country lying so far west as Scotland, and in the icy north?" There are no lions in Scotland. The blazoned lion rampant, he goes on to tell us, was carried thither from Ireland by "Fergusius, the son of Ferchardas." Thus it will be seen that "the lion of Scotland was in reality the lion of Ireland; and, as the lion is no more an Irish than a Scottish wild beast, it is evidently an importation to that country from the East." In short, the prophet Jeremiah was as clearly its first introducer as he was the introducer of the " King's Daughter" and of "Jacob's Pillow; " and thus the first lion which the Irish ever saw was the heraldic brute pictured upon the banner which the prophet carried from Asia to Tara. Here, again, we are not without fear that Mr. Glover may be unconsciously playing into the hands of the Irish Home Rulers, and even into the hands of the Papists. Can he be aware that Daniel O'Connell used to call the late Roman Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. MacHale, "the lion of the tribe of Judah"? Can he be aware that the leading English journal accepted the "identity," and that the Times headed that prelate's letter with the title "A Roar from St. Jarlaths"? If Mr. Glover had been a student of English history he would have discovered that an attempt was seriously made in the middle of the seventeenth century to carry the Anglo-Israelite hypothesis out of the province of mere speculation into that of political fact. The first AngloIsraelite was the London wine-cooper, Thomas Venner, the leader of the "FifthMonarchy men," who plotted successively against Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Venner resolved that the "identity" of England and Israel should be practically realized. In 1657 he and his followers determined to kill the Protector and proclaim "King Jesus." Secretary Thurloe had a spy amongst the early Anglo-Israelites, detected their programme, and seized their arms and their banner. On the latter was painted "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah," couchant, with the motto, "Who will rouse him up?" Again, in 1661, the same fanatical Anglo-Israelites - to whom Cromwell had been "very tender," as Jessop, clerk of the Council, put it, on account of "that appearance of Christ in them," and "often seeking of God"raised the banner of "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah " against Charles II. The poor mad theorist who thought that he and his fifty followers would conquer England for the Son of David was hanged. As the courtly Dryden in his "Absalom and Achitophel" figured England as Israel, and King Charles as David, perhaps he may also be claimed, like the fanatic Venner, as a precursor of Mr. Glover and Mr. Hine. AN EASTERN LEGEND. -The most painful | thing to endure among the ruins of Palmyra is the want of water. The inhabitants have no other water than that of a hot spring, the water of which has an intense smell of sulphur. It can only be drunk after it has been exposed for twelve hours to the wind in a leather bottle. Yet, however repulsive it might have appeared at first, one gets so accustomed to it that at last the water brought by travellers, even from the "Wild-goat's Well" (Ain el Woul, half-way between Karatern and Palmyra), appears tasteless. The following legend relates to the sulphurous well of Palmyra, Ain el Ritshen, or the Star Well. Once upon a time a large snake had taken its abode in the well, and was stopping its mouth so that no water could be drawn from it. Solomon, son of David, ordered the animal to leave the place, in order that the people might use the water. The snake replied to the wise king "Grant me to come out with my whole body, and promise me not to kill me. I have a sun spot in the middle of my body, and I shall die if anything touches me on that place." When Solomon had given him the required promise, the snake began to wind itself out; it crawled and crawled, but there was no end to it. Its rings already filled the valley, and there was no appearance of a sun-spot yet. Solomon began to be frightened, and he trembled so much that a ring slipped from his finger at the very moment when the mysterious spot appeared at the mouth of the well; the ring fell on that spot, and the snake was broken in two parts. The hind part of the monster remained in the well, and was putrefied in it, so that it became impossible to drink the water. Solomon purified the spring with sulphur, the putrid smell disappeared, but that of sulphur remains till now. The ashes of the front part of the snake burnt by Solomon, dispersed to all the four winds, became another plague, that of the army of springing insects, e.g. locusts, etc. Das Deutsche Familienblatt. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office 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 & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. These long years with the effort, as earnest as strong, To slay ancient hate and to right ancient wrong. Again! A last message of peace, or it seems The last effort of patience. What thricewelcome gleams Sure it's welcome you are, call it guerdon or gift, If it only avail that foul shadow to lift From the meadows and mountains of Erin's green land, The hate from her heart, and the blood from her hand! SUMMER. BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. O SWEET and strange, what time gay morning steals Bee-laden limes and pendulous abeles, To brush the dew-bespangled gossamers From meadow grasses and beneath black firs, To bathe amid dim heron-haunted brakes! O sweet and sumptuous at height of noon, Languid to lie on scented summer lawns Fanned by faint breezes of the breathless June; To watch the timorous and trooping fawns, Dappled like tenderest clouds in early dawns, Forth from their ferny covert glide to drink And cool lithe limbs beside the river's brink! O strange and sad ere daylight disappears, To hear the creaking of the homeward wain, Drawn by its yoke of tardy-pacing steers, 'Neath honeysuckle hedge and tangled lane, To breathe faint scent of roses on the wane Of fair promise will greet us the sole best By cottage doors, and watch the mellowing sky reward Fade into saffron hues insensibly. AGE. "STEPPING westward," did she say, At sunset on that long Scotch day? "Stepping westward," yes, alway, With staff and scrip, Wayfaring songs upon my lip, Stepping, stepping, to the end. As down the slanting path I wend, "Stepping westward," all that be, Body and soul, by land or sea, Follow still the westering sun; That must end which has begun. W. B. SCOTT. From The Contemporary Review. IT is proposed in the following paper It will be desirable to commence with that great doctrine in astronomny which is often regarded as almost universally established. The doctrine to which we refer is known as the law of universal gravitation. It is customary to enunciate this law in the proposition that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force which varies directly as the product of the masses and inversely as the square of their distance. It is no doubt convenient to enunciate the great law in this very simple manner. It might seem awkward to have to specify all the qualifications which would be necessary if that enunciation is to assert no more than what we absolutely know. Perhaps many people believe, or think they believe, the law to be true in its general form; yet the assertion that the law of gravitation is universally true is an enormous, indeed an infinite, exaggeration of the actual extent of our information. the evidence for the statement that the earth revolves around the sun. Concrete truths of this kind could be multiplied indefinitely. We can make similar assertions with regard to the planets. We can assert that the planets rotate upon their axes, and that the planets revolve around the sun. But the law of gravitation is a proposition of quite a different nature. Let us examine briefly the evidence by which this law has been established. The science of dynamics is founded upon certain principles known as the laws of motion. The simplest of these principles asserts that a body once set moving in a straight line will continue to move on uniformly forever in the same straight line, unless some force be permitted to act upon that body. For nature as we know it, this law seems to be fully proved. It has been tested in every way that we have been able to devise. All these tests have tended to confirm that law. The law is therefore believed to be true, at all events throughout the regions of space accessible to us and to our telescopes. Assuming this law and the other principles analogous to it, we can apply them to the case of the revolution of the earth around the sun. As the earth is not moving in a straight line, it must be acted upon by some force. It can be shown that this force must be directed towards the sun. It will further appear that the intensity of this force will vary inversely as the square of the distance between the earth and the sun. The movements of the planets can be To make this clear, let us contrast the made to yield the same conclusions. All law of gravitation as generally stated with these movements can be accounted for on the proposition which asserts that the the supposition that each planet is at earth rotates on its axis. No one who is tracted by the sun with a force which capable of understanding the evidence on varies directly as the product of the the question can doubt that the earth masses, and inversely as the square of really does rotate upon its axis. I pur- the distance between the two bodies. posely set aside any difficulties of a quasi- When more careful observations are inmetaphysical character, and speak merely troduced it is seen that the planets exhibit of words in their ordinary acceptation. some slight deviations from the moveIn stating that the earth rotates upon its ments which they would have were each axis we assert merely a definite proposi- planet only acted upon by the attraction tion as regards one body, all the facts of the sun. These deviations do not inwhich the assertion involves are present validate the principle of attraction. They to our minds, and we know that the asser- have been shown to arise from the mution must be true. Equally conclusive is │tual attractions of the planets themselves. The tails of comets, so far from being attracted towards the sun, seem actually to be repelled from the sun. Nor is even this an adequate statement of the case. The repulsive force by which the tails of the comets are driven from the sun is sometimes a very much more intense force than the attraction of gravitation. I have no intention to discuss here the vexed question as to the origin of the tails of comets. I do not now inquire whether the repulsion by which the tail is produced be due to the intense radiation from the sun, or to electricity, or to some other agent. It is sufficient for our present purpose to note that, even if the tails of comets do gravitate towards the sun, the attraction is obscured by a more powerful repulsive force. Each of the planets is thus seen to attract | comets, which certainly do not appear to each of the other planets. The intensity follow the law of universal attraction? of this attraction between any pair of the planets is proportional to the masses of these planets, and varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. We may use similar language with regard to the satellites by which so many of the planets are attended. Each satellite revolves around its primary. The movements of each satellite are mainly due to the preponderating attraction of the primary. Irregularities in the movements of the satellites are well known to astronomers, but these irregularities can be accounted for by the attraction of other bodies of the system. The law of attraction thus seems to prevail among the small bodies of the system as well as among the large bodies. It is true that there are still a few outstanding discrepancies which cannot yet be said to have been completely accounted for by the principle of gravitation. This is probably due to the difficulties of the subject. The calculations which are involved are among the most difficult on which the mind of man has ever been engaged. We may practically assume that the law of gravitation is universal between the sun, the planets, and the satellites; and we may suppose that the few difficulties still outstanding will be finally cleared away, as has been the case with so many other seeming discrepancies. But even when these admissions have been made, are we in a position to assert that the law of gravitation is universal throughout the solar system? We are here confronted with a very celebrated difficulty. Do those erratic objects known as comets acknowledge the law of gravitation? There can be no doubt that in one sense the comets do obey the law of gravitation in a most signal and emphatic manner. A comet usually moves in an orbit of very great eccentricity; and it is one of the most remarkable triumphs of Newton's discovery, that we were by its means able to render account of how the movements of a comet could be produced by the attraction of the sun. As a whole, the comet is very amenable to gravitation, but what are we to say as to the tails of The solar system is a very small object when viewed in comparison with the dimensions of the sidereal system. The planets form a group nestled up closely around the sun. This little group is separated from its nearest visible neighbors in space by the most appalling distances. A vessel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is not more completely isolated from the shores of Europe and America than is our solar system from the stars and other bodies which surround it in space. Our knowledge of gravitation has been most entirely obtained from the study of the bodies in the solar system. Let us inquire what can be ascertained as to the existence of this law in other parts of the universe. Newton knew nothing of the existence of the law of gravitation beyond the confines of the solar system. A little more is known now. Our actual knowledge of the existence of gravitation in the celestial spaces outside the solar system depends entirely upon those very interesting objects known as binary stars. There are in the heav ens many cases of two stars occurring quite close together. A well-known instance is presented in the star Epsilon Lyræ, where two stars are so close together that it is a fair test of good vision to be able to separate them. But there are many cases in which the two stars are |