PERIODICALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3916, 4 September 1874, Page 3

PERIODICALS.

Clf AMBERS S

Maintains its well-won fame this month by a very good novel, "The Best of Husbands," and many minor pieces of .considerable interest. Tho scraps from Mr Robt. Chamber's note-book arc hardly worth publishing, are indeed a remarkable instance of the way in which promising materials require working up, and are in their raw state indigestible.' " Waste Materials " is the title of a very excellent paper upon the use of things often throAvn away. Surely the Superintendent must have read the following by anticipation before hia late utterances on immigration. We always thought him a very far-sighted man :—

However woollen garments may lie disposed of time after time, they sue at length ho longer passaLlo. and then conies a totnl revolution in tlieir character; the buttons are taken off, the linings torn out, and what remains of the fabric is ground by machinery into " devil's dust." This is the first step in whnt may he called tho resurrection, in old clothes. When a coat will not so much as hang together to dress up a scarecrow, it will, still make down into, very good shoddy, as the devil's dust is politely named. The mesning of this is, that the garment is torn up by toothed wheels into a condition ot loose fibres, which, on being properly sifted, are mixed with fresh wool, carded, spun, and woven into cloth. There, is a triumph of art: The shoddy, or mungo. as it is sometimes called,. after being fit for the dung-heap, is incorporated with what appears exceedingly beautiful cloth, and is again proudly exhibited as Sunday clothes on the backs of thousands of wearers. The thing seems ridiculous, if not a bit of a cheat; but let us not be too hard on shoddy. There is not a sufficiency of fresh wool for all the world. And as woollen goods are in au ever-growing demand, what better can be suggested than that the elastic fibres of the old garments should be wrought up into an article agreeable to the eye, and productive of bodily comfort ? All hail'to the value and virtues of shoddy ! He was a great man who thought out that marvellous invention.

A paper upon " Mad. Dogs" once more endeavours to combat the well-worn superstition abeut their dislii-.ing water. On the contrary, they are veritabl» Good Templars —perf-ct beasts (the term 13 one of cunplimeiit) in the zeal with which they lap it up: i The advice given in the concluding paragraph is admirable. Is not this the way to Paint a moral or adorn a tale ? ; . . Better, at any rate, than the tin-kettle adornment : — ■■ '■ • '.:. ■' .., One thing, and a very important one^ remains to he specified. As prevention is better than cure, we cannot speak too strongly of the necessity for treating dogs with that degree of kind consideration which will go far to avert their falling into a rabid condition. . Too. frequently are they' neglected, kicked about, half-starved^ aud denied proper shelter from the weather. Those who .do. not treat dogs with a proper regard to tlieir-wants,-ought not to have them. Tlie creatureshad Letter be put out of existence than maltreated; Besides regular food and shelter, dogs require water-to allay tiieir thirst, particularly iii warm weather, and neglect on this score is perhaps, more, than anything else, the cause of ina'lness. We believe that rabies more frequently, occurs in male than female dogs. At least, the females in the smaller and tender varieties are more easily managed as pets. This circumstance .alone points to an ci ror, or, indeed, the cruelty, of drowning female pups, and allowing ihe male, ones to live. Nature, it is to be remembered, cannot be outraged with impunity. The ascription to nature which cannot be outraged with impunity, in the way of drowning the female pups, is quite delicious, the implication of course being, that nature designed the male pups for painless extinction in a tub of water;; but" ;the bitches, no, no. .. ■:.-■ THE CONTEMPORARY ,; '. seems less interesting than n'suil. " Latent Thought" is a sort.of review of certain chapters in Dr Carpenter's " Mental Physiology. Any fool can pick holes hi a theory, like his, but it requires genius to construct. Mr Huttoh is not happy in his arguments; which have a very slipshod look alongside those of Dr Carpenter himself. Speaking of the latent knowledge, of which we are* all often conscious, but which we cannot readily reproduce, in reference -to;the unconscious n,ent<il cerebration interpretation of spiritualistic feats, lie says':— : " ■ ' :' .-.'. ' Not only have we no experience whatever of simultaneous phenomena ot the kind, but if we had, our ideas of moral responsibility would be extraordinarily confused. Whicfcl of th'esetwo intellectual agencies is to.be identifieeVwith the person of the individual who was" the source of both ? The one which remembered correctly and telegraphed the .accurate memory through the table, or the one with a defective memory which asserted its inaccurate meiijory by the voice ? ;-If my spinal chord holds one view, and my cerebrum auother. as to the events of my past lifej the one might turn Queen's" evidence against the other; but how one of ■ them could be lianged,; while the other, received a pardon, would be an embarrassing problem. Speaking seriously, it seems to me tkat this doctrine of a "lateut" .■memory, capable of articulate telegraphy^ in direct contradiction to the conscious memory— which denies simultaneously all knowledge of the matter so telegraphed— passes infinitely beyond any hypothesis warranted by the class of facts I have hitherto dealt with, and could | hardly be true without our constantly coming ! across ample evidence af its ■ truth. That men forget a thing one moment and remember it the next, is certain; but while they 'forget, they ; forget, and have, as far as we" know, no oracle to ■ consult in that part of theirsystem to which the reflex actions are due, by, the help of which the forgotten facts can be. recalled. , A capital paper upon Strauss as a theolo^ gian, by a Mr Appleton, gives us, a commonsense—perhaps we may call it a Pliilistine— view of the great German., He has been the most unpopular man in Europe, we are told,^ with the inevitable consequence of producing a vein of irritability in his writing which is distressing. •<.<• ■-•:...... . The experience of every one will bear witness that nothiug is more easy .than to? construct a '-generality,or .this sort; out. of the.circuirisUuices of one's ov/ii private sphere. .A' "mail" quarrels with his architect,and relieves his;, feelings .-by writing a paper- to prove thatthe extinction.of the whole class of architects is an indispensable condition of modern progress.'■■ My grocer serves me with some adulterated commodity, and in my righteous indignation 1 feel. that. 1 am at one with all .that is sound in European-;thought-in inveighing publicly against "the 'poSverfulvand ■ predatory class of licensed 'Victuallers?' Many a man who has grdaned;under the tyranny of; the clerical majority at our English- Universities has been 'permanently alienated, not only from the Church, liiit from all religion: ~ Strauss is not very unlike those idolaters .who were accustomed to chastise tliesir deities- fin "an access of misfortune. But it remains to ask, why Strauss should have selected the distinctive tenet of eighteenth century .Rationalism, as the1 speculative accompaniment of- his chagrin.- That his mind has been1 tending in'that (lireetibn is shown by the character of the" biographies which, occupied his pen during the latter, part of the interval between:tbe two Lives of Jesus, r; In; UI rich yon Hutten,.he had found the heroof. theological conflicts The contentious irfecbheile-: able character of his subject was congenial to him. At the time of the;concordats with Rome' he asks himself what would Hutten have done.

We cannot congratulate Mr A. T. Innes upon his answer to Archbishop Maniing. There is a want of lucidity and inaptness in his arguments,that the as tide upon' Ultramontanisra and the Free Kirk very hard: reading^ jSTo doubt Mr Innes has got hold of a great truth, but he does not make the most* of his subject. As contrasted with the masterly method pursued bjr'the Archbishop, Mr Innes is simply nowhere.

f Church Parties," by the Bey. R. F. Littledaie, is one long defence for the High Church Party in the Anglican Church. A very able apologist that party has in him. Without one word of narrowness- or nncharitableness lie manages to give excellent reasons for showing his preference for that school <if thought, of which lie is perhaps the most able champion. He is hardest, perhaps, upon the broad Church, but of them he van say— :

It is enough to remark that all dogma goes sooner or later into the crucible of metaphysics, aud none survives which cannot resist that solvent. Our own day has seen the cardinal doctrines of both Lutheranism and Calvinism suecuinb when so assailed, and ali systems which have not even their show of coherence are iuevitably doomed. And therefore honour is due to the mtn who first showed how. the highest thought had room for its play within the Church' of England. ■ : : .

We.clip one or two extracts to show something of his platform and conclusions:—

The attitude of a person claiming to adjudicate impartially is such as to deprive his remarks of trust worthiness and value; because in a matter of -such vital interest as religion, to assume the function of unbiassed criticism is in truth to assert that religious truth is undiscovered, if not undiscoverable, and thus to range one's self at once with Agnostics, precisely the.one section of thinkers whose ojjinion on the rival merits of Church parties-can havo v.o possible weight. The most fanatically narrow-minded sect of the present day, the Plymouth Brethren, have split into two hostile camps ;.and so with all others. _

Tnore are other reasons which weigh with myself, but I think these four, of practical achievement, of permanence, of plasticity, and of representative character, are those which mainly cause tho steady now into the High Church school of the very' best elements of the other two. I hayc known vary many Evangelicals who liave gradually advanced from grade to grade, till they were well-nigh in the van of the luturtlist movement. I h : . lV e known not a few taoarl Churchmen melt.insensibly into the Hiirh Anglican ranks. I have also known some three or four Ih-h Churchmen who made shipwreck of their _fiiith_altogether; but 1 have never known a single instance of a conversion made by iivangehcals from the Tracbuian ranks. I do not allege that there have been none such, but if there had been more than a very few, and those few very obscure, I must needs have heard of them. Hence, it is not surprising to find that of tho twenty thousand clergymen belonging to the Oh it roll of England, more than one half belong to some shade or other of tl.e High Church party, which lias far more varieties of type within it than any of the other schools. Given a dull preacher, there is really no reason, except to keep'up respectability, why an .educated Protestant should go to church or meeting nt all, bpcan.se he can read his Bible and his favourite book of sermons more quietly and thoughtfully at home. But the Catholic view, although not in the least degree making light of preaching, puts another conception above it, that of Worship. The primary reason of going to church is to do p-ablic homage to a Personal King, to attend His court in token of loyalty to Him and harmony with our felloweitizens.

The above will be sufficient to show that however determined Mr. Ufctledale may be in his own conclusions he is no harsh abuser of other people.