as distinct impression goes, it seems that the young man, with that loyal and truthful magnanimity which has characterized him through life, could not see his way clearly to take upon himself the work of the ministry." He appears to have started at once on his literary career. In 1828, the philosopher was living at Craigenputtoch, near Dumfries; and in a letter to Goethe he himself speaks of his home: "In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed, and planted ground, where corn ripens, and this affords a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep." The spot is described as one of the loneliest in the empire; but with a couple of ponies to carry him and his wife about the

country, Carlyle there passed some of the happiest seasons of his life. He has been a resident at Chelsea during forty-five years, and we believe he has occupied the same house during the whole of that lengthened period. At first he had Leigh Hunt for a neighbour, and the two were steadfast friends. Mrs. Carlyle, who was a woman of great literary talents, died in 1866. It was Charles Dickens's opinion that" none of the writing women came near her at all;" and Mr. Forster thought that "no one who knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss."

Thus Chelsea, a pleasant suburb, has been the dwelling-place of many illustrious persons whose names will live to the end of time.

LXIX. EDINBURGH ON

SATURDAY NIGHT.

E once went on a Saturday night expedition through the worst parts of the Old Town of Edinburgh. It was an awful sight the Northern Capital presented as the hours waxed late and the drink waxed deep. Our companions were-a local magistrate, a town missionary, and a lady (a contributor to Good Words and other publications). We met at the Cannongate at ten o'clock, and thence proceeded through the wynds and closes and alleys that branch off right and left. It was one terrible progress through drink and drunkenness, and oaths and blasphemies, and quarrels and riots-all of the worst description, worse than we have ever seen in London. It was Pandemonium let loose. Turning down one of the narrow wynds, we came upon a group of wretched old hags, who were wrangling and swearing and jawing as loud as their old lungs would permit. The only protection to our lady companion's ears was that their Scotch brogue, expressed through toothless gums, was an almost unintelligible jargon. As we came near, their chatter ceased, and in the

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.

sudden pause we felt we must say something; and we hit upon the merest commonplace, and said-"This is Blackadder's Close, I believe?" "Na, na, mon," said one of the toothless drunken hags, "this is Hell's Mouth!" Our lady friend, who published an account of our midnight ramble, made this little incident the subject of her frontispiece. We closed up with a visit to the police-cells, which we found glutted with drunkards, the majority being women, and the majority of these again being very young girls!

LXX. REFLECTIONS.

Facts such as those of the preceding "Note" incline us very strongly in the direction of a moralizing mood. The New Town of Edinburgh, rich and wealthy, looks across the subdividing valley, on its poor and wayward Sister of the Old Town; but in what respect is the one the better for its close vicinity and relationship to the other? Thus the West End of London looks across upon the East End, and alas! it comes true that "one-half of the world knows not how the other half lives." Thus have we felt, again, when standing on the fair heights of Clifton, and looking down on the smoke, and hearing the din, of the work-a-day and populous city of Bristol, lying at its feet. Thus also, from the magnificent hills of Malvern, from different points

of which may be seen the towers of Worcester and Hereford; or from the hilly suburbs of dainty and delicate Cheltenham looking across on the tower of Gloucester Cathedral, thoughts have come, climbing up as an invading force-What do those comfortable people, dwelling thus securely in these gardens on the hills-what do they know of the multitudes that crowd, and huddle, and drink, and sin, and suffer amid the temptations of those populous cities? We know of One, at least, of whom it was said, when He stood on such vantage ground of observation, that "when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it!" Ay, and although many kind acts of intercourse are performed, and many a hand of help is held out, across the chasm from New to Old, from West to East, from wooded height to crowded street, yet, it is not, it cannot be, what ought to be done, or what would be done, if the wealthy and the well-to-do Christian people were only in earnest in doing "what they could" to stem the torrent of evil, and to stay the curse of sin. That, at all events, is what we feel-what we ofttimes feel when we stand upon some (morally and materially) favoured height, and look down upon some (morally and spiritually) depressed and lowlying valley, with seething, surging crowds of population, and no man, or at best but few, caring for their souls.

LXXI. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

The annual congress of the British Association was held during the closing days of the month of August. The inaugural address was delivered by the president, Professor Allman. The sermon before the members was preached by the Archbishop of York. At the banquet given by the mayor and citizens of Sheffield to the Association, a very remarkable testimony was borne, which, in the face of that learned assembly, sounds like the funeral knell of Darwinism and Development. Professor Haughton, one of the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, and one of the most diversely learned of the scientists of the present day, expressed himself in the following words :-" Any Darwinites present will excuse me if I use strong language. We have been thoroughly nauseated with Darwinism; in fact, we have had enough of it. Explain it as you like, we were sick of the revival of the fœtus, and of the bad English that sprung up around Mr. Darwin's theory. I congratulate not only the Association but the men of Sheffield that you may now think and feel with men of science that poor creatures like Plato and Aristotle and Newton were not wrong in thinking that there was something inside them that differentiated them from an ox or an ass. We have now come round, and we can say to the world around us, Don't be afraid of the convictions you learnt from your mother, and the belief you were brought up in. Don't be afraid.""

The playfulness of a public assembly of working men and the advantage of masters and men working

together in the sympathy of their common calling were manifested in some very interesting forms at a lecture delivered by one of the savans, Professor Ayrton, formerly of Japan, who delivered an address, with experiments, in the Albert Hall, on the subject of "Electricity as a Motive Power." Wires had been laid on to the platform connected with Messrs. Walker and Hall's works, in Howard Street, and by these means several machines were set in motion in the presence of the meeting. The report specifies one very interesting incident:-Mr. John Wilson, 'got up' as a Sheffield grinder,' sat at an emery wheel and polished a knife, the wheel being driven by an electric current conveyed by wires from Messrs. Walker and Hall's works. Mr. Wilson was greeted with applause, and had to submit to a little chaff. Lay on, John,' said one of the audience; Throw t' band off,' said another; Thou has na' forgotten how to do it, hasta?' said a third. Mr. Wilson despised the chaff and stuck to his knife-polishing, till the lecturer told him to knock off. Many other experiments were shown."

Wise and weighty were those words with which the Archbishop of York concluded his admirable sermon in Sheffield Parish Church before the members of the Association :-" Shall religion survive the shocks that it daily sustains? The suffering heart makes answer, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' The thinker may adopt the conclusion of a French writer who has studied the modern substitutes for Christianity:'Religion, the contemporary of pain and sorrow, will last as long as these. To cease to believe in God, man must have ceased to be man, and have become a god himself.""

It is a curious thing, and not, we should suppose, merely accidental, that the British Association meetings should tread so quickly on the heels of the Church Congress in the various towns in which these gatherings are assembled. Thus Sheffield has within these two successive years received both of these great bodies; and the meeting of the British Association next year (1880) is to be at Swansea, where the Church Congress has met this year (1879). Is it that "Science" wishes to tread on holy ground; or that in a spirit of undue presumption she follows with her supposed "correctives" the utterances of "Religion"? At all events, it is very clear that the welcome reception accorded to the Church Congress by the Sheffield people last year had not overtaxed the hospitality of that most hospitable town. Sheffield has, in this respect, earned to itself double honours, and Swansea has done the same.

LXXII. "PROTOPLASM."

It is almost melancholy to observe how the British Association, albeit a learned assembly, keeps hankering after this " protoplastic" theory. From year to year it seems to be the great purpose of its successive presidents to give this notion a fresh

airing, and to lick it into some better shape and form for the public eye. Yet, this year, although Professor Allman laboured over his task, he could not "develop" his "protoplasm" into anything approaching to human life or mental consciousness. The Bishop of Manchester has, since then, ably criticised the hopeless efforts of the Association to elaborate its pet theory, so as to gain an entrance for it into the domain of science. Those who have read these theories will understand and appreciate the lines we are inserting in this "Note." It will be remembered that Professor Allman helplessly, but yet honestly, confessed that the "life" discovered in "protoplasm" does not account for consciousness," thereby leaving a vast abyss of which these modern theories can give no account whatsoever; and thus the very first line of defence of religion is as yet unapproached, and, therefore, unassailed. The lines we refer to were written by one of the learned men attending the Sheffield meetings, and are these:

66

"From life to consciousness the chasm
Cannot be bridged by protoplasm;
All flesh is grass, but chlorophyll

Can all man's (Allman's) duties not fulfil!"

We feel that the strictures of the Standard, evoked by these helpless efforts to establish a worthless theory, express the truth in the matter of these meetings of the British Association. "It is for these reasons," says the Standard, "that the British Association has passed the zenith of its prosperity, even if it cannot be said to have outlived its original purposes." And yet again," Still, the fact remains that the worth of the Association as an organization for scientific discovery and education seems to be just now at a standstill, and that it exists mainly as an organization for the delivery of first-class lectures, and the pursuit of refined pleasure." This witness is true.

LXXIII. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.

The Church of England Temperance Society having exhausted the five years for which its Special Income Fund of £10,000 was " guaranteed," is now sending out a new appeal for a "Guarantee Fund" of £25,000, to be spread over the next five years. Unlike all such pleas for special help during a period of acknowledged depression all round, this appeal finds its chief support, as the prospectus says, "in the very existence of that depression;" and on this wise:"That the rates which fall with such a heavy incidence on the propertied and industrious classes -the poor, police, and prison rates, the charge for lunatic asylums and reformatories, to say nothing of the voluntary expenditure on infirmaries, idiot and orphan asylums-are swollen by, if not in some of the instances mainly due to, excessive drinking, is a truth so widely recognised as to require no elaborate proof."

The prospectus also urges the fact that" the time wasted and the money spent in strong drink is hea

vily weighting the industries of the country in their competition with other and more sober countries; while, in addition to this, the home and family life of England is now more seriously imperilled by the growth of female intemperance on a scale so vast,' says the report of the House of Lords' Committee, and at a rate of progression so rapid, as to constitute a new reproach and danger.''

The large and varied scope of action now so effectively being carried out by the Church of England Temperance Society is only the necessary result of the varied and diverse and wide-spreading influences of the liquor traffic itself. This also is set forth very clearly in the " Appeal," as when it says:-"To suppose that habits dependent upon long national usage, and due to a concurrence of moral, physical, climatic, social, and legislative causes, can be changed by any single measure, would be Utopian indeed. It is only by attacking the evil on all sides, and combining all classes of the community in the movement, that success can eventually be obtained." How true it is in this matter, as in so many others, that there are "differences of administration," and "diversities of operation."

We trust that this Special Appeal will not be issued in vain. The Church of England Temperance Society has entitled itself to the support of all good men and citizens, members of this Church and realm. The liquor traffic is supported by strong and powerful allies in parliament, in society, and in the prevailing customs of the day, and perhaps most of all by the princely wealth of its own producers. Accordingly, in counteracting this wealthy and powerful interest, large material means must needs be forthcoming; and it is with a view to the formation of a strong and commanding Guarantee Fund that the Executive of the Society now sends forth its appeal, and adds these earnest, concluding words:" It is in the assured conviction that in doing its best to alter the drinking habits of the country, the Church of England will be in that proportion contributing to its material prosperity, while, on the other hand, it will be taking away the chief stumbling-block to the advance of the kingdom of Christ among us, that the Executive makes the present appeal."

LXXIV. THE BRITISH MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION.

At the recent meeting of the British Medical Association at Cork, the usual temperance breakfast of the Medical Temperance Society connected with the Association was held, presided over by Dr. Norman Kerr, of London. The chairman, in his address, spoke thus of the nature of this embodiment of medical men for temperance work-" Our Medical Temperance Association is a standing protest against the sanction of the educated classes to those drinking customs, and that unwise legislation, which have brought upon us the stain and disgrace of our national sin of intemperance." And of his own personal regimen in this matter he said :-" In

view of the terrible extent in all classes of the great evil against which we contend, I feel that I cannot carry on my professional work amongst either rich or poor except as an abstainer. Lighter in pocket I am; but lighter, too, in conscience, stronger in health, clearer in mind, able now to look the most degraded dipsomaniac straight in the face with a confidence to which I was formerly a stranger, and invite him to stand with me on the safe platform of abstaining sobriety." And, speaking of the number of members who from within the Association have joined the cause, Dr. Norman Kerr added:-" One hundred and sixty-eight of us, few in number, but strong of purpose, have obeyed our country's call, and have resolved, courting no man's favour and fearing no man's frown, to avow ourselves abstainers to the profession and to the world."

How significant are those words of Dr. Norman Kerr, above quoted-" Lighter in pocket I am." The experience of abstainers, as such, is generally in the opposite direction. They thankfully acknowledge that their pocket is "heavier," and their substance yet more substantial. But in a professional point of view it seems to fare worse with abstaining doctors. It reminds us of the words of Dr. Carpenter, of Croydon, who more than once has taken public meetings into his confidence, and to this effect-that in his younger days, and when the matter of professional income was more to him than it is now, he has been "discharged " by many of his patients because of his discouragement of stimulants. "I see," said a dyspeptic old lady, who had been forbidden her usual brandy-toddy, "I see you do not understand my case; " and so the doctor had his congé! Dr. Norman Kerr seems to have the same sort of battle to wage, with a "lighter" purse as the result. Is not this, after all, the reason that keeps back so many of the members of this honourable and enlightened profession from boldly acting on their better knowledge? All the greater honour, therefore, to Dr. Norman Kerr and his one hundred and sixty-eight abstaining colleagues!

LXXV. THE BISHOP SUFFRAGAN OF LONDON.

The anniversary service in connection with the Mary Datchelor Girls' School was held on the afternoon of Sept. 11th, in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Mary Axe, City of London, in the presence of a crowded congregation. The rector, the Bishop of Bedford, Bishop Suffragan of London, Dr. Walsham How, delivered an address in which he spoke especially to the children present. He knew the rule of their school was that the Bible should be read but not explained, and that had been thought necessary on account of our unhappy divisions. He was very sorry that that should be so, but they would have to accept it as a fact. There was all the more reason why they should study the Bible by themselves. He believed one reason why God's

Word was not loved as it ought to be in these days was because the Bible had become so commonalmost every house possessed one-and a Bible could now be purchased for a few pence. The time was when the Bible could only be found chained inside the churches for fear of its being taken away, and he was not sure that the Word of God was not looked upon as being more precious in those days. He laid down three things for the children to remember:-(1) To think what it was they did when they read the Bible; (2) to try and make it a spiritual act; and (3) to try and make Bible reading a systematic and regular habit. He advised particularly that they should read the Bible a short time in the morning previous to morning prayer.

LXXVI. A NEW SOUTH AFRICAN
DIFFICULTY.

While the war has been waging in Zululand, with but few lessons of any exalted character to learn from it, a still more unedifying squabble seems to have been raging in another battle-field altogether, but still in South Africa. News has been received from the Cape that the Dean of Grahamstown has refused the Bishop of Grahamstown admission to the Cathedral pulpit, and that for this course of action the Dean has been condemned for contumacy in the Diocesan Court, suspended from his functions until he submits, and deprived of his emoluments. But it appears that the Dean has the support of all the members of the congregation usually worshipping in the cathedral, who have begged him to resist, and have offered to frank him through the expenses. We are informed that "he (the Dean) is resisting; the Bishop's delegates fail to gain admission to the pulpit, and the result is a scandal." We are not ourselves aware of the cause of this controversy, nor of the merits (or demerits) of the case; but on whichever side the blame rests, the occasion must only be deplored as offering an unedifying example of Christianity in its effort to evangelize the distant heathen.

The whole dispute seems to turn on legal quibbles and trifles, as to the authority of Colonial synods, the connection between the Home and the Colonial Churches, the force of statute-law, and other such questions. The Dean, in a sermon lately preached in his cathedral, makes a great rejoicing over the discovery of a document which he says makes for his cause, and which was restored to the light "by a very marvellous accident, which occurred last week when I lay ill-namely, the clearing out of an old out-door lumber cellar at home, a printed draft in folio of the proposed constitution and canons of our Colonial Church," etc. And this is the way some folks are going about the sacred work of the Mission to which they have been commissioned, for converting South Africa to the Gospel of the Prince of Peace!