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as to eliminate the initial difference between man and man in each class, and produce uniform types of workers, soldiers, and the like. But in such a case, what is instinct but a degradation of intelligence, producing perhaps a higher level of work but a lower type of mind.

From The Spectator.

HENRY G. WREFORD.

offspring the whole permanent instinct | human community in which the system of architecture and social polity of her of caste might become so stereotyped the power of heredity cannot be denied, because the facts do not admit of any other explanation, except on the hypothesis of the existence of some additional sense which, owing to the limitation of our own, we could by no possible means comprehend. The growth of instinct, if the theory of its development given above is correct, should be a process of abnormal length, and it would almost follow that the antiquity of species could be estimated from the degree of perfection in which instinct is exhibited. The difference of structure and diversity of needs in different animals, in some so simple and in others so complex, need not weaken this conclusion, if we only compare those in which the order of daily life is somewhat similar. The life-history of the hive-bee would seem to demand a far longer period for its complex instinct to become stereotyped than the life-history of the solitary species; and man, with his few forms of instinctive action and reliance on individual intelligence, would be assigned a place among the latest developments of nature. Our knowledge of the facts of instinct is as yet too ill-assorted for the construction of more than a working hypothesis as to its origin; and until the question of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is more completely answered than it is at present, the whole structure hangs on a doubtful link. But there is one point on which the theory of instinct which M. Houssay reproduces is eminently satisfactory, though he does not claim it as au argument for its value. It accounts for the uniformity and subordination of individuals in the life of the social animals and social insects, which is almost inexplicable on any other hypothesis. That thousands of beings so intelligent as the bee can live together and exercise an intelligence which is used solely for the good of the community, and never for the personal advantage or aggrandizement of an individual, transcends reason, as we understand it. Yet it is just possible to conceive a

MR. HENRY G. WREFORD, for fifty years the Times correspondent in southern Italy, deserves something more than a passing word of comment. He was one of the few genuine heroes of the pen, the men who reflect lustre on the most ephemeral and least honored of all serious professions. There have been and are among special correspondents plenty of brave men, who have behaved like volunteers in a forlorn hope, and have faced death in the performance of duty with a daring uninspired by the hope of honors or by that feeling of fidelity to a flag which, with so many otherwise commonplace natures, has operated like a religion; but Mr. Wreford had a courage which was in some respects beyond them all. He had contracted, early in his service with the Times, a deep pity for the people of Naples, who repaid him at first with incessant insult, and a deep horror of the foul Bourbon court, that "negation of God erected into a system," as Mr. Gladstone described it, which at that time tyrannized over their destinies. Most Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone perhaps excepted, have forgotten it; but there has never existed elsewhere in Europe anything like this government, which defended itself with Swiss mercenaries, used as instruments the wretched lazzaroni of the capital, and ruled the respectable classes like a pasha in Algiers or Tunis, punishing the slightest opposition by imprisonment, often lifelong, in dungeons which were, without aid from rhetoric, describable as mere wells. Unless an

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ambassador, no man's life or liberty | Wreford been a Neapolitan, he would was safe if he were denounced by one have died in torture. The king, howof a myriad spies; and for years even ever, who was by far the best-informed the pleasure-lovers of Europe avoided man in his dominions, understood perthe delicious kingdom like a lazar- fectly well that the kingdom of the house. Mr. Wreford set himself to Two Sicilies alone among European bring European opinion to bear on this kingdoms lay at the mercy of the Britden of horrors, and for seventeen years ish fleet; that two men-of-war would he persevered unflinchingly in his cut him off from Sicily, and one call work. He was recognized after a little Naples into insurrection; that he was while as one of the most "dangerous coldly disliked by the very powers of opponents, as a man who was turn- which protected him; and that, if ing all Europe against the king's gov- Switzerland recalled her children, he ernment; and the devotees of that would be left face to face with subjects horrible court swore to have their re- who might adulate but could not devenge. He was shadowed perpetually fend him. He wanted no duel to the by spies; men suspected of sending death with either the Times or the information to him were treated like British Parliament, and as he was a criminals he was menaced with ruin dreaded master, Mr. Wreford just esby expulsion; and the populace were caped. During the whole of this period, excited against him till it was unsafe half an ordinary generation, Mr. Wrefor him to enter Naples. Darker ford, though by no means a man of the threats, too, were levelled against him soldier type, but rather a retiring and by the zealots of the court party. He sensitive civilian, with a habit of dehimself showed the writer one proof pression - he had been, we rather positive that men who could not have think, at one time a Nonconformist been punished had proposed his assas-minister-held unswervingly on his sination; that two plans at least for way, never concealing any truth he kidnapping him had been matured; knew, and striking sometimes fearful and that on one occasion a plot for blows at a system which latterly he drowning him had been within an ace came to hate almost beyond reason. of success. During one gloomy six His courage may have been of the months he held his life, as he believed, passive type, but he faced death, only from hour to hour, and owed it, worse, unfalteringly through years of as he thought, mainly to the protection feeble health, for the sake of men who of the British minister, and one or gave him nothing back, not even their two persons in a foreign embassy. In applause. He behaved, in fact, for reality he owed it, as after hearing his years as one of the bravest of mankind, narrative the writer could not but rec- and when at last the evil despotism fell ognize, to King Ferdinand, who was in a night as if struck down by the not the vulgar tyrant Englishmen be- God it had despised, the ease of its fall lieved, but a cool, shrewd cynic, who was in great part due to the horror of despised his subjects and most of his it which he had patiently spread through own agents, who was full of courage Europe, and which had at last reacted a quality in him which Mr. Gladstone on the monarchy itself. He was once recognized publicly after his plain man, though a cultivated one, death -and who was so completely simple in thought and in the expression king of the old Bourbon type, that he of his thought, with perhaps a faint would not stoop to crime against a poor vanity in his own skill in gathering indevil of a foreign correspondent who formation; but he did a knight's serowed him no allegiance. Had Mr. vice for Italy and for the world.

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Fifth Series, Volume LXXXIV.

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No. 2578.- December 2, 1893.

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From Beginning
Vol. OXOLX.

CONTENTS.

I. ATOMS AND SUNBEAMS. By Robert Ball, Fortnightly Review, .
II. A COMEDY OF ERRORS. By Katharine

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Blackwood's Magazine,

National Review,

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V. A STUDY FOR COLONEL NEWCOME. By
John W. Irvine,

VI. THE BAD PENNY,

VII. A POACHING STORY. By A Son of the
Marshes,

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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 copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

LONDON SNOW.

WHEN men were all asleep the snow came

flying,

So in our world of doubt, and death, and change,

The vision of eternity is sweet,

In large white flakes falling on the city The vision of eternity is strange !

brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and

loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy

town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down;

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof, and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches

seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

Its clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all awoke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled-marvelled at the daz

zling whiteness;

MRS. JAMES DARMESTETER.

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Content to leave, if you would have it so,

Your presence and continue, as before, His singing to the air -nor ask to know The fate of one poor word, till death's sweet shore

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the The truth or falseness of the song shall

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THE VISION.

SOMETIMES When I sit musing all alone
The sick diversity of human things
Into my soul, I know not how, there
springs

The vision of a world unlike our own.

O stable Zion, perfect, endless, one,

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"Dolce color dell' oriental zaffiro."

THE gross Etruscan felt within these skies
Only a fiery finger that pursued

His body till the glutton soul renewed
Its pastime in the painted tomb. Such lies
Otherwise
Their augurs spake to Heaven.

The seer of Florence saw, whose spirit,
thewed

By trial, soared unto the heights and viewed

The azure light that fell from Paradise.

Why hauntest thou a soul that hath no For, lo! Italia, risen from the Hell wings?

I look on thee as men on mirage-springs, Knowing the desert bears but sand and

stone.

Yet, as a passing mirror in the street

Of heathen gods and temples, dead and bare,

Awoke and mounted to the ardent air; By Roman virtue purged and taught to dwell

Aloof from earth, she read with chastened
eye

Flashes a glimpse of gardens out of range
Through some poor sick-room open to the A holier religion in her sky.

heat;

Academy.

ATOMS AND SUNBEAMS.

From The Fortnightly Review. the combustion of that great sphere of fuel could generate. We know, howIn recent years an important change ever, that the sun has been radiating has taken place in the manner in heat, not alone for thousands of years, which many physical problems are ap- but for millions of years. The existproached. The philosopher who now ence of fossil plants and animals would seeks an explanation of great nat- alone suffice to demonstrate this fact. ural phenomena not unfrequently finds We have thus to account for the exmuch assistance from certain remark-tremely remarkable circumstance that able discoveries as to the ultimate con- our great luminary has radiated forth stitution of matter. Many an obscure already a thousand times as much heat question in physics has been rendered clear when some of the properties of molecules have been brought to light. No doubt our knowledge of the natural history of the molecule is still vastly wanting in detail. It must, however, be admitted that we have traced an outline of that wonderful chapter in nature which is specially serviceable in the question which I now propose to discuss.

as could be generated by the combustion of a sphere of coal as big as the sun is at present, and yet, notwithstanding this expenditure in the past, physics declares that for millions of years to come the sun may continue to dispense light and heat to its attendant worlds with the same abundant prodigality. To have shown how the apparent paradox could be removed is one of the most notable achievements of the

The problem before us may be stated | great German philosopher.

in the following terms. We have to What Helmholtz did was to refer to illustrate how the sun is enabled to the obvious fact that the expenditure maintain its tremendous expenditure of light and heat without giving any signs of approaching exhaustion. It will be found that the atomic theory of the constitution of matter exhibits the mechanism of the process by which that capacity of the great luminary for supplying the radiation so vital to the welfare of mankind is sustained from age to age.

of heat by radiation must necessarily lead to shrinkage of the solar volume. This shrinkage has the effect of abstracting from a store of potential energy in the sun and transforming what it takes into the active form of heat. The transformation advances pari passu with the radiation, so that the loss of heat arising from the radiation is restored by the newly produced heat Let me here anticipate an objection derived from the latent reservoir. which may not improbably be raised. Such is an outline of the now famous Those who have paid attention to this doctrine universally accepted among subject are aware that the remarkable physicists. It fulfils the conditions of doctrine first propounded by Helmholtz the problem, and when tested by arithremoved all real doubt from the mat-metical calculation it is not found wantter. It is to this eminent philosophering.

we owe an explanation of what at first But the genuine student of nature seemed to be a paradox. He explained loves to get to the heart of a great how, notwithstanding that the sun ra- problem like this; he loves to be able diates its heat so profusely, no indica- to follow it, not through mere formulæ tions of the inevitable decline of heat or abstract principles, but so as to be can be as yet discovered. If the sun able to visualize its truth and feel its had been made of solid coal from centre certainty. He will, therefore, often to surface, and if that coal had been desire something in addition to the burned for the purpose of sustaining bare presentation of the theory as the radiation, it can be demonstrated above stated. It may be no doubt sufthat a few thousand years of solar ex- ficient for the mathematician to know penditure at the present rate would that the total potential energy in the suffice to exhaust all the heat which sun, due to the dispersed nature of its

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