The sewers contain two water mains, as well as telegraph and telephone wires, and tubes for compressed air, which is laid on just like water. Mr. Waller says:

This ingenious system sprang from another embodied in a contract granted in 1881 by the Municipal Council of Paris to the Pneumatic Clock Company, who were given permission to place their tubes in the sewers on condition that they erected a given number of clocks in the public places of the city, and undertook to keep them to the time furnished daily at noon by the Observatory. The

ence.

clocks are worked from a central office by the compressed air, and constitute a great public conveniAfter twentyfive years from the date of the contract they will become the property of the city. As a set-off the company received a concession to establish and keep their pipes in the sewers for fifty years, for the purpose. of distributing compressed air as a motive power throughout the. city. A very wide use is made of so advantageous a system, for it obviates the purchase of an engine, saves space, time, and trouble. All that is. needed is a meter

and the proper connections with

the

compressed air-tube, then a turn of the tap, and the machinery is in motion.

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towns. They are to spend 66 million francs in adapting the sewers to take all the sewage which at the present time is stored in cesspools. They are also going to spend 50 million francs more in improving the water supply, and the means of distributing it. One of the sewers passes under the river by means of a syphon 170 yards long and three feet in diameter. This is kept clean by inserting a wooden ball on the left bank of the Seine which almost exactly fills the tube. The pressure of the stream carries the ball down, and then being of lighter specific gravity, it rushes to the surface, carrying before it everything that may have settled in the syphon.

THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS.

IN the Gentleman's Magazine Mr. Neil Wynn Williams tells how the subterranean quarries whence Paris was built caused subsidence after subsidence, until after the roof had been properly propped up they were in 1784

PNEUMATIC
TUBES

COMPRESSED AIR

RIVER WATER

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SPRING WATER

TELEPHONE

WIRES

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used as a receptacle for remains removed from cemeteries above ground. This is the picture which

broke from the darkness:

We move on again, and lo! the rocks on either hand contract, change colour, break out into the gruesome design of a symmetrically built wall of bones and skulls. From the level of our heads down to the level of cur feet, skull rests upon skull, and leans back against the myriad bones behind. The shivering candlelight falls with unequal rays upon the formal tiers; it flashes coldly upon the grinning teeth, penetrates the mortarless crannies of the wall, and ever shows bone of many shapes and curves. Now it lights up a rent in some skull -a ghastly, jagged wound which haunts one with the thought of foul murder. Anon, it shimmers with erratic play on the trickling water that, pursuing its silent way from year to year, has crusted with a smooth gloss the skull beneath.

3F

SEWAGE

SECTION OF MAIN SEWER, BOULEVARD SEBASTOPOL.

The sewers are also used to accommodate the pneumatic tubes, by means of which the carte telegrams are conveyed from one end of the city to the other. The convenience of having the telephone wires in the sewers is very great. There are thousands of miles of these connecting 214 post offices, as well as hundreds of private subscribers in every part of the city. Any subscriber in any part of Paris may be heard with ease in the General Post Office in London, and a whisper can be heard over the telephone in Paris, with the result that the hard swearing that goes on over the London telephones is almost unknown. A sluice carriage is run along the ledges of the sewers, while a tongue scrapes the side and bottom clean. The sewers are lighted with lamps, and not only is every thoroughfare inscribed on enamel plates, but every house which is connected with the sewer is also numbered. As many as fifty tourists a day go down the sewers in the tourist season to ride in the tourist car or sail in the gondola. The Paris Council has decided upon adopting the system of drainage which is in vogue in English

The fate of the hundred fugitive Communists who lost their way in these catacombs and perished is vividly imagined.

"SHIRLEY" begins what promises to be a series of Table Talk papers in Good Words for July.

HERR A. VON BORRIES Concludes a historical review in Cassier's of the evolution of the compound locomotive by predicting that

the two-cylinder compound locomotive will be the railway motor of the future except in cases where an extra large amount of tractive force is required, and here Mr. Mallet's articulated four-cylinder compound engine will successfully replace the two-cylinder locomotive.

HOW TO BECOME STRONG. BY SANDOW.

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IN the Cosmopolitan for June, Eugen Sandow has an article entitled How to Preserve Health and Maintain Strength." It is illustrated by copyright photographs, which are the nakedest which have ever been published in a magazine, and the apologetic fig-leaf is much worse than nothing. Sandow looks very much better in his clothes than without them. In the article which accompanies these extraordinary pictures he asserts that the first step towards the preservation of health and strength is a knowledge of physiology and anatomy-subjects which seem to him as essential as the study of mathematics, and more so than astronomy. Sandow's first golden rule is, If you want to be strong, do not eat too much. Nothing shortens life and minimises power as the almost universal habit of taking too much food. only rule as to how much food should be taken is that the system should be kept free from hunger until the usual time for the next meal. If you wish to be strong, do not drink tea or coffee, and when the stomach is empty take nothing but distilled water. Another point is never try to economise in sleep. Sandow says that he sleeps nine hours, and often more. You should sleep in a warm bedroom, and bathe almost as frequently as you eat. At any rate, you should always have a cold bath morning and evening. Lawn tennis is an admirable exercise, which brings into play almost all the muscles of the body. Bicycling, from the point of view of exercise, is superior to walking, but the rider should see to it that his seat and handles are so adjusted as to enable him to ride upright. Sandow says he has not much faith in gymnastics as they are usually taught, as they do not bring out the muscles which are in everyday use. Dumb-bell exercises as usually practised are useless, and all exercise carried on in an enclosed building is not nearly so advantageous as that in the open air. Parallel bars and other apparatus he thinks are of little use. His faith is pinned to dumbbells, and he does all his training with them, supplemented with weight lifting. If you wish to be strong, says Sandow, do not overstrain yourself; develop your muscles by the easiest and lightest exercise. Muscular action, by accelerating the circulation and increasing the absorption of nutritive materials, assists the regenerative process, and wards off disease. By a constant use of dumb-bells any man of average strength can bring his muscles to the highest possible development. exercising it is very important to stand correctly and to breathe properly. The right way to breathe properly is to take long full breaths and to expel the air slowly. If you breathe properly, stand as you ought to do, get plenty of pure air, sufficient, but not too much, wholesome food, you will be sure to be healthy and strong. He thinks that in American schools children are overdriven, and the body is sacrificed to the mind. In his personal habits Sandow says that he does not go to bed till after midnight, and does not rise till eleven, when he takes a cold bath all the year round, and a little light exercise with dumb-bells. After breakfast he attends to his correspondence and sees his friends, and then goes for a walk or a drive whatever the weather may be. At seven he dines, after which he rests until his evening's performance, and then he closes the day with a bath and supper. If he requires more exercise than his constitutional or bicycle run, he takes it by flicking his muscles.

In

THE Freie Bühne and the Musikalische Rundschau are publishing Dr. Hans von Bülow's letters to his friend Richard Pohl.

ANOTHER AND A NOBLER MAHDI.

"A MYSTIC being enshrouded in an atmosphere of saintliness, dwelling in a convent citadel remote from the world; a man of piety and prayer, who has, slowly and for a long time unnoticed, been at work regenerating whole races by means of emissaries quoting a few simple religious dogmas; a man given the name of Mahdi, but not claiming it; a man, moreover, fulfilling many of the conditions that the looked-for Messiah is to fulfil," -such is the description given in Blackwood of Senoussi, the Sheikh of Jerboub. The elder Senoussi, his father, was, it seems, an apostle of Mohammedan reform, who, after preaching through Morocco, Egypt, and Mecca, retreated into convent life first near the ancient Cyrene, and then deeper in the desert at the oasis Jerboub. That place has become a great centre of religious influence, whence preachers are sent and convents are sown far and wide through Northern Africa. "In theory the tenets of the order are stern, unbending, and emblematic of Islam. In practice the disciples of Senoussi show, in many respects, a liberal-mindedness and adaptability to circumstances characteristic rather of the least bigoted of Christian Churches; " even granting at times a place to woman far in advance of Moslem ideas.

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The priests and emissaries of the order endeavour to promote agriculture and encourage thrift in the districts where they are at work. By opening new wells, by planting crops, and by carefully attending to the culture of the date-palms which form the main wealth of the oases of North Africa, they have created new centres of population, and have thereby opened up fresh routes into the far interior absolutely under control of the order. Under the influence of these preachers, districts like the Jebel Akhdar hills near Cyrene are regaining a prosperity lost since the early days of the Christian era.

At present the Sheikh of Jerboub certainly possesses far more political power in the provinces of Tripoli, of Barka, and of Fezzan, which are marked on maps as Ottoman territory,

than does the Sultan.

This is a power which, the writer believes, opposes a menacing "barrier to a French annexation of the great tracts intervening between Senegal and Algeria." A false move on the part of the French might rouse Senoussi to declare himself the long-expected Mahdi, and proclaim a holy war which would set the whole of North Africa ablaze.

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Boys and "Roderick Random."

IN the course of Mr. James Payn's "Gleams of Memory in Cornhill Magazine, he makes reference to the subject upon which there has been some little discussion-namely, the effect of allowing boys to read the coarse literature of the "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" type. Mr. Payn says:

It was said that the mind shrank from the grossness of vice, and was more liable to be injured by the delicate suggestions of it than by its actual picture. Don Juan," for example (to take a very mild specimen of the latter class), was thought to be less hurtful than "Lalla Rookh." This may be so with girls (though I doubt it), but certainly not with boys. Humour, no doubt, of which there is such a plenty in Smollett and Fielding, is a disinfectant of coarseness with natures that possess humour; but unfortunately it is only a very few boys who have this gift, and what most pleases them in "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" is just what should please them the least. In saying this I know that I run counter to the opinion of many cultured persons even now; but I am too old for illusions of this kind-if, indeed, I was ever so weak as to entertain them. I am told boys have been much improved since I was one of them, and it may be so; but certainly in my time they more resembled those described by Cowper in his "Tirocinium” than by Mr. Hughes in "Tom Brown."

THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.

THIS month's Contemporary is an excellent number, of widely varied interest and solid value. Sir J. R. Seeley's "History of English Policy," Mr. S. J. Capper's "Alsace and Lorraine," and my "Incidents of Labour War in America," have been separately noticed.

COST OF COMPENSATION FOR ALL ACCIDENTS.

Mr. A. D. Provand, M.P., desires to see "all accidents compensated for," and holds that the only way to secure this end is "by making insurance compulsory on employers, by payment to an accident insurance office or to a Government-managed insurance fund." He has estimated the probable cost to the industries of the country which such a system of insurance would entail. He calculates that it would involve a total annual outlay of about £2,103,000 altogether, taking the largest scale of compensation allowed by the Employers' Liability Act, while the expenses connected with the management of the fund would be fully met by the addition of a further £100,000. This would be no serious tax on industrial resources, since the accidents are now paid for by friends or relatives or charity, or other means; and even in such risky works as the Manchester Canal and the Forth Bridge it would have only added £100,000 to the £13,000,000 which the canal cost, and £60,000 to the £3,225,000 which was the cost of the bridge. He would have the Government

undertake the management of the insurance fund for the whole of the industries of the country, charging to each a rate proportionate to the risks involved, and increasing or lessening these rates from time to time in order to keep the fund solvent, and charging less or more to individual employers or companies as they found their workshops and factories were free from accident or were otherwise, just as accident insurance offices do at present. The fund would be self-supporting, and would neither benefit the taxpayer nor be a charge on him.

PAPAL CONCESSIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE.

Rev. Father Clarke, replying again to the anonymous author of " the Policy of the Pope," makes several admissions which, for an official defender of the papal curia, are very significant. He admits that his critic has "hit some blots," that "Catholics do not sufficiently study the Bible," that "mistakes may have been made in the arrangement of MSS., a prophetic fragment by one author may have been tacked on without a separate heading to a prophecy by another, or declarations made by the same prophet at different times and under different circumstances may have been made to follow on without giving notice of the distinction," that the texts we have of the original" have suffered from reiterated transcription," and it is not barely a question of the accidental errors of copyists, it is also one of revising and re-editing," that "the Bible is "not a secular revelation either of art, or science, or anything else;" that "numbers must be expected to be used Orientally," not "numerically," and that "the Bible is the record of a progressive revelation in faith and morals, starting

from paganism and going on to Apostolic Christianity." This is going a long way towards the higher criticism. The warm praise which Professor A. B. Bruce accords, a few pages further on, to Miss Wedgewood's "Message of Israel in the light of modern criticism" reminds us how, from Presbyterian to Papist, the new views on the Bible have spread.

INCOMPARABLE HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

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Phil Robinson has seen Hampstead Heath for the first time, and describes his visit with charming enthusiasm. It reminded him of the Delectable Mountains. It gave him, he says, one of the finest views in the whole of this round world of ours. I have seen more of its surface than most men, but I cannot remember any view to beat it." With Parliament Hill and Highgate rising before him, and London with St. Paul's in view stretching away to the right, he exclaims:-

What is the Bay of Naples, with its bitter, relentless, gentian blue overhead, and its sun-scorched, dusty, and grassless ground beneath, compared to this view from Hampstead Heath? Where else can you find such satisfying beauty? Not in Lisbon as seen from the river, nor in Sydney harbour, nor in Southern California, nor anywhere else, not even in Nature's most favoured island-New Zealand. There is nothing, I believe, like it anywhere to captivate and comfort both the eye and mind at once.

Yet, he confesses, "the whole place seems to sniff of Bank Holiday." Small birds there are in profusion, and the crab-apple trees rouse him to a rare rapture; but in no part of the open Heath could he find a single flower. Only where wire netting protected some growing ivy were wild flowers present, and in a plenty which told what the Heath as a whole would have been but for the picking fingers of children, and the tread of innumerable feet.

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OTHER ARTICLES.

Mr. L. M. Brunton tells curious stories of beatification in the East. In India and China it is "of almost weekly occurrence." Some dozen new objects of worship are recognised by the Chinese State every year. The emperor claims sway over the departed spirits, and these he beatifies, canonises, decorates with titles, mentions with approval in the Peking Gazette when they do anything to deserve that honour, and actually degrades and uncanonises if he sees just cause." The chief commissioner of a district is said to have received the following pithy telegram from a subordinate: "A new god has appeared on the Swat frontier; the police are after him."

Mr. H. F. B. Lynch continues his instructive account of Russian Armenia. He speaks in the highest terms of the new Katholikos, and as the Church is the one power of national cohesion, he strongly urges the education of the clergy. "The Armenian has edged out the Russian, and if peace were allowed its conquests unhindered he would ultimately rule in the land."

Prof. T. G. Bonney holds against Dr. A. R. Wallace that glaciers can only excavate under the most favourable conditions, but are proved incapable of hollowing out the great Alpine lakes. Mr. T. H. S. Escott discusses the possibilities of Liberal Reunion, and thinks that Liberals are as likely to reunite as the Liberal Unionists are to merge in the Conservative party.

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