guiça! Quem quer comprar!" (Sloth! good sloth! Who'll buy?) Meanwhile, I, little dreaming of what had befallen my poor favorite, was riding leisurely along the great road leading from the suburb of Larangeiras to the city, when I suddenly discovered that I had forgotten some papers which I wanted. To save time, I went back by a short cut through some of the by-streets, and it was just as well that I did, for I suddenly encountered a sloth tied by his claws to a pole, and looking very much ashamed of himself; and in this disconsolate captive I recognized, to my no small amazement, tion of ultra-violet spectra of gases. He employs two large Geissler tubes placed parallel and communicating together by a capillary tube at right angles to them. The spectroscope consists of three 60° prisms of Iceland their dihedral angles is parallel to the optic axis of the crystal. With such prisms the ordinary and extraordinary spectra do not encroach on one another. The axis of the capillary tube is then made to coincide exactly with that of the collimator of the spectroscope, and the intensity of the light which can be utilized during passage of the current from a Ruhmkorff coil, is found to be very much greater than if the tube were placed, as usual, perpendicularly to the axis of the apparatus. The author recommends using a plate of quartz in place of one of the large tubes of glass, so as to prevent too great absorption of rays of high refrangibility. To give an idea of the exactness with which even the most refrangible bright lines are reproduced, M. van Monckhoven presented three plates representing the solar spectrum, the bright lines of hydrogen combined with those of aluminium (of which the electrodes were formed), and the bright lines of a solar protuberance. IN the current number of Mind, Mr. G. H. | Lewes gives briefly what seems to be one of the chief positions taken by him in his new volume "The Physical Basis of Mind." He finds that according to usage the word "consciousness" is equivalent to sentience or feel-spar, cut so that the bisector plane of each of ing; that it is also used in a special sense as signifying that we not only feel, but feel or are conscious that we feel. Now Mr. Lewes holds that every neural process implies sensibility, indeed is feeling or consciousness in the general sense of that term; accordingly consciousness, sentience these neural processes may be said to have "various modes and degrees, such as perception, ideation, emotion, volition, which may be conscious, subconscious, or unconscious." In the last sentence the word "unconscious" describes a mode or degree of sentience which has not given rise to consciousness in the special sense, and Mr. Lewes contends that the word "unconscious" ought to be confined to this usage, that in strictness we should not speak of unconsciousness outside the sphere of sentience. He then proceeds to argue that to describe a neural process as a mere series of physical changes is to say that "organic processes suddenly cease to be organic and become purely physical by a slight change in their relative position in the consensus.' The matter of fact of which Mr. Lewes has to persuade his readers is, that "the reflex mechanism necessarily involves sensibility," that a neural process is a feeling. THE foundation of a permanent station for help to wrecked vessels on Novaya Zemlya is now in way of execution. We hope that the station will also be used for taking regular meteorological observations. An Eskimo family, which has already wintered for two IN a recent communication to the Belgian years on the island, will remain there permaAcademy, M. van Monckhoven describes some nently, and be supplied by the Russian gov improvements in the photographic reproduc-ernment with all necessaries. Nature. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY 706 TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-otice money-order. if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Gay. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The Edinburgh Review. THE HOUSE OF FORTESCUE.* THOSE who were so fortunate as to see the very remarkable collection of portraits gathered from the principal country houses of Devonshire and Cornwall, and exhibited at Exeter during the visit of the Archæological Institute to that city in 1873, will hardly have forgotten the earliest picture in the assemblage the portrait of Henry VI.'s chief justice and chancellor, sent from Castle Hill by his representative and descendant the present Earl Fortescue. The portrait, which seems to have formed one of the wings of an altar-piece, of which Sir John Fortescue may have been the donatore, represents him with his hands clasped in prayer. The face is closely shaven, and the hair, cut short in front, falls from under a plain black cap. The face, grave and pleasant, is not that of the old judge who died at the age of ninety, but shows us the laudator of the leges Anglia in his younger days, long before he fought at Towton, or passed across the sea to share the exile of Queen Margaret and her son. The picture was possibly designed by some artist of the school of Mabuse, after an earlier portrait; but however this may be, it remains the only authentic representation of a great man - not the least among those 66 worthies" of whom Devonshire is so justly proud — and it is impossible to regard it with other than the highest interest. Sir John Fortescue was not the first of his race to distinguish himself, but he is the first whose distinction is still recognized among us -one of the earliest to set forth, in anything like an abstract treatise, the excellence of English law and constitution; quite the first, unless we choose to regard in the same light the "Tractatus de Legibus" of Randolph Glanville, the justiciar of Henry II.; † and the 1. The Works of Sir John Fortescue, Knight, Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor to King Henry the Sixth. Now first collected and arranged by THOMAS (FORTESCUE) Lord CLERMONT. London: Printed for Private Distribution. 1869. 2. A History of the Family of Fortescue, in all its Branches. By THOMAS (FORTESCUE) Lord CLER MONT. 1869. London: Printed for Private Distribution, ↑ Glanville's treatise is, however, of a very different aim and character; nor can the famous "Dialogus de treatise which he composed for the instruction of the young prince who was killed in the fight at Tewksbury may still be read with pleasure and profit. Since his time, the family to which he belonged has thrown out various branches and offsets from the parent stem; and few of the more ancient houses of this country can prove a more undoubted descent, or can point to a greater number of illustrious sons distinguished alike in camp and in court, than this long-lined race of honored Fortescue. Its greatest honors (if accession to the ranks of the peerage is thus to be regarded) have been attained in comparatively recent times. The English barony dates Ireland, the barony, viscounty, and earlfrom 1746, and the earldom from 1789. In dom of Clermont were first held by a Fortescue in 1770, and, the titles having become extinct, the barony was revived in 1852, in favor of the present Lord Clermont. But from the time, not long after the Conquest, when we first find them settled in the South Hams of Devon, to the present day, there has hardly been a stirduring which a Fortescue has not come to ring period in the history of this country the front. It was not, at first, one of the greater or more wealthy houses of England; but "land and beeves" speedily came to the various branches, especially to that which migrated, as the result of a marriage with a great heiress, to the north think of the Hastings story, the “ of Devonshire; and, whatever we may of the race, as old Westcote calls it, exposy" presses what is certainly true with regard to such Norman families as that of the Fortescues during the earlier days of their settlement in the west. "Forte scutum salus ducum." The gradual approach of Normans and English after the Conquest was materially influenced, and the final blending of the races was no doubt hastened, by the spreading through the country of these smaller landowners. They were brought into sharper and closer contact with the English than the greater lords, who were seldom for any length of Scaccario" of Richard Fitz-Nigel be compared, in any fair sense, with Fortescue's book. "De time in one place. They more speedily | ful volumes which Lord Clermont has priadopted old English feelings and sympa- vately printed we have the records of one thies; and the great leaders were indebted of the most ancient and honorable houses to them for much of their best strength in England; and we believe that we may during the struggles and the trials which trace the same type of character, and that ended in renewing the England of former a very high and noble one, showing itself days, and in welding into one strong- with more or less distinctness, in nearly hearted people the conquerors and the all its more prominent members. Lord conquered. Clermont's memorials of the Fortescues There are few more interesting books are contained in two very handsome folios, than those which, like the "Lives of the and are enriched with illustrations of all Lindsays" or the delightful "Memorie of kinds — heraldic and topographical, enthe Somervilles" edited by Sir Walter gravings from authentic portraits, examScott, deal with the history of a single ples of handwriting, and facsimiles of anfamily so far as it can be traced, and ena- cient manuscripts. The first volume conble us to follow (as is almost always possi- tains a most careful life of the lord chief ble) the common character and tendencies justice, whom we regard as displaying the which, displaying themselves in different most pronounced type of the family charfashions and in various proportions, de-acter, together with a complete edition scend through all the generations from (with English translation) of his works, the founder the "Sholto Douglas" who the "De Naturâ Legis Natura," the " De first emerges from the dark to the Laudibus Legum Angliæ," the many-acred peer or commoner of the Dominio Regali et Politico," and some present day. There exists, we believe smaller treatises. In the second volume its whereabouts we do not care to disclose the history of the family is traced through the pictorial record of a Kentish family, all its branches, and everything that could in which, passing from sire to son, its be recovered concerning the lives of the members are represented "in their habits more distinguished Fortescues has been as they lived," taking part in the various collected and preserved. The cost of preevents of the centuries to which their paring and of printing two such volumes respective fates had conducted them. must have been considerable. The labor The series begins with the opposition of was no doubt one of love; yet the mere a valiant chief to the landing of Cæsar arrangement of materials so extensive, for we are to suppose that the race thus and gathered from so many quarters, canrecorded was one to which Derings and not but have taken much time and care, Colepepers are of yesterday. But from and the power of producing from them a beginning to end, whether the costume be narrative so pleasant and so readable is a "painted vest won from some "naked not given to every writer of family history. Pict," the chain-mail of the crusaders, the The book has not been published; but, ruff and trunk hose of Elizabeth, the flow- with great liberality, copies have been ing periwig and ribbons of the Pepysian sent to the chief public libraries of the era, or the well-powdered Ramillies of the country, so that the valuable results of Georgian, the same remarkable nose, and Lord Clermont's labors are accessible to the same countenance of bland, well-satis-others besides members of the family, who fied stupidity, distinguish the long procession. On such very marked characteristics as these, whether corporeal or mental, we do not mean to insist, but we do maintain that the general turn and temperament of an ancient house are often, when we have the means of tracing them, not less clearly evident than the likeness which may run through the family portraits in the great gallery. In the beauti must necessarily regard them with more interest than the rest of the world. When we first get clear sight of the Fortescues we find them settled at Wimondeston or Wimpstone, in the parish of Modbury, in South Devon. This is late in the twelfth century; and there exists, or did exist, a confirmation of Wimpstone by King John to a Sir John Fortescue, who, during the troubles of that reign had |