The National Magazine. 66 66 SEPTEMBER, 1854. EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS. SALUTATIONS. The parting salutations of various nations are strikingly alike. The vale of the Latins corresponds with the xaipe of the Greeks; and though Deity is not expressed distinctly in either, it was doubtless understood: for who can be kept in health without, as the ancients would say, the will of the gods? The Greek word perhaps has a higher signification than the Latin; for it was not a mere complimentary salutation. Says Macknight: "St. John forbids it to be given to heretical teachers, Eph. ii, 10, 11." The French, on taking leave, say, Adieu," thus distinctly recognizing the providential power of the Creator; and the same meaning is indeed conveyed in our English word "good-by," which is a corruption of "God be with you." The Irish, in their warmth of manner and love of words, often extend the expression. "A well-known guide," says a traveler, upon my leaving one of the loveliest spots in Wicklow, shook hands with me heartily, and said, in a voice somewhat more tremulous through age than it was when Tom Moore loved to listen to it: God Almighty bless you, be with you, and guide you safely to your journey's end!'" This salutation, when used thoughtfully and aright, has not only a pleasant sound, but deep meaning. All courtesies are, indeed, grateful to a generous mind, though they may be but ceremonies. A man or a nation which disregards them shows a want of the best kind of sensibility. Utility is not always "utilitarian;" the finest productions of the human mind are not directly "utilitarian." The Paradise Lost of Milton has as much to do, perhaps, with English civilization, as the Principia of Newton; but it presents no practical science. Beauty has its uses, the highest uses, however little utilitarian it may seem. So with manners and even with ceremonies, when not ceremonious. The ugliest feature of our republican life is our affected disregard of the forms of polite intercourse; the want of respectful attentions between children and parents, servants and masters, magistrates and people. The little courtesies of life make up half of its reliefs, and in the more intimate relations of friendship, kindred, or love, they make up half its real endearments. Let us not foolishly presume that republican simplicity, much less republicar virtue, requires us to abjure them; the finest perfections of art and the most thorough refinements of taste accompanied the ancient democracies. So should the benignest virtues and manners distinguish our Christian republicanism. BURYING-PLACES OF POETS.-Chaucer was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, without the building, but removed to the south aisle in 1555: Spenser lies near him. Beaumont, Drayton, Cowley, Denham, Dryden, Rowe, Addison, Prior, Congreve, Gay, Johnson, Sheridan, and Campbell, all lie within Westminster Abbey. Shakspeare, as every one knows, was buried in the chancel of the church at Stratford, where there is a monument to his memory. Chapman and Shirley are buried in St. Giles's-in-theFields; Marlowe, in the church-yard of St. Paul's, Deptford; Fletcher and Massinger in the church-yard of St. Saviour's, Southwark; Dr. Donne, in Old St. Paul's; Edmund Waller, in Beaconsfield church-yard; Milton, in the church-yard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate; Butler, in the church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden; Otway, no one knows where; Garth, in the church at Harrow; Pope, in the church at Twickenham; Swift, in St. Patrick's, Dublin; Savage, in the church-yard of St. Peter's, Bristol; Parnell, at Chester, where he died on his way to Dublin; Dr. Young, at Walwyn, in Hertfordshire, of which place he was the rector; Thomson, in the church-yard at Richmond, in Surrey; Collins, in St. Andrew's Church, at Chichester; Gray, in the church-yard of StokePogis, where he conceived his Elegy; Goldsmith, in the church-yard of the Temple Church; Falconer, at sea, "with all ocean for his grave;" Churchill, in the church-yard of St. Martin's, Dover; Cowper, in the church-yard at Dereham; Chatterton, in a church-yard belonging to the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn; Burns, in St. Michael's church-yard, Dumfries; Byron, in the church at Hucknall, near Newstead; Crabbe, at Trowbridge; Coleridge, in the church at Highgate; Sir Walter Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey; Southey, in Crossthwaite Church, near Keswick; Shelley, "beneath one of the antique weed-grown towers surrounding ancient Rome;" and Keats beside him, "under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius." THE MOST CURIOUS BOOK IN THE WORLD.— The London "Notes and Queries" says that perhaps the most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged to the family of the Prince de Ligne, and is now in France. It is entitled, Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, cum Characteribus Nulla Materia Compositis. This book is neither written nor printed! The whole letters of the text are cut out of each folio upon the finest vellum; and being interleaved with blue paper, is read as easily as the best print. The labor and patience bestowed in its completion must have been excessive, especially when the precision and minuteness of the letters are considered. The general execution, in every respect, is indeed admirable; and the vellum is of the most delicate and costly kind. Rodolphus II. of Germany offered for it, in 1640, eleven thousand ducats, which was probably equal to sixty thousand at this day. The most remarkable circumstance connected with this literary treasure is, that it bears the royal arms of England; but it cannot be traced to have ever been in that country. COLERIDGE'S UNPUBLISHED WORKS.-Every year adds to the fame of Coleridge, as one of the profoundest, if not the profoundest, thinker of modern times. His views on Christianity especially command the deepest interest of religious inquirers. He passed through transitions of opinion, which give them a special importance. His published works are one of the richest magazines of thought in the language: it appears, however, that some of his most important productions have not yet seen the light, and are destined, if ever they do see it, to modify much of that charge of indolence and waste of life and intellect which has been so wantonly brought against him by the critics. In the London "Notes and Queries," some interesting facts have been recently given respecting his unpublished MSS. One writer says: "When I sent you my note on this subject I had not read Letters, Conversations, and Recollec tions of S. T. Coleridge, Moxon, London, 1836. The subjoined extracts from that work confirm that note: August 8, 1820.- Coleridge: "I at least am as well as I ever am, and my regular employment, in which Mr. Green is weekly my amanuensis, [is] the work on the books of the Old and New Testaments, introduced by the assumptions and postulates required as the preconditions of a fair examination of Christianity as a scheme of doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn or at least deducible from these books." January, 1821.-Coleridge: "In addition to these of my GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest sense of the word, mainly rest, &c. Of this work, &c., the result must finally be revolution of all that has been called Philosophy or Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the commencing predominance of the mechanical system at the restoration of our second Charles, and with the present fash ionable views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics, and physiology. Of this work, something more than a volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green; and more than as much again would have been evolved and delivered to paper, but that for the last six or eight months I have been compelled to break off our weekly meeting," &c. Vol. ii, p. 219.-Editor: "The prospectus of these lectures (viz., on Philosophy) is so full of interest, and so well worthy of attention, that I subjoin it; trusting that the Lectures themselves will soon be furnished by, or under the auspices of Mr. Green, the most constant and the most assiduous of his disciples. That gentleman will, I earnestly hope, and doubt not, see, feel the necessity of giving the whole of his great master's views, opinions, and anticipations; not those alone in which he more entirely sympathizes, or those which may have more ready acceptance in the present time. He will not shrink from the great, the sacred duty he has voluntarily undertaken, from any regards of prudence, still less from that most hopeless form of fastidiousness, the wish to conciliate those who are never to be conciliated, inferior minds smarting under a sense of inferiority, and the imputation which they are conscious is just, that but for him they never could have been; that distorted, dwarfed, changed as are all his views and opinions, by passing athwart minds with which they could not assimilate, they are yet almost the only things which give such minds a status in literature." How has Mr. Green discharged the duties of this solemn trust? Has he made any attempt to give publicity to the Logic, the "great work" on Philosophy, the work on the Old and New Testaments, to be called The Assertion of Religion, or the History of Philosophy, all of which are in his custody, and of which the first is, on the testimony of Coleridge himself, a finished work? We know from the Letters, vol. ii, pp. 11, 150, that the Logic is an essay in three parts, viz., the " Canon," the "Criterion," and the "Organon." Of these, the last only can be in any respect identical with the Treatise on 66 JEWISH FACTS RELATIVE TO THE RESURREC TION." He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken." Psa. xxxiv, 20. The Jews have some remarkable fancies concerning their dead. So well are they persuaded of the resurrection, that the name which they give to a burial-place is, "the house of the living." The body, according to their notion, has a certain indestructible part, called "luz," which is the seed from whence it is to be reproduced. It is described as a bone in shape like an almond, and having its place at the end of the vertebrae. This bone, according to the rabbis, can neither be broken by any force of man, nor consumed by fire, nor dissolved by water; and they tell us that the fact was proved before the emperor Adrian, upon whom they imprecate their usual malediction, May his bones be broken!" In his presence, Rabbi Joshua Ben Chauma produced a "luz." It was ground between two millstones, but came out as whole as it had been put in. They burned it with fire; and it was found incombustible. They cast it in water; and it could not be softened. Lastly, they hammered it on the anvil; and both the anvil and hammer were broken, without affecting the "luz." The rabbinical writers, with their wonted perversion of Scripture, support this silly notion by a verse from the Psalms: "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken." A dew is to descend upon the earth, preparatory to the resurrection, and quicken into life and growth these seeds of the dead. Another curious opinion is, that, wherever their bodies may be buried, it is only in their own promised land that the resurrection can take place; and, therefore, they who are interred in any other part of the world must make their way to Palestine under ground; and this will be an operation of dreadful toil and pain, although clefts and caverns will be opened for them by the Almighty. Whether it arose from this superstition, or from that love for the land of their fathers, which in the Jews is connected with the strongest feelings of faith and hope, certain it is that many have directed their remains to be sent there. "We were fraughted with wool," says an old traveler, "from Constantinople to Sidon; in which sacks, as most certainly was told to me, were many Jews' bones put into little chests, but unknown to any of the ship. The Jews, our merchants, told me of them at my return from Jerusalem to Saphet; but earnestly entreated me not to tell it, for fear of preventing them another time." Sometimes a wealthy Jew has been known to import earth from Jerusalem wherewith to line his grave. From that moment she never appears, even in her own house, unvailed. She is never seen abroad in the public streets, except when she goes to church, which is only twice in the year, and then closely vailed. If a stranger enters the house or garden, she instantly conceals herself. With no person, not even her father or brother, is she allowed to exchange a single word; and she speaks to her husband only when they are alone. With the rest of the household she can only communicate by gestures, and by talking on her fingers. This silent reserve, which custom imperatively prescribes, the young wife maintains until she has borne her first child, from which time she becomes gradually emancipated from her constraint: she speaks to her new-born infant; then her mother-in-law is the first person she may address; after a while she is allowed to converse with her own mother, then with her Now she begins to talk with the young girls in the house, but always in a gentle whisper, that none of the male part of the family may hear what is said. The wife, however, is not fully emancipated, her education is not completed, until after the lapse of six years! and even then she can never speak with any strangers of the other sex, nor appear before them unvailed. REV. DR. CUMMING.-There is a whimsicalness about this popular writer which betrays itself increasingly in his publications, and which cannot fail soon to impair their authority, if not their popularity. In his late pamphlet on the "Moslem and his End," he is determined to dispose summarily of the poor Turks, whatever may be the result of their gallant efforts at self-defense, and we may justly add, at self-sisters-in-law, and afterward her own sisters. regeneration. The reverend doctor sees amazing "signs of the times," boding their fate, in even the most frivolous incidents of the day. "It is a fact," he says, "that the fingers of a lady laid lightly on a heavy table, made it, in my presence, spin round, lift its legs, stamp the floor, and throw itself into most extraordinary and unbecoming attitudes." The same case, or a similar one, is on another page attested by Dr. Cumming, who says: "I saw a table, touched lightly by the fingers of a lady, whose muscular powers, I am sure, were not very formidable, rise, leap, and move from side to side in the most extraordinary manner. Faraday, I think, does not explain, and I cannot explain this." Doctor Cumming also describes astronomical signs of the times, thus: "For the last three or four years we have heard of new planets, unexpected comets, brilliant auroras, lunar rainbows, and yet more brilliant and remarkable meteoric appearances. I am not superstitious, but I am not skeptical; I cannot help remembering that signs and sights in the heavens are the phenomena of the last days." The SEVERE CUSTOMS.-A very interesting book has been published in London recently, entitled, "Trans-Caucasia Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian, by Baron Von Hoxthausen." It abounds in entertaining sketches of life and manners. baron describes a custom among the Armenians, which calls loudly for a "Woman's Rights" reform. "The young unmarried people of both sexes," he says, "enjoy perfect liberty, within the recognized limits of manners and propriety. Custom is here precisely the reverse of what prevails in the surrounding countries: while in the latter the purchase of a wife is the only usual form of contracting a marriage, until which time the girl remains in perfect seclusion; among the Armenians, on the contrary, the young people of both sexes enjoy free social intercourse. The girls go where they like, unvailed and bareheaded; the young men carry on their love-suits freely and openly, and marriages of affection are of common occurrence. But with marriage the scene changes: the word which the young woman pronounces at the altar, in accepting her husband, is the last that is for a long time heard from her lips. IS THE HUMAN STATURE DIMINISHING ?—It is a very common opinion, that in the early ages of the world men in general possessed superior physical properties, and were of a greater size than they are at present; and this notion of diminished stature and strength seems to have been just as prevalent in ancient times as at present. Pliny observes of the human height, that "the whole race of mankind is daily becoming smaller;" an alarming prospect, if it had been true. Homer more than once makes a very disparaging comparison between his own degenerate contemporaries and the heroes of the Trojan war. But all the facts and circumstances which can be brought forward on this subject tend to convince us, that the human form has not degenerated, and that men of the present age are of the same stature as in the beginning of the world. In the first place, though we read, both in sacred and profane history, of giants, yet they were at the time when they lived esteemed as wonders, and far above the ordinary proportions of mankind. All the remains of the human body (as bones, and particularly the teeth) which have been found unchanged in the most ancient urns and burialplaces, demonstrate this point clearly. The oldest coffin in the world is that found in the great pyramid of Egypt; and Mr. Greaves observes that this sarcophagus hardly exceeds the size of our ordinary coffins, being scarcely six feet and a-half long. From looking also at the height of mummies which have been brought to this country, we must conclude that those who inhabited Egypt two or three thousand years ago were not superior in size to the present inhabitants of that country. Lastly, all the facts which we can collect from ancient works of art, from armor, as helmets and breastplates, or from buildings designed for the abode and accommodation of men, concur in strengthening the proofs against any decay in nature. That man is not degenerated in stature in consequence of the effect of civilization is clear; because the inhabitants of savage countries, as the natives of America, Africa, Australia, or the South Sea Islands, do not exceed us in size. IRISH ODDITIES.-A late foreign reviewer discusses the oddities of Irish character. The Irishman, he says, reverses the usual mode of ratiocination, according to which things are valuable in the inverse ratio of their accessibility. He is for the direct ratio. Whatever is easiest to come at, the same is also the best. To the same principle is to be referred the national mode of digging, and the form of the implement employed in the operation. That the Irish spade should be twice the length of the English, and unprovided with any aperture for thrusting the hand into, is only, therefore, not curious, because it saves half the labor. Standing pretty nearly upright, with a cheerful countenance, and in an unconstrained posture, which presents no obstacle either to his conversing freely with his neighbor, or observing the natural beauty of the landscape, the Irish peasant plants his foot on a sort of stirrup provided for the purpose, and turns up the soil "as unconsarnedly as possible." "Sure it saves breaking the back over it." It does so, no doubt; but it also saves breaking the soil to any extent worth mentioning. This, however, is a secondary matter; and it is obvious that this implement, like other institutions of the country, is constructed chiefly with a view to "saving throuble." One thing, in truth, there is, which an Irishman does not worship, and that is material prosperity. Indeed, he has rather a contempt for it, than otherwise. He prefers the idea to the reality. To his imagining, his humble lot is a "bee-eu-tiful" one already, and you can't mend it much by your tinkering. What signifies just poking a stone into the wall here, to make it weather-tight, or pushing another out there, to prevent its being smoke-tight ?What signifies an old hat more or less in the window, or an increased approximation between the different levels of the floor? of which, as at the bottom of the Lacus Asphaltites, and other inland seas, there are always two at least. These things will add not a grain to the sands of gold over which the Pactolus of his imagination wanders. "Sure, it'll do:" nay, the existing structure will not only "do," but is full of illegant conthrivances," the whole beauty and merit of which would be sacrificed by the threatened innovations. In referring to idiomatic tendencies among them, the critic gives examples of some, which the American reader will notice, have, from some cause-perhaps the great number of Irish among us-affected somewhat our own popular modes of speech. A nocturnal foray against a garden was thus summed up: "There were eight of them in it," that is to say, as afterward appeared, not "in" the garden,-into which, owing to a timely alarm, the thieves were unable to penetrate, but merely "in" the transaction. "On" or 'upon" is used, again, in the peculiar sense of "to the detriment of." They've rose the market upon us ;" or, " that young man 66 has put a mile upon us," viz., by giving a wrong direction as to the road. Occasional misconceptions of course arise here, for want of due notice being given whether the physical or metaphysical sense of the preposition is intended. Thus, to the inquiry, how a small farmer came to be behindhand with his rent? it was replied, "Why, you see, sir, two cows died upon him in the one year, and that was very bad for him." "And the next year a cow burst upon him, wid eating" (it was fortunately added in explanation) "too much clover." Other preposition usages have a grace and ease perfectly Homeric; thus we recognize the epic Toì in the favorite expression, "true for ye." Others, again, have a quiet beauty and pathos about them, as in this translation of an epitaph from the original Irish: "Aged 21, Lawrence | died from us." Miss Edgeworth endeavors to explain the national proneness to perpetrate "bulls," to a habit of using figurative language. She adduces an instance, that of pronouncing a certain ship the finest "that ever sailed on the face of the earth." Now it is true that in this particular instance the temptation to make a bull lay in the generally recognized figurative expression, " on the face of the earth." Catching at this tempting flourish, and not adjusting the rest of his sentence very accurately to it, the speaker committed a bull incontinently. The same temptation, too, is no doubt the exciting cause of other bulls; some of English growth, such as the well-known denunciation, "Sir, the hand of justice cannot any longer wink at your iniquities." The attempt to combine two incompatible figures does certainly produce the result in question; the Cretan Minotaur is the first Irish bull on record. But there are other varieties found roaming over the pastures of the Green Isle. An Irish bull may be defined as a dilemma,-or syllogismus cornutus, as the logicians speak,-of which both horns are embraced at once:-and this, for aught we know, may be the derivation of the term. It It is two alternatives taken together. Mankind in general are sensible that, in the case of incompatible alternatives presented to the mind, you must reject one of them. The Irishman does not see this. He takes both. Being told that one of Arnott's stoves saves half the fuel, he resolves to get two, and save the whole. Understanding that music is taught at two guineas the first month and one the second, he declares he won't begin till the second. A little consideration would show that these confusions are merely the result of an endeavor to combine two incompatible opinions. The true secret of Irish blundering, with or without metaphor, lies in that zeal for ideas, that vehement partisanship on behalf of the topic of the moment, which appears in so many forms as a national characteristic. In some cases the speaker rises, as it were, with his subject, and after proceeding rationally for some time, puts a colophon of absurdity to a piece of plain common sense. So a young recruit, after soberly describing to his officer his circumstances in other respects, ventures on a final stroke to the effect that, "Indeed he was come of very decent people, for his father and mother were both Kerry men." But more commonly a bull is only a particular and more intense instance of a kind of extravaganza which runs through the whole speech. It is no wonder that he who is ever on the brink of a blunder or a malapropos should fall into one now and then. Take the following string of extravagances, poured forth verbatim not long since by an Irish mendicant, in acknowledgment of some trifling favor: "Long life to your honor, and may ye live till ye 're wondered at, and have a gold watch as big as a forty-pound pot, with a chain as long as the Boyne water!" Even epitaph-writing in Ireland is not free from the national tendency to make the most of things, at the expense of sound sense and possibility. Take the following instance from the half-ruined church of St. Audeon, Dublin: "Underneath lyeth James M—, and all his posteritie." Or this from Christ-church, on a monument of the Earls of Cork: "Here follow the arms of his sons, and of such of the husbands of his daughters as were married." HELOISE.-Lamartine, in his late work, Memoirs of Celebrated Characters, draws the following distinct and beautiful picture of the famous Heloise: "The medallions and the statue which perpetuate her, according to contemporary traditions, and the casts taken after death in her sepulchre, represent a young female, tall in stature, and exquisitely formed. An oval head, slightly depressed toward the temples by the conflict of thought; a high and smooth forehead, where intelligence reveled without impediment, like a ray of light unchecked by an obstructing angle, on the smooth surface of a marble slab; eyes deeply set within their arch, and the balls of which reflected the azure tint of heaven; a small nose, slightly raised towards the nostrils, such as sculpture models from nature in the statues of women immortalized by the feelings of the heart; a mouth, where breathed, between brilliant teeth, the smiles of genius and the tenderness of sympathy; a short chin, slightly dimpled in the middle, as if by the finger of reflection often placed upon the lips; a long, flexible neck, which carried the head as the lotus bears the flower, while undulating with the motion of the wave; falling shoulders, gracefully molded, and blending into the same line with the arms; slender fingers, flowing curls, delicate anatomical articulations, the feet of a goddess upon her pedestal,-such is the statue, by which we may judge of the woman! Let the life, the complexion, the look, the attitude, the youth, the languor, the passion, the paleness, the blush, the thought, the feeling, the accent, the smile, the tears, be restored to the skeleton of this other Inez de Castro, and we shall again look on Heloise." GOLDEN RULES.-Dr. Hempel, in a recent medical work, which we have noticed, gives twelve golden rules for health, which we prefer to all the rest of the good sense of his elaborate volume. Though "golden," we give them to our readers gratuitously: "1. Rise early, and make it a point to retire at ten o'clock: seven hours' sleep should suffice; although less may do in some cases, and in others more may be required. "2. Wash your whole body from head to foot, with cold water, every morning, winter and summer, immediately after leaving the bed; and rub yourself well with a flesh-brush or coarse towel, immediately after washing. 8. Never sleep in a warm room, or in a room that has not been properly ventilated in the day time. "4. Never sit or sleep in a draught of air. This rule is almost universally violated, but a draught of air is generally hurtful, more in one case than in another," and more especially when persons are over-heated or covered with perspiration. "5. Dress according to the season; but be careful not to leave off your winter clothes before the warm weather has fairly set in. This rule should be particularly observed by persons who are subject to sore throat, bronchitis, chronic cough, and such like woak nesses. such as rich pastry, fat, heavy, farinaceous diet, warm "6. Avoid all kinds of heavy and indigestible food, bread, spices, mustard, pepper, &c. "7. Avoid all stimulating drinks-brandy, beer, wine; and content yourself with cold water, milk, light and unspiced chocolate, weak black tea, and sirups made of currants, raspberries, strawberries, or other kinds of wholesome and unmedicinal fruit. Never use tobacco in any shape, except for medicinal purposes. "8. Never keep on wet or damp clothes, stockings, &c., and never sleep on damp sheets. "9. Do not expose yourself to keen, sharp winds, and avoid the raw and damp evening air. "10. Live as nearly as possible in the same temperature; keep your room moderately warm, and make it a point never to sit near the fire. 11. Eat your meals at regular hours; eat slowly; chew every mouthful well, and do not swallow it until it is properly mixed up with saliva. If possible, take about an hour for each meal, and never eat so much as to leave the table with a sense of repletion and oppression. Do not forget to clean your teeth with a soft tooth-brush after eating, and never indulge in the abominable habit of picking them. 12. Avoid every kind of food or drink which naturally disagrees with you; take a little exercise in the open air every day, but not in any kind of weather; select particularly fine, bracing or balmy weather for a walk or ride; exposure to rainy, windy, raw or damp weather never does anybody any good. "These twelve rules are golden rules, the observance of which can never be impressed with too much care upon the attention of those who are anxious to preserve their health, and to remain free from the many unpleasant feelings which are apt to trouble those who neglect the proper dietetic and hygienic precautions. There is a thirteenth rule of as bright a golden hue as any of these, which the doctor should have added to them as their climax, and that is this-Having settled into the habit of some such good code, dismiss all further concern about it. This is a sine qua nom. There never was a fastidious observer of physiological rules who enjoyed good health. The imagination plays the very mischief with a man's stomach, and can set his pulsations to beating a funeral march incontinently. Get good habits, and then endeavor to practice them without thinking of them; that's the best philosophy of health. No SABBATH.-In a "Prize Essay on the Sabbath," written by a journeyman printer in Scotland-which for singular power of language and beauty of expression has rarely been surpassed-there occurs the following passage. Read it, and then reflect for a while what a dreary and desolate page would this life present if the Sabbath was blotted out from our calculations: "Yokefellow! think how the abstraction of the Sabbath would hopelessly enslave the working classes, with whom we are identified. Think of labor thus going on in one monotonous and continuous and eternal cycle-limbs forever on the rack, the fingers forever playing, the eye-balls forever straining, the brow forever sweating, the feet forever plodding, the brain forever throbbing, the shoulders forever drooping, the loins forever aching, and the restless mind forever scheming. Think of the beauty it would efface; of the merry heartedness it would extinguish; of the giant strength it would tame; of the resources of nature that it would exhaust: of the aspirations it would crush; of the sickness it would breed of the projects it would wreck; of the groans it would extort; of the lives it would immolate; and the cheerless graves that it would prematurely dig! See them, toiling and |