bonggo yali voida From The Atheneum. We may guess in what spirit M. St.-Hilaire Egypt and the Great Suez Canal. A Nar-views the Suez scheme from the admiration rative of Travels. By J. Barthélemy he professes for the Barrage of the Nile, Saint-Hilaire. (Bentley.) superinteded by Mougel Bey. This colossal M. ST.-HILAIRE first published his narra- work, he says, is nearly finished, after years tive in the French newspapers. When M. of difficulty and disappointment; but he is de Lesseps received from the Viceroy of careful not to point to the graves of the FelEgypt his commission to form a company for laheen that lie around, or to number the the purpose of constructing the Suez Canal, bones of the victims to heat and hunger, he invited M. St.-Hilaire to co-operate with who perished while that enormous engineerhim, and the result is that to a number of ing phantasy was being developed. Mohamchapters on the manners and arts of Egypt med Said, we are told, requested the Suez are added one or two on the great project for Commission to ascend the Nile as far as the cutting a channel from the Mediterranean First Cataract, to indicate the most conveto the Red Sea. The old arguments are re-nient point for the establishment of a second peated; but with reference to the practical Barrage; but before the burning dust of the and political objections as stated by us, valley consumes the necessary myriads, it several months ago, M. St.-Hilaire, in a par- would be as well to calculate how many agraph of easy but incorrect generalization, Arabs and their families are to rot on the observes, "The English press, with perhaps road to Pelusium. It was said of the Kublai only one exception, has expressed a favorable Khan: opinion on it" (the Suez Canal scheme). We scarcely know how it can be assumed that "England, so far from rejecting the project desires it," when it is known that strong opposition has been offered to M. de Lesseps' endeavors to procure the concurrence of the Ottoman Sultan in the grant of the Egyptian Viceroy. In fact, this difficulty is felt and acknowledged by the French advocates of this new labor of Hercules. Could you but gather the bones of all, And if the tortured laborers engaged upon the Suez excavations should not supply skeletons enough to choke the canal (if ever the canal be made,) they might at least be exexpected to yield the materials for many a pyramid after the fashion not of Cheops, but of Genghiz Khan. We well know what Admitting then that England (or some Egyptian engineering is, with Pashas to proindividuals who affect to speak in her name and on her behalf) desires to maintain her mote the works and a French scientific staff No doubt M. St.present exclusive monopoly in India, without to superintend them. introducing or permitting any change or Hilaire, when he speculates upon the emigramodification, and, animated by a narrow-tion of Arab families to the Isthmus to be minded spirit of egotism, would attempt to employed on the canal, dreams not of Kublai exclude for ever all the nations bordering the devastations; but he and M. de Lesseps were Mediterranean from the commerce of the so much flattered at Cairo, that they may be East, and to prevent their establishing an excused for writing in a viceregal vein on the and lucrative route, by what right, we easy may ask, could any nation oppose the legiti- subject of Fellah labor. mate desire of all these countries, and bar the passage to them? By what right could the principle of monopoly be re-established, after the most solemn declarations in favor of free-trade? And, moreover, by what right can the British Colonies themselves, which are equally interested in the question, be debarred this new outlet for their commerce? Would any one dare to maintain, openly before the world, or in any European Congress, that England has a right to sacrifice to her own individual interests even if these were well understood the interests of the whole human race? Who would encounter the shame and the responsibility of such an avowal?" "Conversing familiarly with his Highness the Viceroy, and his ministers, Edhem Pasha and Zulfikar Pasha, we might have imagined ourselves in a circle of the best society of Paris. The Viceroy has wit, good sense, easy manners, and a frank disposition. Such was the impression I received from our interview, which lasted four hours. You know me too well to suspect me of flattery or fiction, if I remark the tact as well as politeness shown in many felicitous expressions which fell from his Highness: I mention only one. On our hesitating to cover our heads, notwithstanding his request that we would do so, M. de Lesseps said, 'Your Highness treats these gentlemen like crowned heads.' These gentlemen,' replied Said, ' are indeed the crowned heads of science.' """ We were afraid that M. St.-Hilaire would devote too large a proportion of his octavo volume to the elucidation of a topic respecting which very little remains to be said. The Suez Canal will be constructed when all the Powers are agreed, when the funds are forthcoming, and when the physical obstacles have been conquered. We have no reason to believe that governments or capitalists will be in a hurry to imitate the Arabs and bury treasures in the sand. Meanwhile, M. St.Hilaire discourses learnedly on Mohammedan institutions, on Egyptian architecture, and on the history of the cities and monuments that fringe the blue stream of the Nile. He is a chatty, agreeable tourist when nomading through that very muddy topic, the Suez Canal. His excursions in the Upper Valley were not extensive, but he saw much of Egyptian life. "During our visit to the ruins of the Ramesseion, in the western plains of Thebes, two young children from eight to ten years of age, one of whom was quite naked, came running up to us, and showed us their little right arms, on which a cross was tatooed in blue. They gave us to understand that they were Christians; and, to convince us of this, they made the sign of the Cross, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Their faces were gentle and intelligent, and their physiognomy more refined than that of their companions. Their eyes beamed with a less wild expression, and showed more traces of humanity. Our conversation with these poor little creatures ended naturally DERIVATION OF THE WORD "MORTAR."-In reference to the derivation of this word, as meaning a cement composed of water, sand, and lime, Webster says that "perhaps this name is taken from beating and mixing." I think there can be little doubt that it is derived from the Latin mortarium, the name of the vessel in which, according to the elder Pliny (xxxvI. 55.) arenatum," or sanded cement was mixed. HENRY T. RILEY. -Notes and Queries. LEGEND OF THE ALLIGATOR.-Whence comes with an alms, a bakshish, which they begged of us, whilst, one of their companions, of the same age, stretched out his arm with energy, and exclaimed Moslem!' to testify it as the two others were of being Christhat he was a Mussulman, and as proud of tians." Accustomed to philosophize, he suggests a defence of the jealous veil: first, on the ground that by partial concealment it piques the beholder's fancy. "There is another more real utility in the veil concealing the face. With us, a girl who is ugly may remain a long time, nay her whole life, without getting a husband. The veil spares a woman such disappoint ments, though perhaps it prepares them for the husband. No man here ever sees the figure of the woman he is to marry; and if marriage ceremony he first uncovers his the surprise of the husband, when after the wife's face, is sometimes agreeable, it may often be very distressing. It is true that he can easily find consolation, by speculating on taking another wife, or getting a speedy divorce. Thanks to the veil, however, the woman has been married, and is at least saved the pain of being forced by her ugli ness to remain single all her life." Further, M. St.-Hilaire dilates the upon Pyramids and palaces of Pharaonic antiquity, but not in the spirit of Alciphron. It would be too much to say that his book is more than a tourist's record, with a ballast of Egyptian rambles have become less frequent pamphlet dissertation; but narratives of than formerly, and M. St.-Hilaire with welcome as one who has come fresh from the Nile, who saw its valley after the summer of 1855. ineet WEATHERCOCKS.-I shall feel greatly obliged if some of your correspondents will inform me, 1. When weathercocks first began to be used? 2. Under what circumstances, and for what purpose? 3. What was the original shape? and 4. Why the figure of the cock, hare, greyhound, and arrow, so generally prevail? Any other information tending to throw light on the various shapes and representations adopted in the vanes of the present day, will be very acceptable and interesting.-Notes and Queries. the saying that alligators have shed false tears STYLE OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION.-Can ever since they partook of the garlic made use any writer be named from Wicliffe and Chaucer of as an article of food by the Israelites while to James I., whose English style resembles that employed in building the pyramids ?-Notes of the authorized version of the Old and New and Queries. Testaments?-Notes and Queries. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 692.-29 AUGUST, 1857. From The Edinburgh Review. which material force can be directed. It Catholic Priest. London: 1856. 3. La Salette devant le Pape, ou Rational- 1. Manual of the Confraternity of La has established the dominion of man more Salette; comprising every information firmly over space, time, and the world; it concerning La Salette, with Devotions for the Confraternities established in has roused fresh powers of self-reliance; it England. By the Rev. John Wyse, has satisfied fresh dreams of enterprise. Yet, if we are asked at the present moment, and with the evidence now before us, to reassert that the artifices of superstition are no longer to be dreaded; that the awakened intelligence of mankind can no longer be imposed upon; that the empire of bigotry and cant is approaching its downfall; and that the cause of religion is fortified by a nearer approach to the sublime purity of Gospel Truth, we are reluctantly compelled to acknowledge that the experience of the last and present generation leads us to an ABOUT thirty-three years ago we had occa- opposite conclusion. We have witnessed, sion to examine in this Journal some of and are still witnessing, even in the domain those practices on the superstition and cre- of science and positive experience, delusions dulity of mankind, which had then acquired as wild and senseless as ever beguiled the a sort of vogue under the name of Prince human imagination-clairvoyance, spiritHohenlohe's Miracles. We showed how rapping, biology, and all the phantoms degrading to religion, and how offensive to which hover on the confines of organic true piety, are those "stratagemata præla- nature. We learn with astonishment that torum, quibus utuntur ad ambitionem pro- in the far West, beyond the deserts of the priam et lucrum," to use the language of Rocky Mountains, in that region to which Lord Bacon. We demonstrated by medical liberty and toleration have hitherto pointed evidence the utter absurdity of the cures as their inviolable refuge, a theocratiewhich were supposed to denote a miraculous tyranny reigns over a hundred thousand efficacy in the prayers of a German prince; American citizens,-more degrading in and we terminated our remarks by the con-objects of veneration, more abominable in soling reflection that such deceptions as these its practices, more atrocious in its means of were no longer likely to produce any effect government, than the most accursed rites of on society; that the days were passed and heathenism. Nor is this strange aberrationgone when prodigies could be imposed upon whole nations; and that the general improvement of men's minds would prove a sufficient guarantee against such trash for the future. of the human mind confined to frantie enthusiasts or half-civilized communities. We.. have seen in one portion of our own Church a craving for the mysterious influences of the secondary objects of faith-on abject The third part of a century has elapsed submission to authority and sacerdotal insince these words were written and these tervention-a sentimental veneration extendhopes expressed. The century to which this ing even to things inanimate and formal. portion of human history belongs is remark- The Church of Rome, with that profound able above all others for the vociferous diffu- observation or instinctive perception of the sion of knowledge, and for undoubted im- spirit of the age, which has characterized provements in all the methods by which her for a thousand years, seeks largely and knowledge can be imparted to men. It is promptly to avail herself of this baek-water characterized by an unbounded development of the great stream of civilization. If her of material force, and of that intelligence by authority is contested, she asserts-it in more DOXOLI. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVIII. 33 imperious language; if her doctrines are | bodily apparitions, and all the retinue of apparitionsunt, the assailed, she adds to them a fresh article of imposture still haunt, not only more faith, more irreconcilable to reason and to ignorant classes of modern Europe, but perScripture, and more opposed to the primitive sons of imagination and sensibility; and -belief of the Church than any former prop- that Church which boasts among its proseattainments osition of her creed; if the secret influence lytes even Englishmen of high does not base artifices and deceits. But it is not the less true that a very considerable body of the authorities of that Church are lending them selves to this unhallowed work: the highest authority, that of the Pope, is invoked to sanction it by a form of worship and by acts of indulgence; and even in this country distinct attempt is here made to enrol among the duties of religious observance one of the grossest frauds ever practised by the priest hood. We think, therefore, that it is nota useless task to unravel this story-to expos the facts on which it rests-to hold up a candle to this spectre-and to trace the rapid growth of so extraordinary an impor ture. e exercised upon society by her sacraments and undoubted mental powers, and her confessional is denounced as an in- scruple to sanction tricks and absurdities sufferable tyranny, undermining the relations which the Middle Ages would have repudiof husband and wife, of parents and chil- ated. dren, she retorts by proscribing all mixed The first of the little volumes before us marriages as concubinage and all lay educa- has suggested these painful reflections, and tion as blasphemy; if her ecclesiastical appears to call for our serious animadverorganization is resisted, she succeeds in sion. We make these remarks in no spirit wresting from Austria the Concordat of of sectarian hostility to any branch of the 1855, and in establishing a papal hierarchy Christian Church. We believe-indeed we even in the most Protestant States of Eu- have the proof before us-that many Cathorope; if her claim to traditional infallibility lics reject with as much abhorrence as our and miraculous gifts is denied, she boldly selves these attempts to impose on mankind sets the stamp of her authority on lying a tissue of vulgar inventions. The Roman legends and old-wives' fables, And all this Catholic Church condemns by many of its the society of Europe-the Europe of the greatest legislators and commentators these nineteenth century-endures. To arrogance which the seventeenth century would have overborne with contempt-to superstitions which the eighteenth century would have scouted with ridicule, some at least of the men of our day lend a voluntary obedience or an indiscriminate faith. We boast of our victories over the prejudices and ignorances of the past-over political oppression and social abuses; but against this progress in the temporal and secular interests of life, must be set off a strange reaction in the higher regions of thought and belief, which serves in too many instances to render superstition more dense, and intolerance more keen. It is not altogether safe, then, to rely on the progress of knowledge and cul- Most of our readers have probably heard tivation to dissipate this gloom. It is not of the pretended Apparition of Our Lady of true that these phantoms will disperse at the La Salette. We shall presently revert to : first glimmering of the dawn. On the con- the particulars of this astounding narrative, trary, seen through the twilight of imper- when we examine the evidence on which it fect day, they assume an aspect at once more rests. But few of them will be aware that substantial and more menacing. Man is this incongruous appendage to the offices of like the traveller who toils up the crags and religion is no longer confined to the diocese through the mists of the Brocken, only to in which it originated, or to countries in behold the visionary giant, which is the which the Roman Catholic Church holds an shadow of his own form, looming above his undivided sway. It remained for the Rev. bath and forbidding his advance. This in- John Wyse, Catholic Priest, to furnish us exhaustible love of the mysterious and the with a Manual for the Confraternities of La wonderful, which dwells in his finite capac- Salette established in England; and it re ity, seems to invest new idols with a super-mained for Bishop Ullathorne, titular Bishop natural radiance. Ecstatic nuns, false mir of Birmingham, to send this mendacions ...acles, winking pictures, bleeding images, production forth to the world with the stamp of his approval. On the first page | Country, and that, as the Confraternity of of this publication we find the following La Salette is not singular to one part of the strangely written declaration: "APPROBATION OF HIS LORDSHIP, THE "I have read the book entitled The "W. B. ULLATHORNE. "Birmingham, June 9, 1855." We believe that Dr. Ullathorne is considered to be one of the most eminent of the Roman Catholic prelates in this country; and with this attestation before us we shall have an opportunity of judging what his notions of faith, good morals, piety and devotion really amount to. It must, how ever, be added, that he speaks with more than common authority on the subject, for his Lordship has actually made a pilgrimage to La Salette in his own person, and has published an account of all that has taken place under the title of "The Holy Mountain of La Salette, by a Pilgrim of 1854." We have examined this narrative since the Manual first attracted our attention, and we find that it is the production of an enthusiastic votary of the Apparition. Nothing seems to be too extravagant for this reverend prelate to believe, and nothing too blasphemous for him to say. When it is remembered what the Roman Catholics conceive the Virgin Mary to be, we confess that we are lost in wonder, to find them treating her with a mixture of puerility and presumption which they would not display to any ordinary mortal. It seems, however, that Mr. Wyse himself, the author of this Manual, is not entirely insensible to some of the inconveniences resulting from the propagation of such stories in England. "In introducing this Manual to the use of English Catholics, it may not be wide of the purpose to say that, in common with other priests, I am well aware of the objections not unfrequently made to the establishment of this particular Confraternity in England. It is too singular, we hear it sometimes objected, and ill-calculated to win beretics to the Faith. Without considering the real want of Faith, which is usually the parent of such sentiments, I will simply answer, that the Catholic Church is our Catholic Church, we have no right to treat With regard to the testimony of the Curè of Ars, who is well known in the south of France for his great piety, we shall be able to show that this very individual has played a conspicuous part in exposing the impos ture; but he is not the less relied on by Mr. Wyse, as an especial authority for the introduction of the devotion of La Salette in England. It will have been remarked that in this passage just quoted from Mr. Wyse's preface, this reverend gentleman declares "the Catholic Church to be his country "-implying that he acknowledges no other: and the views he entertains towards England in particular are expressed with equal candor. "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.' Now, practically speaking, in England there is a great want of this sort of willing Faith. Of course it is not meant to speak bere of Protestants. Faith with them is out of the question. salvation; much less, therefore, in that They do not believe in the essential truths of which is not of necessity. But unfortunately by contact with Protestants, and by constantly breathing an atmosphere of rationalism, the Faith of many Catholics, firm enough in its way, has become, if we may be allowed to use the expression, ungenerous and stingy. Pushed and goaded on every side, and at last almost persuaded that the wonderful doctrines of the Catholic Church are quite hard task enough on their belief, they contract their Faith into as small a space as possible. They take in what they are obliged, and nothing more. These good |