NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I am busy, and tired, this month; so shall keep my making up of accounts till January. The gist of them is simply that we have got £8000 worth of Consols; and we had a balance of £501 7s. at the bank, which balance I have taken, and advanced another hundred of my own, making £600, to buy the Sheffield property with: this advance I shall repay myself as the interest comes in, or farther subscription; and then use such additional sums for the filling of the museum, and building a small curator’s house on the ground. But I shall not touch any of the funded sum; and hope soon to see it raised to £10,000. I have no word yet from our lawyer about our constitution. The Sheffield property, like the funded, stands in the names of the Trustees.

I have accepted, out of our forty subscribers, some eight or nine for Companions, very gratefully. Others wish well to the cause, but dislike the required expression of creed and purpose. I use no persuasion in the matter, wishing to have complete harmony of feeling among the active members of the Society.

E. L.’s courteous, but firm, reply to Mrs. Green’s letter reaches me too late for examination. In justice to both my correspondents, and to my readers, I must defer its insertion, in such abstract as may seem desirable, until next month.

I. Letter from a clergyman, now an accepted Companion. The extract contained in it makes me wonder if it has never occurred to the Rev. Dr. Mullens that there should be immediately formed [352]a Madagascar Missionary Society, for the instruction of the natives of England:—

“My dear Sir,—Apropos of your strictures on usury which have from time to time appeared in ‘Fors,’ I have thought you would be interested in the following extract from a recent work on Madagascar, by the Rev. Dr. Mullens, of the London Missionary Society.

“After describing a ‘Kabáry,’—a public assembly addressed by the Queen,—in the Betsileo5 province, he goes on to say: ‘Having expressed in a clear and distinct voice her pleasure in meeting her people once more, the Queen uttered several sentences usual to these assemblies, in which she dwelt upon the close and affectionate relations subsisting between them and herself. “You are a father and mother to me: having you, I have all.… And if you confide in me, you have a father and a mother in me. Is it not so, O ye under heaven?” To which, with a deep voice, the people reply, “It is so.” Passing at length to the subject specially before her, the Queen said, “My days in the South are now few; therefore I will say a word about the Schools. And I say to you all, here in Betsileo, … cause your children to attend the Schools. My desire is, that whether high or low, whether sons of the nobles, or sons of the judges, or sons of the officers, or sons of the centurions, your sons and your daughters should attend the Schools and become lovers of wisdom.” The Prime Minister, then, in the Queen’s name, addressed the assembly on the subject of usury,—a great evil among poor nations, and only too common in stages of society like that in Madagascar,—and said, “Thus saith the Queen: All the usury exacted by the Hovas from the Betsileo is remitted, and only the original debt shall remain!’ ”

“I am, dear Sir, faithfully yours,
“Joseph Halsey.”

[353]

II. Useful letter from a friend:—

“You say when I agree in your opinions I may come, but surely you do not exact the unquestioning and entire submission of the individual opinion which the most arrogant of churches exacts.6 With your leading principles, so far as I am yet able to judge of them, I entirely and unreservedly agree. I see daily such warped morality, such crooked ways in the most urgent and important concerns of life, as to convince me that the axe should be laid to the root of the tree. Mainly I am disgusted—no more tolerant word will do—with the prevalent tone of thought in religious matters, and the resulting tortuous courses in daily work and worship. What a worse than Pagan misconception of Him whom they ignorantly worship—

“ ‘Ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo’—

is shown by the mass of so-called religious persons! How scurrilously the Protestant will rail against Papist intolerance—making his private judgment of Scripture the infallible rule,—

“ ‘Blushing not (as Hooker says) in any doubt concerning matters of Scripture to think his own bare Yea as good as the Nay of all the wise, grave, and learned judgments that are in the whole world. Which insolency must be repressed, or it will be the very bane of Christian Religion.’—(Ecc. Polity, Book II.)

“I believe the St. George’s Company contains the germ of a healthy and vigorous constitution. I see that you are planting that germ, and fostering it with all deliberation and cautious directness of advance; but what Titanic obstacles! It seems to me the fittest plant of this age to survive, but in the complexities of the struggle for existence, its rearing must be a Herculean labour. Yet wherein is this age singular? When was there any [354]time whose sentence we might not write thus: ‘L’état agité par les brigues des ambitieux, par les largesses des riches factieux, par la vénalité des pauvres oiseux, par l’empirisme des orateurs, par l’audace des hommes pervers, par la faiblesse des hommes vertueux,’ was distracted and disintegrate.

“When I can get better words than my own I like to use them—and it is seldom I cannot. In the selfish pleasure of writing to you I forget the tax on your time of reading my vagaries; but I feel a kind of filial unburdening in writing thus freely. Will that excuse me?

“Always sincerely and affectionately yours,
“James Hooper.”

Wood versus Coal.—Subject to such correction as may be due to the different quantity of carbon contained in a load of wood as in a ton of coal, the product of the coal-field is seven times as much [of fuel] per mile, as that of the forest. To produce a yield of fuel equal to that obtainable from the known coal measures of the world, if worked with an activity equal to that of our own, seven times the area of cultivated forest is required. But the actual area, as estimated, is not seven, but twenty-seven times that of the coal measures. It is thus four times as important, regarded as a source of fuel. But while the life of the coal-field has been taken at 150 years, that of the forest, if rightly cared for, will endure as long as that of the human family. A wealth such as this is not to be measured in tons of gold.—Edinburgh Review, p. 375, Oct., 1875.

“I think Sheffield is more likely ‘Schaf-feld’ than Sheaf-field. ‘Sheep-fold,’ the sheltered hollow with moors all round it. I know a place called ‘Theescombe,’ meaning ‘theaves-combe,’ or ‘young lambs-combe.’ ”—Note by a Companion.

1 It is at this moment, nine o’clock, 27th October, tearing the Virginian creeper round my window into rags rather than leaves. ↑

2 See Fourth Morning in Florence. ‘The Vaulted Book.’ ↑

3 I use the current English of Mrs. Lennox’s translation, but Henry’s real saying was (see the first—green leaf—edition of Sully), “It is written above what is to happen to me on every occasion.” “Toute occasion” becomes “Cette occasion” in the subsequent editions, and finally “what is to happen to me” (ce que doit être fait de moi) becomes “what I ought to do” in the English. ↑

4 See the ‘Times’ of November 23rd of that year. ↑

5 I can’t answer for Madagascar nomenclature. ↑

6 By no means; but practical obedience, yes,—not to me, but to the Master of the Company, whoever he may be; and this not for his pride’s sake, but for your comfort’s. ↑