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is a well-understood thing that the salary is not adequate to the expenses, in others a minister can only save by exposing himself to constant disparagement for inhospitality and stinginess.

it must work. Very little of that wealth grades that are tolerably paid; and while in reaches the devout believer in gentlemanly some embassies, such as St. Petersburg, it professions. All his pasture grounds are drying up year by year. Success in the law is both rarer and less lucrative than it was, and what remains of it is reserved as a marriage portion for the sons-in-law of attorneys. The newspapers are filled with the The government and the church are not wails of the starving clergy, unable to live to blame for the scanty pittances with which without help, and forbidden by law to help they secure for their service the best talents themselves. There are still prizes in the and energy of the country. Like prudent Church, no doubt; but there is no system of employers, they refuse to give higher pay promotion by which a man without personal than the state of the labor market exacts. or party interest can even hope to attain a So long as there are hundreds of foolish competence. There is nothing in this world young men willing to enter upon a desolate so desolate as the prospects of a curate who life and a hopeless career, and to esteem has neither party leader nor rich patron to themselves adequately paid by that arbitrary befriend him-in other words, of at least seal of respectability which costs nothing to one-half of those who yearly resort to the the giver and in no way benefits the receiver, church as a means of livelihood. They be- so long they would be equally foolish if they gin at eighty pounds a year; and an adver- offered higher terms. But the system is far tisement for a curate on this salary will from working well, though they cannot be bring in a score of applications. Then their held responsible for its defects. Compelled usual course is to marry and beget nine chil- by the phantom of gentility, the men endren; and the ultimate goal of their ambi-dure to go on with all the miseries of a cation is a Peel district of a hundred and fifty reer which promises them nothing; but they pounds a year. The daughters become the are not contented. The patriarchal but starvdrudge governesses at ten shillings a week ing curate, the despairing lieutenant in an -the sons would probably be only too thank- unwholesome station, the gray-headed govful for the clerkship which their father dis- ernment clerk who has risen by gradual prodained as a loss of caste. We do not of motion to the pinnacle of three hundred course speak of the minority, who take or- pounds a year, have all had early friends ders from a higher motive than self-mainte- who were less trammelled by gentility, and nance. This class of minds would probably who, in colonial or commercial life, have look upon the wife and nine children as un-grown fat upon their freedom. They forget necessary adjuncts until they could support them. The navy is scarcely a more cheerful prospect for the poor wretch who has not interest to push him on. A station in the Bight of Benin, a broken constitution, and a lieutenant's half-pay is the reward to which hundreds have been conducted by the boyish desire of wearing epaulets. Of course, the navy has more to offer in time of war. A lucky captain may make a small fortune out of prizes; and if he fails, he may at least comfort himself with such solace as patriotic reflections can afford. But the brokenhearted, threadbare, half-pay officer, who may be met with in almost every country town in England, has known very little of war. The army is wholly beside the question, because it is now admitted to be a pastime for the rich and a sustenance for the poor. It is notorious that a man cannot live upon his pay, and if he could, he must buy the privilege of doing so at a price larger than the pay is worth. If a man has only £6000 he had far better invest it in Rupee five per cent than in buying the steps up to a colonelcy. Of diplomacy it is also needless to say much. It is only the higher

that their pay has been according to contract, supplemented with the rations of gentility for which they bargained, for their early illusions as to its value have probably been modified; and they vent their wrath at the disheartening contrast in bitter maledictions against the ingratitude of their country. These grumblers do not make efficient servants. They are apt to look on their engagement as a Shylock's covenant, and not to give a drop of service beyond what is written in the bond; and the cleverer and the more ambitious they are, the bitterer their discontent at finding that what they call their devotion to their country has distanced them in the race of life. It is one of the evils of the new system of competition, that this class of sullen malcontents is likely to increase rather than diminish. The dulness that used to reign in government offices was thickskinned and complacent, and penetrated to the last with a thankful conviction of its own intense respectability. With so much of conscious dignity to reward them, the older race of clerks were patient of scanty salaries; but this delusion is not likely to prevail with the sharper wits whom the com

petitive examinations are bringing into the offices. The gentility superstition will drive even clever lads into the dismal career of a government clerkship; but it will hardly, when they are middle-aged men, comfort them for what they have done. Of course all this discontent would be removed if a healthier feeling prevailed as to the choice of an occupation. If professions were selected without any regard to the caste they

would confer, no one would be satisfied with government pay as it is now, either in the civil or military services. It would no doubt be an acute suffering to Mr. Gladstone to be obliged to raise his estimates; but the nation would be the gainer. The exchequer might suffer for a time from the necessity of greater liberality, but a heartier and more genuine service would more than make up the loss.

QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.President Buchanan to Queen Victoria.-To her Majesty Queen Victoria,-I have learned from the public journals that the Prince of Wales is about to visit your Majesty's North American dominions. Should it be the intention of his Royal Highness to extend his visit to the United States I need not say how happy I should be to give him a cordial welcome to Washington. You may be well assured that everywhere in this country he will be greeted by the American people in such a manner as cannot fail to prove gratifying to your Majesty. In this they will manifest their deep sense of your domestic virtues, as well as their convictions of your merits as a wise, patriotic, and constitutional sovereign.-Your Majesty's most obedient JAMES BUCHANAN.

servant,

Washington, June 4, 1860.

QUEEN VICTORIA TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.

Buckingham Palace, June 22, 1860.

My Good Friend,-I have been much gratified at the feelings which prompted you to write to me, inviting the Prince of Wales to come to Washington. He intends to return from Canada through the United States; and it will afford him great pleasure to have an opportunity of testifying to you in person that these feelings are fully reciprocated by him. He will thus be able, at the same time, to mark the respect which he entertains for the chief magistrate of a great and friendly state and kindred nation.

The Prince of Wales will drop all royal state on leaving my dominions, and travel under the name of Lord Renfrew, as he has done when travelling on the continent of Europe.

The Prince Consort wishes to be kindly remembered to you.

I remain, ever your good friend,

VICTORIA R.

Chateaubriand's sister, the Countess de Marigny, whose one hundredth birthday was noticed some weeks ago as having made a sensation at Dinan, died at that place July 17.

MIND AND MATTER.-Isaac Taylor, in his Physical Theory of Another Life (ed. Bell and Daldy, 1857), p. 17, says:—

"The doctrine of the materialist, if it were followed out to its extreme consequences, and consistently held, is plainly atheistic, and is therefore incompatible with any and with every form of religious belief. It is so because, in af firming that mind is nothing more than the product of animal organization, it excludes the belief of a pure and ancreated mind-the cause of all things; for if there be a supreme mind, absolutely independent of matter, then, unquestionably, there may be created minds, also independent."

To this it may be added, that a person who asserts that mind is the secretion of the brain, may be placed on the same level as a man who declares that one of Beethoven's Sonatas is the secretion of the piano.

-Notes and Queries.

JOHN PAVIN PHILLIPS.

MESSRS. W. and G. Young, of Leith, sent out in some of their vessels engaged in the Greenland whale fishery, harpoons poisoned with prus sic acid. This was so arranged that as the line was drawn tight, the poison was injected into the wound made by the harpoon. One ship so provided met with a fine whale. The harpoon was deeply and skilfully buried in its body; the leviathan immediately "sounded," or dived perpendicularly downwards, but in a very short time the rope relaxed, and the whale rose to the surface quite dead; but the men were so appalled by the terrific effect of the poisoned harpoon that they declined to use any more of them.

Roman Catholics seem to consider that variety in the form of worship of the blessed Virgin is a test of devotion; she is our "Lady of Charity," our "Lady of Victories," and a thousand other names, and now it is announced that a new mode of devotion is invented under the style of our "Lady of the Legion of Honor."

From The Economist.

The Sources of the Nile: being a General
Survey of the Basin of that River, and
of its Head-Streams; with the History of
Nilotic Discovery. By Charles T. Beke,

Ph.D. James Madden.

north. On all these sides, however, have we during centuries persisted in our endeavors to penetrate inwards, while the east coast has been unattempted and remained almost totally unknown. And yet it is in this direction that the interior of intertropical Africa is approachable with the greatest facility.

THE volume before us is based on an "Of the physical character and climate of essay "On the Nile and its Tributaries," Eastern Africa a general outline is given in my contributed by Dr. Beke to the Royal Geo-Essay on the Nile and its Tributaries; and I graphical Society at the close of the year cannot do better than repeat, on the present oc1846, and on various subsequent papers casion, the concluding remarks there made on which bring down the history of these geo-acter of the plateau of Eastern Africa cannot the subject: This survey of the physical chargraphical investigations to the present time. be concluded without special attention being diThe last few years, as Dr. Beke points out, rected to a most important practical result which have been marked rather by an intelligent it affords. It is, that the castern coast of that and consistent reconstruction of the map of continent presents facilities for the exploration the district in accordance with ascertained of the interior very superior to those possessed information than by any great accession of by the western coast. For, when the narrow geographical facts. The result has been the belt of low land along the shores of the Indian establishment of what Dr. Beke claims as a Ocean-which, from its general dryness, arising special theory of his own. "The principal from the absence of large rivers, is far from unmountain system of Africa," he observes, healthy at most seasons of the year-is onco "is now found to extend from north to south, passed, and the eastern edge of the elevated table land is attained, a climate is met with in proximity to the Red Sea and the Indian which is not merely congenial to European conOcean, instead of running across the conti- stitutions, but is absolutely more healthy than nent from east to west, as shown in all maps, that of most countries. I speak from the exboth ancient and modern, excepting only perience of upwards of two years passed on the those recently constructed, in which the high land under circumstances any thing but fa'Mountains of the Moon' are laid down in vorable. Here, that is to say, on the edge of accordance with my views." A more impor- the elevated plateau, and not in the low desert tant result from this theory was pointed out country along the sea coast,-settlers might tako to her majesty's government by Dr. Beke as up their permanent residence, without apprehenlong ago as 1852. The vast continent of sions as to the effects of the climate at any period of the year; while travellers might wait in Africa has hitherto "remained, as it were, a safety, and even with advantage to their health, sealed book" to civilized Europe, and this till suitable opportunities should present themhas been attributed to its "arid and inhos- selves for penetrating westward into the interior; pitable character, its want of navigable rivers, and, in the event of their having to retrace their and the barbarism of its inhabitants. But, steps, they would only return upon a healthy active as all these causes may have been, and delightful country, where they might remain and still continue to be, recent discoveries till the proper season should arrive for their jourhave shown that they are far from being true ney down to the coast. On the other hand, the to the extent generally attributed to them; notoriously such, that few can long withstand its climate of the western coast, even far inland, is for it is now demonstrated that Africa pos- baneful influences; while a traveller is necessi sesses fertile and genial regions, large riv- tated to press forwards, whatever may be the ers and lakes, and an immense population, time of the year, whatever the condition of the which, if not civilized, is yet to a consider- country, whatever even his state of health. And able extent endowed with kindly manners, should he from sickness or any other unforeseen humane dispositions, and industrious hab-circumstance, be compelled to abandon his jourits."

"The fundamental cause," Dr. Beke proceeds
to say,
"of the erroneous notions prevalent re-
specting Africa, is that Europeans have always
approached that continent in a wrong direction.
Towards the north, the districts skirting the
Mediterranean Sea are cut off from the other

portions of the continents by the rainless sands
of the great Desert; towards the west, the cli-
mate truly exercises those baneful influences on
European constitutions which have stamped
their mark on the rest of the continent; towards
the south, the forms of the peninsula, which
there runs almost to a point, prevents ready ac-
cess to the vast internal regions further to the

ney,
he must do so with the painful knowledge,
that the further be retrogrades the more un-
healthy are the districts which he has to traverse,
and the less likelihood there is of his ever reach-
ing the coast, more fatal than all the rest.'

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The ancients, as Dr. Beke, following the steps of Heeren, points out, were well acquainted with the fact now only beginning to be recognized by the modern world. Commerce has left the footprints of her former achievements in "a chain of ruins extending from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean." And with commerce have been introduced to a considerable extent the

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however, within the same limits, it receives three tributaries, the Atbara, the Bahr-el-Azrek or Blue River, and the Sobat or Telfi, having their origin in the elevated table land of Abessinia."

ideas of religious faith which are prevalent "A peculiarity of the Nile scarcely less singu in these districts. lar, is that for upwards of six hundred and fifty geographical miles above the point just men"As regards Africa, the fact is indisputable-tioned or in all full two thousand miles from its and it is one which is pregnant with inferences mouths, the river receives no affluent whatever -that the greatest movement of the population on its left or western side. On its eastern side, is from west to east and from east to west; pilgrims from the remotest regions of Western and North-Western Africa traversing the entire breadth of the continent, on their way to and from the Caaba and the tomb of their prophet and lawgiver. And this, indeed, is the road which has unalterably been trodden during countless ages; for it existed long before the time of Mohammed, who merely dedicated to the worship of the one true God the world-rcnowned fane of the idols of the Sabæans.

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The first of these branches, called also the "Bahr-el-Aswad or the Black River," from the quantity of black earth brought down by it during the rains, "is most important, because it contributes the largest amount of "The pilgrims who frequent Mecca are al- the slime which manures and fertilizes the land of Egypt.' most of necessity merchants trading from place The third great tributary to place as the sole means of enabling them to of the Nile-of which the Sobat is a feeder perform their journey. And it is by the same-known generally as the "Bahr-el-Abyad, simple means that the Mohammedan religion or White River," "is of great magnitude, has attained its great development throughout Central Africa-not by any zealous and expensive, or indeed intentional, propagandism, but by the casual communication between these Moslem merchant pilgrims and the rude Pagans through whose countries their route happens to pass. The strict outward devotional forms of the Mohammedans, and their constant mixing up of religious invocations in the ordinary processes of life, are no doubt mainly instrumental in bringing about these results."

and is said to contribute to the river nearly a moiety of its waters." Its main stream might, however, rather, according to Dr. Beke, be called the "Black River," on account of the color of its filthy, stagnant, unwholesome water. The water of the Sobat, on the other hand, is stated to be actually white. After devoting separate chapters to the description of the Black, Blue, and White Rivers, with their respective feeders, and been able to obtain respecting each of them, tracing historically the knowledge we have Dr. Beke arrives at his critical chapter entitled "The True Nile and its Sources." As we decline taking upon ourselves the responwill quote the author's own words:— sibility of so important a communication, we

The name of Mohammed has been introduced into regions wholly ignorant of his divine claims, simply by the chant of the native Pagans who towed the vessels on the Nile, caught up from the Mussulman crews. In speaking of the sources of the Nile, Dr. Beke uses the expression in the most general sense, "as meaning all the head- "There are two rules for determining which streams that take their rise at the extreme of the various head-streams of a river is entitled limits of the basin of that river, along the to be regarded as its upper course, and conse water-parting between it and the contermin-quently to bear the name borne by the united stream lower down. The one rule is theoretical ous basins of other African rivers flowing towards the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the By the former the greater length and size and or natural, the other is practical or conventional. Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, or (as in the general direction of the valley or basin of the case of some Asiatic, American, and also the river are the main considerations. By the other African rivers) forming separate inland latter it is the first acquaintance which the inhydrographical systems unconnected with habitants or discoverers of the valley of the main the ocean. Proceeding with this under-stream may make with one of its branches (or standing, our author points first to the re- the converse), that causes the name of the formarkable fact that

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mer to be carried over to the latter.

"In the case of the great river of Africa it "For a distance of more than thirteen hun- fortunately happens, that through the far greater dred geographical miles from the Mediterranean, portion of its course both rules are applicable; into which it discharges its waters by several the direct and main stream having been the first mouths, this mighty river, the largest of the known and first explored. Herodotus and all African continent, and probably unsurpassed in writers anterior to Ptolemy concur in describing length by any river in the whole world, is a the Nile as coming from the west, and the first single stream. Fed by the copious rains of the explorers on record, namely, Nero's two cen tropics collected by its innumerable head-streams turions, passing by the mouths of the Astobaras in the south, it is able to contend with the burn- or Atbara, the Astapus or Abai, and the Astaing sun and the scarcely less burning sands of sobas or Sobat,-all three affluents of the Nile Nubia and Egypt throughout this extent of on its right or castern bank,-penetrated up the country, without the aid of a single tributary;-main-stream, in a direction always tending tow a phenomenon presented by no other river. ards the west, as far as the ninth parallel of north

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years of age, with whom the traveller lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, and from whose mouth he received some minute and circumstantial details respecting certain works, constructed in Shoa, by Lalibala, king of Abessinia, for the purpose of turning into or towards the Indian Ocean certain head-streams of the Nile within that kingdom."

Here, unfortunately, facts end and conjecture alone remains. The last pages of Dr. Beke's volume arc, we must say, rather disappointing to those who have been led on to that point by his somewhat too solemn prefatory axioms. The existence of these Lunar mountains is, we believe, still strenu-there, and from the fact that no account of that

ously denied. All the learned geographer
is able to say is:-

"It is, however, of little avail to reason on
insufficient data. This alone is certain, that
all the head-streams of the Nile must be thor-
oughly explored before it would be in our power
to finally and irrevocably to decide which among
them is entitled to the designation of the Source
of the Nile. Till then we must remain content
to own, with the poet-

"Half a century ago, Mr. Salt was led to doubt the tale, in consequence of the assurance given him by a native scribe, who had personally known Bruce in Abessinia, that Emmaha Yésus never visited Gondar during that traveller's stay prince's alleged visit is to be found in Bruce's original memoranda, where it could hardly have failed to be recorded. Since Salt's time, the kingdom of Shoa has been visited by several Europeans, myself among the number; and it is now known, as an historical fact, that the of the late King Sabela Selássye, lasted from reign of Emmaha Yésus, the great-grandfather 1742 to 1774; so that, in the year 1770, when Bruce pretends to have known that prince at Gondar, as a young man between twenty-six and twenty-eight years, who had brought tribute Arcanum natura caput non prodidit ulili, from his father as a vassal of the emperor, EmNec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."" maha Yésus had himself been upwards of twentyWhether, therefore, the "Tubiri," or the eight years seated on the throne of the indepen"Sobat," or any other of the feeders of the dent kingdom of Shoa. It might be shown that the description so elaborately given by Bruce, "White River" is to be considered as rep- on the pretended report of Emmaha Yésus, of resenting the ultimate head-stream of the the gigantic works constructed by King Lalibala Nile, and in what exact district, lake, or in the vicinity of Lake Zuwúi in Southern Abesmoon-mountains the "source" of the "Nile" sinia, is simply a romance. But it is needless is to be found,—remain as much as ever un- to pursue the subject. It is merely requisite to decided questions, although undoubtedly Dr. | remark that, so intimately has Bruce's circumBeke's volume simplifies the matter by re-stantial narrative associated King Lalibala and ducing the points which have to be discussed within a definite and comparatively narrow compass, and extinguishing those claims which are entirely beside the question.

Much of the interest of his volume con-
sists in the subjects incidentally discussed.
Among these, the possibility of turning the
course of the waters of the Nile away from
Egypt and discharging them into the Red
Sea is one of the most curious. "In the
beginning of the sixteenth century, it was a
matter of popular belief in Europe that the
king of Abessinia could prevent the Nile
from flowing down into Egypt, and that the
ruler of the latter country had in conse-
quence to pay
him a large yearly tribute."
Dr. Beke is extremely hostile throughout
his volume to the celebrated traveller Bruce,
whom he accuses, on the alleged authority
of that traveller's own journals, of wilful
misstatements and pure inventions in his
published works. On the point of turning
the Nile, he brands as apocryphal a story
alleged by Bruce to have been told him "by
Emmaha Yésus, Prince of Shoa, a young
man between twenty-six and twenty-eight

Lake Zuwai with the traditional history, and so thoroughly have, on his authority, those two ideas become blended with the primary one, that subsequent travellers and writers have taken their connection for granted, and have treated the subject as if Bruce's fallacious commentary were an integral and essential portion of the original tradition.

The time has however arrived when the whole of these erroneous notions may be discarded. The Astaboras, Atbara or Tákkazye, is the Nile' of Elmazin, Cantacuzene and Albuquerque: and the channel by which its waters Artemidorus' branch' of that river, or the lower might he made to pass into the Red Sea is course of the Khor-el-Gash.

"At the present day the plain country lying on the eastern side of the Atbara, formerly subject to the Axumite or Ethiopian monarchs, is occupied by tribes of doubtful origin, who continue to avail themselves of the facilities afforded by the physical character of the land, for diverting the course of the river flowing through it, gions lying lower down the stream; though in and preventing its waters from reaching the rethis instance it is not the Atbara itself, but the Khor-el-Gash, on which the operation is performed.

"M. Ferdinand Werne, who in 1840 accom

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