The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 42

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4. Abbot Ammonas said: Such be thy thought as that of malefactors in prison. For they are ever asking, "Where is the judge? and when is he coming?" and they bewail themselves at the prospect.

5. Holy Epiphanius said: To sinners who repent G.o.d remits even the princ.i.p.al; but from the just he exacts interest.

6. Abbot Sylva.n.u.s had an ecstacy: and, coming to himself, he wept bitterly. "What is it, my father?" said a novice to him.

He made answer: Because I was carried up to the judgment, O my son, and I saw many of our kind going off to punishment, and many a secular pa.s.sing into the kingdom.

7. An old man said: If you see a youngster mounting up to heaven at his own will, catch him by the foot, and fling him to the earth; for such a flight doth not profit.

8. Abbot Antony fell on a time into weariness and gloom of spirit; and he cried out, "Lord, I wish to be saved; but my searchings of mind will not let me."

And, looking round, he saw some one like himself, sitting and working, then rising and praying, then sitting and rope-making again. And he heard the angel say: "Work and pray; pray and work; and thou shalt be saved."

9. a.r.s.enius, when he was now in solitude, prayed as before: "Lord, lead me along, the way of salvation." And again he heard a voice, which said: "Flight, silence, quiet; these are the three sources of sinlessness."

10. "Which of all our duties," asked the brethren, "is the greatest labor?" Agatho answered: "Prayer; for as soon as we begin, the devils try to stop us, since it is their great enemy. Rest comes after every other toil, but prayer is a struggle up to the last breath."

11. Abbot Theodore said: "Other virtue there is none like this, to make naught of no one."

12. Abbot Sylva.n.u.s said: "Woe to the man whose reputation is greater than his work."

13. Holy Epiphanius said: "A great safeguard against sin is the reading of the Scriptures; and it is a precipice and deep gulf to be ignorant of the Scriptures."

14. Once a monk was told, "Thy father is dead." He answered: "Blaspheme not; my Father is immortal."

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MISCELLANY.

_The Dead Sea_.--The level of the Dead Sea is at last finally settled by the party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Wilson, who were sent by the Ordance Survey for the purpose of surveying Jerusalem and levelling the Dead Sea. The results of the survey are being prepared for publication. The levelling from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea was performed with the greatest possible accuracy. The depression of the surface of the Dead Sea on the 12th of March, 1865, was found to be 1,292 feet, but from the line of drift-wood observed along the border of the Dead Sea it was found that the level of the water at some periods of the year stands two feet six inches higher, which would make the least depression 1,289.5 feet. Captain Wilson also learnt from inquiry among the Bedouins, and from European residents in Palestine, that during the early summer the level of the Dead Sea is lower by at least six feet; this would make the greatest depression to be as near as possible 1,298 feet. Most of the previous observations for determining the relative level of the two seas gave most discordant results. The Dead Sea was found by one to be 710 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, by another to be on the same level, by another to be 710 feet lower, and by another to be 1,446 feet lower; but the most recent before that now given, by the Duc de Luynes and Lieutenant Vignes of the French navy, agrees with the present result in a very remarkable manner.

_Eozoon in Ireland_,--The fossil Rhizopod is not confined to the Canadian rocks. Mr. W. A. Sanford has discovered Eozoon in the green marble rocks of Connemara in Ireland. His a.s.sertion that it is to be found in these deposits at first excited very grave doubts as to the accuracy of his observations. Since his first announcement of the discovery, his specimens have been examined by the distinguished co-editor of the "Geological Magazine" (Mr. H. Woodward), and this gentleman fully confirms Mr. Sanford's opinion. In the specimens prepared from Connemara marble, "the various-formed chambers--the sh.e.l.l of varying thickness--either very thin, and traversed by fine tubuli, the silicate filling which resembles white velvet-pile, or thick, and traversed by brush-like threads, are both present. Although the specimens were not so carefully prepared as those mounted for Dr.

Carpenter, still the structure was so plainly perceptible as to render the diagnosis incontrovertible."

_The Mont Cenis Tunnel_.--The following particulars of the state of the works at Mont Cenis will be read with interest. We owe them to a recent report of M. Sommeiller, the engineer in charge. The length of the tunnel from Bardonneche to Modena is 12,220 metres, and, at the end of 1804, 2,322 metres had been pierced on the Bardonneche side, whilst the work had advanced 1,763 metres from the Modena end, making in all 4,085 metres--nearly a third of the whole distance. From the 1st of January to the 10th of June of the present year the progress of the work has been considerably augmented, upwards of 654 metres having been accomplished. The excavation is now, however, r.e.t.a.r.ded by a ma.s.s of granite, which lessens the work of the machinery by one-third. The presence of this impediment was almost exactly predicted by MM. Elie de Beaumont and Sismonda, who stated, as a result of their survey, that granitic rocks would be met with at a distance of 1,500 or 2,000 metres from the mouth of the tunnel on the Italian side.

_Lightning._--M. Boudin has recently laid before the Academy of Sciences a return of the deaths which have been caused by the action of lightning in France during the period 1835-63. During these thirty years 2,238 persons were struck dead. Among 880 victims during 1854-63, there were but 248 of the female s.e.x; and in several instances the lightning, falling among groups of persons of both s.e.xes, especially struck those of the male s.e.x, and more or less spared the females. In a great number of cases flocks of more than 100 animals, {277} cattle, hogs, or sheep, have been killed, while the shepherds or herdsmen in their midst have remained uninjured. In 1853, of 34 persons killed in the fields, 15, or nearly half, were struck under trees; and of 107 killed between 1841-53, 21 had taken shelter under trees. Reckoning, then, at only 25 per cent, the proportion struck under trees, we find that of 6,714 struck in France nearly 1,700 might have escaped the accidents which occurred to them by avoiding trees during storms.

_More about the Nile_--Another source of the Nile has been discovered by the adventurous Mr. Baker, whose name has been frequently mentioned of late among geographers. But this so-called source is a lake only, the Luta Nzige, about two hundred and sixty miles long, and of proportionate breadth, which lies between the lake discovered by Captain Speke and the heretofore explored course of the Nile. The great river flows from one to the other, forming on the way the Karuma waterfall, one hundred and twenty feet in height, in which particular it represents the Niagara Fall between lakes Erie and Ontario. But it seems right to remark that the true source of the Nile has not yet been discovered, and that it must be looked for at the head of one of the streams which flow into the upper lake--the Victoria Nyanza of Speke. That the two lakes are reservoirs which keep the Nile always flowing, may be accepted as fact; but to describe them as sources is a misuse of terms. If Dr. Livingstone, in his new exploration, should get into the hill-country above the Victoria Nyanza, we might hope to hear that the real source, the fountain-head, of the Nile had been discovered. It is worthy of remark that these lakes of the Nile are laid down and described in old books on the geography of Africa.

Ptolemy mentions them; and they are represented in some of the oldest Arabian and Portuguese maps. It is well known to scholars that the Emperor Nero sent two officers expressly to search for the head of the Nile. "I myself" writes Seneca, "have heard the two centurions narrate that after they had accomplished a long journey, being furnished with a.s.sistance by the king of Ethiopia, and being recommended by him to the neighboring kings, they penetrated into far distant regions, and came to immense lakes, the termination of which neither the inhabitants knew nor could any one hope to do so, because aquatic plants were so densely interwoven in the waters." This description holds good to the present day; and it is thought that certain rocks seen by the centurions mark the site of the Karuma Falls. Mr. Baker describes his voyage down the Luta Nzige as "extremely beautiful, the mountains frequently rising abruptly from the water, while numerous cataracts rush down their furrowed sides... ... The water is deep, sweet, and transparent," and, except at the outlet of the river, the sh.o.r.es are free from reeds. "Mallegga, on the west coast of the lake, is a large and powerful country, governed by a king named Kajoro, who possesses boats sufficiently large to cross the lake." "About ten miles from the junction," he writes, "the channel contracted to about two hundred and fifty yards in width, with little perceptible stream, very deep, and banked as usual with high reeds, the country on either side undulating and wooded. At about twenty miles from Magungo, my voyage suddenly terminated; a stupendous waterfall, of about one hundred and twenty feet perpendicular height, stopped all further progress. Above the great fall, the river is suddenly confined between rocky hills, and it races through a gap, contracted from a grand stream of perhaps two hundred yards width to a channel not exceeding fifty yards. Through this gap it rushes with amazing rapidity, and plunges at one leap into a deep basin below."

_The Burning Well at Broseley_.--Mr. John Randall, F.G.S., writes to the "Geological Magazine" anent this extinct petroleum spring. The so-called burning well has ceased to exist for nearly a century. It was fed by a spring, and petroleum and naphtha also found their way from rents in the rock into the water of the well. Springs of petroleum on a much larger scale are met with in the neighborhood, and the yield of them was formerly much greater than at present. Many hogsheads from one of these were exported some years ago under the name of "Betton's British Oil," The rocks were tapped by driving a level through one of the sandstone rocks of the coal {278} measures; but these are now drained; and very little is found to flow from them.

_The Origin of the Salt in the Dead Sea_.--One of our most distinguished explorers of the Holy Land attributes the intensely saline character of the Dead Sea to the hill of Jebell Usdum. This is a huge ridge of salt, about a mile wide, and running N.E. and S.W. for a distance of three miles and a half, then due N. and S. for four miles further. It is situated near the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, and renders that portion of it much more salt than the northern portion. Further, Mr. Tristram thinks that it is the proximate cause of the saltness of the Dead Sea, the drainage to which has been dissolving away portions of salt, and carrying it to the Dead Sea, ever since the elevation of the ridge of Akabah separated the latter from the Red Sea, or since the desiccation of the ocean, which existed to the Eocene period, presuming (which seems most probable) that the fissures of the Ghor were of submarine origin, and that the valley itself was during the Tertiary period the northernmost of a series of African lakes, of which the Red Sea was the next.--Geological Magazine.

_Iron Implements in Crannogues_.--In a letter addressed to the London _Reader_, by Mr. George Henry Kinahan, some important points relative to the antiquity of iron, and the necessity for seeking for traces of this metal, have been dwelt upon. While investigating one of the largest crannogues or artificial islands in Loughrea, County Galway, Ireland, he found only stone implements, with the exception of a rude knife, which appeared to be of some sort of bronze. But he observed facts which would seem to indicate that iron implements had been in use among the inhabitants of the crannogues. These facts are as follows: 1st, All the stakes that were drawn had been pointed by a sharp cutting instrument, as were evidenced by the clean cuts. 2d, Pieces of deer's horn that were found had been divided by a very fine saw, as was proved by the absence of marks of graining on the surface of the sections. 3d, On some of the bones there were farrows, evidently made by sharpening fish-hooks or some pointed implement on them. 4th, In various places nests of peroxide of iron were observed, as if an iron instrument had once been there, but had been corroded away in course of time. Mr. Kinahan draws particular attention to the circ.u.mstances that "few metals corrode as fast as iron, and that, while stone and bronze would last for ages, iron would disappear, owing to corrosion, in a comparatively short s.p.a.ce of time."

_The Gibraltar Cave Fossils_.--Mr. Busk in his paper on this subject says: The rock in which the caverns of Gibraltar were found is limestone, and extends for about three miles from north to south, at an elevation varying from 1,400 to 1,200 feet. It is geologically divided into three nearly equal portions by cleavages which separate the higher parts of the rock on the north and south from the central and lower part. At the southern face of the rock there is comparatively low ground, the Windmill Hill being about 400 feet above the level of the sea; but the strata there are inclined in an opposite direction to the great ma.s.s of what is termed the "Rock of Gibraltar."

In the Windmill rock the caverns have been found, and in these latter a great quant.i.ty of bones was discovered. The bones, which were mingled with pottery, flint implements, and charcoal, appear to have been deposited at different periods, and were found at various depths, the lowest being fourteen feet below the floor of the cavern. Those in the lowest layer consisted of the bones of mammals, several of which were of extinct species. They were imbedded in ferruginous earth partially fossilized, and were covered with stalagmite--no human bones were with them. Above this layer were deposited the remains of about thirty human skeletons, with fragments of pottery, flint implements, particles of charcoal, and a bronze fishing-hook. Some of the pottery had been turned in a lathe, and bore evidence of cla.s.sic art. In another cavern, discovered under the foundation of the military prison, the remains of two isolated skeletons were also found. Only one skull had been discovered there, and that had been sent to Mr.

Busk, who remarked that the lower jaw transmitted with the cranium did not belong to it, showing that there must have been another skull {279} in the cavern, though no trace of it had been found. There was nothing in the form of the skull to distinguish it from the ordinary European type; but the bones of the leg were remarkably compressed; for which appearance it was difficult to account. Since Mr. Busk's attention had been drawn to this character, he had observed a similar compression in the leg-bones of other human skeletons which were known to be of great antiquity. Whether this conformation was to be regarded as a race-character, or was produced by special occupation or habit, Mr. Busk would not venture an opinion upon.--_Social Science Review_.

_Sun's Photosphere_.--From a strict examination of the sun-pictures obtained at Kew, near London, and from Mr. Carrington's maps, Mr. De la Rue and a.s.sistants hare arrived at the conclusion that the sun-spots are cavernous, and lie below the general level of the luminous surface, whilst, on the contrary, the faculae are elevated above the latter. The reason that the faculae appear brighter is, that on account of their height above the solar surface, they are less dimmed by pa.s.sing through its atmosphere. They further conclude that the sun's luminous surface is of the nature of cloud, and that the spots are influenced by the planet Venus. They find that the faculae retain nearly the same appearance for days together, and consider them to be small particles of solid or liquid matter in suspension, and composed of the same cloudy matter as the luminous surface of the sun.

They notice that in the majority of cases the faculae appear to the left of the spots, as if they had been abstracted from them, and, rising to a greater elevation where the velocity of rotation is greater, are consequently left behind. They remark that all the spots which are seen on the solar surface about the same time show a resemblance to each other; for instance, if one spot increases to the central line or past it, another will do the same; if one spot diminishes from its first appearance, another will do the same; if one spot breaks out on the right half; another will do the same. It appears from Mr. Carrington's and all the Kew pictures, that the influence of Venus is exerted in such a manner that as the spots approach the neighborhood of this planet by rotation they decrease; but as the solar surface pa.s.ses away in the same manner, this influence causes it to break out into spots on the opposite side. The question is also proposed, whether the falling behind of the faculae may not be the physical reaction of the motion of the spots detected by Mr. Carrington, the current pa.s.sing upward and carrying the luminous matter falling behind, whilst the current coming down from a colder region moves forward, carrying the spot with it, and accounting for its deficient luminosity.--_Social Science Review_.

_The Arctic Expedition--The Open Polar Sea again_--Last month we published an extract in which it was stated as the belief of the writer that there was an open Arctic sea. Here is another opinion which we find in the _London Reader_ of a late date: "We have received from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences a map of Spitzbergen, with explanatory remarks in ill.u.s.tration (by N. Duner and A. E.

Nordenskiold). This beautiful map is the result of the two last expeditions undertaken to explore that group of islands. It is based upon astronomical observations, made at about eighty different places on the sh.o.r.es of Spitzbergen, with prism-circles by Pistor and Martins, mercury horizons and good chronometers by Frodsham and Kessels. The observations were calculated by Professors D. G.

Lindhagen and Duner. The lat.i.tude and longitude of seventy-nine different points are given--the longitude of Sabine's Observatory, determined as 11 40' 80", being taken as the starting point of the longitudes. The value of such a map is at once apparent. All the highest mountains were ascended during the expedition, and the height of twenty-eight peaks is given; the highest being Lindstrom's Mount of 8,800 English feet. The permanent snow-line commences at about 1,500 feet. The whole interior country forms an even ice plateau, here and there interrupted by rocks. There are many good harbors, and on this map the places are marked where the explorers anch.o.r.ed. Fish, fowl, and reindeer are to be met with in great numbers. We quote from the memoir as bearing upon one of the most interesting questions of the day. 'During the last years the idea has been vindicated that the Polar {280} basin is composed of an open sea, only here and there covered with drift ice. The learned geographer, Dr. Petermann, has even a.s.serted that it would be as easy to sail from Amsterdam Island (70 47') to the Pole, as from Tromso to Amsterdam Island. This view is in itself so contrary to all experience that it scarcely merits refutation, but as different prominent English Arctic navigators seem inclined to adopt the same view, in spite of the experience gained by their own numerous Arctic expeditions, we will here give some of the most important reasons against this supposition. All who for a long period have navigated the northern seas, whalers and Spitzbergen hunters, have come to the conclusion that the Polar basin is so completely filled with ice that one cannot advance with vessels, and all the attempts that have been made to proceed toward the north have been quite without success. Pa.s.sing by older voyagers, Torell and Nordenskiold ascended, during the expedition in 1861, on the 23d of July, a high top on Northeast Land, Snotoppen (80 23' L.), without being able, from that height, to see trace of open water to the north of the Seven Islands. A few days later, when the ice between Northeast Land and the Seven Islands was separated a little, they could push forward as far as to Parry's Island, though they, even from the highest tops on these islands (1,900 feet, 80 40' L.), could see nothing but ice northward. From the top of White mountain, at the bottom of Wijde Jans Water (3,000 feet), we could, on the 22d of August, 1864, not see anything but ice between Giles Land and Spitzbergen. Some vessels that had the same year attempted to sail round Northeast Land were shut up by ice, and had to be abandoned by their crews. Before leaving the ships, an attempt was made to sail north, in order to return this way to Amsterdam Island, but they were soon met by impenetrable fields of ice. Notwithstanding a high prize has been offered for the reaching of high degrees of lat.i.tude, none of the whalers, who else sail boldly wherever the hope of gain allures them, have considered it possible to win this prize. We have had opportunities of speaking to most of the masters of vessels sailing to Spitzbergen. All experience hitherto acquired seems thus to prove that the Polar basin, when not covered with compact, unbroken ice, is filled with closely-packed, unnavigable drift-ice, in which, during certain very favorable years, some larger apertures may be formed, which apertures, however, do not extend very far to the north. Older narratives, by Dutch whalers, who are said to have reached 86 or 87 nay, even 89-1/2 must therefore be received with the greatest diffidence, if not looked upon as pure fictions, and the prospect of being able to advance with vessels from Spitzbergen to the Pole is, no doubt, extremely slight. _It would be particularly unwise to choose the spring for such an attempt, and the pa.s.sage east of Spitzbergen.

At that time and by that pa.s.sage it would be difficult, if not impossible, to reach even 78 of lat.i.tude._ Whereas, on the west side, one can every year depend on reaching the 80th degree of lat.i.tude, and in favorable years it might be possible, _in September or October_, to sail even a couple of degrees higher.'"

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SIXTEEN REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE, made to a devout servant of our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an anchorite of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Edward the Third. 12mo., pp. 214. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

We Catholics of the United States have good reason to congratulate ourselves upon the appearance of this work. The selection of such a work for republication is proof of good judgment in the Boston publishers, while certainly nothing can be more elegant and tasteful than the "getting up."

Mother Juliana lived in the city of Norwich, England; and, as we are notified by the famous Father Cressy, who first published and edited her "Revelations," she wrote during the reign of Edward the Third, and about three years before his death. She was an anch.o.r.et or recluse, a religious woman who, like St. Bees and many others in England and elsewhere, lived alone, shut up by herself, in contemplation and prayer. It is to us a great mystery that these "Revelations," so excellent in themselves, and edited once by such a man, should be so little known in our day, and should owe their reproduction once more in English literature to Protestant curiosity and not to Catholic piety. We know of nothing of the same kind which can compare with them. There is an odor of supernatural sweetness about them, and a depth of contemplative thought, a freshness moreover and originality, which has never impressed us before when reading books of revelations.

Critical authors have sometimes complained of works of this nature that much in them of what seems elevated or profound is evidently derived, at second hand, from the speculations of theologians, and especially of the philosophical schoolmen; while other things, supposed to have been seen in vision, are the reproduction of early histories, once popular, but proved to be apocryphal and dest.i.tute of all authority. Nothing of the kind can be said of these revelations of Mother Juliana. They sometimes touch upon questions most profound and difficult, but in the simplest and most inartificial manner, and there is not the slightest appearance of reproducing what she had read elsewhere. Every thought bears the stamp of originality and freshness.

All is drawn from the same deep well of contemplation. All comes from her own mind, whether that mind be divinely illuminated or not. There is not the least semblance of searching after what is wonderful, or calculate to strike an undisciplined and curious imagination. For our own part, we cannot resist the impression that the beautiful and holy light which beams upon these pages is a divine illumination, is something supernatural. When we say _supernatural_, this does not necessarily infer anything strictly miraculous, or revelation in the highest sense of the word (supernaturally attested, as well as supernaturally given). We mean simply to say that there is apparent a certain unction and power of spiritual vision which betokens an extraordinary gift of divine love and light, to which her natural power, unaided, could never reach. In reading this book one is impressed in the same way as when reading the Holy Scriptures or Thomas a Kempis. There is a natural beauty of style and thought, but that is not all. There is inspiration, too. It is like a far-reaching landscape in a fair day, where the distant hills are not fairly distinguishable from the sky, and the beauty of earth is mingled with the beauty of heaven.

We have room to give just one example, which we select as showing, in a few lines, the general characteristics of piety, sweetness, simplicity, and beauty which everywhere pervade this little book:

"He is our clothing, that for love wrappeth us, and windeth us, halseth us, and all becloseth us, hangeth about us for tender love, that he maie never leave us. And so in this sight I saw that he is all thing that is good, as to my understanding.

"And in this he shewed a little thing, the quant.i.tie of a hasel-nutt, lying in the palme of my hand, as me seemed; and it was as found as a ball. I looked thereon {282} with the eie of my understanding, and thought, What may this be?' and it was answered generallie thus.