THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY." 361 their phenomena." The mathematicians | we afford no diversion to studies; especial had other reasons for believing that the ly when trifles may be a whet to more seriearth could not have been so old as the ge-ous thoughts, and comical matters may be ologists demanded. Now, however, the so treated of, as that a reader of ordinary mathematicians have discovered the new sense may possibly thence reap more adand stupendous tidal grinding engine. vantage than from some more big and stateWith this powerful aid the geologists can ly argument. As to what relates to get through their work in a reasonable pe- myself, I must be forced to submit to the riod of time, and the geologists and the judgment of others, yet, except I am too par. mathematicians may be reconciled. tial to be judge in my own case, I am apt to believe I have praised Folly in such a manner as not to have deserved the name of fool for my pains. THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY." [DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, the celebrated Dutch scholar, was born at Rotterdam, October 28, 1465. He early distinguished himself as a classical scholar, and for a time was professor of Greek at Cambridge University, England. His immense erudition and lively wit gave him great influence as a writer. He is regarded as the leading man of letters of his age. His Praise of Folly, a broad satire, had a great circulation, as had also his Colloquies. He produced the first edition of the Greek Testament ever printed, and also a corrected Latin version. He died July 12, 1536. The "Praise of Folly" is introduced by a dedicatory epistle to Sir Thomas More, from which we quote.] But those who are offended at the lightness and pedantry of this subject, I would have them consider that I do not set myself for the first example of this kind, but that the same has been oft done by many considerable authors. For thus several ages since, Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than of a war between the frogs and mice; Virgil of a gnat and a pudding-cake; and Ovid of a nut. Polycrites commended the cruelty of Busiris; and Isocrates, that corrects him for this, did as much for the injustice of Glaucus. Favori nus extolled Thersites, and wrote in praise of a quartane ague. Synesius pleaded in behalf of baldness; and Lucian defended a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deifying of Claudius; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt Gryllus and Ulysses; Lucian and Apuleius the story of an ass; and somebody else records the last will of a hog, of which St. Hierom makes mention. So that if they please, let themselves think the worst of me, and fancy to themselves that I was, all this while, a playing at push-pin, or riding astride on a hobby-horse. For how unjust is it, if when we allow different recreations to each particular course of life, noble and heroical. It is one farther very commendable property of fools, that they always speak the truth, than which there is nothing more For so, though Plato relates it as a sentence of Alcibiades, that in the sea of drunkenness truth swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller of truth, yet this character may more justly be assumed by me, as I can make good from the authority of Euripides, who lays down this as an axiom, "Children and fools always speak the truth." Whatever the fool has in his heart, he betrays in his face; or what is more notifying, discovers it by his words: while the wise man, as Euripides observes, carries a double tongue; the one to speak what may be said, the other what ought to be; the one what truth, the other what time requires: whereby he can in a trice so alter his judgment, as to prove that to be now white, which he had just swore to be black; like the satyr at his porridge, blowing hot and cold at the same breath; in his lips professing one thing, when in his heart he means another. Furthermore, princes in their greatest splendor seem upon this account unhappy, in that they miss the advantage of being told the truth, and are shammed off by a parcel of insinuating courtiers, that acquit themselves as flatterers more than as friends. But some will perchance object that princes do not love to hear the truth, and therefore wise men must be very cautious how they behave themselves before them, lest they should take too great a liberty in speaking what is true, rather than what is acceptable. This must be confessed, truth indeed is seldom palatable to the ears of kings, yet fools have so great a privilege as to have free leave, not only to speak bare 362 MOUNTAINS AND THEIR ORIGIN. truths but the most bitter ones too: so as mountain-upheavals from existing active the same reproof which, had it come from volcanoes, although the causes which prothe mouth of a wise man would have cost duced them were, in a somewhat modified him his head, being blurted out by a fool, is not only pardoned, but well taken, and rewarded. For truth has naturally a mixture of pleasure, if it carry with it nothing of offence to the person whom it is applied to; and the happy knack of ordering it so, is bestowed only on fools. ... HOME, SWEET HOME. [JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, editor, poet, and actor, was born in New York, June 9, 1792. The familiar lines given below were written for his opera Clari, or the Maid of Milan. Among his best dramas are Virginius and Charles the Second. Died at Tunis, April 10, 1852.] MID pleasures and palaces though we may roam, elsewhere. Home! home! sweet, sweet home! An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain; all! Home! home! sweet, sweet home! MOUNTAINS AND THEIR ORIGIN. [LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ was born in Motier, Switzerland, May 28th, 1807. His first publication was a Latin description of fossil fishes, published in 182931, and in 1832 he was appointed professor of natural history at Neuchâtel. Soon after, he brought out, in Paris, his great work, Researches on Fossil Fishes, which established his reputation. His next publications, two treatises on glaciers, appeared respectively in 1840 and 1847. In 1846 he chose the United States for a permanent residence, and in 1848 became professor of zoology and geology at Harvard. He made numerous explorations in various parts of this continent, in the Amazon, and In the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, all of which were sense, the same. Our present volcanic mountains are only chimneys, or narrow tunnels, as it were, pierced in the thickness of the earth's surface, through which the molten lava pours out, flowing over the edges and down the sides, and hardening upon the slopes, so as to form conical elevations. The mountain ranges upheaved by ancient eruptions, on the contrary, are folds of the earth's surface, produced by the cooling of a comparatively thin crust upon a hot mass. The first effect of this cooling process would be to cause contractions; the next, to produce corresponding protru sions,-for, wherever such a shrinking and subsidence of the crust occurred, the consequent pressure upon the melted materials beneath must displace them and force them upward. While the crust continued so thin that these results could go on without very violent dislocations-the materials within easily finding an outlet, if displaced, or merely lifting the surface without breaking through it-the effect would be moderate elevations divided by corresponding depressions. We have seen this kind of action during the earlier geological epochs, in the upheaval of the low hills in the United States, leading to the formation of the coal basins. After the crust of the earth had grown so thick, as it was, for instance, in the later Tertiary periods, when the Alps were uplifted, such an eruption could take place only through the agency of an immense force, and the extent of the fracture would be in proportion to the resistance opposed. It is hardly to be doubted, from the geological evidence already collected, that the whole mountain-range from Western Europe through the continent of Asia, including the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas, was raised at the same time. A convulsion that thus made a gigantic rent across two continents, giving egress to three such mountain ranges, must have been accompanied by a thousand fractures and breaks in contrary directions. Such a pressure along so extensive a tract could not be equal anywhere; the various thicknesses of the crust, the greater or less flexibility of the deposits, the direction of the pressure, would give rise to an infinite variety in the results; accordingly, instead of We must not form an idea of ancient the long, even arches, such as characterize fruitful in valuable books, essays and lectures. It has been justly remarked that no one, except Hugh Miller, did more to popularize science than Agassiz. "He was not merely a scientific thinker," says Mr. Whipple, "but a scientific force." He died Dec. 14th, 1873. We quote from his Geological Sketches.] METHODS OF ACCOUNTING FOR LANGUAGE. the earlier upheavals of the Alleghanies and the Jura, there are violent dislocations of the surface, cracks, rents, fissures in all directions, transverse to the general trend of the upheaval, as well as parallel with it. а Table-lands are only long, unbroken folds of the earth's surface, raised uniformly and in one direction. It is the same pressure from below which, when acting with more intense force in one direction, makes a narrow and more abrupt fold, forming a mountain ridge, but when acting over wider surface with equal force, produces an extensive uniform elevation. If the pressure be strong enough, it will cause cracks and dislocations at the edges of such a gigantic fold, and then we have table-lands between two mountain chains, like the Gobi in Asia, between the Altai mountains and the Himalayas, or the table-land enclosed between the rocky mountains and the Coast range of the Pacific shore. Thither,-yes! thither will I go, To the rosy vale, where the nightingale 863 Translated by SIR JOHN BOWRING. METHODS OF ACCOUNTING FOR LANGUAGE. [JOHN HORNE TOOKE, was born at Westminster, England, 1736; died 1812. He was the son of John Horne, and assumed, in 1782, the additional name of Tooke out of regard to Mr. Tooke, of Purley, who made him his heir. He took orders in the church at his father's desire, but against his own wishes. In 1765 Wilkes. For starting a subscription for the widows and he began his political career, by writing a defence of orphans of Americans "Murdered by the King's troops at Lexington and Concord, 1775," he was convicted of libel and imprisoned for one year. Subsequently he sat in Parliament. His chief literary work is EIIEA IITEPOENTA, or the Diversions of Purley, an ingenious treatise on etymology conducted in the form of a diaWe do not think of table-lands as moun-logue, from which we quote.] tainous elevations, because their broad, flat surfaces remind us of the level tracts of the earth; but some of the table-lands are, nevertheless, higher than many mountainchains, as, for instance, the Gobi, which is higher than the Alleghanies, or the Jura, or the Scandinavian Alps. THE NIGHTINGALE. [GIL VICENTE, an eminent Portuguese poet, one of the fathers of the modern drama, was born at Barcellos in 1485. He has been called “the Portuguese Plautus." He died in 1557.] THE rose looks out in the valley, To the rosy vale, where the nightingale The virgin on the river-side, Culling the lemons pale; Thither, yes! thither will I go, To the rosy vale, where the nightingale The fairest fruit her hand hath culled, To the rosy vale, where the nightingale In her hat of straw, for her gentle swain, B. That the methods of accounting for language remain to this day various, uncertain and unsatisfactory, cannot be denied. But you have said nothing yet to clear up the paradox you set out with; nor a single word to unfold to us by what means you suppose Hermes has blinded philosophy. H. I imagine that it is, in some measure, with the vehicle of our thoughts, as with the vehicles for our bodies. Necessity produces both. The first carriage for men was no doubt invented to transport the bodies of those who from infirmity, or otherwise, could not move themselves: but should any one, desirous of understanding the purpose and meaning of all the parts of our modern elegant carriages, attempt to explain them upon this principle alone, viz: That they were necessary for conveyance,—— he would find himself wofully puzzled to account for the wheels, the seats, the springs, the blinds, the glasses, the lining, etc., not to mention the more ornamental parts of gilding, varnish, etc. Abbrevia tions are the wheels of language, the wings of Mercury. And though we might be dragged along without them, it would be with much difficulty, very heavily and tediously. B. I think I begin to comprehend you. You mean to say that the errors of grammarians have arisen from supposing all words to be immediately either the signs of 364 HOW THE POPES ACQUIRED TEMPORAL POWER. things or the signs of ideas: whereas in fact many words are merely Abbreviations employed for dispatch, and are the signs of other words. And that these are the artificial wings of Mercury, by means of which the Argus eyes of philosophy have been cheated. The H. It is my meaning. first aim of language was to communicate our thoughts: the second, to do it with dispatch. (I mean entirely to disregard whatever additions or alterations have been made for the sake of beauty, or ornament, ease, gracefulness, or pleasure.) The diffi culties and disputes concerning language have arisen almost entirely from neglecting the consideration of the latter purpose of speech, which, though subordinate to the former, is almost as necessary in the commerce of mankind, and has a much greater share in accounting for the different sorts of words. Words have been called winged; and they well deserve that name, when their abbreviations are compared with the progress which speech could make without these inventions; but compared with the rapidity of thought, they have not the smallest claim to that title. Philosophers have calculated the difference of velocity between Sound and light: but who will attempt to calculate the difference between speech and thought! What wonder then that the invention of all ages should have been upon the stretch to add such wings to their conversation as might enable it, if possible, to keep pace in some measure with their minds. Hence chiefly the variety of words. FLORENCE VANE. {PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE, born in Berkley Co., Va., 1816. Died 1850.] I loved thee long and dearly, My life's bright dream and early I renew my fond vision My heart's dear pain, My hopes and thy derision, The ruin, lone and hoary, The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story, At even told, That spot, the hues elysian Of sky and plain, I treasure in my vision, Thou wast lovelier than the roses Thy voice excelled the closes Thy heart was as a river Would I had loved thee never But fairest, coldest wonder! And it boots not to remember To quicken love's pale ember, Florence Vane! The lilies of the valley By young graves weep, The daisies love to dally Where maidens sleep; May their bloom, in beauty vying, Never wane Where thine earthly part is lying, Florence Vane! HOW THE POPES ACQUIRED TEMPORAL POWER. [JAMES GIBBONS, Archbishop of Baltimore, born in Baltimore July 23, 1834. He was ordained June 30, 1861; consecrated Bishop and Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, August 16, 1868; transferred to the See of Richmond, Va., July 30, 1872; and promoted to the Archiepiscopal See of Baltimore, October 3, 1877. From his widely circulated Faith of our Fathers, we extract as follows:] For the clearer understanding of the origin and gradual growth of the Temporal Power of the Popes, we may divide the history of the Church into three great epochs. The first embraces the period which elapsed from the establishment of the Church to the days of Constantine the Great, in the fourth century; the second, from Constantine to Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor in the year 800; the third, from Charlemagne to the present time. When St. Peter, the first Pope in the long unbroken line of Sovereign Pontiffs, entered Italy and Rome, he did not possess a foot of ground which he could call his own. He HOW THE POPES ACQUIRED TEMPORAL POWER. could say with his divine Master: "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of man hath not where on to lay His head." The Apostle died as he had lived, a poor man, having nothing at his death save the affections of a grateful people. But although the Prince of the Apostles owned nothing that he could call his personal property, he received from the faithful large donations to be distributed among the needy. For in the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that "neither was anyone among them [the faithful] needy; for as many as were owners of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the prices of the things which they sold and laid them before the feet of the Apostles, and distribution was made to every one according as he had need." Such was the filial attachment of the early Christians towards the Pontiffs of the Church; such was the confidence reposed in their personal integrity, and in their discretion in dispensing the charity of the faithful. During the first three hundred years, the Pastors of the Church were generally incapable of holding real estate in Rome; for Christianity was yet a proscribed religion, and the faithful were exposed to the most violent and unrelenting persecutions that have ever darkened the annals of history. 365 soon became very considerable. And Voltaire himself tells us that the wealth which the Popes acquired was spent, not in satisfying their own avarice and ambition, but in the most laudable works of charity and religion. They expended their patrimony, he says, in sending missionaries to evangelize Pagan Europe, in giving hospitality to exiled Bishops at Rome, and in feeding the poor. And I may here add that succeeding Popes have generously imitated the munificence of the early Pontiffs. An event occurred in the reign of Constantine which paved the way for the partial jurisdiction which the Roman Pontiffs commenced to enjoy over Rome, and which they continued to exercise, till they obtained full sovereignty in the days of King Pepin of France. In the year 327, the Emperor Constantine transferred the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople, the present capital of Turkey. The city was named after Constantine, who founded it. A subsequent Emperor appointed a Governor or Exarch to rule Italy, who resided in the city of Ravenna. This new system, as is manifest, did not work well. The Emperor of Constantinople referred all matters to his deputy in Ravenna, and the deputy was more anxious to conciliate the Emperor than to The Christians of Rome worshipped for satisfy the people of Rome. Italy and Rome the most part in the catacombs. These cata- were then in a political condition analocombs are subterranean chambers and pas-gous to that in which the Irish have been sages under the city of Rome. They extend for miles in different directions, and are visited to this day by thousands of strangers. Here the primitive Christians prayed together; here they encouraged one another to martyrdom; here they died and were buried. So that these caverns served at the same time as temples of worship for the living, and as tombs for the dead. At last, Constantine the Great brought peace to the Church. The long night of Pagan persecution was succeeded by the bright dawn of religious liberty; and as our Blessed Saviour rose triumphant from the grave, after having lain there for three days, so did our early brethren in the faith emerge from the tombs of the catacombs, after having been buried, as it were, in the bowels of the earth for three centuries. Constantine gave to the Roman Church magnificent donations of money and real estate, which were augmented by additional grants contributed by subsequent Emperors. Hence the patrimony of the Roman Pontiffs placed for several centuries past. Ireland is under the immediate jurisdiction of a Lieutenant-Governor, who is responsible only to the government, and who is never accused, among his other weaknesses, of having an excessive fondness for Ireland. Abandoned to itself, Rome became a tempting prey to those numerous hordes of barbarians from the North that then devastated Italy. The city was successively attacked by the Goths under Alaric, and by the Vandals under Genseric, and was threatened by the Huns under Attila. Unable to obtain assistance from the Emperor in the East, or the Governor at Ravenna, the citi zens of Rome looked up to the Popes as their only Governors and protectors, and their only salvation in the dangers which threatened them. The confidence which they reposed in the Pontiffs was not misplaced. The Popes were not only devoted Spiritual Fathers, but firm and valiant civil Governors. When Attila, who was named "The Scourge of God," approached sur |