The Exeter Advocate, 1897-3-25, Page 7A GREAT SACRIFICE.
REV. DR. ITALMAGE ILLUSTRATES
THE ATONEMENT.
Be Explains the Theory of Vicarious Simi'
fice—The Blood of Christ—Cases of Sub-
• stitution—Life for Life --Frequence of
Suffering for Others.
Washington, March 2L—From many
conditious of life Dr. Talmage, in this
serxaon, draws graphic illustrations of
one of the sublimest theories of religion
--namely, vicarious sacrifiee, His text
was Hebrews ix, 22, "Without shedding
of blood is no remission.
John G. Whittier, the last of the great
school of American poets that made the
last quarter of a century brilliant, asked
me in the White mountaits, one morn-
ing after prayers, in which I had given
out Cowper's famous hymn about the
"fountain filled with blood," "Do you
really believe there is a literal application
of the blood of Christ to the soul?" My
negative reply then is my negative reply
now. The Bible statement agrees with
all physicians, and all physiologists,. and
all scientists, in saying that the blood is
the We, and in the Christian religion it
.means simply that Christ's life was given
for our life. Hence all this talk of men
who say the Bible story of blood is dis-
gusting and that they dortit want what
they call a "slaughter house religion"
only shows their incapacity or unwilling-
ness to look through the figure of speeoh
toward the thing signified. The blood
that, on the darkest Friday the world
ever saw, • oozed or trickled or poured
from the brow, and the side, and the
hands, and the feet of the illustrious
sufferer, baok a jerusalene, in a few
hours coagulated and dried up • and for-
ever disappeared, and if num had depend-
ed on the application of the literal blood
of Christ there would not ita,ve been a
soul saved for the last 18 centuries.
Voluntary Suffering.
In order to understand this red word
of my text we only have to exercise as
much common sense in religion as we do
In everything else. Pang for pang, hun•
ger for hunger'fatigue for fatigue, tear
for tear, blood for bltod, • life for life, we
see every day illustrated. The act of sub-
stitution is no novelty, although I hear
men talk as though the idea of Christ's
suffering substituted for our suffering
were something abnorinal, something
distressingly odd, something wilaly
eccentric, a solitary episode in the world's
history, when I could. take you out into
this oity, and before sundown point you
to 500 cases of substitution and volun-
tary suffering of one in belsalf of another,
At 2 o'clock to -morrow afternoon go
among the places of business or toil. It
'will be no diificult thing for you to find
men who, by their looks, show you that
they are overworked. • They are prema-
turely old. They are hastening rapidly
toward their decease. They have gone
through crises in bosiness that shattered
their nervous system and pulled on the
brain. They have a shortness of breath
and a pain in the back of the head, and
at night an insomnia that alarms them.
Why are they drudging at business early
and late? For fun.? No; it would be
difficult to extract any amusement out
elof that exhaustion. Because they are
• '-'avaricious? In many cases no. Because
their own personal expenses are lavish?
No; a few hundred dollars would meet
all their wants. The simple fact is the
man is enduring. all that fatigue and ex-
• asperation and wear and tear to keep his
home prosperous. There is an invisible
line reaching from that store from that
bank, from that shop, from that scaffold-
ing, to a quiet scene a few blocks away,
a few miles away, and there is the secret
of that business endurance. He is simply
the champion of a homestead, for which
he wins bread and. wardrobe and educa-
tion and prosperity, and in such battle
10,000 men fall. Of ten business men
whom I bury, nine die of overwork for
others. Some sudden disease finds them
with no power of resistance, and they are
gone. Life for life, blood for blood. Sub-
stitution!
At 1 o'clock to -morrow morning, the
hour when slumber is inost entinterrupted
and most profound, walk amid the dwell-
ing houses of the city. Here and there
you will find a dim light because it is
the household custom to keep a subdued
light burning, but most of the houses
froze base to top are as dark as though
uninhabited. A merciful God has sent
forth the archangel of sleep, and he puts
his wings over the city. But yonder is a
clear light burning, and outside on the
window casement is a glass or pitcher
containing food for a sick child. The
food is set in the fresh air. This is the
sixth night that mother has sat up with
that sufferer. She has to the last point
obeyed the physician's prescription, not
giving a drop too much or too little, or a
moment too soon or too late. She is very
anxious, for she has buried three children
with the same disease, and she prays and
weeps, each prayer and sob ending with
a kiss of the pale obeek. By dint of kind-
ness she gets the little one through the
°Veal. After it is all over the mother is
• ta)ken down. Brain or nervous fever sets
in, and one day she leaves the convales-
cent child with a mother's blessing and
goes up to join the three in the kingdom
of heaven. Life for life. Substitution!
The fact is that there are an uncounted
number of mothers who, after they have
navigated a large la,mily of children
through all the diseases of infancy and
got them fairly started up the flowering
slope of boyhood and girlhood, have only
• strength enough left to die. They fade
away. Some call it consumption, some
call it nervous prostration' some call it
•intermittent or malarialindisposition,
ibut I call it martyrdom of the domestic
circle. Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution!
• A Sacrificing Mother.
• Or perhaps the mother lingers long
enough to see a son get on the wrong
• road, and his former kindness becomes
rough reply when she expresses anxiety
about him. But she goes right on, look-
ing carefully after his apparel, remember-
ing his every birthday. , with some
•memento,and, when he is brought home,
worn out with dissipation,xturses him till
he gets well and starts him again and
hopes and expects and prays and counsels
and suffers until her strength gives out
and she fails. She is going, and attend-
ants, tending over her pillow and ask
her if she has any message to leave, and
the makes great effort to say something,
bot out of three or four minutes of in-
distinct utterance they ca,n catch but
three words, "My poor boy!" The simple
fact is she died for him. Life for life.
Substitution!
About 36 years ago there went forth
from our northern and southern homes
• hundreds of thousands of men to do
battle for their country. All the poetry of
war soon vanished and loft them nothing
but the terrible prose. They waded knee
deep in mud; they slept in snowbanks;
they marched till their cut feet tracked
the earth; they were swindled out of
their honest rations and lived on meat
not fit for a dog; they had jaws all frac-
tured, and eyes extinguished, and limbs
shot away. Theusancls of them cried for
water as they lay dying on the field the
night after the battle, and got it not.
They were homesick and received oo
xnessage from their loved ones. They died
an barns, in bushes, in ditches, the bus
•zards of the sunimer heat the only
attendants on their obsequies. No one
but the infinite God, who knows every-
thing, knows the ten -thousandth part of
the length and breadth and depth and
height of the anguish of the northern
and southern battlefields. 'Why did these
fathers leave their children and go to the
front and why did these young men,
postponing the mairiage day start out
into the probabilities of never coining
back? For the country they died. Life
for life. Blood for blood. Substitutionl
But we need not go so far. What is
that monument in Greenwood? It is to
the doctors who fell in the southern epi-
demics. Why go? Were there not enough
sick to be attended in these northern
latitudes? Oh, yes! But the doctor puts
a few medical books in his valise and
some -vials of medicine and leaves his
patients here in the hands of other phy-
sicians and takes the rail train Before
he gets to the infected regions he passes
crowded rail trains, regular and extra,
taking the flying and affrighted popula-
tions. He arrives in a city over which a
great horror is brooding. He goes from
couch to couch, feeling of the pulse and
studying symptoms and prescribing day
after day, night after night, until a fellow
physician says: "Doctor, you had better
go home and rest. You look miserable."
But he cannot rest while so many are
suffering On and on, until sense morn-
ing finds bine in a delirium in which he
talks of home, and then rises and says
he must go and look after those patients.
He is told to lie down, but he fights his
attendants until he falls back and is
weaker and weaker ancl dies for people
with whom he had no kinship, and far
away from his own family, and is hastily
put away ill a stranger's tomb, and only
the fifth part of a newspaper line tells as
of his sacrifice, his name just mentioned
among five. 'Yet he has touched. the far.
thest height of sublimity in that three
weeks of humanitarian serivce. Be goes
straight as an arrow to the bosom of him
who said, "I was sick, and ye visited
me." Life for life. Blood for blood.. Sub-
stitution!
In the legal profession I see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1846 William
Freeman, a pauperlzed and idiotio negro,
was at Auburn, N. Y., on trial for mur-
der.
He had slain the entire Van Nest
family. The foaming wrath of the com-
munity could be kept off him only by
armed constables. • Who would volunteer
to be his counsel? No attorney wanted to
sacrifice his popularity by such an un-
grateful task. .All were silent, save one
a young lawyer with feeble voles, that
could hardly be heard outside the bar,
pale ancl thin and awkward. It was Wil-
liam H. Seward, who saw that the pri-
soner was idiotic and irresponsible and
ought to be put in an asylum rather than
put to death, the heroic counsel uttering
these beautiful words:—
speak now in the hearing of a peo-
ple who have prejudiced the prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his behalf.
Be is a convict, a pauper, a negro, with-
out intellect, sense or emotion. Ny ehild,
with an affectionate smile, disarms nu -
careworn face of its frowii. whenever 1
cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges me to give because lie says,
'God bless you!: as I pass. :Sly dog ear-
esses ran with fondness it I will but smile
on him. My horse recognizes nie when I
fill his snanger. What reward,what grati-
tude what sympathy and affection can I
expect here? There the prisoner sits.
Look at him. Look at the assemblage
around you. Listen to their ill suppressed
censures and their excited fears and tell
me where among my neighbors or my
fellow men, where, even in his heart, I
can expect to lind a sentimenna thought,
not to say of reward or of acknowledg-
ment, or even of recognition? Gentlemen,
you may think of this evidence what you
please, bring in what verdict you can,
but I asseverate before heaven and you
that, to the best of my knowledge and
belief, the prisoner at the bar does not at
this moment know why it is that my
shadow falls on you instead of his own."
• The gallows got its victiin'but the
post =stem examination of the poor
creature showed to all the surgeons and
to all the world that the public was
wrong, that William H. Seward was
right, and that hard, stony step of oblo-
quy in the Auburn court -room was the
first step of the stairs of fame up which
he went to the top, or to within one step
of the top, the last denied him through
the treachery of American politics. Noth-
ing sublimer was ever seen in an Ameri-
can court -room than William H. Seward,
without reward, standing between the
fury of the populace aid the loathsome
imbecile. Substitution I
What Buskin Did.
In the realm of the fine arts there was
es remarkable an instance. A brilliant
but hypercriticised Disinter, Joseph Wil-
liam Turner, was met by a volley of
abuse from all the art galleries of Europe.
ills paintings, which have since won the
applause 'of all civilized nations—" The
Fifth Plague of.Egypt," "Fishermen on
a Lee Shore In Squally Weather,"
"Calais Pier," "The Sun Rising Through
Mist" and "Dido Building Carthage"—
were then targets for critics to shoot at.
In d.efense of this outrageously abused
man, a young author of 24 years, just
one years out of college, came forth with
his pen and wrote the ablest ' and most
famous essays on art that the world ever
saw, or ever will see—John Ruekin's
"Modern Painters." For 17 years this
author fought the battles of the maltreat-
ed artist, and after, in poverty and brok-
en heartedness, the painter had died, and
the public tried to undo their cruelties
toward him by giving him a big funeral
and burial in Si. Paul's cathedral, his old
time friend took out of a tin box 19,000
pieces of paper containing drawings by
the old painter, and through many weary
and uncompensated months assorted and
arranged them for publio observation.
People say John Ruskin in his old days
is cross, misanthropic and morbid. What-
ever he may do that he ought not to do,
and whatever he may say that he ought
not to say between now and his death,
he will leave this world insolvent as far
as it has any capacity to pay this author's
pen for its chivalric and Christian defense
of a poor painter's pencil. John Ruskin
for William Turner. Blood for blood.
Substitution!
What an exalting principle this which
leads one to Pliffer for another! Nothing
SO kindles enthusiasm, or awakens elo-
quence, or chimes poetic caoto, or moves
nations. The principle is the donairtant
one in our religion --Christ, the martyr,
Christ the celestial hero, Christ the de-
fender, Christ the substitute. No new
principle, for it was as old as Inman
nature, but now on a grander, wider,
higher, deeper and more world resound-
ing scale. The shepherd boy as a cham-
pion for Israel with a sling toppled the
giant of Philistine braggadocio in the
dust, but here is another David, who, for
all the armies of churches militant and
triumphant, hurls the Goliath of perdi-
tion into defeat, the crash of his brazen
armor like an explosion at • Hell Gate.
Abraham had at God's coramand agreed
to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the same
God just in time had provided a ram of
the thicket as a substitute, but here is
another Isaac bound to the altar, nod BO
hand arrests the sharp edges of laceration
and death, and the universe shivers and
quakes and recoils and groans at the hor-
ror.
All good risen have for centuries been
trying to tell who this substitute was
like, and every comparison, inspired and
uninspired, evangelistic, prophetic.
apostolic and human,. falls short, foi.
Christ was the Great Unlike. Adam a
yp is manse e came dfrectl
from God, Noah a type of Christ becaus
he delivered his own family from the
deluge, Melchisedec a type of Christ be-
cause he had no predecessor or successor,
Joseph a typo of Christ bemuse he was
oast out by his brethren, Moses a type of
Christ because he was a deliverer from
bondage, Sarasota a type of Christ because
of his strength to slay the lions and carry
off the iron gates of impossibility, Solo-
mon a typo of Christ in the affluence of
his dominion, Jonah a type of Christ
because of the stormy sea in which he
threw himself for the rescue of others,
but put together Adam and Noah and
Melchisedeo and Joseph and Moses and
Joshua and Samson and Solomon and
Jonah, and they would not make a frag-
ment of a Christ, the half of a Christ or
the millionth part of a Christ.
1 y under because of the malodor arising in
e 'that hot month of June.
ii There," said our guide, "the highland
regiments lay down on their faces wait
ing for the monaeot to spring upon the
foe. In that orchard 2,500 soon were cot
to pieces. Here stood Wellington, veith
white lips, and up that knoll rode Mar-
shal Ney on his sixth horse, five basing
been shot under him. Here the ranks of
the French broke, and Marshal Nay, with
his boot slashed off by a sword,and his hat
off, and his face covered. with powder and
blood, tried to rally his troops as he
cried, 'Cense and see how a marshal of
France dies on the battlefield!' From
yonder direction Grouchy was expected
for the French re-euforcernent, but he
aurae not. Around those woods Blucher
was looked. tor to re -enforce the English,
and just in time he came up. Yonder is
the field where Napoleon stood, his arms
through the reins of the horse's bridle,
dazed and insane, trying to go back."
Scene from a battle that went on from
25 naioutes to 12 o'clock, on the 18th of
June, until 4 o'clock, when the English
seemed defeated, and their commander
(tried. out: "Boys, can you think of giv-
ing way? Benseinber old England!" and
the tide turned, and at 8 o'clock in the
evening the man of destiny, who was
called by his troops Old Two Hundred
Thousand, turned away with broken
heart, and the fate of centuries was de-
cided.
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What Christ Did.
He forsook a throne and sat down on
his own footstool. Ile came from the top
of glory to the bottom of humiliation and
changed a circumference seraphic or a
circumference diabolic. Coco waited on
by angels, now hissed at by brigands.
From afar and high up he came down;
past nieteors swifter than they; by starry
thrones, himself more lustrous; past
larger worlds to smaller worlds; down
stairs of firmaments, and from cloud to
cloud, and through tree tops and into
the camel's stall, to thrust his shoulders
under our burdens and take the lances of
pain through his vitals, and wrapped
himself in all the agonies which we de -
sere for our snisdoisigs, and stood on the
splitting deoks of a foundering vessel
amid the drenching surf of the sea, and
passed midnights on the mountains
amid wild beasts of prey, and stood at
the point where all earthly and infernal
hostilities charged on him at once with
their keen sabers—our substitute!
When did attorney ever endure so
much for a pauper client,or physician for
the patient in the lazaretto, or mother
for the ohild in zneunbranous croup, as
Christ for us, as Christ for you, as Christ
for me? Shall any man or woman or
child in this audience who has ever
suffered for another find it hard to under-
stand this Christly suffering for us?
Shall those whose sympathies have been
wrung in behalf of the unfortunate
have no appreciation of that one moment
whioh was lifted out of all the ages of
eternity as most conspicuous when Christ
gathered up all the sins of those to be
redeemed under his one arm and all his
sorrows under his other arm and said:
"I will atone for these under my right
arm and will heal all those under iny left
arm. • Strike me with all thy glittering.
shafts, 0 eternal justice! Roll over rne
with all thy surges, ye oceans of sorrow!"
And the thunderbolts struck him from
above, and the seas of trouble rolled up
from beneath, hurricane after hurricane,
and cyclone after cyclone, and then there
in presence of heaven and earth and
hell—yea, all worlds witnesssing—the
price, the bitter price, the transcendent
price, the awful price, the glorious price,
the infinite price, the eternal price, was
paid that sets us free.
That is what Paul means, that is what
I mean, that is what all those who have
ever had their heart changed mean by
"blood." I glory in this religion of blood.
I ara thrilled as I see the suggestive color
in sacramental cup, whether it be of
burnished silver set on cloth immaculate-
ly white, or rough hewn from wood set
on table in log hut meeting house of the
wilderness. Now I am thrilled .as I see
the altars of ancient sacrifice' crimson
with the blood of the slain lamb, and
Leviticus is to me not so much the Old
Testament as the New. Now I see why
the destroying angel, passing over Egypt
in the night, spared all those houses that
had blood sprinkled on their doorposts.
Now I know what Isaiah means when he
speaks of "one in red apparel coining
with dyed earinents from Bosrah," and
whom the cApocalypse means when it
describes a heavenly chieftain whose
"vesture was dipped in blood," and what
Peter, the apostle, means when he speaks
of the "precious blood that cleanseth
from all sin," and what the old, worn
out, decrepit missionary Paul means
when in iny text, he cries, "Without
shedding of blood is no remission." By
that blood you and I will be saved or
never at all. Glory be to God that the
hills back of Jerusalem was the battle-
field on which Christ aohieved our lib-
erty!
Waterloo.
The most exciting and overpowering
day of one summer was the day I spent
on the battlefield of Waterloo. Starting
out with the morning train from Brus-
sels, we arrived in about an hour on that
famous spot. A son of one who was in the
battle,and who had heard from his father
a thousand times the whole scene recited,
accompanied us over the field. There
stood the old Hougomont chateau, the
wane dented and scratched and broken
and shattered by grapeshot and cannon
ball. There is the well in which BOO dy-
ing and dead were pitched. There is the
chapel, with the head of the infant
Christ shot off. There are the gates at
which for many hours English and French
armies wrestled. Yonder were the 160
guns of the English and the 250 guns of
the French. Yonder the Hanoverian
hussars fled for the woods. •Yonder was
the ravine of Chain, where the French
cavalry, not knowing there was a hollow
in the ground, rolled over and down,
troop after troop, tumbling into one aw-
ful mass of stsffering hoof, of kicking
horses against brow and breast of cap-
tains and colonels and private soldiers,
the human and the beastly groan kept
up until, the day after, all was shoveled
Lion and Lamb.
No wonder a great mound as been
reared there, hundreds of feet high—a
mound at the expense of millions of dol-
lars and loony years rising—and on the
top is the great Belgian lion of bronze,
and a grand old. lion it is. But our great
Waterloo was in Palestine. There came
a day when all hell rode up, led by
Apollyon, and the captain of our salva-
tion confronted them alone. The rider
.on the white horse of the Apocalypse go-
ing out against the black horse cavalry
of death, and the battalions of the de-
moniac, and the myrmidons of darkness.
From 12 o'clock at noon to 3 o'clock in
the afternoon the greatest battle of the
universe went on. Eternal destinies were
being decided. All the arrows of hell
pierced our chieftain, and the battleaxes
struck, him, until brow and cheek and
shoulder and band and foot were incarn-
adined with oozing life, but he fought on
until he gave a final stroke, and the
commander in chief of hell and all his
forces fell back in everlasting ruin, and
the victory is ours. And on the mound
Shat celebrates the triumph we plant this
day two figures not in bronze or iron or
sculptured marble, but two figures of
living light, the lion of Judah's tribe,
and the lamb that was slain.
Keepini Elng Charles' Memory Green.
Persons who are adapted by intellectual
and ipitirual equipment to be high
church Episcopalians seem to find ex-
cellent entertainment in that fold. Com-
ment has hardly cleared yet on the very
interesting novelty that was provided for
some of them on the 30th of January in
New York and Philadelphia, in the
shape of celebrations of the anniversary
of "King Charles the Martyr," the same
being no less familiar nod recent a per-
sonage than the late Charles 1 of Eng-
• land. Pious and respectable as King
Charles was, it put the casual newspaper
reader to his stumps to guess why two
American churches should be putting
themselves to trouble and expense to
keep his memory green, but there is an
explanation of it which partly explains.
It is held that Charles might have saved
his life if he had agreed to abolish the
episcopacy. On that ground he is held to
be a martyr. He was canonized after the
restoration, and his day kept in England
for more than a century, but the enthu-
siasm about it gradually fell off, and In
1859 Queen Victoria, with the help of
parliament, abolished the service for his
day, removed his prayer from prayer book
and took his name off the saints' calen-
dar.
Later a society of persons, not other-
wise fully occupied, was started in Eng-
land. te observe this day of the only Eng-
lish saint made since the reformation,
and branch societies have since been
started in this country. A pertrait of
Charles in saintly guise, painted by
Oswald Fleuss'has been hung in the
Church of the Evangelists, in Philadel-
phia, and was unveiled with many cere-
monies at the recent celebration. Bishop
Perry, of•Iowa, the same who was so
zealously opposed to making Phillips
Brooks a bishop, pronounced a eulogy on
King Charles, and eight other bishops
and Dr. Morgan Dix, of New York, sent
their blessings to the service. How many
kinds of pious people there are in this
Interesting world, and how odd the acti-
vities of some of them do seem to us,
their more prosaio fellows1-11arper's
Weekly.
• Byron's "There Let Him Lay."
A correspondent recently wrote to
John Murray, stating that, having
learned he was about to publish a new,
complete and carefully revised edition of
Byron's poetioal and prose works, be
thought the time had come to COrref `I
what admirers of the poet considered
must be a misprint. He advised the
omission of the period after "lay" in the
line which terniinates with "there let
him lay," in that stanza of the apos-
trophe to the ocean in the fourth canto
of `Childe Harold," and so do away with
what many felt to be a reproach to the
author, as hitherto printed. Mr. Murray
in reply said:—
"In answer to your inquiry, I write to
inform you that the well known 'passage
in the fourth canto of amide • Harold,'
'there let him lay,' is no misprint, I have
the original MS. in my possession, and
the word and the full stop axe as clear as
can possibly be.
"Moreover, the stanza beginning 'The
armaments which thunderstrike the
walls' was not in the original draft, but
was added last of all.
"As originally written, the word 'lay'
was followed by, 'Though glorious mir-
ror,' eto. So that it could. not have been
Byron's intention to run on the sense
from one stanza to the next.
"He uses the word 'lay' Iran incorrect
way elsewhere."—New York Times.
A Weird Advertisement.
A grewsomeeadvertisement of bicycle
fixtures is displayed in the winclove of a
store on Market street, above Tenth. A
bicycle is rigged up in the window, and
upon it sits a skeleton scorcher. The
bony Lingers clutch the handle bars and
the fleshless feet are firmly fixed to the
pedals. • The skull is fitted with a power-
ful electric lamp, and the light gleams
very weirdly through the hollow sockets
where the eyes had once been. An elec-
tric motor supplies the power which
drives the wheels around, and the leg
bones rattle up and down rapidly and
the jawbone moves regularly, as though
the skeleton were busily chewing gum.—
Philadelphia Record.
ENORMOUS DEATH DUES.
Old English Families May be Ruined by'
Them.
In order to realize the terrible strain
imposed by Sir William Harcourt's so
called "death duties," sviiich excited so
much resentment among the landowning
class of Great Britain last year, it may
be mentioned that most of the territorial
magnates who, through the death of a
father or other relative, recently have
come into possessioxi of the family prop-
erty, have been compelled by the burden
th.us imposed upon there to close up their
country houses and to let their shooting
to the highest bidder.
Thus when, a few months ago, the
Marquis of Bath succeeded to the en-
tailed estates of Ms father, he was forced
by the death duties which he had to pay
on his father's estate to close up Longlat
and to lease all the sporting privileges of
the estate to a city merchant, and now
it is announced that the new Lord Saville
(husband of that pretty Mrs. Horace
Helyar svhp, with her first husband, was
connected with the English embassy at
Washington in the days of Lord Saab-
ville) will have to close Rufford abbey,
one of the most beautiful country seats
irt "the dukeries," the duties in this
case amounting to nearly $1,000,000.
The duties are exceptionally heavy in
this instance, in the first place because
the new Lord Saville is merely the nephew
instead of the son of the testator, and,
secondly, because of the immense and ex-
tremely valuable art collection gathered.
together by the late lord, who was a fa-
mous connoisseur. Each of his pictures,
each of his pieces of bric-a-brac, has been
valued by experts, and on every separate
piece succession duty has to be paid.
It will readily be seen what a heavy
charge this is upon any inheritance, and
one cannot help pitying to a certain ex-
tent the great landowners and county
families, They are debarred by the laws
of entail from getting rid of any of their
treasures ibus which they have only a life
interest, and yet at their death their
estate is °barged with succession duties
thereon.
If the property happens to change
hands more than once in a year, the
estate is, of °muse, charged with just
double the amount of duty, and the Duke
of Devonshire and other opponents of the
death duties cannot be accused of any
exaggeration in that they declared in
parliament and from the platform that
the duties M question, unless altered,
will ultimately result in the ruin of eveiy
old family in England.
It is understood that during the forth-
coming session the Salisbury governmeut
will bring forward a measure modifying
the death duties as now constituted and
will restrict them merely to the so milled
"personal estate," exempting all entailed
property and such things as art treasures.
—Chicago Record.
• Gone Into Trade.
There have recently been two notable
instances of aristocrats going into trade
and dragging their aristocracy in after
them. In Europe the Princes August and
Charles of Bourbon have hung out their
signs as wine dealers. They have also
published a circular, in which they ex-
plain why they have disregarded the tra-
ditions of their class and come down to
the level of everyday citizens. They tell
how their ancestress, Marie Antoinette,
darned the stockings of their grandfather,
the Dauphin; how Louis XVII was a
watchmaker, and how Charles XI, their
uncle and the head of their house, earned
his livelihood by manual labor and by
trading. Since the court of appeals ie.
Paris refuses to recognize their rights
they cannot become soldiers in France.
"Only one career is open to us," they
say—"that of the • merchant • or trades -
Ir our own couuntry some excitement
has been created by the action of Miss
Florence Cornelia Pell in opening a
millinery shop in New York, and not
only puttiog her aristocratic name over
the door, but having the family motto
and crest printed in the crown of every
bonnet that goes out of her shop.. Miss
Pell, who has just secured a divorce from
Nathan Clifford Brown, of a well known
Portland (Me.) family, is the eldest
daughter of the late John Howland Pell.
The family is an old Huguenot one and
has been prominent in the social annals
of New York city for 900 years. The fair
shopkeeper is Mr. Pell's ehild by his first
marriage, and the children of the second
marriage, Mr. S. Osgood Pell and Miss
Mary Howland Pell, are thrown into
aristocratic hysterics by the idea of their
family crest and motto decorating the
bonnets of every Mary Ann who has the
enoney to patronize their half sister's
shop. But Miss Florence Cornelia will
doubtless thrive, for there are quite a
number of Americans who enjoy baying
heraldic blazonings on their personal
belongings, even though those heraldic
blazonings be those of their tradesmen.
—San Francisco Argonaut.
A Year or the X Bays.
Many experiments were made to deter-
mine the source from which the rays
proceed before it was learned definitely
that they emanate from the surface upon
which the cathode rays first impinge a
fact that was annousiced almost simisl-
taoeously by several experimenters. It
is one of the important points that have
been determined, mad even this was dis-
tinctly intimated by Professor Roentgen
in the twelfth section of his original
paper.
ID intensity they vary as the square of
the distaoce trona their source.
They electrify Genie bodies positively
and some negatively, and, whatever
charge a body may already have, they re-
duce or change it to the charge which
they would independently give to the
body. Their penetrating power depends
upon the length of time they act.
Thus gradually these and many addi-
tional isolated facts have been estab-
lished, and no doubt enough data will be
accumulated eventually to permit gener-
alization into laws, but that stage has
not yet been reached.
Four theories have been suggested.
Firsts.—They are either waves, like
• ordinary light, but of exceedingly brief
period, therefore ultra ultra -violet.
Second—They are streams of material
particles.
Third—They are vortexes of the inter-
molecular ether, forced from the cathode
when the gas pressure is sufficientlylow.
Rectilinear propagation, absence of re-
flection, etc., follow from the properties
of vortexes.
Fourth—They are variations of stress
in the dielectric surrounding the vacuum
tubes.
Each of these theories is entitled to the
Scoteh verdict, "Not proved," though the
preponderance of opinion is on the side
of the first. Still it cannot yet be said to
be more than opiolon.—Professor D. W.
Hering bus Popular Science Monthly.
New Letters of Edward Gibbon.
Gibbon's "Letters," now first pub.
lished, are most pleasant reading, and
they throw new light on the character of
the historian and his age. The "fierce.
light that beats upon" a great name now
reveals to us the historian as one of the
most genial, affectionate, sane and con-
tented natures in literasy history, with a
genius for friendship, indulgent almost
to a fault toward all failings, gently fond
of all pleasant things and people and
ling to put up with much for the sake of
an easy life. Never was any man less
heroic, who less pretended to the heroics
with more perfectly worldly ideals and a
more instinctive repugnance to any en,
thusiasm. A cosmopolitan philosopher ot
the eighteenth century to the bone with
all the optimism, the • cool brain, the
apolausticism, the insensibility to the
moral and spiritual reformation to come,
whichonark the literary aristocrat of the
time. We are not likely now to overrate
the good sense and good isature of such
men. We see all their blindness, theta
grossness, their egoism. But their mils
ture and their balance of mind still in.
terest us. The life they led fascinates us
in a way, as does the life of Horace arid
of Pliny. Peace to their ashes! Let us
utter a half pagan sigh over the classical
urn, sacred to the Dis Manibus of the
historian of Rome.—Frederio Harrison
in Forum.
The First German Book.
Brewer says the first book printed in
the German language was the "Edel.
stein," or "Precious Stone," in 1461, by
UlricBoner. Seven years before this,
however, bus 1454, Gutenberg and Faust
printed in Latin an indulgence issued by
Pope Nicholas V. to Paulinus Chappe,
an einbassador of the king of Cyprus.
There is much conflict among the au-
thorities as to the dates of the earlier
copies of the Faust and Gutenberg books,
and in inany cases the exact thne cf
their issuance is conjectural.
Rats and the Plague.
According to Dr. James Candle, in
The Lancet, the disease called the bu-
bonic plague, now raging in Asia, at-
tacks rats before it makes its appearance
among human beings in the same locali-
ty. A month before the plague broke out
in the city of Bombay it was observed
that the rats were dying by thousands.
Other animals are also affeoted, but none
so soon or so fatally as rats.
Marlborough House Ceremony.
At Marlborough. House there is more
ceremoty, socially speaking, than at
Sandringham. A:number of servants her,
ald your arrival or departure, and there
are usually two servants standing mite
side your room door when you are ittaye
ing in the house anti a xna,n behind MS
chair of every guest at mealtirae.
Until coniparatively recent times the
only harrow Was a large pile pt hrush or
tree branches, dragged aossite ea geld hy a
teem of oxen.