GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEAVENS FOR APRIL.

“Now boast thee, death; in thy possession liesA lass, unparallel’d.”

“Now boast thee, death; in thy possession lies

A lass, unparallel’d.”

Next to the Brick is the Jewel or Martin Tower, where the crown jewels were formerly kept. They are now preserved in the Record Tower. On the wall of the Martin Tower we saw inscribed the name of Anne Boleyn. It is said that one of the unfortunate gentlemen who lost their heads on her account traced it there. Diagonally across the inner ward rises the Bell Tower, thus named from the alarm bell which crowned it. This was the prison of Princess Elizabeth during her enforced stay in the tower. Some little children used to bring her flowers here, until it came to the ears of Mary, who forbade this innocent service.

Only a short walk from Bell loom up the frowning walls of Beauchamp Tower, than which there is no more interesting place in the entire enclosure. Its architecture is of the reign of John and Henry III. Its name is derived from Thomas De Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, imprisoned here during the reign of Richard II. This tower is in the center of the western side of the inner ward, and in a half circle projects from the strong ballium walls, and is two stories in height. Its walls are covered with inscriptions made by different prisoners; some indicative of their mental agony during their captivity; many, indeed the most, expressing Christian fortitude and pious resignation to their hard lot.

The first name noticed is that of Marmaduke Neville, near the entrance. He was one of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland, and was implicated in a plot to place Mary Stuart upon the throne during Elizabeth’s reign. In the southern recess is shown an inscription in old Italian: “Dispoi che voie la fortuna che la mea speranza va al vento pianger, hovolio el tempo per dudo; e semper stel me tristo, e disconteto. Wilim: Tyrrel, 1541.” The mournful burden of which comes like a sigh of despair from out the past, “Since fortune hath chosen that my hope should go to the wind to complain, I wish the time were destroyed; my planet being ever sad and unfavorable.” Alas, unhappy one! Your words no doubt were but the echo of many sad hearts that found the times were indeed out of joint.

Over the fireplace is a beautiful and touching inscription: “Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc sæculo, tanto plus gloriæ cum Christo in futuro. Arundell, June 22, 1587,” which being interpreted is, “The more affliction for Christ in this world, the more glory with Christ in the next.”

This was written by Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, whose devotion to the Romish church during Elizabeth’s reign, brought so much odium upon him, and made for him so many enemies that he at last resolved to leave his country, friends, and his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, and go into voluntary exile for his better safety. He informed the Queen in a most pathetic letter of his intention, designing she should not receive it until he was well out of way, but by some freak of fortune, the letter fell into the hands of his foes, and he was seized as he was setting sail from the coast of Sussex. He was sent to the Tower and kept a close prisoner for forty years, when worn out with his long and cruel confinement and sorrow he died, realizing at the end, we hope, the truth of the touching words he traced upon his prison walls.

There are several interesting inscriptions made by Arthur and Edmund Poole, great-grandsons of the Duke of Clarence. These young gentlemen were also accused for conspiring for Mary Stuart, adjudged traitors, and pined away their lives in hopeless captivity. Well might the White Rose of Scotland have said with Helen of Troy:

“Many drew swords and died; where’er I came,I brought calamity.”

“Many drew swords and died; where’er I came,

I brought calamity.”

One inscription reads:

“IHS. A passage perillus maketh a port pleasant. Ao. 1568. Arthur Poole, Æ sue 37, A. P.”

A passage perilous indeed, hadst thou, poor soul; God grant thou madst a fair haven at last.

Another contains these words:

“IHS. Dio semine in lachrimis in exultatione meter. Æ. 21, E. Poole, 1562.” “That which is sown by God in tears is reaped in joy.”

In all the inscriptions left by these ill-starred gentlemen, there breathes the same spirit of noble and pious submission.

The greatest interest clusters about one little word, supposed to have been traced by the hand of one to whom that name was sacred. Directly under one of the Poole autographs is the word “IANE,” supposed to have been the royal title of Lady Jane Grey, written there by her husband, Lord Dudley, who was confined in this tower. Scarcely can the eyes be restrained at this touching reminder of the fate of those two unhappy children, the victims of circumstance and greedy ambition.

In the corner next the Beauchamp is the Devereux Tower, named from the brilliant Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the chivalric soldier and courtier, first a petted favorite, then a victim of Queen Elizabeth. His story is one of thrilling and fascinating interest. Meteor-like he flashed through his court and army life, and after gaining the zenith of his power, sank as suddenly as he had risen. It is said that he was one of the many with whom the royal and fickle spinster coquetted, and that he really touched her haughty heart. The government of Ireland was in his hands, but enemies at court plotted his overthrow. He in turn plotted against these foes and rashly attempted to cause their removal. He was arrested and arraigned in Westminster Hall for high treason, pronounced guilty, and doomed to the block.

Elizabeth had a terrific struggle between revenge and affection, but the baser passion got the victory, and the accomplished general, statesman, and courtier trod the same hard road to death that so many knew full well.

“I have reached the highest point of all my greatness!And from that full meridian of my glory,I haste now to my setting: I shall fallLike a bright exhalation in the evening,And no man see me more.”

“I have reached the highest point of all my greatness!

And from that full meridian of my glory,

I haste now to my setting: I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

And no man see me more.”

The towers of the outer ward are comparatively of but little interest, with the exception of St. Thomas’s Tower or the Traitor’s Gate. This is a large, square building over the moat, the outside of which is guarded by two circular towers, which exhibit specimens of the architecture of the time of Henry III. The gate through which state prisoners entered the Tower is underneath this building.

The rain was falling drearily on the day we visited the Tower. Somber and heavy skies looked sullenly down on the gloomy scene. Thoughts as somber and heavy weighed down our minds as we stood before the Traitor’s Gate; thoughts of countless numbers that had gone in at that gate never to come forth again. In the clang of those iron portals behind them they heard their death knell. The royal, the noble, the illustrious, the pious passed under these frowning battlements, leaving behind grandeur, brilliancy of courts, dreams of glory, home, friends, all that makes life sweet, to receive in exchange, the dungeon, the scaffold, the block, the axe.

They who entered there left hope indeed behind.

Through this gate went Elizabeth, expecting naught but death; dreaming little of the hour when all England should lie within the hollow of her white hand. Under these portals three short years after she issued from the Tower in all the full flush of her pride and triumph, received by lords and dukes, amid the blare of trumpets, and peal of bells and roar of guns. Elizabeth’s hapless mother, Anne Boleyn, returned to the Tower. No nobles in her train now; no burst of music; no chime of bells nor roar of artillery; alone, save with her jailers; her fair fame blackened; her triumphs, glories—all shrunk to this little measure. The husband she had stolen from another, in turn lured from her, wearied of her, longing to be rid of her, hurrying her to her fearful doom with brutal haste.

“A dream of what thou wast; a garish flag,To be the aim of ever dangerous shot;A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble;A queen in jest only to fill the scene.…Where is thy husband now?…Who sues and kneels and says God save the queen?Where be thy bending peers that flattered thee?Where be the thronging troops that followed thee?…For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;For queen, a very caitiff crowned with care;Thus hath the course of justice wheeled aboutAnd left thee but a very prey to time;Having no more but thought of what thou wert,To torture thee the more, being what thou art.”

“A dream of what thou wast; a garish flag,

To be the aim of ever dangerous shot;

A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble;

A queen in jest only to fill the scene.

…

Where is thy husband now?

…

Who sues and kneels and says God save the queen?

Where be thy bending peers that flattered thee?

Where be the thronging troops that followed thee?

…

For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;

For queen, a very caitiff crowned with care;

Thus hath the course of justice wheeled about

And left thee but a very prey to time;

Having no more but thought of what thou wert,

To torture thee the more, being what thou art.”

What thoughts must have chased each other in lightning rapidity through the mind of beautiful, brilliant, witty Anne Boleyn, during those short seventeen days she passed in the Tower before she was led out to execution. What experienceof life had she not compressed into those three little years of usurpation, during which she spurned “heads like foot balls,” laughed, danced, and jested away her poor, butterfly life? What remorse must have been hers when the sad, pale face of Katharine arose before her! What unspeakable anguish when the coquettish features of Jane Seymour swam before her weeping eyes!

On the 19th of May, 1536, when hedge and field were bursting into bloom, when birds sang and soft breezes played, when all nature must have breathed of beauty, hope and life—Anne Boleyn went forth the second time from the Tower to receive her crown; not this time an earthly diadem, glittering with jewels, but the thorny crown of martyrdom. Not in cloth of gold and blazing with gems, but in sable robes went she to this coronation, and her only salute was the dull boom of the cannon which announced to the royal ruffian waiting at Richmond that he was free.

The Tower of London has been used not alone for a fortress and prison, but also for a palace. All of the kings from William to Charles II. held occasional court in the Tower. A palace occupied a space in the inner ward, between the southwest corner of the White Tower and the Record, Salt and Broadarrow Towers. The queens had a suite extending from the Lanthorn to the southeast of the White Tower. And near the Record Tower was a great hall which demanded forty fir trees to repair it at the time of the marriage festivities of Henry III. and Eleanore of Provence.

When Edward the Black Prince took prisoner King John of France, he lodged his royal captive in this palace, and King John gave an entertainment for his captor in this great hall. The beautiful Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., and queen of Henry VII., resided for a time in this palace, and passed from thence to her coronation. Sixteen years later she lay in state twelve days in the royal chapel in the White Tower, where her knights and ladies kept solemn vigil beside her bier. What an impressive scene it must have been! The windows all ablaze with lights, and an illuminated hearse holding the royal dead.

Queen Mary held court in the Tower directly after she had defeated Northumberland and the Dudleys. The ancient custom of a state procession from the Tower to Westminster was observed for the last time at the coronation of Charles II.

Very near the Devereux Tower is a plain, unpretentious building—the chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula. It is small, having but one nave and one side aisle, and is quite without ornamentation. But marvelous interest invests it. Here Lady Jane was buried; here the body of poor Anne Boleyn was thrust into an old chest and hastily interred in the vaults; here lies the dust of Northumberland, Thomas Cromwell, Somerset, Surrey, and Essex, teaching the terribly solemn lesson that ambition, talents, fame, form no sure bulwark against death.

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusky death. Out, out, brief candle.”

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusky death. Out, out, brief candle.”

Just in front of this chapel is the spot on which the scaffold was built; the spot where the best blood of England flowed like water; the spot which mars the escutcheon of the Tudors with an ineffaceable stain; the spot where Englishmen first looked upon the spectacle of the blood of their countrywoman flowing beneath the blows of a foreign headsman. Here fell the heads of two of the wives of Henry VIII.; here the hapless Lady Jane was despatched, and the gallant Essex met his death by orders of Henry’s daughters, fit representatives of their father; here was enacted that revolting scene, the butchery of the venerable mother of Cardinal Pole, the Countess of Salisbury. She was sister of the Earl of Warwick, and daughter of the murdered Clarence. Her only crime seems to have been her royal blood. When brought out to execution, she refused to lay her head on the block, saying haughtily, “So do traitors use to do, and I am no traitor.” The sequel is almost too sickening to be rehearsed. The executioner pursued his victim around the scaffold, striking at her with his axe, and finally dragged her by her white hairs to the block. Thus miserably perished the last of the Plantagenets.

Heavier fell the rain and wilder blew the wind as we slowly took our way toward the outer entrance to the Tower. In the patter of the rain upon the stone flagging beneath us, we seemed to hear the footsteps of a countless, headless throng; in the slow drip, drip of the raindrops from the gloomy walls, the drip, drip of warm life blood trickling down and ebbing away; borne on the wail of the wind there seemed to come sighs of anguish, moaning voices long since silenced, voices from out a dreadful past, voices that cried aloud for vengeance. And as the great gates of the Tower clanged behind us, in a tremendous peal of thunder, there seemed to come an answering voice from heaven, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

BY PROF. M. B. GOFF,Western University of Pennsylvania.

With its immediate attendants, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, etc., has been the “theme of our discourse” for the last eighteen months. Except an occasional reference to one of the planets as being located near some fixed star, or in some constellation, little has been said about the 3,391 “fixed” stars, visible to the naked eye, many of which are located on maps of the heavens, just as villages, cities, mountains, rivers and plains are located on maps of the earth; nor of the somewhere between 30,000,000 and 50,000,000 which are visible only through powerful telescopes, and whose distances from the sun are so great as to make that of Neptune appear like a little walk “across lots” to visit a neighbor. Nor is it proposed now to enter upon such an extensive subject, except so far as may be necessary to present a single thought. As we know, our sun is a bright body, whose light and heat (so great is their power) we can hardly estimate. Both these qualities render it visible to us and make us realize its presence. The other bodies, as Mars, Jupiter and the Moon are seen only by reflected light, and were they as distant as the fixed stars, would not be at all visible. These 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 stars must be suns. How many satellites has each? We do not know, for they can not be seen. Suppose each had as many as our sun. Then instead of 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 of heavenly bodies, we have within reach of the telescope from 240,000,000 to 400,000,000. How many are outside of these? No man can number them. We shall have to wait till our minds can grasp the infinite. Are these millions of bodies standing still, or are they in motion? Does our sun stand still and permit us to go around him once every year, or is he, and are we along with him, making our way through other vast multitudes and moving around some other central orb?Observation proves that the sun is only a sergeant in a great army of generals, and marches his squad in an appointed way to their assigned duties. How do we know? The records of patient watchers for centuries reveal the fact. “If we suppose the sun, attended by planets, to be moving through space, we ought to be able to detect this motion by an apparent motion of the stars in a contrary direction, as when an observer moves through a forest of trees, his own motion imparts an apparent motion to the trees in a contrary direction. All the stars would not be equally affected by such a motion of the solar system. The nearest stars would appear to have the greatest motion, but all the changes of position would appear to take place in the same direction. The stars would appear to recede from that point of the heavenstowardwhich the sun is moving, while in the opposite quarter the stars would seem to crowd more closely together.” Proceeding upon this principle, Sir William Herschel was in 1783 enabled to announce that the observed proper motion of a large portion of the stars could be accounted for on the supposition that the sun was moving toward the constellationHercules. Later investigations not only established the fact that the sun moved, but that it was moving nearly toward the starRho, inHercules, and Struve estimated its motion at about five miles per second; though Professor Airy places it at about twenty-seven miles per second. It is also highly probable that its motion is not in a straight line, but in obedience to the same laws that govern the motions of its own satellites, it with other suns revolves about a center located nearly in the plane of the Milky Way, and with an orbit so great “that ages may elapse before it will be possible to detect any change in the direction of its motion.” Meantime, finite beings are interested in knowing how its light and heat affect their interests, and how these qualities may be made most profitable to mankind. For ourselves, we must at present be content to know that on the 1st our sun has reached a point 4° 48′ north of the equator, and that by the 30th he will be 14° 58′ north, an increase in northern declination of 10° 10′, and, as a consequence, our daylight will be increased about one hour and thirteen minutes, and the time “from early dawn to dewy” twilight will be seventeen hours and thirty-five minutes. On the 1st sunrise occurs at 5:43 a. m., sunset, 6:24 p. m.; on the 16th, sunrise, 5:19, sunset, 6:40; on the 30th, sunrise, 4:59, sunset, 6:54.

The phases for the month are as follows: Last quarter, 7th, at 9:34 a. m.; new moon, 15th, at 12:43 a. m.; first quarter, 21st, at 6:12 p. m.; full moon, 29th, at 1:06 a. m. Rises on the 1st, at 8:38 p. m.; sets on the 16th, at 8:28 p. m.; rises on the 30th, at 8:21 p. m. In latitude 41° 30′ north, least elevation on the 6th, and equals 30° 20′; greatest elevation on the 19th, equals 66° 44′ 29″.

Will be an evening star during the month; it will have a direct motion of 12° 25′ 59″ up to the 17th, after which, to the end of the month, a retrograde motion of 5° 22′ 11″. On the 8th, at 2:00 a. m., will be at its greatest eastern elongation (19° 26′); on the 16th, at 11:55 a. m., will be 6° 21′ south of the moon; on the 17th, at 5:00 a. m., will be stationary; on 27th, at 10:00 p. m., will be in inferior conjunction with the sun—that is, will be between the earth and sun; and next day, at 1:00 p. m., will be 1° 42′ north of Venus. A few days before and after the 8th may be seen as a pale, light star, near the western horizon. Its times of rising and setting are as follows: On the 1st, rises at 6:21 a. m., sets at 7:51 p. m.; on the 16th, rises at 5:50 a. m., sets at 8:00 p. m.; on 30th, rises at 4:53 a. m., sets at 6:29 p. m. Diameter increases from 6.4″ to 11.8″.

Like Mercury, will be evening star throughout the month, and near the 28th the two will keep “close company,” but will so completely hide themselves in the light of “Old Sol” as to be entirely indifferent to the gaze of the “vulgar crowd.” On the 1st Venus rises at 5:34 a. m., and sets at 5:34 p. m., being just twelve hours above the horizon; on the 16th, rises at 5:19 a. m., sets at 6:09 p. m.; on 30th, rises at 5:06 a. m., sets at 6:42 p. m. Diameter diminishes during the month two tenths of a second; motion, 34° 38′ 45″ eastwardly; on the 14th, at 3:00 p. m., six minutes north of the moon.

MARS

Has a direct motion of 21° 13′ 16″, and his diameter increases two tenths of one second. On the 14th, at 12:27 a. m., 12′ south of the moon. On the 1st, rises at 5:29 a. m., sets at 5:25 p. m.; on the 16th, rises at 4:56 a. m., sets at 5:24 p. m.; on the 30th, rises at 4:27 a. m., sets at 5:23 p. m.; on the 14th, at 12:27 a. m., twelve minutes south of moon.

May well be called this month the “Ruler of the Night.” From twilight till near the dawn his broad face looks condescendingly upon our little world, and by his example cheerily bids us “pursue the even tenor of our way.” Jupiter rises on the 1st at 2:26 p. m., sets next morning at 4:02 a. m.; on the 16th, rises at 1:24 p. m., sets on 17th at 3:02 a. m.; rises on 30th, at 12:29 p. m., and sets next morning at 2:07 a. m. Before the 21st, retrograde motion amounts to 36′ 26″; after that date to end of month, direct motion equals 8′ 42″; diameter diminishes three seconds, from 40.4″ to 37.4″. On 21st, at 3:00 p. m., stationary; on 23d, at 2:05 p. m., 4° 37′ north of the moon. It might be observed in passing that as a mean result of five years’ observations at the Dearborn Observatory, Chicago, the time of Jupiter’s rotation has been discovered to be greater by three seconds than was supposed in 1879.

Sets at the following times: On the 1st, at 11:49 p. m.; on 16th, at 10:57 p. m.; on the 30th, at 10:09 p. m.; is, therefore, an evening star, and will remain so till the 18th of June. On the 18th, at 8:20 p. m., 4° 1′ north of the moon. Diameter diminishes from 16.6″ to 16″. Makes a forward (direct) motion of 3° 2′ 30″. For observation, this month is preferable to May. Can be found a little northwest ofZeta, in the constellationTaurus.

Unlike Saturn, retrogrades nearly one degree of arc during the present month, and shines from early eve to break of day, rising on the 1st at 5:18 p. m., and setting on the 2d at 5:22 a. m.; on the 16th, rising at 4:17 p. m., and setting next morning at 4:21; and on the 30th, rising at 3:19 p. m., and setting May 1st at 3:23 a. m., and can be seen all night by those who know where to find him (a little southwest ofEta, in the constellationVirgo). On 26th, at 12:16 a. m., 1° 17′ north of moon.

Not only the father of waters, but water himself, scarcely visible at best, “hangs out” all day, rising soon after the sun, and setting as follows: On the 1st, at 9:36 p. m.; on the 16th, at 8:40 p. m.; on the 30th, at 7:46 p. m. Has a retrograde motion of 58′ 16″; and on the 16th, at 8:42 p. m., is 2° 13′ north of the moon.

We have now passed the boundary of the first century of our existence as an independent nation. We are as a people engaged in a confused struggle with the problem of our own national self-consciousness. We want to know what is the spirit that is in us as a nation. We must know this in order to be properly master of ourselves and of our destiny. We must know this in order to know our place in universal history.—George S. Morris.

BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.

Within two years there have been three prophets in Egypt. Arabi Pasha is in exile; Chinese Gordon is dead; El Mahdi, the mysterious voice in the Soudan wilderness, mutters his prayers in the mosque of Khartoum. England bombarded Alexandria; Arab loss in dead perhaps 5,000. Then England fought and conquered Arabi in the open field, captured him, and sent him into exile; Arab loss in dead perhaps 7,000. Next there is trouble on the Red Sea, and another English army killed perhaps 9,000 Arabs. And last a battle or series of battles in the heart of the Soudan; Arab loss in dead perhaps 12,000. Probably not less than 30,000 have been slaughtered by Englishmen in less than two years. English loss, a few hundreds. The butchers have been liberally rewarded; one soldier has become a “lord;” promotions and extra pay and pensions have fallen in a silvery shower on “our brave fellows” in Egypt. Only one Englishman got nothing. He disappeared one day in the desert, and his dromedary was said to carry the destiny of England; and perhaps it did. He was a soldier seeking peace at the meeting place of the Niles. Chinese Gordon entered Khartoum in triumph, and almost at once there rose a cry: “We must rescue Gordon.” Then came the long delayed march of an army in search of the English prophet at Khartoum; then the butcheries, called battles of Metemneh, and what not. And then in the last days of January there was a slaughter, not this time by Englishmen in person, and perhaps 5,000 more Moslems perish by Moslem steel in the sack of Khartoum. Then a wail rises on every breeze in Christendom; “Alas! alas! Gordon is dead!” The story of his death is a parable: “Stabbed in the back while leaving his house.” Make the “house” stand for England, and the knives that pierced him the indecisions, tergiversations, and infidelities of an English ministry with a great Christian statesman at its head. The world has supped full of the horrors of that kind of Christian statesmanship. We have believed in it; we have hoped that it meant something, even in those bloody Egyptian campaigns.

We are nearly at the end of our confidence. It is not merely the shade of Disraeli which calls mockingly for explanations; the world that believed in Gladstone when Disraeli was playing at fantastic military statesmanship, wants to know why Christian statesmanship in Egypt has, in a short time, spilt almost as much blood as was shed by one army in that American conflict which Mr. Gladstone thought so cruel and so useless. We can not even condone Mr. Gladstone’s offense against civilization by saying that it has been a less bloody assault on humanitarian ideas and plans than Disraeli’s was; for Gladstone has butchered twenty men to Disraeli’s one. There has, in fact, been nothing so bloody in this century—I mean no such large butchery by a small army. Ten years of such statesmanship would fill the Nile valley with human bones. It is high time to call for a full explanation. What does Mr. Gladstone mean? What does he expect to accomplish? If he has intended something exalted and noble, which we should wish to believe, it is time to say so with the breadth of statement and accuracy of detail by which he obtained renown. The personal question stands at the front, because England is governed by one man. It is a happiness of Englishmen that they are able to know whom to blame when things go wrong. Mr. Gladstone is the head of a government for whose acts and failures to act he is perfectly responsible. What England does in Egypt Gladstone does. It is the one governmental luxury of the English people—they know exactly who governs them. Mr. Gladstone has not been compelled to do this or that by parties or circumstances. If he turns butcher in the Delta, on the Nile, or on the Red Sea, he alone does it, and he does it because he chooses to do it. For, at any moment, he can shift disagreeable duties to another; three lines in the form of a resignation will relieve him of the burden of responsible government. So long as he remains at the head of the English ministry he is the man who shoots down Arabs by the thousand. In this country politicians have divided, dispersed and destroyed responsibility to such an extent that the people know not whom to blame for evil events. It is a devil’s art, from whose manipulations England has by some special favor of heaven escaped. There the ghosts of murdered men and things can “shake” their “gory locks” at the Prime Minister; and he may not reply:

“Thou canst not say I did it.”

Many of us have expected Mr. Gladstone to retire when each of these bloody episodes in Egypt has begun. His retention of power may be explained as an old man’s insane appetite for office, or as the surrender of a statesman to the logic of a situation. The first explanation we respect Mr. Gladstone too much to accept; the second is embarrassed by the absence of a clearly defined policy. We should understand Disraeli; but he would help us to understand him by making distinct proclamation of his purpose to govern and bless the Moslem world. He would have butchered less, but he would have planted an imperial stake on every battle-field. We should have known that he meant conquest and dominion. There would have been no meaningless carnage. A humanitarian war is a difficult conception; but it is not impossible to conceive of wars that produce beneficent results. We could conceive of the subjugation of Islam to British sway, and rejoice to see the Soudan like India, slowly but surely rising into civilization under English rule. But an army thrusting down no imperial stakes, going home after each slaughter to be paid, promoted and fêted, is not doing work which opens any vistas of smiling peace and advancing light. It is only a bloody carnival. No petty cabinet differences, no outcry of public opinion, no Jingoism in the army or the royal family, no temporary exigencies of party, no domestic dangers nor foreign rivalries can explain and justify the responsible man’s conduct. Mr. Gladstone’s garments are dripping with Moslem blood, and the world can not find an explanation which explains.

It seems to the spectators that England is doing the one thing she should most carefully avoid doing. She is uniting Islam, and teaching Islam how to make war. In each new campaign the Soudanese are better armed, fight with better method, and kill more Englishmen. England is training them into sturdy and disciplined soldiers. A Moslem victory is proclaimed in every Arab tent, and in every Indian village. Such a victory is not merely a victory for El Mahdi; it is a hope for the whole Moslem world. Moslem defeats travel less swiftly, and mean only a delayed victory. What fierce resolutions are begotten in Moslem bosoms by Mr. Gladstone’s campaigns of butchery, we can easily imagine. Meanwhile, Christendom can only say: “Premier of England, your garments are soaked with blood; and, may God forgive you, the blood is not your own. We can not understand you, but we are painfully certain that you are arousing all Islam against us.” Meanwhile, the ancient spears are giving place in the Prophet’s armies to repeating rifles, and Krupp guns may soon guard every height along the Nile. Islam is strong in numbers. There are 75,000,000 of Soudanese, with a very large proportion of men just civilized enough to make terrible soldiers. It may happensome day that a military leader will arise in the front of this vast army, and that an effeminate Europe may find that its military science has gone over to the Moslems. Probably no one man’s policy could effect its transfer more rapidly than Mr. Gladstone’s. When that dark wave of the Moslem millions is gathered into conquering masses by a capable leader, it will have mighty winds of religious enthusiasm behind it, and plenty of room before it. The southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean would be swept clean of the petty European military establishments in a month. Morocco, larger than France, holds at least half of the western gate of the Mediterranean, while the Turk holds the eastern gate; and a month’s campaign might convert that sea into a Moslem lake, and leave its Italian, French, and Spanish and Greek shores to be ravaged again as in the crusading centuries, by Moslem piracy and brigandage. The one thing the Arab can learn thoroughly is the art of war. He was once great on the sea. That man may exult too soon, who, remembering the leviathans of the deep which destroyed Alexandria, trusts Europe’s safety to the great navies of Europe. Islam has some great ships in the Bosphorus, and is rapidly learning where the great ships grow. It is true that if splendid leadership does not arise, Islam may continue to bleed and die in vain; but wars produce great soldiers as regularly as oaks bear acorns. Thereisdanger. Ten years of Gladstoneism in the Nile valley would make the danger a terrible reality. Christendom should rise up and condemn the bloody education which England is imparting to Islam.

Meanwhile, Germans and Frenchmen are in the armies of the Prophet, teaching the rude but vigorous men of the desert how to use arms of precision with deadly effect. In the process of creating a terrible peril for Europe, greed, personal ambition, and national jealousies are contributing to perfect the lessons in modern warfare which England is giving to Islam. No doubt it is true that a great man is needed to weld together the forces of Islam. But why should no strong man be expected to arise in a race so rich in warlike memories? When the Prophet is once crowned with the diadem of military success, there is an army of Mohammedans in India wearing the queen’s uniform, there are vast resources at Constantinople ready to fall from the helpless hands of the Sultan; there are millions of soldiers who require no pay, and have no scruples about the rights of private property. If one gives rein to his imagination, he is soon in a world of awful possibilities. There are two hundred millions of Mohammedans waiting for a leader to restore the glories of Islam.

The relations of England to Islam are logically and historically friendly. England has a Moslem army in India, and has long protected the head of Islam at Constantinople, from the consequences of his vices, extravagances and follies. The Indian mutiny had a religious source, but this was denied, and the spring covered up so successfully that, until Mr. Gladstone attacked Disraeli’s policy in the name of Christianity (such as it is) in Bulgaria, England had successfully encountered the difficulties of her position as a Christian power ruling directly and indirectly half the Moslem world.

Does Mr. Gladstone foresee an “irrepressible conflict” between England and Islam? Is he instinctively bringing on a conflict which will be the less perilous the sooner it comes? Will history add to his rare good fortune by making him glorious as the beginner of a defense of Christendom which he has never dreamed of organizing? Disraeli’s conception followed logic and history. He made a Christian queen empress of India, and he contemplated with composure a time when the descendant of Victoria should be born in India, and be reared in the faith of Mohammed, the center of the British empire having gone to its proper place. Against such ideas Christian England revolted. Is Mr. Gladstone reversing centuries of history and setting the Moslem and Christian worlds by the ears again? If he is moving on that line, his armies should conquer and hold Egypt and the Soudan, the Nile and the Red Sea, the ancient Delta and its modern canal, with the grip England once laid on North America. The audacity of the conquest would provoke diplomatic criminations; but it were easier far to face them than to answer the hard questions which are provoked by fruitless slaughter in Moslem lands. England is only the heart of the British empire. A quiet and gentle England is a possible dream; but the empire is war, conquest, dominion, at the expense of weak peoples. The empire can not survive the definitive abandonment of an imperial policy. The empire must dominate by force or fall to pieces.

It is not worth while to seek in the history of the Egyptian debt, and the “grasping disposition of the English bondholders,” for the key of the present situation. Those who make a religion, or at least a philanthropy, of heaping abuse on bondholders anywhere and everywhere, are the least reasonable of Christians. It is not a crime to deny ourselves, save money and lend it to others. To refuse to pay debts freely contracted is not the first of virtues or the best of policies. The bondholders are commonly poor people who have saved a little by pinching themselves, and have bought bonds for the holy purposes of family forethought. Repudiated debts are baptised in the self-renouncing spirit which is at the heart of our religion, and repudiators make war on the foundations of character and society. In so far as England protects her money lenders, she protects her noble middle class, whose honest thrift lies at the foundation of her wealth. It is among the strangest perversions of feeling that prodigals and prodigal governments should get the sympathy of mankind. Let England foreclose her mortgage on Egypt, and the honest world will thank her for abolishing one nest of spendthrifts. Much is said of the miserable Egyptian peasants, from whom the taxes to pay interest are wrung with every form of despotic oppression. Let us not be deceived by such false-toned appeals for sympathy. The fellaheen of the Nile are oppressed irrespective of the bondholders. Arabi or El Mahdi would maintain the oppressive systems if they were in power. If there were no bondholders, the backs of the miserable fellaheen would smart under the lash of the oppressor. The despotism is Egyptian, not English. English rule would gradually emancipate the oppressed classes. Nowhere, not even in Ireland, has England conquered a people without improving the condition of the poor. The interest on debts which she surrenders in the valley of the Nile does not go to the relief of the peasants; it is squandered in the harems of Cairo and Alexandria. The issue is strictly between the splendid, many-concubined lords in Egypt and the honest and self-denying people who have lent honest money on the faith of England.

Which way, then, will events march? Toward a war between Islam and Christendom, or back to the old imperial policy of England? It would seem that the world’s hope lies in a restoration of the ancient policy of the British empire. The events of 1885 in Moslem land will be full of interest, perhaps pregnant with destiny. A larger English army, perhaps 25,000 men, will soon be in Egypt. It will probably face a better trained foe. There will be more English graves in Egypt. To what end? The LondonTimessays: “Gordon must be avenged.” England repeats the cry. But what end will the vengeance serve? And what if Arabi Pasha and the Emirs killed in the late battles, and the 30,000 to 40,000 Moslems slain, should be avenged? Soon or late—if she does not attempt it too late—England must return to her historical policy and stand among Christian powers the foremost ally of the sons of Mohammed. It is the inexorable logic of her greatness. Let us shut our eyes upon the horrible vision of the new crusades, as useless as the old and far bloodier. Christendom can hope for no more fortunate disposition of Mohammedanism than that it should be locked fast in the iron arms of the British empire; and on the other hand the failure of the British empire would involve the greatest possible disasters for Christendom.Many foolish things have been promised in the name of “manifest destiny.” Perhaps destiny is never so manifest that it may be read off by uninspired prophecy; but there is no other Power which seems fitted to play England’s imperial rôle; and it does not appear how the progress and happiness of mankind can go forward without such an imperial force as England has been for two centuries. While we deprecate the effects of the Jingo spirit which Disraeli fostered, and repudiate the indifference to the progress of Christianity which the Hebrew statesman scarcely concealed, we can not look with complacency upon changes of British policy which would disintegrate the empire. Let England’s drum-beat go round the earth with the sun; for the sunrise of progress and civilization will awaken wherever that martial music falls upon the ear of mankind.

BY PROF. G. BROWN GOODE.

When any portion of the earth is colonized by civilized man, an era of change and readjustment at once begins. The untilled plain, the primeval forest, the bridgeless river, the malaria-breathing swamp, and the jungle—lurking place for beasts of prey—are all obstructions which must be removed from the highway of social and industrial progress. Until a new environment had been created, the colonists of Virginia and New England were like helpless children, compared with the Indians whom they had come to disinherit. The hills were soon cleared, and the water-courses dried up, swamps were drained, and lakes were made in the valleys, the plains were plowed and planted with exotic vegetation, and great regions of land were entirely changed in character by irrigation and the use of manure. The New World has in two centuries become in very truth a new world, for its physical features have been entirely reconstructed. The aboriginal man retreated before the advancing strides of civilization, and has now been practically exterminated, at least east of the Mississippi River.

The manner in which the man of European descent has eliminated and replaced the son of the soil is fairly typical of changes which have occurred in the animal and vegetable life of the continent. Bear, moose, caribou, deer, wolf, beaver, and all other large animals have been entirely destroyed in many parts of the country, and the time is not far remote when they will exist among us only in a state of partial or entire domestication. The prairie chicken once reared its brood in Massachusetts, but is now never seen east of the Alleghenies. The alligator is fast being exterminated in Florida and Mississippi, and the buffalo is now rarely to be seen except in captivity. The sea cow of the north Pacific, the great auk of New England and Newfoundland stand with the dodo, the moa, and the zebra in the list of animals which have become extinct within the memory of man, and the list will continue to increase. A similar story might be told for birds, reptiles, and plants. The rattlesnake is retreating to the mountain tops, the turkey, the pigeon, the woodpecker and hosts of others are disappearing, the medicinal plant ginseng, once so important in the Alleghenies, is almost a rarity to botanists.

The aboriginal animals and plants go. They are replaced by others, which in that struggle for existence which plays so important a part in determining careers for plants and animals, have become particularly well fitted to be man’s companions. The clover, the ox-eye daisy, the buttercup, the thistle, the mullein, the dandelion, followed the European to America, and with them the broad-leaved plantain, which, as every one knows, the Indians called “the white man’s foot,” because it sprung up at once in every meadow where the soles of his shoes had touched. With these came the European mouse, the rat, the cat, the dog. The browsing herds of deer and buffalo were replaced by oxen, horses and sheep, and the greedy, quarrelsome, impertinent sparrow was permitted to drive out the native birds which many of us would have been glad to keep as relics of the old dispensation.

Not less important in many regions have been the changes in the life in the waters. In many of our streams and lakes the fish, formerly abundant, have been entirely exterminated. Sometimes, perhaps we may charitably say usually, this has been the result of ignorance, but often, I fear, it may be ascribed to recklessness or cupidity.

Fishes may be grouped, according to their habits, into two classes—resident and migratory. Representatives of each of these classes may be found both in fresh water and in the sea. Among resident fresh water fishes may be mentioned the perch, the catfish, suckers and dace, the pike and pickerel, the black bass. Resident sea fishes are typified by the flounders, cod, sheepshead, blackfish and sea bass, which are found near the shore in winter as well as summer. In cold climates, resident fishes always retreat in winter into deeper water to avoid the cold, and if they can not get beyond its reach they subside into a state of torpidity or hibernation, in which all the vital functions are more or less inert. The carp, and many other kinds of fish, at this time, burrow into “kettles” or holes in the mud in the bottom of the pond, where they remain for months. A hybernating fish may be frozen solid in the middle of a cake of ice, and emerge when thawed out, unharmed.

Migratory fishes, on the other hand, are those which wander extensively from season to season. There are migrating fish in the sea, which, like the mackerel, the bluefish, the menhaden and the porgy come near our northern coasts only in the summer, and in winter retreat to regions either in the south or far out at sea unknown; others, like the smelt and the sea herring, which retreat northward in summer and only appear in quantity on the Atlantic coast of the United States in the colder months of the year.

Then there are migratory fishes which live part of the year in the rivers. Such are the shad and the river-herrings or alewives, which leave the sea in the spring and ascend to the river heads to spawn, and the salmon, which does likewise, to spawn in the brooklets in November and December. Still more remarkable is the eel, which breeds in the sea, where the male eels always remain, while the young females, when as large as darning needles, ascend in the spring to inland lakes and streams, there to remain, until, after three or four years, they are grown to maturity, when they descend to salt water, to reproduce their kind and die.

There are also migratory fish in fresh water, like the white fish, the salmon, trout, and the siscowet, which live in the abyssal depths of the great lakes and swim up into the shallows and creeks in winter to spawn their eggs, and the brook trout and dace, which for a similar purpose ascend from the pools and quiet meadow stretches to the pebble-paved ripplets near the spring sources of the brooks in which they live.

Having, in a general way, classified fish according to their habits, we are in a position to consider the manner in which man has succeeded in exterminating them. As a general rule, fish deposit their eggs in shallow water, and the time of egg-laying is very closely dependent upon the temperature of thewater. The eggs of a fish are, as every one knows, enclosed in two sacs, or ovaries, which are situated close to the walls of the abdominal cavity, and separated from the water by thin walls of skin and flesh, rarely, even in the largest fish, more than a sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Experiment has shown that the temperature of the blood in the abdomen of a fish deviates very little from that of the water in which it is floating. Experiment has also shown that as soon as the water has reached a certain degree of warmth, variable with each kind of fish, the eggs are sure to be laid within a very few hours. This being the case, it usually happens that great schools of fish always congregate together at one time upon the spawning grounds. Since the spawning grounds of many kinds of fish are in shallow water, and the fish are at that time most easily caught, it happens that many of the most extensive fisheries are carried on in the spawning season. The delicious little smelts which our neighbors in Maine and New Brunswick send us by the hundred car-loads each winter, packed in little boxes of snow, are always full of eggs—so are the lake white fish, when they are caught, and the shad, and the Potomac herrings, and the cod, and the mullet, and the herring, and in early spring the mackerel.

Now consider how easy it is, taking these fish so much at a disadvantage, to diminish their numbers, simply by catching them. The man who catches a spawning cod destroys anywhere from 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 of eggs, a spawning halibut at least 2,000,000, a shad from 50,000 to 2,000,000. Is not the American breakfasting on broiled shad roe a modern representative of him who killed the goose which laid the golden egg? When we consider that the yearly catch of mother-fish along the New England coast does not fall short of ten to fifteen millions of individuals, we may gain an adequate idea of the destruction of fish life by the fisheries.

Still it is not necessary to be alarmed at these figures. They are presented simply in illustration of the immense possibilities of destruction when the fisheries are carried on at the spawning season. As a matter of fact, cod are just as abundant along our coasts as they ever were, and it has not yet been demonstrated that any kind of sea fish has ever been diminished in numbers by hook and line fishing or by netting them at a distance from the shore.

Some kinds of fishes, however, enter narrow bays and estuaries to spawn, and if they are there recklessly destroyed, the local supply at least may be permanently interfered with. This has apparently been the case with certain species in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. For instance, the scuppaug or porgy has been seriously diminished in numbers in certain seasons, years ago; the supply will probably be replenished from adjoining waters by the reparative tendencies of nature, if this indeed has not already been done. So, too, the halibut has been exterminated in Massachusetts, where it was once so abundant as to be regarded as a nuisance by the fishermen. It is in the inland or freshwater fisheries, however, that the work of extermination has been thorough, and here, from the nature of the case, the work once accomplished, it is beyond the power of nature to remedy the damage. If I could take the reader with me next May to one of the many little streamlets of Cape Cod, flowing southward into Nantucket Sound, I could show him a scene which he would never forget. The little rill has been encased at bottom and sides with planks, so that it flows for a mile or two, down to its junction with the sea, in a straight trough not over fifteen inches wide, and a foot in depth. At a convenient level place a shed has been built over the trough, and in the floor is a kind of cistern, through which the waters of the brook flow as it goes on its course. In the shed stand two men, each with a great scoop of netting, with which they labor, dipping the fish out of the cistern as they fill it, swimming up the trough from the sea. Several barrels are taken out every day, and in some of these streams one or two thousand barrels always reward a season’s work, the brook being the property of the township, and the privilege of fishing being sold at auction for the benefit of the public. Dip! dip! dip it is all day long, and as the little alewives are tumbled into barrels and carts, the eye of the practiced observer notes the plump sides and the brilliant iridescent coloring of the silvery scales, which indicate that the fish are loaded with a precious burden of eggs, to deposit which in the pond at the head of the stream is the motive which leads them to press forward so blindly into the trap men have set for them.

In these enlightened days the town laws generally require that the brooks shall be unobstructed for one or two days each week, and so a few fish get by the barriers and are allowed to perpetuate their kind. In the past, however, many excellent “herring brooks” have been completely deprived of their fish.

This illustrates how completely man has the destinies of river fish under his control. Suppose that instead of a fish house with movable barriers, an impassable dam had been built. Of course the fish would have been locked out, and their kind exterminated in that immediate region. This is precisely what has happened in almost every river and stream on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Shad and salmon were formerly abundant in every river of New England—and shad and alewives in every considerable stream south to Florida. Now, they are excluded, either entirely or in great part from the waters in which they once swarmed in great schools. Take, for instance, the Connecticut River. In colonial days, salmon were there in immense numbers. All summer long they were swimming up from the sea to the headwaters of the river, to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, where they deposited their eggs in the cool, clear rapids of the main river and its tributaries. They were so abundant that the shad fishermen used to require their customers to take one salmon with every shad, and, as the hackneyed old story goes, the apprentices were accustomed to stipulate in their papers that they should not be required to eat salmon above three times a week. In 1798 a dam was built across the river at Miller’s Falls. Next year many salmon were seen at the base of the dam, the following year a smaller number, and in less than ten years salmon had entirely disappeared from the Connecticut. Not a salmon was seen in those waters until seventy years later, when, in 1871, a single artificially bred fish was caught at Saybrook. I could show you a map prepared by an associate of mine, in which the present and former limits of the shad are shown, and you would see how they once ranged clear up into the mountains, far up the Susquehanna into New York State, up the Connecticut into New Hampshire and Vermont, and how now, in many rivers, they are confined to very restrictive stretches at the river mouths.

The dams operate in still another way. We have considered hitherto only their influence upon the sea fish which ascend the rivers to spawn. Their effect upon the resident fish is quite as baneful. As the suckers, and the bass, and the cat fish, and dace, and trout, grow large, they naturally go down stream in search of deeper water and wider pools, where they get more room and better food. If they luckily escape the baskets and traps set for them in every dam, they never can get back. The streams are gradually sifted out and left tenantless.

Little need be said of the manner in which ponds are drained dry in order to get all the fish in them, in which immense seines are hauled in little lakes, clearing out everything, great and small, of the use of explosives, lime, orcocculus indicus, in the work of wholesale destruction. The fact stands undisputed and undisputable, that in many parts of the United States the native fish are actually exterminated, and the mud turtles, muskrats and fresh water clams left as sole occupants. Even the harmonious bull-frog has been devoured by man, and only his diminutive cousins, the cricket frogs and hylasleft—the aquatic choir can henceforth perform only soprano and contralto songs, unless the fish culturist finds some way of bringing back the basso whose obligatos we once admired.

Oysters, scallops, and lobsters are going the same way. Although they live in free waters, they are stationary in their habits, and wholesale gathering will soon complete the work of extermination so recklessly begun. The forthcoming census reports on the fisheries will show conclusively the need of immediate protection.

What is the remedy for these great evils? One hundred thousand men are actively engaged in the fisheries of the United States, and at least one fiftieth of the entire population of the country are, to a large extent, dependent on the fishery industry. Fish is the poor man’s food, for unlike any other food product it may be had for the taking. A fish swimming in the water has cost no man labor. There floats four pounds of savory shad, fifty pounds of nutritious sturgeon, a hundred barrels of whale oil; there lies a bushel of oysters, or a barrel of sponges. They are God’s gift, and man has only to gather them in, and possibly submit them to a very simple process of preparation, to be the possessor of a valuable piece of property. If the matter can be properly regulated, good fish ought to be sold in every town and village for two thirds or half the price of beef and pork. As it is, poor fish often cost more than beef and pork, and in many localities good fish can not be had at any price. It is a great problem in political economy, and one which we are, as yet, far from thoroughly understanding.

We are confronted with the question, What can be done to neutralize these destructive tendencies?

There are evidently three things to do.

1. To preserve fish waters, especially those inland, as nearly as possible in their normal condition.

2. To prohibit wasteful or immoderate fishing.

3. To employ the art of fish breeding.

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