tricity. For the multitude the discovery is no less wonderful; it adds one more to the marvels of science. To photograph in total darkness seems inexplicable; but that we should be able to photograph through walls of wood, or through solid and opaque bodies, is little short of a miracle. We shall now be able to realize Dickens's fancy when he made Scrooge perceive through Marley's body the two brass buttons on the back of his coat. We shall now be able to discover photographically the position of a bullet in a man's body. Even stone walls will not a prison make to the revelations of the camera. SILVANUS P. THOMPSON. artist by the coat-tails on to the Craig, the picture was obtained, which I venture to think, amply rewards us for our trouble. The members of an eminent northern natural history society visited the Craig about a fortnight afterwards for the same purpose, and from the insurmountable character of the difficulties which presented themselves, had to return empty-handed. Nobody who has essayed the same task will much blame them. "British Birds' Nests," by R. Kearton (Cassell & Co.). An Adventure with the Camera.-The, from a more secure footing, held the picture of the Solan goose was obtained about four o'clock in the morning on Ailsa Craig, and so early in the season that the birds had not settled down seriously to business of incubation, and is of especial value and interest to us on account of the adventures we encountered on that "beetling crag." In getting down to the edge of the cliff, my brother placed too much dependence upon the stability of a large slab of rock, which treacherously commenced to slither down the terribly steep hillside at a great pace directly it received his additional weight. He narrowly managed to save himself and the camera, with which he was encumbered at the time, from being shot over the lip of the precipice, and sustaining a fall of several hundred feet into the sea below. We took five photographs of the gannet sitting on her nest, each at closer range, and although she was ill at ease while all this was going on, by working deftly we established ourselves somewhat in her confidence and got close enough to obtain the picture forming the frontispiece of this work. When everything was ready, as if by the malicious intervention of some unkind fate, the screw affixing the camera to the tripod suddenly dropped out, and the apparatus toppled over seawards. It was well on its way to what the Americans describe as "everlasting smash" when my brother, by a dexterous catch, stopped it from striking a piece of rock, off which it would have rebounded and finally disappeared over the cliff. By the aid of some strong feather shafts (the only materials available) we managed to fix up, after a fashion, our apparatus again, and whilst the artist held the camera on to the tripod, and the author, A Danger of the Manchester Canal.— Something like a panic has, it is said, arisen on the Liverpool Exchange, owing to the death of one well-known merchant and the serious illness of several others. All were members of a party who accepted an invitation of the Manchester Cotton Brokers' Association to travel from Liverpool to Manchester by the Ship Canal journey complaints were made as to the on September 21. During the foul smell arising from the canal when its waters were stirred up by the steamboat. So distasteful was this to some members of the party that they left the boat at the first stopping place, and returned to Manchester. It is confidently asserted that the illness of several members of the party and the death of one are to be attributed to infection contracted from the waters of the canal during the picnic. This theory appears hardly to have been proved, but it is not disputed that a considerable quantity of sewage finds its way into the canal. British Medical Journal. Temple Bar, 567 572 VII. JOHANNESBURG THE GOLDEN, VIII. THE SELAMLIK. By Mary A. M. Marks. Argosy, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded 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 copies of the LIVING AGE, 15 cents. SONNET. Ere baffled Winter, at fair Spring's first nod, His weakened forces northward home hath led, The maidens sitting round us sewed and span, And in their queenly manner bade us sing. While remnant drifts about our path I took the lute from Julia's shapely hand, And sang of her whose plighting-ring I wore, My Phyllis-fairest maid in all the land! Inspired, I sang as ne'er I sang before. Then Herrick followed; and with easy grace He sang of Julia's breath, Anthea's charms, Of Dianeme's form, Electra's face, And all the gracious curves of Silvia's arms. Willing I was to own the master-voice, Unwilling that my love should share my fall, When Herrick's whisper made my heart rejoice, "Thy Phyllis doth, I own, excel them all!" Temple Bar. T. BRUCE DILKS. From Blackwood's Magazine. HOW TO READ. "Few men learn the highest use of books." JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. After all, what is reading but an attempt to understand another mind? If so, to discuss How to Read is to discuss how best we may enter into the spirit and thoughts of another. In real life, when we really wish to strengthen our relationship with an acquaintance or a friend, we usually take great pains in the process. We are not satisfied with a few jerky sentences shouted at the top of our voices over an ice at an afternoon tea. Inanities between entrées at a dinner only exasperate us. We think three dances with two extras at a ball all too little. A tête-à-tête on the staircase only makes us have another in the corridor (I speak as a man). We call on rainy days, when the probability is that no one else will be there, and we persuade what people call the "object of our attentions" to come into a corner and sit opposite the window. We all know with what persistance this little game of chance-and skill-is played. Well, why not the same with a book? Bacon likens good books to "true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble." "Books," says Milton, "are not abso lutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay, they doe preserve as in a violl that purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them." If so, a good book is not a thing to be judged of by a cursory glance. It often takes a long time and much insight to understand and enter into the charac ter of another. It is the same with many a book. Into a good book a great man puts the best part of his mind; it may need not a little trouble on the part of a smaller mind to become acquainted with it. But suppose we first ask, quite sim. ply and candidly, What is the object of our reading?-to answer which simple. looking question would perhaps to some people be a puzzle indeed. Reading, to some people, is a mere pass-time, a mere kill-time, we might call it. I was travelling not long ago with a portly matron, the mother of great grown-up sons and daughters, and in a fair way towards being a grandmother, who told me quite artlessly that what she loved above all things was reading lovestories. Well, at her age perhaps that was, after all, not so unhealthy a taste. It showed, at all events, that she had settled her creed; had formed her ideas, or was content to lack ideas, about the constitution of the world and its rela tion to its Maker; was untroubled by misgivings as to whether she had gained correct, or gained any, estimates of science or philosophy, of history or art; she had done her work in the world, and was now resting from her labors and reading stories. And I see no valid reason why she should not. She had no need to develop the intellect or to expand the emotions. At her age experience was ripe and the mind matured, and the store of information she had laid up was doubtless sufficient for all the purposes of her life. But for youth and health and strength, for young men and maidens to do this, that surely is a different matter. Youth should read-What for? Surely to settle a creed, or at least to discover grounds for believing few things credible; to form ideas, or to give reasons for lacking them, about the constitution of the world and its relation to its Maker; to gain estimates of philosophy and science, history and art; to learn something of man, of nature, and of human life; to obtain relief from care or recreation from toil; to quicken our perceptions of beauty; to make keen our conceptions of truth; to give clarity to thought, and learn expression for emotion; to plumb the deeps of friendship and take the altitude of love; to study character as depicted by those who could read it; to watch how great lives have wrestled with problems of life; to set us standards and samples of nobility; to "cheer us with books of rich and believing men;" to seek solution for those doubts which come when intellects of different calibre and conviction clash; to find assuagement for the pangs which stimulating) of this appetite, with the pierce sundered hearts; to "maintain around us the 'infinite illusion' which makes action easier;" to "stir in us the primal sources of feeling which keep human nature sweet;" to "familiarize ourselves with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence." It is this sort of reading, I take it, which alone deserves discussion. Reading, it is safe to say, is a lost art. And what has killed it is the spread of reading. This is not a paradox, it is simple truth. Mr. Joseph Ackland, in the Nineteenth Century, assures us, and proves by tabulated statistics, that during the last quarter of a century "the force of the intellectual wave seems to have been almost exhausted," and "the general drift [is] away from solid, and in the direction of more scrappy and discursive, literature"-the literature of "Tit-Bits," "Pick-Me-Up" and Somebody's "Society News." It is the spread of such reading as this that has killed reading in the true sense of the word. Mr. Ackland's sarcasms, indeed, are pointed chiefly at what some regard as the failure of the Elementary Education Act. But surely it is hardly to be expected that those whom that act was passed to reach would, so soon as they were taught to read, read Milton, Ruskin, or Sir Thomas Browne. Being taught to read, quite naturally they want something after their own kind to read, and "Tit-Bits," "Pick-Me-Up," and Somebody's "Society News" arise to supply the want. It is vain to suppose that because the masses have gone to school they will at once read the "Areopagitica," "Ethics of the Dust," or the "Quincunxial Lozenge." In time they may; but at present they read only the penny dreadful and the shilling shocker. But Mr. Ackland's lament refers very truthfully to more than the masses. This habit of discursive and indiscriminate reading is widespread. Very tempting books, too, are daily manufactured to order (like boilers and boots) for the appeasing (and for the further 1 Nineteenth Century, vol. xxxv. pp. 412-423. March, 1894. result that there spring up six-shilling shockers and thirty-one-and-sixpenny dreadfuls, certainly far above the level of "Tit-Bits," "Pick-Me-Up," and Somebody's "Society News," but as certainly far below that of Milton, Ruskin, or Sir Thomas Browne. Seventy years ago Hazlitt complained of the "rage manifested by the greater part of the world for reading new books;" and thirty years ago "we cannot read, . . . we have despised literature," averred Mr. Ruskin. So it is no new thing this avidity for novelty. But I doubt whether it was worth a whole denunciatory essay by Hazlitt, or two diatribic lectures by Ruskin. For myself, I should be inclined to say of the confirmed novelreader as was said of Ephraim, he is joined to idols, let him alone. For it will be found, as a rule, that those who read nothing but new books rarely know a good book from a bad one. Carlyle was fond of dividing books as, in the New Testament, is divided humanity, into sheep and goats. Well, the reader addicted to fiction is not likely to recognize even this broad distinction, and perhaps, when a slave to his habit, will even prefer goat to sheep. Another characteristic of the devourer of the ephemeral novel is that he or she rarely remembers anything but the shadowy impression left by such perusal; so much so, that one might not unhandsomely compare the effect upon the mind of such vapid reading to the shadows cast upon the earth by passing clouds, which only obscure the vivifying sunlight of a truly good and great author. Nothing is more certain than that you cannot have sunlight and a sky full of clouds at one and the same time. A long course of minor authors creates a distaste for a great one. The effect of a great author on a mind unbeclouded it is indeed a pleasure to see. Some months ago I lent to a young lady my five volumes of Jowett's translation of Plato. it was her first introduction to Plato. To-day I received from her a note, and in it this is what she says-I hope she will pardon my quoting her |