The Sketcher.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 214, 16 October 1875, Page 5

The Sketcher.

JERUSALEM. (From the New Yorlc Herald.) The most interesting part of the planet, on account of associations which reach back into the mists of prehistoric times, is undoubtedly that known as the Holy Land. The whole country is only about one hundred and forty miles long, while it averages something like forty in width. Yet within that narrow space victories, defeats, and revelation have been crowded which have been the impulse of civilisation and the foundation of religion. Whatever we may say or think of the Hebrew family as it is represented in Europe and America at the present time, there can be little doubt in the mind of a critical scholarship that the time has been when that remarkable family held the key to the world’s future. The whole of Christendom looks on the soil of the Promised Land as holy, and there is hardly an acre, from thickly wooded Lebanon in the north to the desert in the south, that has not been the scene of some prominent and important event. What the Hebrew race is to become at some time in the distant future, when certain vague and not easily understood prophecies shall come true, is matter of grave interest and speculation ; but so proud are we all of its heroic and privileged past that every hill top and valley, every plain and stream, has an inestimable value.

Leaving its future, then, for time to settle, and caring less than nothing for its ignoble present, the religious bodies of Christendom some years ago determined to discover whatever inscriptions, monuments, and relics of any kind remained after the ravages of centuries. To Great Britain was assigned the country lying west of the Jordan, while the land of Moab was given to the spade, pick, and derrick of American zeal. This land of Moab lies directly east of the Jordan, stretching along the shores of the Red Sea, and is about fifty miles long by nearly twenty broad. It contains some very interesting remains, and discoveries of more or less importance are being made every year by persevering explorers. Their expenses, which are by no means light, are met by a commendable generosity on the part of churches and individuals. The American people are not much given to antiquities, because we believe more in to-morrow than in yesterday. The new rather than the old is valuable to us. As a general rule, we are quite willing to let the dead past bury its dead. But in this instance

the past seems to have a very decided relation to things of the present. It is no ordinary event to discover a tablet of .a monument whose inscription corroborates Old Testament story, and so far, at least, confounds the audacity of modern infidelity. . The English, however, have the more startling field of discovery. They have concentrated their efforts on the city of Jerusalem, and have managed to unearth important inscriptions and facts. The difficulties of this work are understood by few. There are relics which point to a variety of periods, and which must be. carefully discriminated.’ There are ruins which the jieople of Israel found when they captured the country ; ruins Herodian ; ruins Roman and post-Herodian ; mins Christian and ruins Saracenic. Now, in spite of the time and money spent in this enterprise, the English explorers are compelled to confess that they have demonstrated very little, while they have guessed at a great deal. They seem to have no definite idea as to the position of the Temple even, and cannot reproduce the ancient city with sufficient accuracy to give any satisfaction to the Bible student. It is impossible to tell the position of the . fortress Antonia, or of the lombs of the Kings. It is not known where the Pool of Bethesda was, or that of Hezekiah, nor where the towers of Hippicus, Phasmlus and Mariamne were. Even the site of Mount Zion itself is matter for hot controversy. We have a conviction, contrary to the judgment of many, that a private enterprise is apt to be more successful than a regularly organised expedition. The latter is likely to use more ordinary methods and to lack the zeal and personal responsibility of the former. When business of importance is to be accomplished, it can be more satisfactorily done by one earnest administrative man than by a cumbersome committee. We should hesitate .to utter a word of criticism even concerning the efficiency of the expedition which is . excavating in the region of Jerusalem. Still it occurs to us to say, in spite of the admonition of that expedition not to engage in or encourage any private enterprises, that a private enterprise is just as likely to make important discoveries as the not entirely satisfactory organisation which has the work in hand. It is a pity that nothing can be found which will fix some important site, like that of the Temple, which will be a key to other important discoveries. Wo have strong hopes that the day is not far distant when new light will be thrown on these disputed matters, and when the Christian Church can have some definite conception of the city which to their affection is the centre of all things earthly. COLONIAL COPYRIGHT. (From the Pall Mall Gazette.) The Canada Copyright Bill, introduced the other day by Lord Carnarvon into the House of Lords, is a short Bill of four sections, the object of which is to confirm a Copyright Act passed by the Canadian Legislature, and to remove certain doubts which have arisen whether the Canadian measure may not be repugnant to the order in council of December 12, 1858, suspending all prohibitions contained in Acts of the Imperial Parliament against the importing into Canada and selling there “foreign reprints of books first composed, written, or published in the United Kingdom, and entitled to copyright therein.” The Royal assent to the Canadian Bill, which by clause 3 of the present measure it is declared lawful for her Majesty to grant, -will thus have the effect of abrogating the order in council so far as it is inconsistent with the new colonial legislation; and save as regards the counter prohibition of the importation of colonial reprints into the United Kingdom, contained in the 4th clause of the Bill, it is by the Canadian “ Act respecting Copyrights ” that the rights of British authors, and the formalities to be observed for securing them, will be for the future determined.

This Act is recited in extenso in the schedule to the Bill now before the House of Lords, and appears to be a satisfactory measure. The class of persons to whom the benefits of the Act extend are defined in section 4, which provides that “ any person domiciled in Canada, or in any part of the British possessions, or being a citizen of any country, having an international copyright treaty with the United Kingdom, who is the author of any book, map, chart, or musical composition, or of any original painting, drawing, statue, sculpture, or photograph, or who invents, designs, etches, engraves, or causes to be engraved, etched, or made from his design, any print or engraving, and the legal representatives of such person, shall have the sole right and liberty of printing,” &c., subject to the conditions enumerated below. These conditions are (1) that “the said literary, scientific, and artistic works be printed and published, or reprinted or republished, in Canada, or, in the case of works of art, that it be produced or reproduced in Canada, whether they be so published or produced for the first time, or contemporaneously with or subsequently to publication elsewhere; and (2) that no immoral or licentious, or irreligious or treasonable or seditious literary, scientific, or artistic work shall be the legitimate subject of such registration or copyright.” But, further, in order to be entitled to the benefit of the Act, the person claiming copyright must deposit in the office of the Minister of Agriculture two copies of the book, map, print, &c., and in case of paintings, drawings, &c., must furnish a written description of such works of art, to be recorded by the Minister of Agrilculture in a book to be kept for that purpose ; and he must, moreover, give notice of the copyright being secured by printing on the t ; tie-page of the book or on the face of the print the words “ Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.” In section 10 there follows an important provision for allowing the author of a work or his representatives to obtain an interim copyright pending the publication of republication of a book in Canada, by depositing with the Minister of

Agriculture :i copy of the title or :i designation of the work intended for publication or republication in Canada ; such interim registration, however, not to endure for more than a month from the date of the original publication elsewhere. Such a condition, however, obviously could not be fulfilled by the author of a serial story, appearing in, for instance, a monthly magazine ; and with a view to these cases it is further provided that a literary work intended to be published in a pamphlet or book form, but which is first published in separate articles in a newspaper, may be the subject of registration within the meaning of the Act, provided that the title of the manuscript and a short analysis of the work are deposited in the office of the Minister of Agriculture, and that every separate article so published is preceded by the words, “ Registered in accordance with the Copyright Act of 1875.” As soon, however, as the work is published in a complete form it will be subject besides to the other requirements of the Act; that is to say, we suppose, that the author will be only entitled to an interim registration of a month from the date of its appearance in England, and must, before the expiration of that time, republish it in its complete form in Canada in order to comply with the Act. Penalties for the infringement of duly secured copyrights are next enacted; and the Act then goes on to provide that works of which the copyright has been granted and is subsisting in the United Kingdom, and copyright of which is not secured or subsisting in Canada under any Canadian or Provincial Act, shall, upon being printed and published or reprinted and republished in Canada, lie entitled to copyright ; but nothing in the Act shall he held to prohibit the importation from the United Kingdom of copies of such works legally printed, there. A penalty of one hundred dollars is attached to failure on the part of any person who has obtained an interim copyright, to print and publish or reprint and republish the work within the time prescribed. It only remains to add that the term of a copyright under this Act is twenty- eight years from the time of its being first recorded, unless the author or one of the authors of the copyright work be at the expiration of that period still living., or, if dead, has left a widow or a child or children living ; in which case the copyright shall be continued to such author, or, if dead, to such child or children, for a further space of fourteen years, subject to the condition that the work be a second time recorded, with all the formalities required in the case of the original copyright, within a year after tlj,e expiration of the first term.

These provisions, it will have been seen, give protection to all works of English authors who will comply with the conditions of the Bill, whether their works make their first appearance in a complete or in a serial form. The only question which seems to us to arise upon the Bill, is as regards the clause providing for interim copyright pending the publication or republication of an English work in Canada. The period of a month appears unnecessarily short, and might under easily conceivable circumstances impose upon an author the necessity of delaying the publication of his work in England in order to bring the Canadian republication within the prescribed time. The clause above noted, attaching a penalty of a himdred dollars to the failure to publish, within the prescribed time, a work of which interim registration has been obtained, seems defectively worded. We can only understand the words “any person” to mean, as in the previous section, “ any person not having legally acquired the copyright,” and must interpret the clause as designed to repress unauthorised attempts to secure copyright in a work which do not go as far as actual publication of it. But it is necessary to point out the ambiguity in the framing of the clause to which we have referred.