not be Leo XIII, nor the next, nor the next after him, but it is the immutable intention of God in the government of His Church that His Vicegerent shall be an independent sovereign. For a Pope without a territory of his own is a theological anomaly, a crime against the majesty of God himself, and thus the present position of the Pope is that of a prisoner -altogether an intolerable position of affairs."

HOW THE POPE HOPES TO REGAIN HIS THRONE.

Not only does the Pope sigh for the restoration of his temporal power, but he believes the attainment of this ideal is not very far out of his reach. The following is Captain Gambier's statement of the conclusions which find favor at the Vatican: "The Church believes that all the poorer and most of the middle and respectable classes sigh for the good old days-all save the political adventurer and the money-lender. The Church, therefore, bides its time until the bubble bursts; probably after the great war so long foretold, when Europe will resolve into its natural elements; when Italy, leaning on that fatal reed, England, will have ceased to be anything but a geographical expression, with France extended all along the maritime Alps to Genoa, Venice once more Austrian, with Lombardy thrown in to compensate' her for the loss of Herzegovina and Bosnia, formed into a new state with Hungary and Servia, while Umberto will be handed back politely to reign in Turin-if he has recognized on which side his bread is buttered, a faculty which has always hitherto distinguished the House of Savoy. The rest of Italy may have formed some kind of republic, its capital Florence, leaving Rome, and a possible twenty or thirty miles' radius of the Campagna, for the Pope. Here the head of the Church will reign as an independent sovereign over a neutral state, will levy his own taxes (which would be a species of municipal rate), and will once more strike his own effigy on coins which the experience of Pio Nono's attempt will keep up to the proper standard. This small spot on earth, dedicated to the service of God, will be under the guarantee of all the powers, will require no lines of circumvallation, no soldiers, and no ships, and Rome will once more become what it had been for nearly seventeen hundred years (with a brief interval), the home of the head of the only true Church. And the Vatican need not trouble itself much to bring about this state of affairs. By abstention on the part of the faithful in Italy from all political matters, power is gradually slipping into the hands which must ruin the country. With authority set at naught and bankruptcy at her doors, resources sucked dry, credit blasted, with the Triple Alliance fading away (her only support), bullied by France, deserted by England, Italy, the Italy of Umberto, Crispi, Rudini & Co., is tottering to destruction. And this must render the restoration of the temporal power a European necessity, for the simple reason that, failing an Italian king, no other person except the Pope would be allowed by the other powers to seat himself there."

THE BATTLE OF THE YALU.

OMMANDER MCGIFFEN, of the Chinese iron

Chad Chen Yuen, writing in the August Cen

tury, gives his personal recollections of the great naval battle with the Japanese which took place September 17, 1894, off the Yalu River. His article is remarkably instructive as a first-hand description of naval warfare under modern conditions. What he says of the behavior of the Chinese under fire is especially significant.

WHY THE JAPS WON.

"The question is often asked, Why did the Japanese win? I reply, because the Japanese had better ships, more of them, better and larger supplies of ammunition, better officers, and as good men. As to the practice, it was on both sides bad; but, as the Japanese have admitted, the Chinese excelled. The Japanese percentage of hits (excluding 6-pounder and lighter projectiles) was about twelve; the Chinese perhaps twenty. But the latter had only three quick-firing guns in action-viz., the Kwang Ping's 50-pounders. An enormous number of projectiles could have been fired by the enemy. It must not be forgotten that the Japanese had twelve ships against our eight, as the Tsi Yuen and Kwan Chia ran away almost without having fired a shot, while the Chao Yung and Yang Wei were in flames before they had time to do much more.

66

BRAVERY OF CHINESE SAILORS.

Admitting freely and heartily the courage of the Japanese crews and the dash of their commanders, I must also say a word for the despised Chinese sailor. The Japanese stood to their guns throughout; but their decks were not almost continuously swept by a storm of missiles, as were those of the Chinese. Had they been, it would have made no difference, I am sure. But owing to our paucity of ships and guns, especially quick-firing guns, they were not often so tried; while on the two ironclads, at least, a shower of missiles searched the upper works almost continuously, yet the men fought on, as a few incidents will show.

About the middle of the fight the Lai Yuen caught fire aft, and burned fiercely. . . Below, in the engine rooms, with the ventilators stopped on account of fire overhead, and, in darkness, receiving orders only by voice-tube transmitted from the deck through the stoke-hole, the engineers stood to their duty, hour after hour, in a temperature bordering on 200 degrees. After several hours the fire was extinguished; but these brave men were in several cases blinded for life, and in every instance horribly burned and disfigured. There was no surgeon on board, and until Port Arthur was reached they sufered terribly. Many such incidents could be cited did space permit.

"When the Chen Yuen was desperately on fire in the forecastle, and a call was made for volunteers to accompany an officer to extinguish it, although the

gun fire from three Japanese ships was sweeping the place in question, men responded heartily, and went to what seemed to them almost certain death. Not one came back unscathed. No, these men were not cowards. There were cowards present, as there have been on every battlefield; but here, as elsewhere, there were brave men to detest them.

"

AFTER THE BATTLE.

The battle being over, there was time to look about, and indeed the ships were found to be in a sorry plight. On the Chen Yuen there had long been no sign of life in the military foretop, where five men and an officer had been stationed, the former to work the two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns, and the latter to find the enemy's range. Two gaping holes in the top gave an ominous meaning to the silence, and on investigation it was found that a shell had penetrated and had killed every one of the six."

The views commonly held by Americans and Europeans as to the decisive character of the engagement at Yalu are not fully confirmed by Commander McGiffen's account. He leaves it to be inferred that the Japanese themselves were badly demoralized.

A VICTORY NOT FOLLOWED UP.

The Japanese claim a victory at the Yalu, and with justice. But with the going down of the sun on that day seemed to disappear the élan with which they broke our formation in the early afternoon. As has been said, no attempt was made to renew the battle during the night. Four of the torpedo-boats, which (from the reports of the Japanese) seemed such a bugbear to them, never left the river; and it is hard to believe that so dashing a commander as Admiral Ito would have allowed the two boats with us to frighten him. They say that, imagining us to be bound for Wei-Hai-Wei, they kept, as they considered, a parallel course, intending to renew battle and oppose our entering the harbor in the morning. But why, in the name of common sense, should we have gone to Wei-Hai-Wei, which is over eighty miles further than Port Arthur, and had no docking facilities, nor any place where ships could be repaired, save a small yard for trifling damages, while Port Arthur, on the other hand, possessed ample facilities for repair, and abundant stores? Moreover, the course we steered-direct for Port Arthur, even before dark-should have indicated to the enemy our destination. Perhaps they were in little better condition for fighting than ourselves. The next morning a Japanese squadron from Ping Yang, which probably had not been in the battle of the day before, reconnoitered the field of battle, and, like a kick administered to a dead animal, exploded a torpedo against the stranded, fire-gutted wreck of what had been the Yang Wei. No attempt whatever was made on the transports, the four gunboats, and the four torpedo-boats up the river, which, some five days later, arrived safe at Port Arthur and Taku."

66

THE BATTLE OF KONIGGRATZ.

'By four in the morning, Moltke with his staff officers was riding through the foggy drizzle on his way to the heights in front of Sadowa. Before the king arrived, at eight, the first shot had been fired, and half an hour later the cannonade was in full vigor all along the Bistritz. Then the Prussian infantry moved down to assail the villages on the stream, and immediately the battle waxed fierce. Franseky, on the Prussian left, dashed on Benatek; Horne promptly flung his Brandenburgers against Sadowa; Herwath's Pomeranians battled their way into the blazing Dohalitz, and Werder led his division through the Austrian cannon fire upon Mokrovous. An hour's hard fighting sufficed to carry the villages; but the attempts to press up the wooded slopes beyond were unsuccessful in the face of the stubborn Austrian defense, and even the advantage gained was held with difficulty.

"Three hours passed of stationary fighting and terrible slaughter, but Moltke's confidence in the issue was unimpaired. To a question put by the king, his quiet, assured answer was, "Your majesty today will not only win the battle, but will decide the war. At length was visible the smoke of the Crown Prince's cannon; the Austrians began to waver, and the order was given for a general advance. The storming masses swept up the slopes, pierced the belt of wood, overwhelmed the Austrian batteries on the upland beyond, and fell on the rear of the retreating enemy. The Prussian cavalry crossed the stream, galloped up the slope and debouched on the blood-stained plateau. Furious encounters occurred between the Prussian squadrons and the valiant Austrian horse fighting desperately to cover the retreat. Moltke and his royal master were in the heart of the mélée, but escaped uninjured. After riding over the battlefield, the king went for the night to the adjacent village of Horitz. Moltke had to ride twenty miles back to Gitschin, where the bureaux were, to prepare orders for the new situation resulting from the victory. Unlike Dugald Dalgetty, he had neglected the 'proviant' and had been beholden in the battle to a uhlan for a slice of sausage. When he reached Gitschin, at midnight, he was so exhausted that he threw himself on his bed in his clothes and instantly fell asleep. It had been a great day for Prussia, of the triumph of which, while the brave soldiers had been the doers, he had been the planner.'

Moltke himself, on one occasion, told Forbes something about his methods of war, "He who

would win in war," he said, "must put himself in the enemy's place. He should know all that can be known about the enemy, the character and eccentricities of the chief not less than the strength and support of the army he commands. Keep to the axioms of war," he continued, with some animation," but do not hesitate to violate them when a specific opportunity presents itself for making a stroke by disregarding them unexpectedly. Be clear in your own conception as to what has to be done, and painstaking in making clear to the executants that which is clear to the conceiver. Yet there must be left to individual commanders, in whose capacity perfect confidence must be reposed, the fullest and freest discretion in regard to details. What has to be achieved is the result."

Commenting upon these methods Mr. Forbes says: "Both in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the Franco-German war of 1870-71, Moltke freely illus trated those views. Once and again he took the most startling liberties with his enemy. Over and over again he violated the rules of war which rest upon experience and ventured on operations of extraordinary audacity. And this he did simply be cause he had made it a duty to gauge the calibre of the men who were opposed to him, and had formed his estimate of their capacity, or their incapacity, as the case might be."

HOW SHOULD THE INDEMNITY BE USED?

THE Japanese are at a loss as to what to do with

the 200,000,000 taels which they are about to receive from China as an indemnity under the recent treaty. The Tokio Sun tabulates as follows the ideas on this question advanced by the Japanese press:

"1. To lay it up in the treasury as an extraordinary reserve fund.

"2. To employ it in works of national defense, such as the construction of men-of-war, forts, etc.

"3. To give it in subsidies for the extending of new lines of navigation.

"4. To use it in the management of affairs in the occupied territories.

5. To invest it in establishing iron foundries. "6. To employ it to recompense those who have served in the late war.

"7. To lay it up as a permanent capital for the Imperial University.

"8. To expend it in carrying on national education. 9. To use it for holding a world's exposition. "10. To use it for constructing new parliamentary buildings.

"11. To pay off with it the 7 per cent. foreign loan, amounting to almost 2,000,000 yen, and the 10,000,000 yen borrowed from the Fifteenth National Bank at 74 per cent. as a war fund.

12. To use it in the construction of railroads. "13. To use it to reduce the import tax on cotton and to adjust land taxes so that they may be reduced."

THE

WOULD A WAR BANKRUPT ENGLAND? HE other day the London Spectator, in a very remarkable article entitled "Consols at 106," quoted with enthusiasm the authority of the London Economist to prove that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted a sum of money suddenly he could raise £200,000,000 without imposing a single tax by simply suspending the payment of the interest on the debt. The Spectator also pointed out that by putting a penny on the income tax and dropping the sugar duty he could raise three thousand millions more. It would be difficult to conceive a statement more likely to upset the equanimity of the champion financial pessimist of the age, and accordingly, in the Investor's Review for July, Mr. A. J. Wilson devotes the first place to a scathing analysis of what he calls the sugar wealth dream of the Spectator. The gist of what Mr. Wilson has to say is to be found in the following extracts:

THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER.

"The truth of the matter is that we have no reserves of wealth worth speaking of in this country. All our spare means is either invested in securities, is the expression of mortgages, or of capital employed in industry, or our banks have absorbed it, and turned it into 'deposits' and credits lent on the market; and if the thing deposited or pledged is only esteemed of value, or is marketable, it does not matter to the money market what its intrinsic worth may be. And because we have all our wealth directly or vicariously out at interest, or mortgaged, or in trade, because the credits of the banker are only in the main the expression of the debts incurred by one part of the community, or one part of the world to another, it follows that the entire product has not only no relation to actual wealth, but may in many instances represent the destruction of that wealth at an accelerated pace. The wealth may be consumed, as in the exhaustion of our minerals, or irrecoverably spent on buildings, 'public works,' jewels, or riotous living, but as long as the credits originally created upon securities taken to represent it can be kept afloat in the markets of the world we are not conscious of the loss. On the contrary, we see a continual increase in the appearances of wealth which abundant creations of new securities, rapid advances in the prices of old ones, or the steady expansion of bank and private investments and advances produce. Scotland, gauged by her bank deposits, does not look any the poorer because of her losses abroad, because these losses formed little part of these deposits, save to the small extent the securities the people held to represent former home deposits placed abroad might have been pledged, and because prices of home stocks have risen so much in the interval. The Scottish credit fabric was not breached by these losses causing a wholesale writing off of exhausted credits, and so long as it could be kept whole, deposits could not but grow by the law of their being. Every bank or other company dividend augments for a time the supply of credit in the market, and ipso tanto the

total of the deposits. Every new colonial or foreign loan, raised to pay interest on the old, does the same thing; and the steady endeavor of all banks to find a use to the last shilling, for every increase in their apparent means, encourages the pawning of these stocks and maintains or raises their price. They live to lend, and must lend to live, and the more they lend the more their deposits multiply. Thus the nation grows richer and richer by the debts it nourishes or contracts. All the while these debts may be no better than accommodation bills.”

Mr. Wilson stoutly asserts that England cannot go to war without bursting up the Empire: "How foolish, in the light of considerations like these, is the state ment that by merely suspending the sinking fundi.e., stopping the pressure the terminal annuities and other debt extinguishing burdens exercise upon prices the Government of this country could add £200,000,000 to the national debt. The moment such a strain as a large war implies is put upon us it is probable that most of the wealth we now plume ourselves upon will be discovered to have been eaten and drunk, or otherwise in wantonness consumed, with only dishonored bills to show for it. Banking wealth, at least, will probably shrink up like the carbons of an incandescent electric lamp when the air is permitted to come in contact with them. Our next great war is almost certain to be the death knell of our 'Empire' boast the feather heads, the poets of the nation's glories, and the sentimentalists of all types never so loudly.”

THE

CROMWELL AND HIS STATUE.

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HE Free Review writes as follows on the proposed statue to Cromwell: " A thoughtful politician will look at the past of his country all round, and he may as well muse over Strafford as over Simon de Montfort, as well over Bolingbroke as over Peel. Above all, if he is to commemorate kings as kings, he may fitly commemorate statesmen as statesmen. Now, of all the men whose names bulk large in our political history there is simply none so important, so outstanding, so memorable, as Cromwell. That we should have statues in London to the two Charleses and the four Georges, and none to Oliver, testifies merely to average meanness of spirit, not at all to principled criticism of Oliver's tyranny. If we leave him statueless as a tyrant, we should leave the Charleses and the Georges statueless for no less valid reasons. The men who bestatued these cannot have done so on worthy grounds of constitutional principle. And as no Liberal can now be supposed to admire George III as a politician, no Liberal could reasonably be challenged for proposing a good statue to Cromwell while bad statues to bad kings remain standing in the name of public opinion.

"London is infamous among capitals for the quality and the quiddity of its statues; Shakespeare is made trivial by incompetent statuary; Cobden is made insignificant by selection of site; Keats, Lon

don born, is represented by an American bust, stuck in a church, where it had no business to be; Milton, the greatest of English artists in verse, is but feebly grouped with Chaucer, another great Londoner born, and with Shakespeare, on the fountain in Park Lane; but George III and Charles I and Anne, though with no better statues, have some of the best available sites. In Edinburgh they have statues to Charles II and George IV, to Adam Black and to Christopher North; but none to Hume, none to Smith, none to Napier. Then we have the grotesque chaos of Westminster Abbey, with forgotten nobodies of rank and office sprawling in groups over roods of ground, while great writers and artists get inches for busts. The best that can be said for the statue system is that it reproduces the confusion and irrationality of life.”

MR.

AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION.

Its Progress and Prospects.

́R. EDWARD SALMON, writing in the Fortnightly Review, laments bitterly the delay that has taken place in the federation of the Australasian colonies. He points out the advantages that would result from such federation, and says:

“Why is it that with such palpable boons, immediate and prospective, awaiting them when they

shall enter into a state of federalism, the Australian

colonies have not long since linked their fortunes in indissoluble bonds? The reasons are many. First, the unwillingness of certain leading politicians to surrender privileges which their colonies cannot possibly retain under a federal system. Second, the ambitions and jealousies of public men, who should be the first to sink personal aspirations for the sake of a great cause. Third, the exaggerated importance of tariff arrangements. A few years ago nothing was regarded as more difficult than to induce New South Wales to give up her free trade in the interest of federation. New South Wales abandoned free trade; but the cause of Federation was not advanced by her reversion to protection. Fourth, the indifference, and even the hostility, of numerous officials who have reason to fear that federation would render imperative changes which would not redound to their personal advantage. The present parliaments would become more provincial, and would probably be reduced in size, and the overgrown civil services of the colonies would probably also be more or less drastically dealt with. Fifth, and in some ways most important of all, the lack of spontaneous enthusiasm on the part of the Australian people, due in no small degree to the confusion wrought by the contentions of leading public men.

"The truth is, Australian federation has been delayed too long, and though it must come some day, if not in peace, then under the shadow of the sword, when independence itself is the stake, it cannot be too fully recognized that every year the difficulties increase. Without federation she cannot realize either Wentworth's ideal of "A new Britain in another world," or Sir Henry Parkes of "One

People one Destiny." Only by federation can she further the cause of British unity which, in its turn, means so much to the cause of civilization.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

PROF

66

A Curious List of Ancient Novelties. ROFESSOR LOMBROSO, writing in the Contemporary Review on "Atavism and Evolution," says: It is curious to examine the inventions which we deem novelties, but which are in reality very old. The ancients knew of the lightning-conductor, or, at all events, the method of attracting the lightning. The Celtic soldiers in a storm used to lie down on the ground, first lighting a torch and planting their naked swords in the ground by their side with the points upward. The lightning often struck the point of the sword and passed away into the water without injuring the warrior.

"The Romans, also, seem to have known the lightning-rod, though they let their knowledge slip again into oblivion. On the top of the highest tower of the Castle of Duino, on the Adriatic, there was set, from time immemorial, a long rod of iron.

them have been found in the ruins of Pompeii, and are preserved in the National Museum at Naples. Galande, in 1665, gives a theory of psychic centres, pointing out the anterior portion of the brain as the seat of imagination, the center of reason, and the back of memory. Aristotle noticed that sea-water could be made drinkable by boiling it and collecting the steam.

"The Greeks had a pilema, a woolen or linen cuirass, so closely woven as to be impenetrable by the sharpest of darts. We have not found out the secret of it. The Romans had better mills than ours for pounding olives. The Chinese had invented iron houses as early as 1200. Glass houses were found among the Picts in Scotland and the Celts in Gaul, and many centuries earlier in Siam. The systems of irrigation which made Lombardy and England so fertile were in existence in the time of Virgil. Grass cloth was used many centuries ago by the Chinese. All this is explained by the fact that man naturally detests what is new, and tries his best to escape it, yielding only to absolute necessity and overpowering proof, or to an acquired usage.”

HOSPITAL SURGERY.

N the Revue de Paris Dr. Pierre Delbet contrib

dict the approach of the tempest. A soldier was

· always stationed by it when the sea showed any threatening of a storm. From time to time he put the point of his long javelin close to the rod. Whenever a spark passed between the two pieces of iron he rang a bell to warn the fishermen. Gerbert (Hugh Capet), in the tenth century, invented a plan for diverting lightning from the fields by planting in it long sticks tipped with very sharp lance heads. "In 1662 France was already in possession of omnibuses. The Romans sank artesian wells even in the Sahara. The plains of the Lebanon and of Palmyra were artificially irrigated; traces of the wells and canals are still to be found. In 1685 Papin published in the Journal des Savants an account of an experiment made by one of his friends, named Wilde, who caused flowers to grow instantaneously. The secret lay in the preparation of the ground, but it was not revealed.

"Massage is a very ancient practice, and was known to the Romans. Paracelsus, in his 'Opera Medica,' speaks of homoeopathy, and says that like is cured by like, and not contrary by contrary. 'Nature herself,' he says, 'shows this, and like things seek and desire each other.' Polybius also speaks of healing by similarity, and Avicenna of the use of infinitesimal doses of poison, of arsenic, for example, in omnibus quæ sunt necessaria de incarnatione et resolutione sanguinis et prohibitione nocumenti.' Mireppus also used arsenic in infinitesimal doses as a remedy for intermittent fever. In China Cannabis Indica was used as a sedative 220 years before our era. The Arabs used aloes and camphor as we do. The speculum, the probe, the forceps, were known in the year 500; indeed, specimens of

ods pursued by surgeons of the present day.

He declares that the surgical ward has by no means the infernal aspect which the outside public imagine it to possess; and adds that, however unlikely such a statement may sound, suffering is the exception rather than the rule, most of the patients who have undergone operations being cured in a few days without pain and without increase of temperature. He asserts that chloroform and the new antiseptic treatment have almost put an end, not only to the mortality formerly attendant on many operations, but that they have caused fever and pain to disappear.

Some hopeless and very painful maladies yet afflict humanity, but they are not those which can be cured by surgery. Most patients are resigned to the decisions of the doctors; tears and cries are rare.

The author-whose paper is evidently a reply to criticisms-denies that useless operations are ever undertaken. He admits having heard people say that their friends had been cured at home without an operation of exactly the same ailments as were treated in a hospital by aid of the knife. But, he asks, how is the outsider to know that the cases were exactly similar? Moreover, surgery itself has learned many lessons. It now not unfrequently happens that surgeons refuse to perform operations which they do not think necessary.

The treatment of the goitre, for instance, has undergone a radical change. It was at one time customary to remove these excrescences, and under modern antiseptic treatment no ill effects were at first discernible; but thirteen years ago a Genevan doctor made the curious observation that patients so