be without his sermon on Vanity in his pocket, and his offer of his MS. volume in pledge for an unpaid score. Printing sermons is indeed a time-honoured joke. In one of Smollet's prefaces after the model with which Walter Scott has made us familiarthe Reverend Mr. Jonathan Dustwich, who is coming up to town with a sermon to print, hears in reply from his publisher, "You need not take the trouble to bring up your sermons on my account, nobody reads ser

me in my own house, when I caal'd vurst." | his pulling them out to read to the most inNor is Parson Adams, though a better man, congruous audience, his resolving never to a more desirable inmate of a lady's drawingroom. It is scarcely to be wondered at that he can get no nearer access to the great lady than Mrs. Slipslop, her waiting-maid, who is herself a curate's daughter. He fits much better the kitchen, where he so often refreshes himself with Sir Thomas's ale after his four services. Scholarship and criticism are good things, but a woman must be excused from caring for them when they can only be heard through the fumes of endless pipes of tobacco. It may be that the novel-mons but Methodists and Dissenters "; goist's old plan of leading the hero through a ing on further to explain that he himself was series of adventures confines him to such a stranger to that sort of reading, and that company as at least is introduced at the ale- the man whose judgment he depended on house, for certainly the historical parson in such matters had gone abroad as carseems most at home there. The parson," penter in a man-of-war. says one man, "took me for a Presbyterian This change, then, has come over the because I would not drink with him." And novel. The parson of old, to be worth how Adams's salary of 231. a year could drawing at all, must be either a disgrace to supply him in beer alone is a problem no- his cloth or an oddity - either disreputable where explained. or a pedant, or an amiable eccentric and butt, or simply conventional of the whitehaired type, a piece of furniture uttering platitudes which the reader never dreams of reading, but who must be there for the credit of the hero or heroine. Any way he could only be subordinate. That he should take the lead and represent light and progress, that he should be well-mannered, handsome, and interesting, is an idea of another century which deserves further consideration.

The novelist and essayist of that day alike amused themselves with the rustic fondness for sermons. It was the fashionable world, then as now, that took the satirical view. Sir Roger, when he restricted his pastor to a choice from a library of standard divines of his own selection, no doubt pleased himself at the expense of his parish. Parson Adams has a faith in his own sermons which implies, however, admiring parishioners; the joke is relished of

require to be fully brought out, as well as the passages of his after life and disastrous death. Miss Yonge, who now (we believe, for the first time,) places her name on the title-page, gives us her authorities and points out her deviations from literal history in her preface. We think the book deserves to be well read, and that it will be much enjoyed. Spectator.

THE CAGED LION. By Charlotte M. Yonge, | tive land, in spite of the gains of his captivity, author of " The Heir of Redclyffe. (Macmillan and Co.) There are very few women (or men) of our day so well read in medieval history as Miss Yonge. From childhood the study seems to have been her passion, and in her "Cameos" she displays a familiarity with character and scenery which is rare and remarkable. In historical fiction she is also often successful; and if ever she fails, it is through the want of power to place her readers at her own point of view. Some of the characters and scenes in the Caged Lion will command sympathy, and they are clearly and graphically put. Thus, our MR. ROBERT BROWN, commander of the first Henry V. is sure to inspire the interest he de- Vancouver Exploring Expedition, in a paper serves. We are not so sure about the Lion him- "On the Coal-fields of the North Pacific Coast, self, James I. of Scotland. Yet we suppose, it concludes that though there are abundant supis merely that he is overshadowed by his Eng-plies of tertiary coal on the North Pacific, the lish friend and guardian King Henry. Less is known about James than could be wished. The history of his early life and training at Windsor, his genius, his beautiful poem of the " King's Quhair," and his strong attachment to his na

only beds fitted for steaming purposes are those of the British possessions. It is to be hoped that these will lead to the prosperity of British Columbia.

From The Spectator.

MR. EMERSON ON SHYNESS.

Transactions. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance,- the thing which I chiefly es-erson's rationale of this horror and agony study to decline."" And now for Mr. EmHe interprets it as the effort of nature to of observation,- of this lust of privacy. keep genius itself, to keep it unalloyed by the common-places of a tyrannical world, Each must stand on his glass tripod," he

THE new volume of Mr. Emerson's says opens with one exceedingly characteristic of that subtle and acute interpreter of nature, whose principal fault it is that he makes it a sort of religion (perhaps for want of what others think religion) to force a symbolic meaning in natural facts even where he has not been able truly to discover one. Thus he gives us here a rationale of shyness which strikes us in the highest degree questionable. It follows a very graphic and humorous account of a humourist he once knew, who might, in most of his characteristics at least, stand for Nathaniel

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says,

"if he would keep up his electricity." he cries again, with just a touch of affectation, "Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee," "there is no cooperation

we sit and

muse and are serene and complete; but the
moment we meet with anybody, each be-
comes a fraction."

ed two utterly different things when he
Now, surely Mr. Emerson has confound-
describes the symptoms and when he gives
finely is shyness—which he does not inter-
his interpretation. What he describes so
pret. What he interprets is the capillary
repulsion, so to speak, of genius for all
menacing and alloying substances, which he
hardly describes. That there is this instinct
in genius to possess its own soul apart, and
resist as an injury the attempts of society
to break it into the yoke of ordinary con-
ventionalism, is absolutely true. But in the
of men who were
most remarkable instances it has been true
never in their lives

Hawthorne, who "declared that he could not get enough alone to write a letter to a friend." "He left the city," proceeds Mr. Emerson. "He hid himself in pastures: The solitary river was not solitary enough; the sun and moon put him out. When he bought a house the first thing he did was to plant trees. He could not enough conceal himself. Set a hedge here; set oaks there; trees behind trees; above all, set evergreens, for they will keep a secret all the year round. The most agreeable compliment you could pay him was to imply that you had not observed him in a house or a street where you had met him. Whilst he suffered at being troubled with shyness. Goethe, for inseen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable stance, was the least shy of mankind. Yet number of places where he was not." We he was always jealously guarding himself may safely assert, by the way, that that last from the alien influences, the intellectual consolation was a consolation suggested by and striving to restore his true self in soliaggressiveness, of his ablest companions, the humourist (Mr. Emerson, or his friend?) to the consciousness of the shy tude or such society as was perfectly plastic the same with man, and no natural alleviation of the to his influence. It was Wordsworth, with Shelley, with plenty of agonies of shyness. 'He would have given his soul," proceeds Mr. Emerson, "for the men of genius who were not poets. They ring of Gyges. His dismay at his visibility felt that they had a deposit to guard had blunted his fears of mortality. Do which too much contact with the common air would oxidize, would rust, and turn into you think,' he said, 'I am in such great terror of being shot, I who am only wait- something far less bright and valuable. But ing to shuffle off my corporeal jacket, to slip all this jealousy of alien influences is not away into the back stars and put diameters shyness, and has hardly any true connection of the solar system and sidereal orbits be- with that horror of mere observation which tween me and all souls, then to wear out often affects the least remarkable intellects. ages in solitude, and forget memory itself, quite as powerfully as the most remarkable, if it be possible?' He had a remorse running to despair of his social gaucheries, and would be simply improved by even rough walked miles and miles to get the twitch-friction with the world, as much as the ings out of his face, the starts and shrugs minds which would lose all the delicate out of his arms and shoulders. He ad- essence of their charm in so rough a promired in Newton not so much his theory of cess. Of course, genius may have both both the instinctive dread the moon as his letter to Collins, in which these qualities; he forbade him to insert his name with the of alien influence which belongs to all sensolution of the problem in the Philosophical sitive genius, and the instinctive dread of mere eyes, the hiding instinct, which is the essence of shyness. Hawthorne had both feelings; Cowper had both; and when they

Society and Solitude. Twelve chapters by Ralph Waldo Emerson. London: Sampson Low. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 741

-which often attacks the minds which

of any such high intensity of the feelings as
Mr. Emerson describes. Their own genius
is too strong for it. They identify them-
selves so closely both with the observing
power as well as with the nature observed,
that the resulting feeling is hardly so much
that of increased sensitiveness to observa-
tion, as of increased power of observation.
It almost takes a person who is denied the

in the most painful sense of the word, "shy."
You must be far more conscious of yourself
than of the power to observe yourself, — in
fact, perceptiveness must be utterly second-
ary to sensitiveness,-in other words,
genius must be quite secondary to the dis-
comforts of feeling,-in order to give that
word its fullest meaning.

exist together, it is no doubt impossible
accurately to discriminate them. But the
two are essentially distinct, and the inter-
pretation which Mr. Emerson has given of
the one does not in the least apply to the
other. The desire to flee away to "the
back stars," and there barricade yourself in
with worlds against the myriad eyes of the
universe, is not in any sense, we imagine,
due to the rebellion of genius against con-resource of any such faculty as this, to be,
ventional influences, though that of course
must increase it, but is attributable to that
morbid self-consciousness of deficiencies
which anything like the appearance of ob-
servation from without stimulates into
intense activity. Shyness comes of mirrors,
-moral or physical. Mr. Emerson's friend
who felt remorse for his gaucheries and
walked miles to get the twitchings out of Mr. Emerson having missed, as we be-
his arms, was the victim of both moral and lieve, the essence of the malady, has, of
physical looking-glasses. There are many course, missed the essence of the remedy
men and women who are always weighing for shyness, and only suggests that true
themselves and finding themselves wanting; society, the society in which you can feel
and these, if any eyes at all are upon them, your inner nature to some extent kindled
cannot refrain from weighing themselves into vividness, is the proper balance for
again with a special view to the imaginary the natural love of solitude proper to all
criticisms of the owner of this particular true genius. But it is not the men of
eye; and so their mind is thrown into tu- genius who have plenty of resource in
multuous vibrations fatal to their peace. themselves who most need a remedy for
Now, it is obvious that this sort of tempera- this terrible malady. It is those who have
ment, though it may in some sense be a no such genius, who are afflicted with the
sensitive one, is not in the least necessarily consciousness of having all the eyes of their
connected with peculiar power of any kind, world glaring fixedly upon them without
and may be common-place in the last de- any distraction due to the exercise of an
gree. To interpret it as the anxiety of original faculty of their own, who stand in
nature to protect her individual creations, real need of good counsel and a way of
is like saying that the effeminacy which escape. And to them we would say that
makes some women scream at a spider is a far the best and easiest escape for shy men
special provision for their protection or women is to make a rush into the enemy's
against that most inoffensive of insects. country, and divert attention from thein-
Indeed, the fact is, that though there are selves by showing to good purpose that
exceptional cases like Hawthorne's and they have been studying some
one else.
Cowper's, shyness frequently exists in the There is nothing which is so much observed
highest intensity in those natures when there as apparent silence and reticence. Be full
is the least of individual life to preserve. of interest in others, of whatever kind, and
The mere presence of real creative power you are as much hidden as the cuttle-fish in
tends, so far as it goes, to diminish the in- the inky fluid it expels. In point of fact,
tensity of passive self-consciousness, to shyness creates what it fears. Everybody
betray into self-forgetfulness, to blind to attends to a silent and self-engrossed per-
that purely imaginary gaze from which the son, because he is a hidden power, a riddle,
mind shrinks. It is only in those whose an untested possibility, an unknown moral
minds rarely bubble up into full energy of quantity with which no one likes to as-
their own, that this desire to find a secure sociate. But then the world is very easily
hiding-place assumes the strongest forms. satisfied, with even an appearance of over-
It is true that men of genius are very often flow. It will estimate almost anyone at a
indeed, especially in our modern days, men moment's notice and soon loses all curiosity
of a double nature. One side of Goethe's about those who openly express curiosity
mind, the hard side, was almost always about others. There is no incognito in the
watching the soft, impressionable side; and world so effectual as a little well-expressed
the same is true of Thackeray, and George interest in others. People take their eyes
Eliot, and Miss Brontë, and a host of mod- off you directly you have spoken the kind
ern artists. Still, none of these are capable of thing they expected to hear, and especial-

7

ly if it be something which diverts the at- their powers, their amiable weaknesses, and tention elsewhere. An enigma will always you may slip about as unobserved as if you be scanned till it is guessed; and obviously were in the back stars" with diameters silent, thinking people are always an enigma of solar systems between you and all other to the world at large. The true privacy is souls. There are no persons so truly rea certain superficial atinosphere of social served as those who seem to live in an atfeeling,- a power of effervescing slightly in mosphere of genial superficial raillery. This all sorts of society, and showing that the is the silk cocoon in which the chrysalis of effervescence is due to a certain adequate, many a shy mind is so deeply enveloped as but not necessarily at all profound, appre- to be quite beyond mortal sight. And no ciation of that society. And no power is veil is easier to draw, unless, indeed, the more easily acquired. A shy person with powers of insight and of will are more than the least bonhomie (and most persons, how-ordinarily slight. It is pleasant and easy ever peculiar, have some) can acquire a habit in no time,- a habit, of course, purely selfish in its motive, but full of relief in its results, of noting, and discussing with animation, the personal interests of his friends and acquaintances, so that he is soon as much unobserved as Eneas in the mist which his mother cast about him when he entered Carthage. This is the true "ring of Gyges." Attack others with a gentle, superficial raillery, show that you have noted their traits of character, their wishes,

to know something characteristic of every one. It is not difficult, especially if you realize that the immediate result is not to expose but to conceal you, to use this knowledge with that ready banter and easy criticism in return. We recommend this specific to all shy readers. They will find it far more useful than the rather transcendental recipes of Mr. Emerson,—which, too, are not in the main adapted for the malady of ordinary mortals.

guage at a very early period, and there cannot be a doubt that we derive it from the AngloSaxons, and have not taken it from the French of the Middle Ages. But this fact leads us to another, - namely, that our Anglo-Saxon fore

THE ANTIQUITY OF PAPER IN ENGLAND.I stan; and in the part of which I have just rehave made a little discovery, which will be con-ceived the proof I find“ Papirus, paper." The sidered curious in the history of paper. I be-word paper does not occur in Dr. Bosworth's, lieve that the first traces of the use of paper in or any other, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; but we Western Europe are found towards the end of | have here evidence that it was in use in our lanthe twelfth century, and we have no reason to suppose that it was in use in England until the thirteenth, or even the beginning of the fourteenth. It is understood to have been brought westward from Italy, where it was in use earlier; and I believe that our word paper,- -a corrup-fathers, to have the word in an Anglo-Saxon tion, of course, of papyrus, is considered to form in their own language, must have been have been borrowed, with the article itself, from pretty well acquainted with paper itself, and, the French. I saw years ago in Paris, I be- no doubt, they found the Roman paper in use in lieve they belonged to the royal collection (it the island when they came. It is a fact, indeed was in the time of Louis Philippe), -a few of which opens to us several others, equally new, the earliest documents on paper known belong- in the social history of our Anglo-Saxon foreing to Western Europe in the period since the fathers. I need hardly add, that paper probaRomans, which interested me much. They con-bly never went entirely out of use in Western sisted of receipts, or rather bonds, for money Europe after the Roman times, and a little reborrowed from the Jews in the time of our Coeur- search might still throw some curious light upon de-Lion, given by chiefs who were starting for its history during the earlier Middle Ages. It his Crusade; and, if I remember well, the paper certainly was not supposed before that it might resembled much that of the fifteenth and six-be in use among the Anglo Saxons. teenth centuries, except that it was of a rather coarser texture. It would seem as if, in the West, its use at this early period was known among the Jews. Now, I am just passing through the press an edition of a Glossary of Latin and English or, as we are accustomed to call it, Anglo-Saxon Words, of, I think, not later than the middle of the tenth century. We may safely look upon it as the English of the days of Athel

Athenæum.

THOMAS WRIGHT.

M. LENORMAND has shown from a study of the sculptures that in Egypt, during the time of the Shepherd-Kings, three distinct species of gazelle were domesticated.

From The Saturday Review.
MATHEMATICIANS UNDER A CLOUD.

violence against the heads of his colleagues.
The quarrels of the Observatory are per-
plexing. Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ ?

It is

MATHEMATICIANS, living and dead, have of late had rather a bad time of it in France. The case of Auguste Comte is somewhat M. Leverrier has been dismissed from the harder. Like the kings of Ancient Egypt directorship of the Observatory in Paris. he has been subjected to posthumous judgThe sanity of the late Auguste Comte has ment. A French Court has been called on been in question before a French tribunal. to determine whether the High Priest of M. Michel Chasles has appeared again, and Humanity was in the days of his religious for the last time it may be hoped, in the exaltation and official pontificate neither character of the most egregious dupe in con- more nor less than a lunatic. The wounded temporary history. Against M. Leverrier feelings of Mr. Richard Congreve, Professor no more serious charge seems to have been Beesly, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, at this made than that he was of an incurably quar- suggestion and inquiry, form a subject too relsome temper. His colleagues and assist- painful for contemplation. We hasten to ants could not get on with him. Kant, in a drop a veil over the agonizing picture. celebrated passage, compares the spectacle Archbishop Manning reading Father Graof the starry heavens at midnight, as a try's proof that Pope Honorius was a heretic, source of reverence and awe, with the deep or a faithful Mormon emigrant newly come inner consciousness of the moral law. Pas- from Wales listening to the demonstration cal, in a sentence equally well-known, ex- of the Messrs. Smith junior, sons of Joe the presses the terror with which the thought prophet, that Brigham Young is a deceiver, and the sight of the infinite spaces oppressed may faintly image the grief and desolation him. M. Leverrier, officially surveying the of the Comtist Church. One of the most skies as a sort of celestial inspector-general, afflicting circumstances in the whole busiappears to have kept his mind free from ness is the fact that a woman should have so these elevating and subduing influences. far forgotten her function in the Religion He had to report upon the movements and of Humanity as to ask for a judgment of inperturbations of the stellar bodies, and sanity against its founder. Madame Comte seemed to regard himself only as a kind of was her illustrious husband's accuser. astronomical French detective. The influ-true that she had no very distinct place, and ences which penetrated Kant and Pascal left indeed no place at all, in his system. He him unaffected. A poet more frequently never showed any disposition to worship quoted than read has remarked that an un- her. The private religious observances devout astronomer is mad. There is no which he practised were in honour of the reason to suppose that M. Leverrier is an departed spirit of Madame Clotilde de Vaux. undevout astronomer. On the contrary, That lady was elevated to the rank, during ⚫ the second and third of the three adjectives her life and after her death, of Comte's guarin the celebrated epitaph which described dian angel; and Madame Comte had no its subject as bland, passionate, and deeply title or obligation to assume the office. religious may, for aught we know, strictly Whether, like Donna Inez in Don Juan, she apply to him. The capacity of turning from " called some druggists and physicians," we celestial contemplations to human wrang- do not know, but she certainly tried to lings and strife is, however, remarkable. prove her loving lord was mad." It was The calm order and the regular movement the judgment of the Court rather than hers, of the heavenly bodies might be expected to which," as he had some lucid intermissions, shed something of their own repose into the next decided he was only bad." In other minds of those who habitually survey them. respects, however, M. Comte, rather than The music of the spheres does not appear, his wife, seems to have acted the part of like the harp of David or the lyre of Timo- Inez. It was he who " kept a journal where theus, to cast the evil spirit out of those who her faults were noted," and confided secrets listen to it. One would have thought that to "certain trunks of books and letters." a certain stillness of temper and largeness M. Comte appears also to have vilified his of intelligence would have been derived from wife in his will-a course of conduct to intercourse with the stars. It seems that a which, if she had been not his wife but his man may dwell all his life amid the sublimest daughter, an episcopal parallel might be stellar scenery and be as little impressed by cited. Against Madame Comte's character it as the Alpine peasant by the grandeur of there is by universal confession_no_wellhis mountains, or the American backwoods- grounded imputation whatsoever. Comte man by the religion of the groves. M. himself in his better days admitted as much. Leverrier returned from knocking his sub- The Court granted her such redress as was lime head against the stars, to knock it with in its power, and confided to her keeping

66