AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1950, 9 July 1891, Page 34

AMONG THE BOOKS.

EXTRACTS FROM NEW BOOKS. Leaving an Old House. Oar old houses — all old houses — deserted by their long familiar tenants, are somewhat like old men whose children are dead. A suggestion of forlorn humanity looks through their vacants windows, clings to their mouldering eaves. It is no marvel that vulgar superstition so often makes old houses haunted. There is one great pensive ghost always present in each; their halls echo for ever the footsteps of the past. In them have infants lisped their first language into happy mothers' eyes, and learned their first prayers, children's footsteps have beaten like pulses of fresh new hearts in every room, on every stair, and grown old and slow and heavy, with those same hearts above them also growing old and slow and heavy. Their brides have entered and breathed their smiling breath away, and gone out with household lamentation, ignorant tears of children (smiling again how soon!), and the silence of the strong man's sorrow. Old clocks have haunted the apartments, making audible the pulse of Time, fast or slow ; answering, heard, or unheard, tha heart-pulses of watchers and dreamers in those rooms through the long, long jears. How the sweet lightnings of the fireside have breathed about glad household faces their happy evening halo 1 Friends hare come, and met the threshold smile of welcome, and, departing, left their blessing at the door. All these associations quicken tho atmosphere and people the emptiness of ! old houses.' A living soul has been breathed into them ; our living soul has been breathed into those which we have made our homes. To leave the o!d house we must leave something — indeed much —of ourselves. We think we are free, but some better part of us we leave behind. The body is withdrawn ; our souls remain behind, and are in the presumably vacant chamber's prison in spite o f vs — lovingly in spite of us. — Lares Emigrantes. The Doctrine of Eternal Punishment;. Humanity is shocked and repelled by it. The heart of woman is an unconquerable rebellion against it. The more humane sects tear it from their " Bodies of Divinity " as if it were the flaming shirt of Nessus. A few doctrines with which it is bound up have dropped or are dropping away from it ; the primal ourse ; consequential damages to give infinite extension to every transgression of the law of God ; inverting the natural order of relative obligations; stretching the smallest of finite offences to the proportions of the infinite ; making tbe babe in arms the responsible being, and not the parent who gave it birth and determined its conditions of existence.

Affer a doctrine like "the hangman's whip " has served its purpose— if it ever had any useful purpose — after a doctrine like that of witchcraft has hanged old women enough, civilisation contrives to get rid of it. When we say that civilisation crowds out the old superstitious legends, we recognise two chief causes. The first is the naked individual protest ; tbe voice of the inspiration which giveth man understanding. This shows itself conspicuously in the modern poets, i Burns in Scotland, Bryant, Longfellow, Whiotier, in America, preached a new gospel to the successors of men like Thomas Boston and Jonathan Edwards. In due season the growth of knowledge, chiefly under the form of thatjpart of knowledge called science, so chaDges the view 3 of the universe that many of its long-un challenged legends become more no than nursery tales. T.he text-books of astronomy and geology work their way in between the questions and answers of the time-honoured catechisms. The doctrine of evolution, so far as it is accepted, changes the whole relations of man to the creative power. It substitute* infinite hope in the place of infinite despair for the vast majority of mankind. Instead of a shipwreck, from which a few cabin passengers and others are to be saved in a long boat, it gives mankind a vessel built to endure tbe tempests, and at last to reach a port where at the worst the passengers can find rest, and where they may hope for a home better than any whijh they ever had in their old country.—" Over the Teacups," by the author of " The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table." The Pleasures of Country Life. We may doubt if the Garden of Eden, to the naked Adam and Eve, who had not eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, were quite the delightful Paradise that a country seat —with a goodly apple orchard in k vigorous bearing, to be a gentle reminder of the " fruit of that forbidden tree "—is to the worldly-wise and weather-troubled Adam in the dog days, in a vague reverie over his ledger at his counting house in one of tbe many great cities to which he emigrated in company with Eve (or, haply, one of Eve's family) from that early united state of blissful ignorance. In other words, we need to get experience of the artificial world, the confined business I world, to realise and enjoy fully the out-of-

door, natural world. Having the roar of multitudinous wheels, the jarring of hammers, the trample of footsteps, all the sounds and voices of busy people ringing in our ears, we may best feel the charm of bird songs, lowing of cattle, the rippling of waters, the . j flutter of leaves, and rustle of corn, which ' I are outside of all our present hubbub, ( seeing the dirty streets, the burning pavements, the hurried motion, the sweltering arms, the anxious faces, and all the nameless and numberless sights of a large city, we may create, sweetly and easily, the contrasted vision of leafy woodlands, waving hayfields, wandering lanes (which have no special anxiety to reach any place of appointment punctually), steadfast but leisurely harvesters, straggling and cudchewing cattle, cool and indolent rivers, or bright and dancing brooks, pastures crowded with quiet sheep, orchards ruddy and golden with their ripening fruit, cider-mills swarmed about with half -tipsy bees, cottage glimpses through elms and their embracing vines, and faces touched only with quiet cares, or sunburnt with healthy work and hearty pleasure. The country life must have a background of the city life for its appreciation, and gets its assured sense of the freedom of restraint in loose-hanging social habits and garments from the Black dress coat aud silken stockings, with other hampering accompaniments of urban society. — " A Return to Paradise ; and Fly-leaf Essays in Town and Country," by John James Piatt. Canadian Loyalty, If the language held by Canadian Jingoes, or " Paper Tiger," as they are called, about American character were the truth or anything like the truth, union with such people ought indeed to be declined at any sacrifice of military security or commercial profit. But even those who hold it hardly believe it. . . . Sheer snobbishness, to tell the truth, has not a little to do with the affestation of contempt for Yankees. This is one of the ways in which vulgarity tries to make itself genteel. The good feeling of Canadians towards their Mobher Country is strong, genuine, disinterested, and cannot be too highly prized. But there is a blatant loyalty which it is very easy to prize too highly. If a man makes a violent and offensive demonstration of it against those whom he accuses of American sympathies,yt>u are apt presently to find him in the employment of some American company, peddling for an American house, or accepting a call to the other side of the line. We have already, in our historical retrospect, had occasion to observe that when by untoward circumstances interest is divorced from sentiment, the loyalism which before had been the most fiery in its manifestations can suddenly grow cold. If England ever has" occasion to call on her children in Canada for a real sacrifice, she may ohance to repeat the experience of King Lear. — " Canada and the Canadian Question," by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L.

A year ago the fastest train between London aud Aberdeen, 542 miles, ran in 14 hours. Last fall it was reduced to 12 hours and 50 minutes. This year it will cover the 542 miles ia 12 hours, or a little over 45 miles an hour.