HOW RUSKIN BROKE WITH CHRISTIANITY. MR. W. J. STILLMAN'S autobiography in the Atlantic Monthly is full of interesting matter. In the June number he tells how he went, at Ruskin's invitation, to spend the summer with him in Switzerland. He says: "More princely hospitality than his no man ever received, or more kindly companionship.”

A GHOST STORY.

He mentions one spookish incident which, being given on the authority of Ruskin, may claim some attention even from an incredulous public

a story which Ruskin told me of a locality in the valley of Chamouni, haunted by a ghost that could only be seen by children. It was the figure of a woman who raked the dead leaves, and when she looked up at them the children said they only saw a skull in place of a face. Ruskin sent to a neighbouring valley for a child who could know nothing of the legend, and went with him to the locality which the ghost was reported to haunt. Arrived there, he said to the boy, "What a lonely place! there is nobody here but ourselves.' "Yes, there is," said the child, "there is a woman there raking the leaves," pointing in a certain direction. "Let us go nearer to her," said Ruskin, and they walked that way, when the boy stopped and said that he did not want to go nearer, for the woman looked up, and he said that she had no eyes in her head, "only holes."

ON SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

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At Chamouni, on Sundays, Ruskin would write " sermon for a girls' school in which he was much interested, but not a line of drawing would he do." Mr. Stillman had always regarded the sanctity of the first day of the week as a theological fiction

so that this slavery to a formality in which Ruskin was held by his terrible conscience provoked me to the discussion of the subject. I declared that there was no authority for the transference of the weekly rest from the seventh to the first day of the week.

They went over the texts together which bore on the question; and Ruskin "could not make a defence " :—

It

The creed had so bound him to the letter that the least enlargement of the stricture broke it, and he rejected not only the tradition of the Sunday sabbath, but the whole of the ecclesiastical interpretation of the texts. He said, "If they have deceived me in this, they have probably deceived me in all." This I had not conceived as a possible consequence of the criticism of his creed, and it gave me great pain, for I was not a sceptic, as, I have since learned, he for a time became. was useless to argue with him for the spirit of the gospel-he had always held to its infallibility and the exactitude of doctrine, and his indignation was too strong to be pacified. He returned somewhat, I have heard, to his original beliefs in later days, as old men will to the beliefs of their younger years, for his Christianity was too sincere and profound for a matter of mistaken credence in mere formalities ever to affect its substance; and the years which followed showed that in no essential trait had the religious foundations of his character been moved. For myself, I was still a sincere believer in the substantial accuracy of the body of Christian doctrine, and the revolt of Ruskin from it hurt me deeply.

There is something almost comic as well as tragic in the idea of a dispute as to a first- or a seventh-day Sabbath upsetting the Christian faith of a soul like Ruskin's.

WHAT will probably attract the most attention in the Royal for July is Margaret Collinson's paper on the Queen and her family as artists, and in especial the two drawings by Her Majesty and the one by the Princess Royal. Bible readers may be interested to find in the fiction that the little captive maid of Naaman appears as the heroine of a love story.

A ROYAL ROAD TO EDUCATION.

IT would appear from an article by J. D. Quackenbos, in Harper's Magazine, that hypnotic suggestion is of immense educational value :

"Not only may dull minds be polished, unbalanced minds adjusted, gifted minds empowered to develop their talents, but the educating mind of the school-child may tread that royal road to learning which ancient philosophers sought for in vain; the matured mind of the scholar may be clothed with perceptive faculty, with keenest insight, tireless capacity for application, unerring taste; and the imaginative mind of painter, poet, musician, discoverer, may be crowned with creative efficiency in the line of ideals that are high and true."

The writer gives several examples of the effect of such treatment in cases of unnaturally stupid children with excellent results. In many of these cases the hypnotic treatment was persisted in for months, until the desired trend was permanently given to the mental and moral energies.

An instance is given of the treatment of a boy whose case was so serious that it was practically whether approaching insanity or congenital mental unbalance could be successfully treated by hypnotism.

After the lapse of some time devoted to hypnotic suggestion the boy's state was much improved. The writer says:—

A marked character change has certainly been effected. The boy is now docile, obedient and happy. The tangled faculties have been unravelled, and he has become rational and quick of comprehension.

It is, however, not alone the young who can benefit by this treatment. Mr. Quackenbos tells wonderful stories concerning its effect upon those requiring assistance in musical work :

Proficiency in piano-playing on the part of those who understand the technic is assured in a comparatively short time by suggestive instruction of this nature.

It is not even necessary that the suggestor should be possessed of musical ability. One case is cited in which a singer was cured of hoarseness, a thickened condition of the vocal chords and a morbid expectation of failure. When hypnotised she was assured the atmosphere would have no effect upon her vocal chords, that her voice would be smooth and capable of every demand made upon it. These suggestions had an immediate effect.

Many would-be writers of fiction have been under treatment, the following being the method pursued :

To these were imparted, in hypnosis, first, a knowledge of the canons of narration; secondly, of the laws of construction in the case of the novel, its functions and technic, and its legitimate material.

The results are reported to have been most successful. The writer seems to turn with relief to the treatment of actresses, who apparently are easily influenced by suggestions of their merit and superiority to other stars, and whose consequent improvement is so marked as to easily lead them to the front of their profession.

It would be most interesting to hear more about the after-life of those who have undergone the treatment, as to if they need hypnotism as a stimulant, and whether there comes a time when a reaction sets in. Certainly, if Mr. Quackenbos is able to achieve in every case anything like the success he reports in this article, he is likely to be a very busy man very soon.

THE Lady's Realm for July is a double summer number. It offers a very attractive combination of light articles and well-reproduced pictures, pleasant to glance through, but scarcely suitable to quote.

HOW TO OPEN A NEW BOOK.

THE Library is not a mere technical review containing articles of interest to the librarian only. A fair proportion of its contents will be found to be of considerable interest to all lovers of books. It is from one of the latter category that the following advice, given by Mr. Cedric Chivers, is culled. He writes:

Every librarian knows, and every lover of books soon learns, that to insert the two thumbs in the centre of a book, and to hold the leaves down against the covers tightly, and force the book open flat, is an unwise proceeding. The book ever afterwards has a tendency to fall open in the same place, and if the front edge be marbled or gilt, an ugly ridge, technically called a "start," defaces it as a result.

It should be remembered that in opening a book the convexity of the back is suddenly changed into concavity, and if it is also understood that the back, underneath the covering material, has been coated with glue, paper, or other stiffening material, so that quite a brittle surface has to be dealt with, the necessity for conducting the operation of "breaking in" the book gently is sufficiently apparent. Care, then, is required that the alternative concavity of the back shall not be sharply broken at an angle, but that an attempt should be made when opening the book for the first few times to bend it in an arc. It will in this way become pliable, and will afterwards open gratefully where it is desired.

In order to effect this, a few of the leaves of a new book, say sixteen or so, on each side, should be held tightly to the boards by the first fingers, while the thumbs should be inserted a few leaves nearer the centre, and made to hold these leaves a little less firmly as the covers are opened slightly apart.

The book is then closed, and, taking a few more leaves from the centre, the fingers and thumbs are inserted in the same way on each side. It is to be carefully observed that the leaves held by the index finger close to the boards are to be tightly held, whilst those held by the thumbs are to be allowed to give as the boards are again forced open, this time a little further back. Again closing the book, the fingers and thumbs in the same way as before, gather more leaves from the centre of the volume, and force the covers yet farther. The same operation is repeated by again gathering more leaves toward the covers until the centre of the book is nearly reached, some two dozen leaves, or three sections, being left to prevent the production of an acute angle.

The back of the book has now been bent, and not broken open. Its pliability may be further improved by holding about three-fourths of the leaves in the right hand, and with the left gathering a few of the leaves under the thumb, and leaving a few leaves loose; the cover should be pressed downwards, so that the back at the commencement of the book may be bent. Again closing it, and opening it at the other end, the book must be held by the left hand, and the cover and last few leaves pressed back in the same way by the right, always, however, leaving some sixteen or twenty leaves loose, so that the lining or leather at the back of the volume shall never be folded back at an acute angle.

These operations may seem a little complicated, but a very little practice will amply repay the trouble of a few moments' study of this description. The operations themselves are so simple, and may be so quickly performed, that the writer, who has occasion frequently to open in this way some two hundred octavo volumes, can dispose of that number in about thirty minutes.

SIMPLE V. SUMPTUOUS STAGE-SETTING. THE battle between Puritan and Ritualist, which rages around the question of the proper accessories of public worship, appears also in the dramatic arena and centres on the problem of the staging of Shakespeare. Shall the great plays be set to all the gorgeous accompaniment of modern scenic art, or be given on a stage more akin to the simple arrangements of Elizabethan days? In the July Fortnightly Mr. H. Beerbohm Tree enters the lists to defend the Ritualistic view. He insists that it is unmistakably the popular view, and speaking from his own managerial experience, he declares it to yield in practice a substantial pecuniary profit. He argues also for its being right in taste. He calls Shakespeare himself as witness, and contends that "Shakespeare intended to leave as little to the imagination as possible, and to put upon the stage as gorgeous and as complete a picture as the resources of the theatre could supply." He raises an interesting historical question when he asks ::

Are we not inclined to undervalue a little the stage resources of the Elizabethan period? Are we not prone to assume that Shakespeare had far less in this direction to his hand than we give him credit for? Of scenery in the public theatres there was practically none, but in the private houses and in the castles of the nobles, when plays were played at the celebration of births and marriages and comings-of-age, we find that mounting, scenery, costume, and music were largely employed as adjuncts to these performances. In fact, when we read the description of some of the masques and interludes, when we consider the gorgeousness of display and the money that was expended for only single performances, we may well doubt whether, even in our day, we have surpassed what our forefathers of three centuries ago attained. So that in justifying the lavishness of modern productions we are not altogether thrown back upon the theory of Shakespeare's prophetic vision" of what the stage would compass when he had been laid in his grave. These shows were undoubtedly witnessed by Shakespeare himself, and it is indeed not unreasonable to suppose that he acquired the love of gorgeous stage decorations from such performances witnessed by him in early life. Take the question of what we call properties Shakespeare more than any other author seems to demand these at every turn. Swords, helmets, doublets, rings and bracelets, caskets and crowns are the inevitable paraphernalia of the Shakespearean drama; while as to music, the existence of an orchestra is vouched for by the recent discovery by a German savant of a contemporary drawing of the interior of the old Swan Theatre.

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The writer finds the case still stronger in regard to costumes, and appeals to the lavish stock entered in an inventory still in existence of the costume wardrobe of a London theatre in Shakespeare's time. He contends that the more magnificent setting is required by the actor himself, in the interest of his art, much rather than by the manager in the interest of his pocket.

"POSSIBLY the twentieth century will see the world evangelised." This is the hope which a review of the nineteenth century inspires in the breast of Rev. Richard Lovett, writing in the July Sunday at Home on the "New York Conference on Missions." Rev. T. H. Darlow, in the same number, indicates one way of realising this hope by telling the story of the Bible in Africa, as it is now translated into more than a hundred different African languages; while Rev. F. B. Meyer is selected as a specimen of intensive evangelism, or of “men who reach the masses at home." Tissot's picture of the Beatitudes forms a valuable frontispiece.

HOW THE VENOM OF SERPENTS IS COLLECTED.

THE East is of a truth strangely jumbled with the West to-day, when we find snake charmers in India regularly employed by the Pasteur Institute in Paris to furnish a supply of snake-poison for innoculation purposes. It is this fact which lends an added flavour of interest to the paper in the July Cornhill on "Venomous Snakes : how they are caught and handled." It appears that during the last ten years an annual average of 21,000 deaths have occurred in India from snake bites. The British Government has offered for many years a reward of four pence for every cobra killed, and two pence for each viper or kerait. The undiminished number of venomous reptiles makes one hope for a better remedy from the methods of preventive medicine. The writer says:

Much interest has been aroused lately among medical men in India, and other countries where venomous snakes abound, by a discovery, which Professor Calmette, of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, claims to have made, of an antitoxic serum, the hypodermic or intravenous injection of which, if made before the graver symptoms have advanced very far, is an almost certain antidote to snake-bite. This serum, which the Professor terms Antivenene, is taken from the blood of horses rendered immune by repeated minute injections of snake venom. In the year 1897 Professor Calmette applied to the Government of India for help. in collecting venom for his experiments.

THE SNAKE-CHARMER.

The writer tells how large quantities were secured and forwarded by Major Dennys, at Delhi. For a pound a month" the master snake-catcher of the district, a lowbred Mohammedan of the name of Kullan," undertook to supply one hundred living venomous snakes weekly and to extract their venom. The man disclaimed all pretence of magic. He pulled vipers and cobras from their holes by means of a stick, and then flung them into his bag :

He used no reed instruments or music of any kind to propitiate the reptiles. He would simply squat on his haunches in front of them, and after they had been hissing and swaying their uplifted heads backwards and forwards for a few minutes he raised his hands above their heads and slowly made them descend till they rested on the snakes' heads. He then stroked them gently on the back of their necks, speaking all the time in the most endearing of Hindustani terms. The serpents appeared spell-bound. They made no effort to resent the liberty, but remained quite still with heads uplifted, and seemed to rather enjoy it.

Then he let them twine about his neck and arms. He even allowed a large black cobra to crawl into his mouth and then shut his teeth on its head. Its violent resentment was unavailing; the head was later released without injury to snake or man.

AN INFURIATED COBRA.

The extraction of poison is a process carried out under more menacing conditions. This is how Kullan dealt with a large and angry cobra :—

He would hold up and shake a rag in his left hand. On this the infuriated reptile would rivet its gaze. With his right hand, from behind, the man would then suddenly seize it round the neck about three inches below the head, and an assistant would fasten firmly on to its tail to prevent it winding round Kullan's arm. His right hand would then slide forward till he had fastened his fingers round the neck, just behind the jaw. He would then insert the rim of a watch-glass between the jaws, the grip on the neck would be slightly relaxed, and the serpent would viciously close its jaws on the watch-glass, and in doing so squirt the whole of its venom through the tiny holes of its

fangs, into the concavity of the glass. In this manner snake after snake was made to part with its venom into a watch-glass. Often between sixty and a hundred snakes were so dealt with in the course of a morning.

THE DESICCATED VENOM.

The watch-glasses were then placed on small glass stands in a plate swimming with melted beeswax. Large glass bell jars were then heated so as to drive out most of the air in them, and these were inverted over the plate on to the wax. The entire plate was then placed on a shelf, and the venom allowed to dry in vacuo for seven days. At the end of that time the dried. venom (a flaky yellow powder) was scraped off the glass with a sterilised knife, the powder was hermetically sealed up in small glass tubes, the tubes labelled showing the species of snake and date on which the venom was extracted, and the whole supply forwarded weekly to Professor Calmette. In this condition the desiccated venom maintains its virulence for months.

A VISIT TO MENELIK.

CAPTAIN M. S. WELLBY continues his account of his visit to the Abyssinian capital in the July number of Harper's Magazine. He gives the following description of the King of Kings, as Menelik is called :

Such a brief meeting scarcely allowed me to form a fair judgment of the king. Squatting, as he was, when we entered, I should have taken him to be quite a small man, whereas he stands five feet ten inches high. Though by no means handsome, there is yet a very taking and frank look about his features; or perhaps, I should more correctly say, an open look. Shahzad Mir, my Indian surveyor, summed his appearance up in these words: "I saw a very little man and a very big mouth."

Captain Wellby gives some excellent descriptions of the surroundings of the king, both at his capital and in one of his provinces, whither he betook himself during the writer's visit.

About the customs of the Abyssinians we learn that there are practically no smokers in the country. This is due to an edict of King John, which absolutely forbade smoking.

The British agent, Captain Harrington, had brought out a phonographic message from Queen Victoria to 'Jhanoi," as Melelik is called by the Abyssinians :

tent.

A table was arranged in front of the king, and on this the phonograph was placed. With the exception of the gurgling sound produced by the instrument, dead silence pervaded the The Negus was highly gratified with the message, even standing up that he might the more distinctly catch the words, for he was much struck with their clearness and firmness. He listened to the Queen's gracious words time after time, and readily consented to my attempting to photograph the scene. Queen Taitu also listened to the Queen's words time after time.

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THE English Illustrated for July is an interesting number. Mr. George Wade's Cockney John Chinaman" claims separate notice. Cecil de Thierry narrates the exploits of certain distinguished colonial soldiers, accompanying his sketch with a few pleasing portraits. "The Resuscitation of a Sea Monster " is Helen Gordon's way of describing the salvage of the Milwaukee, the steamer which left her fore half on the rocks, and steamed with her stern portion away to a port, where she was fitted with a new fore part. Frederick Dolman recounts what he has seen of ancient Roman civilisation in the Naples Museum under the title of "Nothing New under the Sun." A pleasant account is given of the surroundings and treatment of the convicts at Princetown.

THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE.

MR. JOHN R. SPEARS contributes to Scribner's Magasine the first of a series of articles dealing with "The Slave Trade in America." He tells in this article of the gathering of the slaves, and it is probable that part of his story will surprise many of his readers; for instance, when he says:—

The fact is the student of slaver history is not unlikely to feel a degree of sympathy for the old-time slaver captains, and that it is an inclination which should not be restrained if a right understanding of the merits of the trade is wanted.

A time soon came, however, when the slave captains ceased to be content with buying the slaves as in the early days, but incited and even assisted the tribes to prey upon one another. The nature of the work degraded the captains and crews until there seemed no end to the infamy they were capable of. The writer

says:

How the degradation of the slaver's deck was contagious; how it spread to the owners of the ships; how these owners, while posing as Christians, became, through inciting such acts, worse than the captains who participated actively in the infamies; how communities and nations were thus made rotten, until at last the greatest slave nation of them all regained health by the most frightful of modern wars, can only be suggested here.

That the trade was very profitable may be judged from the fact that

the Liverpool ship Enterprise, belonging to T. Leyland and Co., in a voyage made about the first of the present century, cleared 24.430 8s. Id. on a cargo of 392 slaves, or more than £62 per head, old and young all counted in.

The article is excellently written, and much interest will be felt to read the succeeding chapters.

A Mammoth Locomotive.

"THE biggest engine in the world" evokes Mr. Herbert Fyfe's admiring notice in the July Windsor. This mammoth locomotive, recently built at Pittsburg, weighs with its tender 167 tons, and has a hauling capacity on a level track of 6,650 tons. In other words, it can pull at the rate of ten miles an hour a train of 166 box-cars loaded with wheat, which would form a train over a mile in length, and would contain the produce in wheat of more than fourteen square miles of land. Its cylinders are 23 inches in diameter. Its boiler is over ten feet in height. Its total length of engine and tender

63 feet 3 inches. The tender carries 5,000 gallons of water and 10 tons of coal. Such huge locomotives would be impossible on our restricted permanent ways, but in America are found to pay.

Sarah Grand on Girls' Holidays.

THERE is much sensible advice give by Sarah Grand in the July Young Woman on making the best of a holiday. Perhaps the most piquant piece is this :

If the English girl would only put some of her intelligence into the art of cooking, what holidays she and her friends might have! They might club together, don rational dress for comfort, convenience, and safety's sake, mount their bicycles, and be off to some delightful spot where their tents could be pitched; and they might lead such a life of freedom and ease as should set them up mentally and physically for a long time to come, and make capable women of them. The experiment has been made by one cycling association with the most perfect success, I understand; and it certainly seems to be one which might be hied more extensively with great advantage, especially when summers are hot and dry, as they have been of late years.

. TO TRAIN CIVIL SERVANTS.

MR. P. LYTTELTON GELL'S article on Administrative Reform in the Public Service" comes appropriately in the same number of the Nineteenth Century as Mr. Knowles's "Business Method Association." Mr. Gell's is a very interesting article, but his criticism is mainly devoted to the higher grades of the Civil Service. There has not been sufficient expansion in the service to meet Imperial development, and the first step must therefore be to enlarge the number of well-paid and responsible posts. The second is no less important, for it is to break up the system of watertight compartments and stereotyped positions in the public service. I would urge that the whole Higher Division should be regarded as a single service. It should not be merely permissible and exceptional, but an absolute rule, that men, especially young men, should be shifted from office to office in order to widen their experience, to freshen their views, and to elicit their abilities by contact with new questions and new conditions.

Mr. Gell points out that a large number of our most successful officials have had experience of a variety of services, civil and military. What is required to effect these and other reforms is a small but strong Board of Administrative Control :

This board would be as independent of all departments (the Treasury not excepted) as the Audit Office is in regard to accounts; and, like the Audit Office, it would present an independent report to Parliament, or, where expedient, a confidential report to a Parliamentary committee. It might consist of three paid commissioners, of whom not more than one should be a civil servant, two being men of experience in the industrial or commercial world. To these may be added four or six unpaid commissioners, who would be members of the Upper or Lower House, chosen for their business reputation-great shipowners, railway managers, or provincial manufacturers. It would be essential that there should be no ex officio members, except perhaps the First Civil Service Commissioner. Above all, its political independence must be absolute.

Browning and the Phonograph.

IN the course of a very interesting interview in the Strand with Mr. Rudolph de Cordova, Mr. G. H. Boughton, R.A., tells the following story about Browning:

'Browning had the most marvellous memory I ever knew," he said, as we talked of him, "and could quote Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and a host of other poets by the page together. If one wanted a quotation for a picture, one had only to go to him, and he would be able to give the necessary lines without a reference to any book, and he'd reel them off letterperfect. I remember once, though, a funny failure of his memory -the funnier because it was in one of his own poems. When the phonograph was first brought over to London it was being shown at the house of an artist, and we were all asked to speak something into the receiver. Browning modestly declined for a time, but we egged him on, and at last someone said, ‘Quote some lines from one of your own poems.'

"I know those least of all,' he replied, with a smile, and eventually he said he thought he knew How they brought the good news from Aix to Ghent' better than he knew anything else. He began splendidly :

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:

"We sprang to the saddle, and Joris and he;

I galloped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three ;
We-we-we-; we-we-we!

Upon my word, I've forgotten my own verses,' he exclaimed, and stopped there. Somebody prompted him; he took up the thread again, but he couldn't get on any farther.

"He apologised, but the owner of the phonograph declared that the cylinder was more valuable to him on account of the breakdown than if the poet had recited it right through."

TO PROVE THE PREAMBLE OF ALL RELIGIONS.

To prove the preamble of all religions, according to Mr. F. W. H. Myers, is the duty and the mission of the new century's leaders of spiritual thought, and this great task has to be achieved via the Psychical Research Society, which has just elected Mr. Myers President in succession to Sir William Crookes. Mr. Myers' presidential address has just been published in the Proceedings of the S.P.R., and a very remarkable address it is. It is partly a confession of faith, partly a record of progress already achieved, and partly a prophecy of things to come. That it is eloquent, need not be said, for when is Mr. Myers not eloquent? But it possesses higher qualities than eloquence; it is instinct with intense conviction. Mr. Myers, after thirty years' continuous study of the Borderland, proclaims aloud the conviction at which he has arrived. He announces :

Our method has revealed to us a hidden world within us, and this hidden world within us has revealed to us an invisible world without.

AGAINST UNSCIENTIFIC MEN OF SCIENCE.

The hidden world within us is the subliminal self, the invisible world without is that in which dwells the myriad multitude of departed spirits. Mr. Myers is somewhat ahead of the majority of psychical researchers. He believes more because he knows more, has studied the subject more closely, and is more quick to realise the facts which the Society has now verified beyond all dispute. In his presidential address he argues with force and fervour against the unscientific attitude of many scientific men who are false to the first principles of science in refusing to recognise the possible significance of facts, the existence of which cannot be denied, and the relation of which to existing systems has not yet been ascertained. Mr. Myers says :-

The faith to which Science is sworn is a faith in the uniformity, the coherence, the intelligibility of, at any rate, the material universe. Science herself is but the practical development of this mighty postulate. And if any phenomenon on which she chances on her onward way seems arbitrary, or incoherent, or unintelligible, she does not therefore suppose that she has come upon an unravelled end in the texture of things; but rather takes for granted that a rational answer to the new problem must somewhere exist-an answer which will be all the more instructive because it will involve facts of which that first question must have failed to take due account.

Science asserts the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy, but, against the doctrine of the conservation of energy there stands the fact of death :

If death be really, as it seems, a sheer truncation of moral progress, absolute alike for the individual and for the race-then any human conception of a moral universe must simply be given up. We are shut in land-locked pools; why speak to us of an infinite sea?

THE WORLD-OLD AND WORLD-WIDE DESIRE.

Science, therefore, confronted thus with this peremptory negation of one of its primary dogmas, should hail with intense interest any facts which afford reason to suspect that this truncation is illusory, and investigate with the utmost eagerness any facts which might promise to prove that on the moral side there is also conservation and persistence, and that the supreme law which covers matter is not less uniform in the domain of life. But unfortunately, despite Mr. Myers' arguments, the majority of scientiac men are coldly oblivious of the possible significance of telepathy and the evidences that point to the doctrine of spirit return. It is therefore for the S.P.R. to pursue its task of accumulating and verifying facts which will in the long run, in Mr. Myers' opinion,

convert scientists to a belief of the metetherial environment of life, as they have now learned to believe in ether:This search for new facts is precisely what our society undertakes. Starting from various standpoints, we endeavour to carry the newer, the intellectual virtues into regions where dispassionate tranquillity has seldom yet been known. As compared with the claims of theologians, we set before ourselves a humbler, yet a difficult task. We do not seek to shape the clauses of the great act of faith, but merely to prove its preamble. To prove the preamble of all religions; to be able to say to theologian or to philosopher, "Thus and thus we demonstrate that a spiritual world exists-a world of independent and abiding realities, not a mere epiphenomenon' or transitory effect of the material world-a world of things, concrete and living, not a mere system of abstract ideas-now, therefore, reason on that world or feel towards it as you will." This would indeed, in my view, be the weightiest service which any research could render to the deep disquiet of our time-nay, to the desiderium orbis catholici, the world-old and world-wide desire.

Our duty is not the founding of a new sect, nor even the establishment of a new science, but is rather the expansion of Science herself until she can satisfy those questions which the human heart will rightly ask, but to which Religion alone has thus far attempted an answer. Or rather, this is the duty, the mission, of the coming century's leaders of spiritual thought. Our own more special duty is to offer through an age of transition more momentous than mankind has ever known, that help in steadying and stimulating psychical research all over the world which cur collective experience should enable us richly to bestow.

If our inquiry lead us first through a jungle of fraud and folly, need that alarm us? As weli might Columbus have yielded to the sailors' panic when he was entangled in the Sargasso Sea. If our first clear facts about the Unseen World seem small and trivial, should that deter us from the quest? As well might Columbus have sailed home again, with America in the offing, on the ground that it was not worth while to discover a continent which manifested itself only by dead logs.

If the belief in the other world is re-established on a scientific foundation among others, says Mr. Myers

One point is clear; and on that point it is already urgently necessary to insist. We must maintain, in old theological language, that the intellectual virtues have now become necessary to salvation. Curiosity, candour, care-these are the intellectual virtues-disinterested curiosity, unselfish candour, unremitting

care.

A NEW WORLD-RELIGION AT HAND.

But from this fusion of religion and science a new world religion will come :

For just as a kind of spiritual fusion of Europe under Roman sway prepared the way for Christianity to become the European religion, so now also it seems to me that a growing conception of the unity, the solidarity, of the human race is preparing the way for a world-religion which expresses and rests upon that solidarity; which conceives it in a fuller, more vital fashion than either Positivist or Catholic had ever dreamed. For the new conception is neither of benefactors dead and done for, inspiring us automatically from their dates in an almanac, nor of shadowy saints imagined to intercede for us at Tribunals more shadowy still; but rather of a human unity--close-linked beneath an unknown Sway-wherein every man, who hath been, or now is, makes a living element; inalienably incorporate, and imperishably co-operant, and joint-inheritor of one infinite Hope.

LOSING HIS FAITH TO FIND IT.

If the careless reader is disposed to shrug his shoulders at that expression of great hope, he may perhaps modify his attitude when he reads the following passage, when Mr. Myers describes his own personal experiences as to the study of psychical phenomena :

When, after deriving much happiness from Christian faith, I felt myself forced by growing knowledge to recognise that the