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90 2. Their zeal, upon this suspicion, was very commendable, v. 12. When they apprehended that these tribes, which by the river Jordan were separated from them, were separating themselves from God, they took it as the greatest injury that could be done to themselves, and showed a readiness, if it were necessary, to put their lives in their hands, in defence of the altar of God, and to take up arms for the chastising and reducing of these rebels, and to prevent the spreading of the infection, if no gentle methods would serve, by cutting off from their body the gangrened member. They all gathered together, and Shiloh was the place of their rendezvous, because it was in defence of the divine charter lately granted to that place, that they now appeared; their resolution was as became a kingdom of priests, who, being devoted to God and his service, did not acknowledge their brethren, nor know their own children, Deut 33. 9. They would immediately go up to war against them, if it appeared they were revolted from God, and in rebellion against him: though they were bone of their bone, had been companions with them in tribulation in the wilderness, and serviceable to them in the wars of Canaan; yet if they turn to serve other gods, they will treat them as enemies, not as sons of Israel, but as children of whoredoms, for so God had appointed, Deut. 13. 12, &c. They had but lately sheathed their swords, and retired from the perils and fatigues of war to the rest God had given them, and yet they are willing to begin a new war, rather than be any way wanting in their duty to restrain, repress, and revenge idolatry, and every step towards it. A brave resolution, and which shows them hearty for their religion, and, we hope careful and diligent in the practice of it themselves. Corruptions in religion are best dealt with at first, before they get a head, and plead prescription.

3. Their prudence in prosecution of this zealous resolution, is no less commendable. God had appointed them in cases of this nature, to inquire and make search, Deut. 13. 14. that they might not wrong their brethren under pretence of righting their religion; accordingly, they resolve here not to send forth their armies to wage war, till they had first sent their ambassadors to inquire into the merits of the cause, and these men of the first rank, one out of each tribe, and Phinehas at the head of them to be their spokesman, v. 13, 14. Thus was their zeal for God tempered, guided, and governed by the meekness of wisdom. He that knows all things, and hates all evil things, would not punish the worst of criminals, but he would first go down and see, Gen. 18. 21. Many an unhappy strife would be prevented, or soon taken up, by an impartial and favourable inquiry into that which is the matter of the offence. The rectifying of mistakes and misunderstandings, and the setting of misconstrued words and actions in a true light, would be the most effectual way to accommodate both private and public quarrels, and bring them to a happy period.

4. The ambassadors' management of this matter came fully up to the sense and spirit of the congregation concerning it, and bespeaks much both of zeal and prudence.

(1.) The charge they draw up against their brethren, is indeed very high, and admits no other excuse than that it was in their zeal for the honour of God, and was now intended to justify the resentments of the congregation at Shiloh, and to awaken the supposed delinquents to clear themselves, otherwise they might have suspected their judgment, or mollified it at least, and not have taken it for granted, as they do here, v. 16. that the building of this altar was a trespass against the God of Israel, and a trespass, no less heinous than the revolt of soldiers from their captain, (to turn from following the Lord,) and the rebellion of subjects against their sovereign (that ye might rebel this day against the Lord.) Hard words! It is well they were not able to make good their charge. Let not innocency think it strange to be thus misrepresented and accused; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.

(2.) The aggravation of the crime charged upon their brethren, is somewhat far-fetched, v. 17. Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us? Probably, that is mentioned, because Phinehas, the first commissioner in this treaty, had signalized himself in that matter, Numb. 25. 7. and because we may suppose they were now about the very place in which that iniquity was committed on the other side Jordan. It is good to recollect and improve those instances of the wrath of God, revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, which have fallen out in our own time, and which we ourselves have been eye-witnesses of. He reminds them of the iniquity of Peor, [1.] As a very great sin, and very provoking to God. The building of this altar seemed but a small matter, but it might lead to iniquity as bad as that of Peor, and therefore must be crushed in its first rise. Note, The remembrance of great sins committed formerly, should engage us to stand upon our guard against the least occasions and beginnings of sin: for the way of sin is down hill. [2.] As a sin that the whole congregation had smarted for; There was a plague in the congregation of the Lord, of which, in one day, there died no less than twenty-four thousand; was not that enough for ever to warn you against idolatry? What, will you bring upon yourselves another plague? Are you so mad upon an idolatrous altar, that you will run yourselves thus upon the sword's point of God's judgments? Does not our camp still feel from that sin, and the punishment of it? We are not cleansed from it unto this day; there are remaining sparks," First, "Of the infection of that sin; some among us so inclined to idolatry, that if you set up another altar, they will soon take occasion from that, whether you intend it or no, to worship another god." Secondly, "Of the wrath of God against us for that sin: we have reason to fear, that if we provoke God by another sin to visit, he will remember against us the iniquity of Peor, as he threatened to do that of the golden calf, Exod. 32. 34. And dare you wake the sleeping lion of divine vengeance?" Note, It is a foolish and dangerous thing for people to think their former sins little, too little for them, as those do who add sin to sin, and so treasure up wrath against the day of wrath. Let therefore the time past suffice, 1 Pet. 4. 3.

(3.) The reason they give for their concerning themselves so warmly in this matter, is very sufficient; they were obliged to it, in their own necessary defence, by the law of self-preservation; "for if you revolt from God to-day, who knows, but to morrow, his judgments may break in upon the whole congregation, v. 18. as in the case of Achan, v. 20. He sinned, and we all smarted for it, by which we should receive instruction, and from what God did then, infer what we may do, and fear what he will do, if we do not witness against your sin, who are so many, and punish it?" Note, The conservators of the public peace are obliged, in justice to the common safety, to use their power for the restraining and so suppressing of vice and profaneness, lest, if it be connived at, the sin thereby become national, and bring God's judgments upon the community. Nay, We are all concerned therefore to reprove our neighbour when he does amiss, lest we bear sin for him, Lev. 19. 17.

(4.) The offer they make is very fair and kind, v. 19. that if they thought the land of their


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THE IVORY TOWER he was alone for some minutes during which he shifted his place and circled, indulged in wide vague movements and vacuous stares at incongruous objects—the place being at once so spacious and so thickly provided—quite after the fashion in which Gray Fielder's nerves and imagination had on the same general scene sought and found relief at the hour of the finest suspense up to that moment possessing him. Haughty too, it would thus have appeared for the furtherance of our interest, had imagination and nerves—had in his way as much to reflect upon as we have allowed ourselves to impute to the dying Mr. Betterman's nephew. No one was dying now, all that was ended, or would be after the funeral, and the nephew himself was surely to be supposed alive, in face of great sequels, including preparations for those obsequies, with an intensity beyond all former experience. This in fact Horton had all the air of recognising under proof as soon as Gray advanced upon him with both hands out; he couldn't not have taken in the highly quickened state of the young black-clad figure so presented, even though soon and unmistakably invited to note that his own visit and his own presence had much to do with the quickening. Gray was in complete mourning, which had the effect of making his face show pale, as compared with old aspects of it remembered by his friend—who was, it may be mentioned, afterwards to describe him to 185

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Rh throw him violently to the ground. Or, two boys are made to seize another by the ears; and, with these organs well out-stretched, he is made to run along for the amusement of the bystanders. Again, a boy is constrained to pull his own ears; and if he fail to extend them sufficiently he is visited with a sorer chastisement. Or, two boys, when both have given offence, are made to knock their heads several times against each other. Again, the boy who first comes to school in the morning, receives one stroke of the cane on the palm of the hand; the next receives two strokes; and so each in succession, as he arrives, receives a number of strokes equal to the number of boys that preceded him;—the first being the privileged administrator of them all. When a boy wants to go out, the common practice is to throw some spittle on the floor; if it dries up before he returns, he is punished with the cane; or if not, a boy hostile to him may, with or without the cognizance and connivance of the master, come and wipe it out in order to ensure his punishment. When, instead of teaching, the Guru mahashai or master betakes himself to the making or the copying of almanacks and horoscopes, as he constantly does, to eke out his scanty allowances; the boys, too, very naturally betake themselves to extraneous modes of diversion and employment, such as playing and pinching, chattering and frolic, waggery and abuse; but when, forgetting themselves too far, they become obstreperous, and the noise swells into tumult, the teacher is suddenly roused into red burning wrath, and gives vent to his uncontrollable fury in a crushing tempest of indiscriminate flagellation, intermingled with the loud sound of vituperative epithets, too gross and shocking to be recorded here.

No wonder that the Patshala, or vernacular school, should be viewed, as it uniformly is, as an object of terror by the young. The conductor of it is the ghost that haunts and scares the young. When a child misbehaves, the most severe and awe-inspiring threat of the mother is, “Call the Guru mahashai to take him to school.” Apart from its general influence in paralysing the intellectual and moral powers, this system of terror leads to many specific practices of a baneful tendency. It superinduces the habit of crouching servility towards the master in his presence, and the rendering of many menial and even dishonest services. To propitiate the dreaded tyrant, the boys are glad to prepare his hookah, to bring fire for smoking, gather flowers for his pujah, sweep his lodging, wash his brazen pots, cleave thick pieces of wood for fuel, &c. They are induced to go to the bazaar with their written plantain-leaves, and to give them to the shopkeepers as packing materials, in exchange for cowries,


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THE IVORY TOWER Cissy Foy as looking, in the conditions, these including the air of the big bedimmed palace room, for all the world like a sort of "happy Hamlet". For so happy indeed our young man at once proclaimed himself at sight of his visitor, for so much the most interesting thing that had befallen or been offered him within the week did he take, by his immediate testimony, his reunion with this character and every element of the latter's aspect and tone, that the pitch of his acclamation clearly had, with no small delay, to drop a little under some unavoidable reminder that they met almost in the nearest presence of death. Was the reminder Morton's own, some pull, for decorum, of a longer face, some expression of his having feared to act in undue haste on the message brought him by Davey?—which might have been, we may say, in view of the appearance after a little that it was Horton rather than Gray who began to suggest a shyness, momentary, without doubt, and determined by the very plenitude of his friend's welcome, yet so far incongruous as that it was not his adoption of a manner and betrayal of a cheer that ran the risk of seeming a trifle gross, but quite these indications on the part of the fortunate heir of the old person awaiting interment somewhere above. He could only have seen with the lapse of the moments that Gray was going to be simple—admirably, splendidly simple, one would probably have pronounced 186


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336 fish, tobacco, fruits, betel-nut, pawn, &c., which they present as offerings to the master. Or, they are positively encouraged, for his sake, to bring, that is, in reality, to purloin or steal wood, rice, salt, dhal, oil, &c., from home, or from anywhere else; seeing that those who succeed, by fair means or foul, in presenting such gifts most frequently, have the best chance of escaping the dreaded rod, the best chance of being praised for cleverness though the greatest dunces, for diligence though the greatest sluggards, and for knowledge though the greatest ignoramuses.

On the other hand, as might be expected, the system tends to generate the spirit of hatred, retaliation, and revenge towards the master. This spirit practically shows itself in various ways. For example, in preparing his hookah, it is a common trick for the boys to mix the tobacco with chillies and other pungent ingredients, so that when he smokes he is made to cough violently, while the whole school is convulsed with laughter;—or, beneath the mats on which he sits may be strewn thorns and sharp prickles which soon display their effects in the contortions of the crest-fallen and discomfited master;—or, at night, he is way-laid by his pupils, who, from their concealed position in a tree, or thicket, or behind a wall, pelt him with pebbles, bricks, or stones;—or, once more, they rehearse doggerel songs in which they implore the gods, and more particularly Kali, to remove him by death—vowing, in the event of the prayer being heard, to present offerings of sugar and cocoa-nuts.

Once more, the system, naturally, and even necessarily, leads the young to regard the Patshala, not as a place for healthful, renovative, mental exercise, but as a sort of dungeon or grievous prison-house, to escape from which is the chiefest of all ends, as the desire to do so is the most powerful of all instincts. Many, accordingly, are the pretexts and the expedients resorted to in order to escape the “durance vile” of scholastic imprisonment. The boy often runs off for several days to the house of a relation or friend at a distance, and, on his return, asseverates that he was sent there by his parents. To throw boiled rice on domestic vessels ceremonially defiles them;—hence, when a boy is bent on a day’s release from school, he peremptorily disobeys his admonishing mother, saying, “No; if you insist on my going I shall throw about the boiled rice”—a threat which usually gains him the victory. If a person of a different caste, or unbathed, or with shoes on his feet, touch the boiled rice or pot of another, it is polluted; hence, when a boy effects his escape from school, he often hastens to some kitchen, touches the boiled rice, or the pots in which it has been boiled, and thus


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Rh becomes himself polluted; and, until he bathes, no one can touch or seize him, without being polluted too. A temporary impunity is thus secured. At other times, the boy finds his way to filthy and unclean places, where he remains for hours, or a whole day, defying the master and his emissaries to touch him, knowing full well that they cannot do so, without partaking of his own contracted pollution. So determined are boys to evade the torturous system of discipline, that, in making good their escape, they often wade or swim through tanks, or along the current of running drains, with a large earthen-pot over their head, so that the suspicion of passers by, or of those in pursuit, is not even excited, seeing that nought appears on the surface but a floating pot; or, they run off, and climb into the loftiest neighbouring tree, where they laugh to scorn the efforts of their assailants to dislodge them. In the recent case of one personally known to our informant, the runaway actually remained for three days on the top of a cocoa-nut tree, vigorously hurling the cocoa-nuts, as missiles, at the heads of all who attempted to ascend for the purpose of securing him.

Not sufficiently adverting to the deleterious influence of the substantive instruction communicated, and apparently overlooking altogether the noxious system of discipline, Mr. Adam was led to view those vernacular schools in a more favourable light than their intrinsic merits or rather demerits warrant. Regarding them chiefly as instruments for simply teaching reading, writing, and accounts, he was disposed to view them as negatively defective rather than positively vicious. But, even under this aspect of the case, he could not help penning the following delineation and verdict:—

“No one will deny that a knowledge of Bengali writing, and of native accounts, is requisite to natives of Bengal, but when these are made the substance and sum of proper instruction and knowledge, the popular mind is necessarily cabined, cribbed, and confined, within the smallest possible range of ideas, and those of the most limited local and temporary interest, and it fails even to acquire those habits of accuracy and precision which the exclusive devotion to forms of calculation might seem fitted to produce. What is wanted is something to awaken and expand the mind, to unshackle it from the trammels of mere usage, and to teach it to employ its own powers; and for such purposes, the introduction into the system of common instruction of some branch of knowledge, in itself perfectly useless (if such a one could be found), would at least rouse and interest by its novelty, and in this way be of some benefit. Of course the benefit would be much greater if the supposed new branch of knowledge were of a useful tendency, stimulating the mind to the increased observation and comparison of external objects, and throwing it back upon itself with a larger stock of materials for thought. A higher intellectual cultivation, however, is not all that is required, That, to be beneficial to the individual and to society, must be


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THE IVORY TOWER it, in estimating and comparing the various possible dangers; but the simplicity of subjects tremendously educated, tremendously "cultivated" and cosmopolitised, as Horton would have called it, especially when such persons were naturally rather extra-refined and ultra-perceptive, was a different affair from the crude candour of the common sort; the consequence of which apprehensions and reflections must have been, in fine, that he presently recognised in the product of "exceptional advantages" now already more and more revealed to him such a pliability of accent as would easily keep judgment, or at least observation, suspended. Gray wasn't going to be at a loss for any shade of decency that didn't depend, to its inconvenience, on some uncertainty about a guest's prejudice; so that once the air was cleared of awkwardness by that perception, exactly, in Horton's ready mind that he and his traditions, his susceptibilities, in fact (of all the queer things!) his own very simplicities and, practically, stupidities were being superfluously allowed for and deferred to, and that this, only this, was the matter, he should have been able to surrender without a reserve to the proposed measure of their common rejoicing. Beautiful might it have been to him to find his friend so considerately glad of him that the spirit of it could consort to the last point with any, with every, other felt weight in the consciousness so 187


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288 observers in connection with the work in question, and the measures now published not only confirm this favourable opinion of the instrument, but bear inherent testimony to the care and patience expended on the observations, and will doubtless be received as an important and valuable contribution to double-star astronomy, and especially by those who are ripe with similar observations, or the investigation of the orbits of the binary systems. Amongst the more interesting of the revolving stars, the Catalogue has measures of η Cassiopeæ, 36 Andromedæ, α Geminorum, ζ Cancri, ω Leonis (which difficult object was just divided at the end of March 1873), ξ Ursæ Majoris, Υ Virginis, ξ Bootis, η Coronæ, Σ 1938, ζ Hereulis, 70 Ophiuchi, Σ 3062, &c. The interesting, though difficult binary Σ 518 (Eridani), is probably within the power of such an instrument, but does not appear in the Catalogue; it may be suggested that it is not too late to examine this object in the present season, the actual angle may probably be found very considerably in advance of that obtained by Prof. Winnecke in 1864, and a first approximation to the form of the orbit may soon be practicable.

.—If we take a mean of the measures of the diameters of the satellites by Struve at Dorpat, and by Engelmann at Leipsic, we shall have for apparent diameters at the mean distance of the primary:— I. … 1"·048 II. … 0"·911 … III. 1"·513 … IV. 1"·278 and with a solar parallax of 8"·875, the true diameters in English miles will be:— I. … 2,435 … II. 2,115 … III. 3,515 … IV. 2,970 The angular diameters at the centre of Jupiter, are:— I. … 31'·4 II. … 17'·1 III. … 17'·8 IV. … 8'·6 and the mean distances from the centre of Jupiter:— The diameter of the planet’s equator is assumed to be 88,200 miles, as lately given in this column.

THE DRAINAGE OF THE ZUYDER ZEE

HE Dutch are a people who in many respects command the respect of the world. Their little country possesses comparatively few natural resources, and yet they have made so much of it, and they have been compelled to cultivate the virtues of frugality and industry to such an extent, that the people as a whole are probably better off than those of any other country in the world. Small as the country is, it is only by the exercise of great skill and constant watchfulness that they are able to prevent its being overwhelmed by the German Ocean. In this unfortunately they have not always been successful. Over and over again has the sea burst in upon them, laying waste their dearly-loved country, and sweeping away thousands of the inhabitants. It has only been after many severe lessons that they have learned how to keep the invader back. And within recent years they themselves have taken the offensive, and determined to drive out old Neptune from lands which he has possessed for centuries. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they succeeded in draining many small areas of land, and during the present century many marshes and lakes have been brought under cultivation, including Lake Haarlem, upwards of 40,000 acres in extent, In this way about 350 square miles of land, mostly devoted to pasture, have been reclaimed, and that entirely by means of windmills,

Now, however, that the applications of steam-power have reached such perfection, this enterprising people have determined upon an enterprise much more gigantic than any they have hitherto attempted,—nothing less than the drainage of the Zuyder Zee. Until the end of the thirteenth century the area now occupied by that arm of the ocean seems to have been mostly dry land, with a Lake in the centre, which by means of a river drained into the German Ocean. At the time mentioned, however, in 1282 according to some authorities, the sea broke through what is now the Strait of Helder, and converted the dry land into a gulf.

For many years the drainage of the Zuyder Zee has occupied the attention of the Dutch Government and of engineers, but it is only since the improvements in the application of steam that the idea has been seriously entertained. At last a scheme has been adopted, after many years’ careful research and consideration, for the details of which we are indebted to the French journal L'Explorateur.

As early as 1865 a Dutch Credit Foncier Association took up the scheme at the suggestion of Mr. Rochussen, an eminent statesman, and employed two engineers, M. Beijerinck, who drained the Haarlem Lake, and M. Stieltjes. These reported on the practicability of draining the southern, the shallowest and most fertile, half of the inland sea. Soundings were made, and numerous specimens of the bottom brought up, and in short a thorough investigation made from a geological and agronomic point of view. The result of these investigations was most favourable, and the specimens submitted to the analysis of a distinguished agricultural chemist, M. van Bemmelen, having been found to consist of alluvial clay or loam of the first quality and of great depth, over an extent of four-fifths of the bottom of the sea, the Society entered into negotiations with the Government. A Government Commission was appointed to consider the whole question from an economic and scientific point of view, and after an investigation lasting about two years, gave in their report in April, 1868. This report was in favour of granting a concession to the Credit Foncier, whenever that company could present a definite plan that would obviate all existing objections. The Society, after further consideration, requested the Government to delegate a commission of specialists to report further on the scheme, taking into consideration all the interests concerned, and to decide upon the plan best adapted to carry the scheme into execution. After three years thorough consideration the Commission gave in a voluminous report in April 1873, which declared that the project from an engineering point of view was practicable; that the clearing of the new lands would be a difficult and very expensive enterprise, but that the experience acquired and the progress of science would furnish the means of overcoming these difficulties, and of making the enterprise a benefit to the country.

The drainage will be effected in that part of the gulf lying between the provinces of Guelderland, Utrecht, and North Holland, over an extent of 195,300 hectares (about 740 square miles, nearly equal to the area of Surrey, and about 100 miles larger than the Dutch province of Zeeland), by means of a principal dike or embankment, of 40 kilometres in length, 50 metres broad at the base, and raised 5 metres above the ordinary tides, to be constructed from the left bank of the mouth of the Yssel to the island of Urk, and from hence to the town of Enkhuyzen in the province of North Holland. The inclosed area will be divided into squares, and numerous pumping steam-engines will then be set to work, having a collective force of 9,400-horse power. The Commission estimates that the work will be entirely accomplished in sixteen years, and that it will cost a sum of 10,000,000l., not including the interest of the capital employed; or 1,600,000l., for preparatory works, provisional circular canals, &c., about 2,760,000l., for the construction of the dike, and the rest for the purchase of engines, the drainage proper, and the construction of reservoirs, internal canals, roads, railway


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THE IVORY TOWER attested; in accordance with which we may remark that continued embarrassment for our gallant caller would have implied on his own side, or in other words deep within his own spirit, some obscure source of confusion.

What distinguishably happened was thus that he first took Graham for exuberant and then for repentant, with the reflection accompanying this that he mustn't, to increase of subsequent shame, have been too open an accomplice in mere jubilation. Then the simple sense of his restored comrade's holding at his disposal a general confidence in which they might absolutely breathe together would have superseded everything else hadn't his individual self-consciousness been perhaps a trifle worried by the very pitch of so much openness. Open, not less generously so, was what he could himself have but wanted to be—in proof of which we may conceive him insist to the happy utmost, for promotion of his comfort, on those sides of their relation the working of which would cast no shadow. They had within five minutes got over much ground—all of which, however, must be said to have represented, and only in part, the extent of Gray's requisition of what he called just elementary human help. He was in a situation at which, as he assured his friend, he had found himself able, those several days, but blankly and inanely to stare. He didn't suppose it had been his uncle's definite design to make an idiot of him, but that 188


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THE IVORY TOWER seemed to threaten as the practical effect of the dear man's extraordinary course. "You see," he explained, bringing it almost pitifully out, "he appears to have left me a most monstrous fortune. I mean"—for under his appeal Haughty had still waited a little—"a really tremendous lot of money."

The effect of the tone of it was to determine in Haughty a peal of laughter quickly repressed—or reduced at least to the intention of decent cheer. "He 'appears', my dear man? Do you mean there's an ambiguity about his will?"

Gray justified his claim of vagueness by having, with his animated eyes on his visitor's, to take an instant or two to grasp so technical an expression. "No—not an ambiguity. Mr. Crick tells me that he has never in all his experience seen such an amount of property disposed of in terms so few and simple and clear. It would seem a kind of masterpiece of a will."

"Then what's the matter with it?" Horton smiled. "Or at least what's the matter with you?—who are so remarkably intelligent and clever?"

"Oh no, I'm not the least little bit clever!" Gray in his earnestness quite excitedly protested. "I haven't a single ray of the intelligence that among you all here clearly passes for rudimentary. But the luxury of you, Haughty," he broke out on a still higher note, "the luxury, the pure luxury of you!" 189


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THE IVORY TOWER Something of beauty in the very tone of which, some confounding force in the very clearness, might it have been that made Horton himself gape for a moment even as Gray had just described his own wit as gaping. They had first sat down, for hospitality offered and accepted—though with no production of the smokable or the drinkable to profane the general reference; but the agitation of all that was latent in this itself had presently broken through, and by the end of a few moments we might perhaps scarce have been able to say whether the host had more set the guest or the guest more the host in motion. Horton Vint had everywhere so the air of a prime social element that it took in any case, and above all in any case of the spacious provision or the sumptuous setting, a good deal of practically combative proof to reduce the implications of his presence to the minor right. He might inveterately have been master or, in quantitative terms, owner—so could he have been taken for the most part as offering you the enjoyment of anything fine that surrounded him: this in proportion to the scale of such matters and to any glimpse of that sense of them in you which was what came nearest to putting you on his level. All of which sprang doubtless but from the fact that his relation to things of expensive interest was so much at the mercy of his appearance; representing as it might be said to do a contradiction of the law under 190


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HE Lutheran Reformation, which was solemnly inaugurated by the national assembly in Copenhagen, in 1536, aroused the people, at least for a time, from the intellectual lethargy in which it had been drowsing for many centuries. The whole people was deeply affected by the problems involved in this religious movement, and the intellectual emancipation secured in religious questions was also made available in other directions. The reformatory movement gave rise to a multitude of writings, which, though primarily concerned with the establishment of the ecclesiastical reform, still, on account of the widespread popularity they gained, also roused many minds to reflection, made them capable of higher culture, and produced in them a desire for intellectual improvement. The art of printing, which had been introduced in Denmark, in 1482, had at first been exclusively employed for the purpose of multiplying Latin books, grammars, and other scholastic works, but henceforth it also rendered important service in the publication of Danish works, and thus it became a powerful instrument for the diffusion of the new spirit among the people.

The Reformation came to Denmark from Germany. Yet even before Luther's doctrine had become known in Denmark, there existed in the minds of many individuals an undefined consciousness of the hollow and false condition into which Catholicism had sunk, and there was a desire to break


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THE IVORY TOWER which it is mostly to be observed, in our modernest conditions, that the figure least congruous with scenic splendour is the figure awaiting the reference. More references than may here be detailed, at any rate, would Horton have seemed ready to gather up during the turns he had resumed his indulgence in after the original arrest and the measurements of the whole place practically determined for him by Gray's own so suggestive revolutions. It was positively now as if these last had all met, in their imperfect expression, what that young man's emotion was in the act of more sharply attaining to—the plain conveyance that if Horton had in his friendliness, not to say his fidelity, presumed to care to know, this disposition was as naught beside the knowledge apparently about to drench him. They were there, the companions, in their second brief arrest, with everything good in the world that he might have conceived or coveted just taking for him the radiant form of precious knowledges that he must be so obliging as to submit to. Let it be fairly inspiring to us to imagine the acuteness of his perception during these minutes of the possibilities of good involved; the refinement of pleasure in his seeing how the advantage thrust upon him would wear the dignity and grace of his consenting unselfishly to learn—inasmuch as, quite evidently, the more he learnt, and though it should be ostensibly and exclusively about Mr. Betterman's heir, 191


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THE IVORY TOWER the more vividly it all would stare at him as a marked course of his own. Wonderful thus the little space of his feeling the great wave set in motion by that quiet worthy break upon him out of Gray's face, Gray's voice, Gray's contact of hands laid all appealingly and affirmingly on his shoulders, and then as it retreated, washing him warmly down, expose to him, off in the intenser light and the uncovered prospect, something like his entire personal future. Something extraordinarily like, yes, could he but keep steady to recognise it through a deepening consciousness, at the same time, of how he was more than matching the growth of his friend's need of him by growing there at once, and to rankness, under the friend's nose, all the values to which this need supplied a soil.

"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad you don't adopt me as pure ornament—glad you see, I mean, a few connections in which one may perhaps be able, as well as certainly desirous, to be of service to you. Only one should honestly tell you," Horton went on, "that people wanting to help you will spring up round you like mushrooms, and that you'll be able to pick and choose as even a king on his throne can't. Therefore, my boy," Haughty said, "don't exaggerate my modest worth."

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Rh the chains with which the Church fettered the people. As an evidence of this tendency we may regard the attempts made already at the close of the middle age to make the Scriptures accessible to the laity through translations into the vernacular. The conditions for a revolution were at hand; there was only need of an impulse from abroad, and when Luther at last raised his mighty voice, there at once spread in ever widening circles a realization of the existing wrongs. The kings immediately became interested in the movement, and, above all, Christian II, who clearly appreciated how closely religion was identified with the popular element. By the reforms which he tried to introduce in the public school system, he manifested his deep sympathy for the masses, and evinced a desire to raise the lower classes such as none of his predecessors, and but few of his successors, ever could boast. But his efforts met with no success, because they were too much in conflict with the egotism and prejudices of the ruling class. Both his ordinances for the improvement of the schools and his other laws were rescinded by his successor, Frederik I, who declared them to be "noxious and opposed to good morals." So when the great fermentation had subsided, when the new doctrines had become firmly established, and when all other matters had been arranged accordingly, the Latin again came to the front, and the national influences still at work had not sufficient strength to repress it. And yet the period between the close of the middle age and the learned age which followed the Reformation, deserves to be called a, since the work done in it was for the people, and since the people were not only recipients, but also took part in the reforms accomplished. Many of the most prominent representatives of the age sprang directly from the ranks of the common people.

Among those who by their literary activity contributed to the cause of the Reformation unquestionably ranks first, and he is rightly styled "the father of Danish literature," since he was really the first important


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THE IVORY TOWER he might in an instant more have felt it go down too deep. It hadn't done that, however, when "What I want of you above all is exactly that you shall pick and choose" was merely what at first came of it. And the case was still all of the rightest as Graham at once added: "You see 'people' are exactly my difficulty—I'm so mortally afraid of them, and so equally sure that it's the last thing you are. If I want you for myself I want you still more for others—by which you may judge," said Gray, "that I've cut you out work."

"That you're mortally afraid of people is, I confess," Haughty answered, "news to me. I seem to remember you, on the contrary, as so remarkably and—what was it we used to call it?—so critico-analytically interested in 'em."

"That's just it—I am so beastly interested! Don't you therefore see," Gray asked, "how I may dread the complication?"

"Dread it so that you seek to work it off on another?"—and Haughty looked about as if he would after all have rather relished a cigarette.

Clearly, none the less, this awkwardness was lost on his friend. "I want to work off on you, Vinty, every blest thing that you'll let me; and when you've seen into my case a little further my reasons will so jump at your eyes that I'm convinced you'll have patience with them."

"I'm not then, you think, too beastly interested myself? I've got such a free mind, 193


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138 author in Denmark who was Danish both in spirit and language. Born in 1480, of parents probably belonging to the middle class, he became a canon in Lund and afterward studied in Paris, where he took the master's degree. In Paris he edited Peder Laale's collection of proverbs, and in 1514 Saxo's Danish chronicle, through which edition the latter was probably rescued from oblivion, for it cost him much trouble to secure a single manuscript copy. His labors for the cause of his country's history were not confined to the editing of this invaluable work, but he was also engaged on a translation or Danish adaptation of it, and even on a continuation of Saxo's chronicle. A few fragments of the latter have been preserved, and it would seem to have been carried down to the death of Christian I. Before the Reformation he produced in the Danish language a few religious works, chiefly intended for the use of laymen, prominent among which is his "Jertegns postille," a collection of sermons—probably based on Latin models—on the gospels and epistles of all the Sundays and sacred days, and each sermon contained meditations on some miracle (Jertegn) or other. When he afterward became a Protestant, he took it much to heart that he possibly had done much harm by this very postil and the papal errors which it helped to spread, for, as he says himself, "the fables and miracles, which it tells of, are things which men have themselves invented and imagined." In order to make such amends as he was able for this transgression, he now translated a Lutheran homily.

On his return to Denmark he became secretary to King Christian II. In this position he ever remained faithfully devoted to his prince, and when the latter, in 1523, was compelled to leave his country, Christian Pedersen accompanied him into exile. He lived in Holland several years, and the works he published in this country show that already at this time he had renounced Catholicism and become a convert to the new doctrine. He remained until his death one of the most ardent and valiant champions of the Reforma-


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THE IVORY TOWER you mean, and such a hard heart, and such a record of failure to have been any use at all to myself, that I must be just the person, it strikes you, to save you all the trouble and secure you all the enjoyment?" That inquiry Horton presently made, but with an addition ere Gray could answer. "My difficulty for myself, you see, has always been that I also am by my nature too beastly interested."

"Yes"—Gray promptly met it—"but you like it, take that easily, immensely enjoy it and are not a bit afraid of it. You carry it off and you don't pay for it."

"Don't you make anything," Horton simply went on, "of my being for instance so uncannily interested in yourself?"

Gray's eyes again sounded him. "Are you really and truly? to the extent of its not boring you?" But with all he had even at the worst to take for granted he waited for no reassurance. "You'll be so sorry for me that I shall wring your heart and you'll assist me for common pity."

"Well," Horton returned, a natural gaiety of response not wholly kept under, "how can I absurdly make believe that pitying you, if it conies to that, won't be enough against nature to have some fascination? Endowed with every advantage, personal, physical, material, moral, in other words, brilliantly clever, inordinately rich, strikingly handsome and incredibly good, 194


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THE IVORY TOWER your state yet insists on being such as to nip in the bud the hardy flower of envy. What's the matter with you to bring that about would seem, I quite agree, well worth one's looking into—even if it proves, by its perversity or its folly, something of a trial to one's practical philosophy. When I pressed you some minutes ago for the reason of your not facing the future with a certain ease you gave as that reason your want of education and wit. But please understand," Horton added, "that I've no time to waste with you on sophistry that isn't so much as plausible." He stopped a moment, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown all but extravagantly back, so that his considering look might have seemed for the time to descend from a height designed a little to emphasise Gray's comparative want of stature. That young man's own eyes remained the while, none the less, unresentfully raised; to such an effect indeed that, after some duration of this exchange, the bigger man's fine irony quite visibly shaded into a still finer, and withal frankly kinder, curiosity. Poor Gray, with a strained face and an agitation but half controlled, breathed quick and hard, as from inward pressure, and then, renouncing choice—there were so many things to say—shook his head, slowly and repeatedly, after a fashion that discouraged levity. "My dear boy," said his friend under this sharper impression, "you do take it hard." Which made Graham turn away, 195


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Rh tion. Of particularly great importance was his translation of the New Testament, published in 1529, "for the use of the common people." It is in every respect superior to another translation which had appeared more than five years previously, and which had been attributed to the burgomaster of Malmö (Sweden), Hans Mikkelsen, who was also a faithful adherent of Christian II. This first attempt to place the New Testament in the hands of the laymen is not, however, the work of a single individual, though Mikkelsen may have done the major part of it. It was rather the joint work of the men who accompanied the king into exile, and it is even possible that the king himself may have done a part of it. It is not an unqualified success, and there remained a great need of a new translation. The language was upon the whole bad, and Christian Pedersen himself testifies that one of the chief reasons why he had undertaken a new translation was the fact that many complained that they could not understand the Danish of the earlier one. While Hans Mikkelsen's version failed to satisfy either the followers of the new doctrine or the Catholics, Christian Pedersen's became deservedly very popular on account of its clear, forcible style, and on account of the general ability with which he had performed his difficult task. As in the case of Hans Mikkelsen, so Christian Pedersen's translation was also made from the Latin, but with this provision, that both have followed "the best and most renowned clerks," and made use of both Erasmus of Rotterdam, and of Luther; still it must be affirmed that especially Pedersen used these authorities with great independence and judgment. The first one to translate fragments of the Bible into Danish from the original tongue was Hans Jansen. Christian Pedersen's translation of the Psalms of David is also superior to that made by Franz Vormoedsen, who had formerly been a Carmelite monk, but had become one of the chief leaders in the reformatory movement. Pedersen's work, when judged by the standard of the age, is remarkable for its exactness, vigor


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THE IVORY TOWER move about in vagueness of impatience and, still panting and still hesitating for other expression, approach again, as from a blind impulse, the big chimney-piece, reach for a box that raised a presumption of cigarettes and, the next instant, thrust it out in silence at his visitor. The latter's welcome of the motion, his prompt appropriation of relief, was also mute; with which he found matches in advance of Gray's own notice of them and had a light ready, of which our young man himself partook, before the box went back to its shelf. Odd again might have been for a protected witness of this scene—which of course is exactly what you are invited to be—the lapse of speech that marked it for the several minutes. Horton, truly touched now, and to the finer issue we have glanced at, waited unmistakably for the sign of something more important than his imagination, even at its best, could give him, and which, not less conceivably, would be the sort of thing he himself hadn't signs, either actual or possible, for. He waited while they did the place at last the inevitable small violence—this being long enough to make him finally say: "Do you mean, on your honour, that you don't like what has happened to you?"

This unloosed then for Gray the gate of possible expression. "Of course I like it—that is of course I try to. I've been trying here, day after day, as hard as ever a decent man can have tried for 196


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THE IVORY TOWER anything; and yet I remain, don't you see? a wretched little worm."

"Deary, deary me," stared Horton, "that you should have to bring up your appreciation of it from such depths! You go in for it as you would for the electric light or the telephone, and then find half-way that you can't stand the expense and want the next-door man somehow to combine with you?"

"That's exactly it, Vinty, and you're the next-door man!"—Gray embraced the analogy with glee. "I can't stand the expense, and yet I don't for a moment deny I should immensely enjoy the convenience. I want," he asseverated, "to like my luck. I want to go in for it, as you say, with every inch of any such capacity as I have. And I want to believe in my capacity; I want to work it up and develop it—I assure you on my honour I do. I've lashed myself up into feeling that if I don't I shall be a base creature, a worm of worms, as I say, and fit only to be utterly ashamed. But that's where you come in. You'll help me to develop. To develop my capacity I mean," he explained with a wondrous candour.

Horton was now, small marvel, all clear faith; even, the cigarettes helping, to the verge again of hilarity. "Your capacity—I see. Not so much your property itself."

"Well"—Gray considered of it—"what will my property be except my capacity?" He spoke 197


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140 and euphony. It at once won the favor of the public and retained it for a long time. The pithy words of the translation frequently of their own accord, as it were, fell in verses and rhymes, and the frequent recurrence of alliterations impart to it a peculiar poetic flavor.

In order to make additional contributions to the spreading and establishment of the new doctrine, Chr. Pedersen edited several minor works, of which there in 1531 appeared no less than seven, chiefly adaptations of Luther's works. There is no room for doubt that the vigorous, telling words that he addressed to the multitude made a deep impression. Precisely this kind of works were needed to break the ground, works that did not go into the discussion of subtle dogmatic problems, but which addressed themselves with warmth and strength to the heart, a gift which this author possessed in an eminent degree. The one of these works which is most interesting to us is a free and admirably localized adaptation of a book by Luther on how children should be kept in school. On account of its vivid description of the deplorable condition of the Danish schools at that time, Pedersen's work, is of more than ordinary value to the historian of civilization. Still, among all these minor works this book, which had one simple, practical object for its aim, and pointed out the need of reform, is probably the one which in reality attained least practical usefulness. It appeared in the midst of religious fermentation, when men's minds were at the highest pitch of excitement, and the regulations which after the reformation were issued for the improvement of the schools emanated directly from the government, so that it is safe to say that the excellent little book in question could not possibly have had much influence on the matter. Of his other works we shall only mention the translations made, during his sojourn in Paris, of two popular works, Charlemagne and Olger the Dane, both of which were in that age regarded as perfectly authentic historical documents.

The rest of his remarkably industrious life devoted to the


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THE IVORY TOWER really as for the pleasure of seeing very finely and very far. "It won't if I don't like it, that is if I don't understand it, don't you see? enough to make it count. Yes, yes, don't revile me," he almost feverishly insisted: "I do want it to count for all it's worth, and to get everything out of it, to the very last drop of interest, pleasure, experience, whatever you may call it, that such a possession can yield. And I'm going to keep myself up to it, to the top of the pitch, by every art and prop, by every helpful dodge, that I can put my hand on. You see if I don't. I breathe defiance," he continued, with his rare radiance, "at any suspicion or doubt. But I come back," he had to add, "to my point that it's you that I essentially most depend on."

Horton again looked at him long and frankly; this subject of appeal might indeed for the moment have been as embarrassed between the various requisitions of response as Gray had just before shown himself. But as the tide could surge for one of the pair so it could surge for the other, and the large truth of what Horton most grasped appeared as soon as he had spoken. "The name of your complaint, you poor dear delightful person, or the name at least of your necessity, your predicament and your solution, is marriage to a wife at short order. I mean of course to an amiable one. There, so obviously, is your aid and your prop, there are the sources of success for interest in 198


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THE IVORY TOWER your fortune, and for the whole experience and enjoyment of it, as you can't find them elsewhere. What are you but just 'fixed' to marry, and what is the sense of your remarks but a more or less intelligent clamour for it?"

Triumphant indeed, as we have said, for lucidity and ease, was this question, and yet it had filled the air, for its moment, but to drop at once by the practical puncture of Gray's perfect recognition. "Oh of course I've thought of that—but it doesn't meet my case at all." Had he been capable of disappointment in his friend he might almost have been showing it now.

Horton had, however, no heat about it. "You mean you absolutely don't want a wife—in connection, so to speak, with your difficulties; or with the idea, that is, of their being resolved into blessings?"

"Well"—Gray was here at least all prompt and clear—"I keep down, in that matter, so much as I can any a priori or mere theoretic want. I see my possibly marrying as an effect, I mean—I somehow don't see it at all as a cause. A cause, that is"—he easily worked it out—"of my getting other things right. It may be, in conditions, the greatest rightness of all; but I want to be sure of the conditions."

"The first of which is, I understand then"—for this at least had been too logical for Haughty not to have to match it—"that you should fall so 199


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Rh cause of religion and of the people, Chr. Pedersen spent in Denmark whither he had returned in 1531. Notwithstanding his open adherence to the banished king he was permitted, in consideration of his services to literature and to the reformation, to reside in his native country and "to eke out his living, as best he could, with printing"—"nære og bjærge sig med Prenteri." During the Count's war he was secretary to Jörgen Kok, the brave burgomaster of Malmö. During the government of Christian III (1533-1559) he continued his literary activity, and the translation of the Bible, published in 1550, noted for its pure and terse language, and popularly known as Christian III's Bible, is in the main Pedersen's work. He died in 1554.

Christian Pedersen has been called the father of Danish literature, and he well deserves this name, for he was, in fact, the founder of Danish literature in the true sense of this word. He was not only the first who engaged extensively in literary pursuits, but he also, on account of the wide circulation and great popularity of his works, exerted in many ways a decided influence on the subsequent literature of Denmark. One of the chief problems to be solved was the creation of a Danish literary language, and the services he here rendered cannot be overestimated. He was himself perfectly conscious of this task and of its importance, and he succeeded in writing Danish with a purity that had not been known before his time. In this manner he paved the way for his successors, and it is not Pedersen's fault that he did not get a more numerous following than he did. Meanwhile a few did follow the example set by him, and the way he had pointed out was never utterly lost sight of by the later generations. In course of time the current of events found it again, and there was evolved a literary activity which has continued down to the present day. His language is always lucid and


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THE IVORY TOWER tremendously in love that you won't be able to help yourself."

Graham just debated; he was all intelligence here. "Falling tremendously in love—the way you grands amoureux talk of such things!"

"Where do you find, my boy," Horton asked, "that I'm a grand amoureux?"

Well, Gray had but to consult his memory of their young days together; there was the admission, under pressure, that he might have confused the appearances. "They were at any rate always up and at you—which seems to have left me with the impression that your life is full of them."

"Every man's life is full of them that has a door or a window they can come in by. But the question's of yourself," said Haughty, "and just exactly of the number of such that you'll have to keep open or shut in the immense façade you'll now present."

Our young man might well have struck him as before all else inconsequent. "I shall present an immense façade?"—Gray, from his tone of surprise, to call it nothing more, would have thought of this for the first time.

But Horton just hesitated. "You've great ideas if you see it yourself as a small one."

"I don't see it as any. I decline," Gray remarked, "to have a façade. And if I don't I shan't have the windows and doors." 200


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Feb. 10, 1876] lines, and works preparatory to bringing the new lands under culture.

The interest on the above sum will raise it to 13,400,000l., but one-fourth of this will be granted as a subsidy by government, which will be amply compensated by the comparatively enormous addition to its small territory,

Of the 473,000 acres to be drained, four-fifths, as we have said, are of great value, composed as they are of a bed of more than a metre thick of the most fertile mud deposited for centuries by the Yssel and other rivers of which the Zuyder Zee is the receptacle. Onty one-fifth consists of land of less value and of sands which will be useful in constructing the base of the dike, or to establish large reservoirs, indispensable in all drainage work, for the reception of the waters until they can be conveyed to the sea. Deduction being made for the land absorbed by these works, by canals, dikes, roads, &c. &., there will remain upwards of 400,000 acres suitable for culture, and the selling value of which ought considerably to exceed the expenses of the enterprise. Every one must wish that this bold and really beneficent scheme may be carried out with complete success.

THE BIRDS OF NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA

ARON THEODOR VON HEUGLIN is well known as one of the most active and successful of the travellers and naturalists of Germany—one who may fairly rank with the Wallaces and Bates of our own country—as regards the extent of his researches. No man living has devoted more time and toil to the investigation of the Fauna of North-eastern Africa, and as regards the classes of birds and mammals, no man living has a better acquaintance with them. Twelve years passed on the coasts and islands of the Red Sea, in the marshes and jungles of the White Nile, and in the Highlands of Abyssinia, during which time constant attention was devoted to the observation and collection of animals have given Herr von Heuglin unrivalled opportunities for amassing this knowledge, to which his skill as an artist has contributed additional facilities, Soon after returning from his last journey in 1865, Herr von Heuglin planned a general work on the Omithology of North-eastern Africa to embrace all the notes and observations collected during his different excursions, together with the information acquired by the study of specimens from these countries already existing in the continental museums. In 1869, the first part of the present work was issued, but its large extent hindered its progress, and the author was called away to join the German Expeditions to Nova Zembla and the extreme north, to which he was attached as naturalist. It was not, therefore, until the close of last year, or, we believe we may say until the beginning of the present year, that the concluding part of the Ornithology of North-eastern Africa was issued from the press. Completed, it now forms four volumes, illustrated by fifty-one coloured plates and a map of the region of which it treats, and is by far the most perfect work on the subject hitherto published. Prior to the completion of the present work Rüppell’s Atlas, and other publications were, so far as regards Nubia and Abyssinia, the only works of reference, whilst of the district of the White Nile so fully explored by Von Heuglin, very little was known except from fragmentary notices. In the present extended work the ornithology of the whole of these countries, together with that of Egypt, the Red Sea, and Northern Somali-land, are treated of together. The sum of species of birds is thus raised to a high figure, no less than 948, of which upwards of 200 are entirely confined to North-eastern Africa, European species are likewise numerous in these countries. Northern Africa being, as is well known, the favoured haunt of our summer migrants during the winter season. Upwards of 300 European birds thus come to be included in Herr von Heuglin’s list. The plan of our author's work is good, though it seems to be rather adapted for the home student than for the field-naturalist, neither family nor generic characters being included. But we observe with pleasure that specific diagnoses are given in Latin to all except the best known species, which, after the contumely that certain imperfectly educated naturalists have recently thought fit to bestow upon that classical tongue, is worthy of all praise. The references to former authors are also numerous, and, so far as we have been able to test them, more accurate than is too often, unfortunately, the case in works of this kind. But the great feature of the book are the observations on the habits and localities extracted from the note-books of the unwearied author. These are much more numerous, and better put together than in almost any other work on foreign ornithology with which we are acquainted. Errors and omissions there are no doubt, and must be, in a work of this magnitude, as indeed is sufficiently evident by the many pages of additions and corrections annexed to the fourth volume, but Herr von Heuglin has spared no trouble to bring his Ornithology of North-eastern Africa up to date, and his volumes will long remain a standard work of reference upon the birds of these districts, which are now attracting so much attention in civilised Europe.

FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS BY INSECTS XIII. Additional Alpine Flowers adapted to Cross-fertilisation by Lepidoptera.

HE same relation which I have shown to exist between Daphne Mezereum and striata, Primula officinalis and villosa, Rhinanthus crista-galli and alpinus (NATURE, vol. xi. p. 110), exists also between Viola tricolor and calcarata, the former inhabiting the plain and the lower mountainous localities, and being adapted to cross-fertilisation by bees; the latter, on the contrary, inhabiting the higher Alpine regions, and being adapted to fertilisation by butterflies.

Viola calcarata is found in the Strela pass towards Davos (2,300 metres above the sea-level), and in the rocky slopes of Piz Umbrail towards Quarta Cantoniera (2,600-2,700 m.) in such plenty as to appear from some distance like a blue carpet of flowers. In the latter locality, July 15, 1875, I saw these flowers assiduously visited by different butterflies, of which I caught two specimens of Colias phicomone, and three Erebia laprona E. (manto, W.V.). The modifications of structure by which the flowers of V. calcarata (Fig. 82-85) differ from those of V. tricolor (Fig. 15-22, NATURE, vol. ix. p. 46), besides their eminent conspicuousness, so frequently found in Alpine flowers, are such as prevent Diptera and probably also Apidæ from sucking the honey, whereas butterflies, for which alone the honey is reserved, cannot suck it without effecting cross-fertilisation. For the spur, which generally is only 3-4 mm. long in V. tricolor, exceeds in this species 10 mm. in length, its width being only 1 mm, in the vertical, and scarcely half a millimetre in the horizontal direction; and the stigmatic knob, provided with a labiated appendage, as in the large-flowered form of V. tricolor, lies so closely pressed against the under lip, that no proboscis of any butterfly can enter the spur without grazing the stigmatic lip. The pollen-grains, when they fall out of the anthers, collect in the hairs which clothe the furrow of the under lip (po Fig. 85), and no proboscis of a butterfly can be inserted into the spur without being smeared with pollen-grains, which, in the flower next


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THE IVORY TOWER "You've got 'em already, fifty in a row"—Haughty was remorseless—"and it isn't a question of 'having': you are a façade; stretching a mile right and left. How can you not be when I'm walking up and down in front of you?"

"Oh you walk up and down, you make the things you pass, and you can behave of course if you want like one of the giants in uniform, outside the big shops, who attend the ladies in and out. In fact," Gray went on, "I don't in the least judge that I am, or can be at all advertised as, one of the really big. You seem all here so hideously rich that I needn't fear to count as extraordinary; indeed I'm very competently assured I'm by all your standards a very moderate affair. And even if I were a much greater one"—he gathered force—"my appearance of it would depend only on myself. You can have means and not be blatant; you can take up, by the very fact itself, if you happen to be decent, no more room than may suit your taste. I'll be hanged if I consent to take up an inch more than suits mine. Even though not of the truly bloated I've at least means to be quiet. Every one among us—I mean among the moneyed—isn't a monster on exhibition." In proof of which he abounded. "I know people myself who aren't."

Horton considered him with amusement, as well apparently as the people that he knew! "Of course you may dig the biggest hole in the ground 201


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142 fluent, his style is remarkably vigorous and graphic, and he frequently evinces the skill of the master. This is particularly true of his above-mentioned translation of the Bible, published in 1550. From a linguistic standpoint it is, without exception, the most remarkable monument from the age of the Reformation. At the same time Pedersen's works are conspicuous for their marked popular and national character. This also applies to his work while he was still a Catholic. He was already then striving to promote the education of the layman, and after he had embraced the Lutheran religion he continued in this line of work, not simply because it was one of the chief objects of the Reformation to win the masses, but, rather, he really had the well-being of the people at heart. He did not, therefore, confine himself to religious writings for the advancement of the ecclesiastical reform, but he also wrote about other things, and in these, too, he knew how to strike a key that was familiar to the people. His adaptations of old chronicles continued, long after his death, to be the favorite reading of the masses. In contrast with the tendency prevalent in his time of waging war against every intellectual inheritance the people possessed from the past, he cherished the old legends and ballads and other monuments of the intellectual life of the people, and it would be doing him injustice not to mention the fact that he clearly comprehended the kinship of the northern nations, a fact repeatedly set forth in unmistakable language in his writings.

Christian Pedersen was not one of the leaders in the great struggle between the old and the new doctrine. He was abroad at the time when the contest was raging most fiercely, and even if he had been at home it is scarcely probable that he would have taken any prominent part. As a rule he preferred to keep aloof from the events of the busy world. As he says of himself, "he had always been fond of a quiet life, and in the turbulent times he had sought retirement among his friends and relations." His works reveal to us a character for which quiet, literary labor must have possessed the


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THE IVORY TOWER that ever was dug—spade-work comes high, but you'll have the means—and get down into it and sit at the very bottom. Only your hole will become then the feature of the scene, and we shall crowd a thousand deep all round the edge of it."

Gray stood for a moment looking down, then faced his guest as with a slight effort. "Do you know about Rosanna Gaw?" And then while Horton, for reasons of his own, failed at once to answer: "She has come in for millions"

"Twenty-two and a fraction," Haughty said at once. "Do you mean that she sits, like Truth, at the bottom of a well?" he asked still more divertedly.

Gray had a sharp gesture. "If there's a person in the world whom I don't call a façade!"

"You don't call her one?"—Haughty took it right up. And he added as for very compassion: "My poor man, my poor man!"

"She loathes self-exhibition; she loathes being noticed; she loathes every form of publicity." Gray quite flushed for it.

Horton went to the mantel for another cigarette, and there was that in the calm way of it that made his friend, even though helping him this time to a light, wait in silence for his word. "She does more than that"—it was brought quite dryly out. "She loathes every separate dollar she possesses."

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Rh greatest charm. Nor does he on the whole assume the uncompromising attitude of his fellow-protestants, and unlike the latter, he did not wholly break with the past. On the contrary, he protected all of the old that seemed to him useful or worthy of preservation, and at the same time he availed himself chiefly of the new elements of culture. In this respect Luther's work was of the greatest importance to him. In the first place the powerful words of the German reformer helped him to become clear in reference to those very ideas with which he had long been struggling without any satisfactory result, and they freed him from many prejudices which still clung to the times, and which prevented his independent intellectual development. Already the works he had published before he became a Lutheran contain distinct reformatory elements, and they clearly reveal the leading thought in his whole literary career, which was, that no one can be saved without the gospel and the holy faith. This was not only in direct opposition to the axiom of the Catholic church concerning the saving power of good works, but it also with equal emphasis urged that the word of God must be made accessible to the common man. In the "Jertegnpostille," mentioned above, he asserts that "no one must believe the gospels to be more sacred in one tongue than in another, but everybody should be able to read them in his own language."

By emphasizing the importance of faith and the right of the layman to read the Scriptures he had grasped Luther's fundamental idea before Luther had yet expressed it. To this idea he clung to the last, and all his numerous religious writings are full of it. He was not gifted with Luther's gigantic spirit, but he worked with fidelity and untiring zeal, and the influence of his literary activity for the advancement, spreading and final establishment of the work of the Reformation can hardly be overestimated. His Danish works, which have recently appeared in a complete edition, will forever retain their value, for he was a prominent and very


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THE IVORY TOWER it was, could just stare at this extravagance of assent; seeing however, on second thoughts, what there might be in it. "Well then if what I have is a molehill beside her mountain, I can the more easily emulate her in standing back."

"What you have is a molehill?" Horton was concerned to inquire.

Gray showed a shade of guilt, but faced his judge. "Well—so I gather."

The judge at this lost patience. "Am I to understand that you positively cultivate vagueness and water it with your tears?"

"Yes"—the culprit was at least honest—"I should rather say I do. And I want you to let me. Do let me."

"It's apparently more then than Miss Gaw does!"

"Yes"—Gray again considered; "she seems to know more or less what she's worth, and she tells me that I can't even begin to approach it."

"Very crushing of her!" his friend laughed. "You 'make the pair', as they say, and you must help each other much. Her 'loathing' it exactly is—since we know all about it!—that gives her a frontage as wide as the Capitol at Washington. Therefore your comparison proves little—though I confess it would rather help us," Horton pursued, "if you could seem, as you say, to have asked one or two of the questions that I should suppose would have been open to you." 203


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THE IVORY TOWER "Asked them of Mr. Crick, you mean?"

"Well, yes—if you've nobody else, and as you appear not to have been able to have cared to look at the will yourself."

Something like a light of hope, at this, kindled in Gray's face. "Would you care to look at it, Vinty?"

The inquiry gave Horton pause. "Look at it now, you mean?"

"Well—whenever you like. I think," said Gray, "it must be in the house."

"You're not sure even of that?" his companion wailed.

"Oh I know there are two"—our young man had coloured. "I don't mean different ones, but copies of the same," he explained; "one of which Mr. Crick must have."

"And the other of which"—Horton pieced it together—"is the one you offer to show me?"

"Unless, unless!" and Gray, casting about, bethought himself. "Unless that one!" With his eyes on his friend's he still shamelessly wondered.

"Unless that one has happened to get lost," Horton tenderly suggested, "so that you can't after all produce it?"

"No, but it may be upstairs, upstairs" Gray continued to turn this over. "I think it is," he then recognised, "where I had perhaps better not just now disturb it." 204


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THE IVORY TOWER His recognition was nothing, apparently, however, to the clear quickness of Morton's. "It's in your uncle's own room?"

"The room," Gray assented, "where he lies in death while we talk here." This, his tone suggested, sufficiently enjoined delay.

Morton's concurrence was immediately such that, once more turning off, he measured, for the intensity of it, half the room. "I can't advise you without the facts that you're unable to give," he said as he came back, "but I don't indeed invite you to go and rummage in that presence." He might have exhaled the faintest irony, save that verily by this time, between these friends—by which I mean of course as from one of them only, the more generally assured, to the other—irony would, to an at all exhaustive analysis, have been felt to flicker in their medium. Gray might in fact, on the evidence of his next words, have found it just distinguishable.

 V

"We do talk here while he lies in death"—they had in fine all serenity for it. "But the extraordinary thing is that my putting myself this way at my ease—and for that matter putting you at yours—is exactly what the dear man made to me the greatest point of. I haven't the shade 205


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THE IVORY TOWER of a sense, and don't think I ever shall have, of not doing what he wanted of me; for what he wanted of me," our particular friend continued, "is—well, so utterly unconventional. He would like my being the right sort of well-meaning idiot that you catch me in the very fact of. I warned him, I sincerely, passionately warned him, that I'm not fit, in the smallest degree, for the use, for the care, for even the most rudimentary comprehension, of a fortune; and that exactly it was which seemed most to settle him. He wanted me clear, to the last degree, not only of the financial brain, but of any sort of faint germ of the money-sense whatever—down to the very lack of power, if he might be so happy (or if I might!) to count up to ten on my fingers. Satisfied of the limits of my arithmetic he passed away in bliss."

To this, as fairly lucid, Horton had applied his understanding. "You can't count up to ten?"

"Not all the way. Still," our young man smiled, "the greater inspiration may now give me the lift."

His guest looked as if one might by that time almost have doubted. But it was indeed an extraordinary matter. "How comes it then that your want of arithmetic hasn't given you a want of order?—unless indeed I'm mistaken and you were perhaps at sixes and sevens?"

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THE IVORY TOWER got up to sevens! I've never had the least rule or method; but that has been a sort of thing I could more or less cover up—from others, I mean, not from myself, who have always been helplessly ashamed of it. It hasn't been the disorder of extravagance," Gray explained, "but the much more ignoble kind, the wasteful thrift that doesn't really save, that simply misses, and that neither enjoys things themselves nor enjoys their horrid little equivalent of hoarded pence. I haven't needed to count far, the fingers of one hand serving for my four or five possessions; and also I've kept straight not by taking no liberties with my means, but by taking none with my understanding of them. From fear of counting wrong, and from loathing of the act of numerical calculation, and of the humiliation of having to give it up after so few steps from the start, I've never counted at all—and that, you see, is what has saved me. That has been my sort of disorder—which you'll agree is the most pitiful of all."

Horton once more turned away from him, but slowly this time, not in impatience, rather with something of the preoccupation of a cup-bearer whose bowl has been filled to the brim and who must carry it a distance with a steady hand. So for a minute or two might he have been taking this care; at the end of which, however, Gray saw him stop in apparent admiration before a tall inlaid and brass-bound French bahut; with 207


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144 marked character, and he has justly been regarded as the revelation of the historical genius of his times in Denmark.

In the same manner as Christian Pedersen, the brothers, Peder and Niels Palladius, also labored for the religious and moral education of the people. They both died in 1560. By editing a number of little books they sought to advance the cause of general education and morality, and thus they completed the work of reform begun by Pedersen. Peder (born 1503) was the more distinguished of the two brothers, who were the sons of plain citizens. He studied in Wittenberg, and by Bogenhagen he was warmly recommended to Christian III as a man peculiarly fitted to carry out the work of the Reformation. In his thirty-fifth year he became the first evangelical bishop of Zealand, and at the same time professor of theology in the University of Copenhagen, and in these positions he worked indefatigably for the cause intrusted to him. Among the numerous works which owe their origin to his professional activity, as a clergyman, his "Visitatsbog " is particularly deserving of mention. It is a work of great importance to a thorough knowledge of the customs and ideas of that epoch, and is unquestionably one of the most remarkable works in the old Danish literature. It is a collection of addresses which were delivered on his professional visits through his bishopric, and which he afterward revised and enlarged with reference to his subsequent experiences. From their very nature these addresses could not help dealing with a large number of topics, which taken collectively furnish an invaluable picture of the times for the student of the development of civilization. He had a rare gift of selecting effective starting points in his addresses from the social circumstances of his listeners, of leading them from their daily surroundings into spiritual realms, and thus of unfolding for them the doctrines of faith on the basis of things with which they were familiar. In this book, simple and straight-


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THE IVORY TOWER the effect, after a further moment, of a sharp break of their thread of talk. "You've got some things here at least to enjoy and that you ought to know how to keep hold of; though I don't so much mean," he explained, "this expensive piece of furniture as the object of interest perched on top."

"Oh the ivory tower!—yes, isn't that, Vinty, a prize piece and worthy of the lovely name?"

Vinty remained for the time all admiration, having, as you would easily have seen, lights enough to judge by. "It appears to have been your uncle's only treasure—as everything else about you here is of a newness! And it isn't so much too small, Gray," he laughed, "for you to get into it yourself, when you want to get rid of us, and draw the doors to. If it's a symbol of any retreat you really have an eye on I much congratulate you; I don't know what I wouldn't give myself for the 'run' of an ivory tower."

"Well, I can't ask you to share mine," Gray returned; "for the situation to have a sense, I take it, one must sit in one's tower alone. And I should properly say," he added after an hesitation, "that mine is the one object, all round me here, that I don't owe my uncle: it has been placed at my disposition, in the handsomest way in the world, by Rosanna Gaw."

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THE IVORY TOWER to thrust you away into; which I hope, however, is far from the case. Does she then keep ivory towers, a choice assortment?" Horton quite gaily continued; "in the sense of having a row of them ready for occupation, and with tenants to match perchable in each and signalling along the line from summit to summit? Because"—and, facing about from his contemplation, he piled up his image even as the type of object represented by it might have risen in the air—"you give me exactly, you see, the formula of that young lady herself: perched aloft in an ivory tower is what she is, and I'll be hanged if this isn't a hint to you to mount, yourself, into just such another; under the same provocation, I fancy her pleading, as she has in her own case taken for sufficient." Thus it was that, suddenly more brilliant than ever yet, to Graham's apprehension, you might well have guessed, his friend stood nearer again—stood verily quite irradiating responsive ingenuity. Markedly would it have struck you that at such instants as this, most of all, the general hush that was so thick about them pushed upward and still further upward the fine flower of the inferential. Following the pair closely from the first, and beginning perhaps with your idea that this life of the intelligence had its greatest fineness in Gray Fielder, you would by now, I dare say, have been brought to a more or less apprehensive foretaste of its possibilities in our other odd agent. For how couldn't 209


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 to fetch the skin and to burn it in the kitchen fire. The moment the flames touched the skin there was a fearful clap of thunder heard, and the prince disappeared out of the palace gate in a whirlwind, and returned to his palace alone.

But the princess was heart-broken, and spent the night weeping bitterly. Next morning she set out to find her way back to the castle, but she wandered through the woods and forests, and she could find no path or track to guide her. For fourteen days she roamed in the forest, sleeping under the trees, and living upon wild berries and roots, and at last she reached a little house. She opened the door and went in, and found the wind seated in the room all by himself, and she spoke to the wind and said: ‘Wind, have you seen the white wolf?’

And the wind answered: ‘All day and all night I have been blowing round the world, and I have only just come home; but I have not seen him.’

But he gave her a pair of shoes, in which, he told her, she would be able to walk a hundred miles with every step. Then she walked through the air till she reached a star, and she said: ‘Tell me, star, have you seen the white wolf?’

And the star answered: ‘I have been shining all night, and I have not seen him.’

But the star gave her a pair of shoes, and told her that if she put them on she would be able to walk two hundred miles at a stride. So she drew them on, and she walked to the moon, and she said: ‘Dear moon, have you not seen the white wolf?’

But the moon answered, ‘All night long I have been sailing through the heavens, and I have only just come home; but I did not see him.’

But he gave her a pair of shoes, in which she would be able to cover four hundred miles with every stride. So she went to the sun, and said: ‘Dear sun, have you seen the white wolf?’

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THE IVORY TOWER it have been to the full stretch of his elastic imagination that Haughty was drawn out by the time of his putting a certain matter beautifully to his companion? "Don't I, 'gad, take the thing straight over from you—all of it you've been trying to convey to me here!—when I see you, up in the blue, behind your parapet, just gracefully lean over and call down to where I mount guard at your door in the dust and comparative darkness? It's well to understand"—his thumbs now in his waistcoat-holes he measured his idea as if Gray's own face fairly reflected it: "you want me to take all the trouble for you simply, in order that you may have all the fun. And you want me at the same time, in order that things shall be for you at their ideal of the easiest, to make you believe, as a salve to your conscience, that the fun isn't so mixed with the trouble as that you can't have it, on the right arrangement made with me, quite by itself. This is most ingenious of you," Horton added, "but it doesn't in the least show me, don't you see? where my fun comes in."

"I wonder if I can do that," Gray returned, "without making you understand first something of the nature of mine—or for that matter without my first understanding myself perhaps what my queer kind of it is most likely to be."

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 And the sun answered, ‘Yes, I have seen him, and he has chosen another bride, for he thought you had left him, and would never return, and he is preparing for the wedding. But I will help you. Here are a pair of shoes. If you put these on you will be able to walk on glass or ice, and to climb the steepest places. And here is a spinning-wheel, with which you will be able to spin moss into silk. When you leave me you will reach a glass mountain. Put on the shoes that I have given you and with them you will be able to climb it quite easily. At the summit you will find the palace of the white wolf.’

Then the princess set out, and before long she reached the glass mountain, and at the summit she found the white wolf’s palace, as the sun had said.

But no one recognised her, as she had disguised herself as an old woman, and had wound a shawl round her head. Great preparations were going on in the palace for the wedding, which was to take place next day. Then the princess, still disguised as an old woman, took out her spinning-wheel, and began to spin moss into silk. And as she spun the new bride passed by, and seeing the moss turn into silk, she said to the old woman: ‘Little mother, I wish you would give me that spinning-wheel.’

And the princess answered, ‘I will give it to you if you will allow me to sleep to-night on the mat outside the prince’s door.’

And the bride replied, ‘Yes, you may sleep on the mat outside the door.’

So the princess gave her the spinning-wheel. And that night, winding the shawl all round her, so that no one could recognise her, she lay down on the mat outside the white wolf’s door. And when everyone in the palace was asleep she began to tell the whole of her story. She told how she had been one of three sisters, and that she had been the youngest and the fairest of the three, and that her father had betrothed her to a white wolf. And she told how she had gone first to

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THE IVORY TOWER 'rum' with your queer kinds, and might make my flesh creep, in these conditions, if it weren't for something in me of rude pluck." Gray, in speaking, had moved towards the great French meuble with some design upon it or upon the charge it carried; which Morton's eyes just wonderingly noted—and to the effect of an exaggeration of tone in his next remark. "However, there are assurances one doesn't keep repeating: it's so little in me, I feel, to refuse you any service I'm capable of, no matter how clumsily, that if you take me but confidently enough for the agent even of your unholiest pleasures, you'll find me still putting them through for you when you've broken down in horror yourself."

"Of course it's my idea that whatever I ask you shall be of interest to you, and of the liveliest, in itself—quite apart from any virtue of my connection with it. If it speaks to you that way so much the better," Gray went on, standing now before the big bahut with both hands raised and resting on the marble top. This lifted his face almost to the level of the base of his perched treasure—so that he stared at the ivory tower without as yet touching it. He only continued to talk, though with his thought, as he brought out the rest of it, almost superseded by the new preoccupation. "I shall absolutely decline any good of anything that isn't attended by some equivalent or—what do you call it?—proportionate good 211


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 the wedding of one sister, and then with her husband to the wedding of the other sister, and how her mother had ordered the servant to throw the white fur skin into the kitchen fire. And then she told of her wanderings through the forest; and of how she had sought the white wolf weeping; and how the wind and star and moon and sun had befriended her, and had helped her to reach his palace. And when the white wolf heard all the story, he knew that it was his first wife, who had sought him, and had found him, after such great dangers and difficulties.

But he said nothing, for he waited till the next day, when many guests—kings and princes from far countries—were coming to his wedding. Then, when all the guests were assembled in the banqueting hall, he spoke to them and said: ‘Hearken to me, ye kings and princes, for I have something to tell you. I had lost the key of my treasure casket, so I ordered a new one to be made; but I have since found the old one. Now, which of these keys is the better?’

Then all the kings and royal guests answered: ‘Certainly the old key is better than the new one.’

‘Then,’ said the wolf, ‘if that is so, my former bride is better than my new one.’

And he sent for the new bride, and he gave her in marriage to one of the princes who was present, and then he turned to his guests, and said: ‘And here is my former bride’—and the beautiful princess was led into the room and seated beside him on his throne. ‘I thought she had forgotten me, and that she would never return. But she has sought me everywhere, and now we are together once more we shall never part again.’

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THE IVORY TOWER for you. I shall propose to you a percentage, if that's the right expression, on every blest benefit I get from you in the way of the sense of safety." Gray now moved his hands, laying them as in finer fondness to either smoothly-plated side of the tall repository, against which a finger or two caressingly rubbed. His back turned therefore to Horton, he was divided between the growth of his response to him and that of this more sensible beauty. "Don't I kind of insure my life, my moral consciousness, I mean, for your advantage?—or with you, as it were, taking you for the officeman or actuary, if I'm not muddling: to whom I pay a handsome premium for the certainty of there being to my credit, on my demise, a sufficient sum to clear off my debts and bury me."

"You propose to me a handsome premium? Catch me," Horton laughed, "not jumping at that!"

"Yes, and you'll of course fix the premium yourself." But Gray was now quite detached, occupied only in opening his ivory doors with light fingers and then playing these a little, whether for hesitation or for the intenser pointing of inquiry, up and down the row of drawers so exposed. Against the topmost they then rested a moment drawing out this one, however, with scant further delay and enabling themselves to feel within and so become possessed of an article contained. It was with this article in his hand that 212


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THE IVORY TOWER he presently faced about again, turning it over, resting his eyes on it and then raising them to his visitor, who perceived in it a heavy letter, duly addressed, to all appearance, but not stamped and as yet unopened. "The distinguished retreat, you see, has its tenant."

"Do you mean by its tenant the author of those evidently numerous pages?—unless you rather mean," Horton asked, "that you seal up in packets the love-letters addressed to you and find that charming receptacle a congruous place to keep them? Is there a packet in every drawer, and do you take them out this way to remind yourself fondly that you have them and that it mayn't be amiss for me to feel your conquests and their fine old fragrance dangled under my nose?"

Our young man, at these words, had but returned to the consideration of his odd property, attaching it first again to the superscription and then to the large firm seal. "I haven't the least idea what this is; and I'm divided in respect of it, I don't mind telling you, between curiosity and repulsion."

Horton then also eyed the ambiguity, but at his discreet distance and reaching out for it as little as his friend surrendered it. "Do you appeal to me by chance to help you to decide either way?"

Poor Gray, still wondering and fingering, had a long demur. "No—I don't think I want to 213