hundredweight, and very good eating; "monks," big enough to swallow a man; and all sorts of ugly, uncanny creatures, whose very look has put them out of the category of Christian food. Educationally the Exhibition is undoubtedly a great boon. Amongst the books which may be read with advantage we recommend "The Silvery Hosts of the North Sea," by Mr. C. Stacy-Watson.* It is charmingly got up, and gives a most graphic description of the Romance of Herring Life and Herring Curing. A sketch of "Quaint Old Yarmouth," with illustrations, adds to the value of this "book of the season."

LXVI. TRIAL OF THE "INVINCIBLES." "I BELIEVE that the law will prove too strong for them," predicted the Attorney-General for Ireland on the opening day of the trial of the "Invincibles." The law has undoubtedly proved too strong for them. Retribution sharp and severe, but only too well deserved, has at last overtaken the perpetrators of one of the most cowardly and cruel assassinations that has ever disgraced our country. There is but one feeling in the minds of all honest men, and that is of profound thankfulness that juries have been found firm enough to uphold without flinching the cause of law and order, returning truthful verdicts against the Phoenix Park bravos. The only regret is that the leading instigators of rebellion and murder are still at large. "Those," said the Attorney-General, "who have by means of money, for their own selfish and guilty purposes, set up this conspiracy and hurried on those wretched creatures who, possibly, some of them, thought they were doing a public service-those who set them on to the ruin not alone of their immediate victims, but of themselves and their families, and to the shame and disgrace of their nation all over the worldthey have taken good care of their own personal safety, and have got off safe to foreign lands." We still hope these "enemies of mankind" may be arrested and brought to justice.

LXVII. EXETER HALL AND THE "TIMES." THE Conversion of the Times from one corner of the political compass to another, is not a very unusual circumstance. Its change of front, in the estimate it now forms of "Exeter Hall," is, therefore, perhaps, only to be expected. Still, it is noteworthy that the "leading journal," which two years since pronounced "the Exeter Hall divine of half a century ago antiquated and obsolete," and amazed everybody by the declaration that "Evangelicalism has succumbed in the theological struggle for existence," has now discovered that four of the chief Evangelical Societies (holding exactly the same theological principles they have held from the first),

"The Silvery Hosts of the North Sea." E.C.) Cloth gilt, 1s. 6d. In Bronzed Paper, 1s.

are in a more prosperous condition than ever. Its present testimony reads thus:

"In solid work of a Christian and Protestant character, Exeter Hall, in its new lease of religious activity, can exhibit at least as satisfactory a record as at any stage of its past career. Balancesheets like those which the managers of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the London City Mission, set before their subscribers, testify to extraordinary practical capacity and indefatigable diligence. Independently of the grandeur of the results sought, and of the enthusiasm employed as the instrument, the immensity of the area from which the institutions derive their resources, and the multiplicity of the aims to which the resources are applied, are as marvellous as the triumphs of modern commerce. An income of £169,000, £225,000, £210,000, or even £51,000, collected in small sums year by year, signifies the most elaborate assiduity and solici tude."

The Times, after weighting this commendation with some depreciatory remarks on the imprudence of missionary modes of operation in certain instances, proceeds to say the supporters of missions can nevertheless point to a sufficient "margin of substantial profit from evangelizing labours to justify them and encourage their continuance."

This is certainly rather "faint praise" of a work which the Duke of Wellington identified with "the marching orders of the Church." But the Times adds-and we gladly close with the quotation:"For a considerable expanse of the earth's surface the missionary station affords the sole educational and civilizing centre which in the nature of things is attainable. A permanent decay of the fruitfulness of the collections summarised at Exeter Hall would mean the extinction of the solitary rays of brotherly kindness which break the darkness over wide spaces abandoned else to native darkness."— The Church Standard.

LXVIII. THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC THE opening of the Royal College of Music is an event of unusual significance. The presence of the Heir to the Crown, and other members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, the Lord Mayor of London, and many men of exalted social and artistic position, indicated that England is at length alive to the importance of the cultivation of music as an art. After only fourteen months of effort since the Prince of Wales launched the scheme, no less than £110,000 has been collected, fifty scholarships have been established, and the College fairly started.

At the opening of the College the Prince of Wales spoke with dignity and impressiveness. The Times says:-" A speech more remarkable for happiness of

expression, elevation of idea, and breadth of view has not often fallen from the lips of Royalty, not even from those of the late Prince Consort." The Prince excited much laughter when he referred to the "musical dilettantism of those who, induced by fashion, not by taste, to study music, make progress enough to torment themselves and distract their friends." And the practical national bearings of the Institution found a pointed illustration in the statement that "among the fifty successful candidates a mill girl, the daughter of a brickmaker, and the son of a blacksmith take high places in singing, while the son of a farm labourer excels in violin playing."

In concluding his speech the Prince said :-" The establishment of an institution such as I open today is not the mere creation of a new musical society. The time has come when class can no longer stand aloof from class, and that man does his duty best who works most earnestly in bridging over the gulf between different classes which it is the tendency of increased wealth and increased civilization to widen. I claim for music the merit that it has a voice which speaks, in different tones, perhaps, but with equal force, to the cultivated and the ignorant, to the peer and the peasant. I claim for music a variety of expression which belongs to no other art, and therefore adapts it more than any other art to produce that union of feeling which I much desire to promote."

LXIX. HOME MISSIONARY WORK.

DR. GUTHRIE'S Sketches of the Cowgate" should be read by those who wish to see how home missionary work should be done, and has been done, without "drums and tambourines, and shoutings and dancing." In a district of two thousand of the most degraded—in a state of practical heathenism, Christian cultivation (not noisy excitement) ere long swept 200 children off the streets into the school. On the Lord's Day the school began to fill with worshippers. A church was required and built, and a congregation formed, mainly made up of those who had been once living without God, embracing 613 members in full communion. "Once sunk, degraded, and irreligious, neglecting the education of their children, they now have a school overflowing with children, and a church overflowing with worshippers. They pay fees for the education of their children; and with money saved from the dramshop, come little short of providing a living for their ministers, and meeting all the other expenses of Divine worship."

What was thus done in "The Cowgate, Edinburgh," might be done in every similar district in London. But it will never be done by merely gathering great and excited crowds by means of processions and sensational announcements. These means are "of the earth earthy." They sadden

Christian hearts and disgust thoughtful non-professors. It would be outrageously profane to think of our Blessed Lord in such a procession, and yet "the common people heard Him gladly." "The Prodigal Son" is the best model of Evangelical preaching, equally suitable for the educated and the unlearned, the prince and the working man. Vulgar hysterical appeals are not needed, and can only do harm. "The still small voice" of tender, sympathising interest sustained by the example of a humble walk with God, will gain the willing hearer, and exercise a power which will make the speaker wonder, not at his own eloquence, but at the Divine grace which alone can give the spiritual "increase."

We trust Messrs. Moody and Sankey will remember during their coming visit to London that New Testament evangelization always contemplated and secured lasting results and established agencies for future work in what may be termed New Testament Church organization or fellowship, and thus guarded against the effervescing excitement which too often issues in a painful reaction.

LXX. "LEADING PUBLIC OPINION." “TELEGRAPH " logic is not always remarkably clear. Witness the following:

"Drunkenness is, undeniably, the cause of a great deal of wretchedness, poverty, and crime; but there is no more reason why the sale of strong drink should be 'productive of drunkenness' than why the sale of butcher's meat should be productive of gluttony and eventual apoplexy."

Reason or no reason, the facts are in this case very "stubborn things."

The Telegraph also thinks the publicans ought to sell beer on "the Lord's Day." It settles the matter off-hand;-"Why not on that day as well as on any other? Are not people hungry and thirsty on Sunday as they were on Saturday, and as they will be on Monday?"

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And this is "leading" public opinion! We advise the Telegraph to apply this questioning in its own printing office. Why should not editors, and printers, and all the rest, work and sell the Telegraph on the Lord's Day' as well as on any other? Are not people hungry and thirsty for news on Sunday as they were on Saturday, and as they will be on Monday?" Of course if the Telegraph scribe had several daughters engaged as barmaids at the "Free and Easy" he would not object to Sunday slavery for them, in order to meet the very natural requirements of the " thirsty" public, who cannot manage to bottle their own beer for Sunday use, that "others may rest as well as they."

LXXI. ATHEISM IN PARLIAMENT. THE discussion of the Affirmation Bill, which proposed to "dispense with the recognition by Parlia

ment of the Supreme Authority of Almighty God," as the One Law-giver, happily resulted in its rejection. The part Mr. Gladstone took in the debate was painfully at variance with his expressed opinion in former years. In the debate on the Oaths Bill in 1854 the Premier remarked :-" I know it is said by some that we should do away with the oath altogether. I am not of that opinion. I revere the principle of an oath, and think it tends to maintain the serious, reverential temper with which men ought to address themselves to solemn duties; and if you want to gain the real and substantial objects of the oath, you ought to frame it in a manner which shall adapt it to those objects. Our own oaths ought to be simple, and they ought to be the same for all; they ought to go direct to the point; they ought to be divested of all needless words in order that the words used by solemn sanction in the presence of God may be used with a sense of the presence of God in a temper which befits men to do a solemn act." Mr. Gladstone in 1883 told the House that "In his heart and soul he believed the interests of Christianity and religion were concerned in the passing of the Bill"-to allow Atheists to make the laws of a Christian nation! Mr. Chaplin well asked, "If that were his sincere belief, if Christianity had been so terribly disparaged as he said it had, why had he delayed the measure until now?"

LXXII. AN ANCIENT BIBLICAL PICTURE. UNTIL very recently there has never been found in Pompeii or Herculaneum the slightest trace of any idea referable to a Jewish or Christian source. But in the progress of excavations which have been of late diligently and carefully renewed by the Government, a striking discovery has been made of a character thought by many to be clearly exceptional in this particular. A short time ago there was removed from Pompeii to the Naples Museum, where it was placed among the Pompeiian frescoes, a picture 5 feet in length by 1 foot 7 inches in height, which, in the opinion of many good critics, stands for the Judgment of Solomon. The scene is laid on a terrace in front of a house, which is shaded with a white awning and festooned with creeping plants. On a platform, which would be about four feet in height, sits the king, holding a sceptre and robed in white; on each side a counsellor, with six armed men in the rear. The king leans over the front of the platform towards a woman in a green robe, who is kneeling before him, with outstretched hands and dishevelled hair. In the centre of the foreground is a three-legged table, on which lies an infant, held down in spite of its struggles by a woman wearing a turban. An armour-clad soldier, having on his head a helmet with a long red plume, holds the child's legs, and is about to cleave it in twain with his falchion. The colouring of this early specimen of mural art is particularly bright and fresh. The

drawing is inartistic, yet full of spirit and expression The artist, apparently in the anxiety to develop strongly the expression of the faces of the figures, has exaggerated the heads in size and rather dwarfed the bodies. At first glance this might suggest caricature, but the marked agony of the kneeling mother, the absorbed attention of the listening king, the complacency of the second woman, who appears to be gloating over the fate threatened by the lifted weapon, appear to repel all idea of travesty. No other discoveries were made in the exhumation of the house from which this was taken, which would tend to shed light upon its occupant's faith, or confirm the suspicion that some Jew had made his home even there. But if this be indeed the first hint looking in that direction, it surely deserves remembrance. Anyhow, the stones of the desert, the mounds of the plains, and the exhumed frescoes of early art, all combine to bear testimony to the truth of the Divine Word."-Homiletic Magazine.

LXXIII. THE NINTH PART OF A MAN. CIVILIZATION Owes an apology to the tailor. For several centuries any amount of cheap wit has been launched upon the world at the expense of this "poor ninth part of a man," this "decimal fraction of humanity," this recruit for Queen Elizabeth's "cavalry regiment in which there should be neither horse nor man"-a regiment, in fact, of tailors upon mares. The Maiden Queen indeed seems to have been especially and frequently jocose upon this subject, for she is also reported to have addressed a deputation of eighteen tailors as "both of you." Even the elephant has gained not a little credit for humorous discrimination by squirting dirty water upon a tailor, and the recent meeting of the "Amalgamated" Tailors in the Midlands has already been referred to as an assembly of tailors "in bundles of nine."

Still the impartially-disposed have in all ages been inclined to question this universal depreciation of the sartorian character, but hitherto without success. Mr. A. Wentworth Powell, however, writing to the Spectator, may be said to have finally settled the matter. The proverb, "nine tailors make a man," was, it seems, originally "nine talers," i.e. tellers or tollers, alluding to the ancient custom of tolling the bell once for an infant, three times for a girl, etc., but always nine times for a man; and a dead tailor would, we suppose, have had his "nine talers as well as any other man.

There is another explanation of the proverb, which associates it with the generosity of "nine tailors," who, on one occasion, contributed a sum of money towards the bringing up of an orphan, who afterwards became a "man," and a very prosperous one, too. Probably this was a new and practical illustration of the proverb; but its original source is no doubt to be traced to the "talers."