and idealistic, of writing history. "The cathedral," he says, "is a petrified mystery, a suffering in stone; or, rather, it is the Sufferer himself. The whole edifice, in the austerity of its architectural geometry, is a human body. The nave, stretching out its two arms, is man on the cross; the crypt, the church under ground, is man in the tomb; the tower, the spire, — it is still he, but up, and mounting to heaven. In that choir, bent from the line of the nave," it should be remarked that only in a very few instances is it found so bent,

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'you see his head bowed in agony; you recognize his blood in the burning purple of the windows. Let us touch these stones with care; let us tread softly upon these pavements. Everything there bleeds and suffers yet. A great mystery is passing before us." This may sound very fanciful.

But

even the cautious Dean Milman avers, in his History of Latin Christianity, that the Gothic cathedral was "typical in every part, from the spire to the crypt."

Under impressions like these, it would not have been singular if a correspondent usage had sprung up (though there is perhaps no positive evidence of it) of laying the heads of the, deceased towards the rising sun, as is indicated by the old dramatist quoted. Indeed, we should wonder if it had been otherwise; and there is fair ground of conjecture that such may have actually been the case in some instances; in some instances, we say, for it does not seem likely that the original tradition of all Christendom should ever have been extensively departed from, and its primitive usage been thus inverted.

But now, again, -as if the subject could never be wholly free from contrary facts and discordant testimony, — the direction in which the apse of the church pointed was by no means universally the same. In France and in Germany it pointed, indeed, pretty uniformly to the east, - in the great Gothic structures, perhaps, invariably so. In the temple of St. Sophia at Constan

tinople, erected centuries before the Northern builders arose, it was so. In London, the modern cathedral of St. Paul's, as well as the ancient Abbey, are both calculated on the same principle of orientation. But in Italy the case is strikingly otherwise. The greatest churches of Rome, with St. Peter's at their head, open their vast portals to the populace on their eastern side, instead of presenting to that sacred quarter the close mysteries of their chancel and high altar and uppermost recess.

It is now time to gather up into some distinct statements the result of what has been suggested, and see if we can get at what was in the mind of Shakespeare when he made Guiderius say, "My father hath a reason for 't." And first, it has been the habit of all religions to regard some one particular point of the horizon as holy above all the rest, to which all observances had reference. The stationary Hindoos sought with their eyes the fabulous mountain of the gods, towards the cool north, through the far mists that would never allow them the vision of it. The roving Goths, in their worship of Odin, stormed towards the South after that city of Asgard where they were to find fulness of joy. The Mussulmans, wherever they spread their carpets for devotion, turn towards Mecca, the city of the prophet. The Hebrews worshipped towards the holy temple, and, when that was thrown down, towards the hill where it had stood. So early as when that temple was dedicated, King Solomon spoke of those who, in the after ages, should pray towards that place; and the Prophet Daniel, in his exile, when he opened his windows in the direction of Jerusalem as he prayed, was imitated by whole generations of his people, in their longer exile and wider dispersion over every part of the earth. Now this same Jerusalem was the point toward which turned Christian worship in the early centuries of the Church. Jerusalem invited Christian arms for its deliverance a part of the time, and attracted Christian hearts to it by their most sacred sympathies always. It

was not like Mount Merû in the North, where the gods sat in council; nor like the city Asgard in the South, where the gods sat at their feasts; but, far away in the East, it was the place of the Master's grief and sepulchre.

We are tempted here to repeat an anecdote relating to the superstitions of some, at least, of the African slaves of our Southern States. It is taken from a letter addressed by Dr. Robert W. Gibbes to Governor Alston of South Carolina, a few years ago. The Doctor writes: "Negroes are generally fatalists, and believe that every one has his time appointed to die; and it it be come, they expect to die; and if not, they will get well without medicine. Frequently I have found the patient's bed turned from its position of the day before, in order that he might die with his face towards the rising sun; and often have I had it restored, informing them that their time had not come to go home,' as they call it." It is an affecting story, and not wholly out of place here. Doubtless the poor fellows, from a similar feeling, would like to have their eyes, after their sight was gone, turned still in the same direction. The cast and their native land, the home of their memory and the home of their hope, would naturally run together in the gleams and shadows of that parting hour.

A further reflection is this. As the eastern quarter of the heavens, both from history and from sentiment, as the point whence religions sprang and the point where the day breaks, would naturally be the religious quarter to the Western nations, whether the head or the face of a corpse was studiously deposited in the direction of the Orient would be equally significant in a religious view. There would be the same pious intent; though it would partake, in the one case, more of an historical, and in the other, more of an allegorical character. If the head were to the east, it would lie nearest to the scene of miraculous events, and to ground considered thrice holy. If the face were to de such local ref

erences, or even without them, prefigure the great hope of human souls.

To return to the line and a half of Shakespeare which have given occasion to this wide ramble of a disquisition. The action of the play is in Britain, just previous to the Christian era. Britain was then the chief seat of the Druidical institutions. Its religious ceremonies were those of the Druids. Now it would be in the highest degree probable, even before making any researches into the subject, that this religion of sacerdotalism and caste, so unlike anything of European birth, did not originate in that extreme corner of the old Western world. It would be too violent a conjecture that such could be the case. The elder Pliny must have told but a small part of the story in saying that this religion was brought into Britain from Gaul; and Julius Cæsar must have been still further from the fact in saying that it was brought into Gaul from Britain. If you go on into Germany, where it contrived to gain a footing, you will still be a great way off from its primitive domain. Eastward, - still eastward. Its doctrines, its ceremonies, its symbols, and the names of its divinities, closely resembling the Sanscrit, afford large testimony that India was its native soil. Even so early a writer as Aristotle, and . Diogenes Laertius after him, rank the Druidic priesthood with the priesthoods of the remotest East; and modern scholarship has followed out that idea with ample confirmations. A writer in the second volume of the Asiatic Researches has the boldness to say that "Stonehenge is evidently one of the temples of Buddha"; and again, “that the Druids of Britain were Brahmins is beyond the least shadow of a doubt." This may be spoken extravagantly, but the general idea that Druidism may be traced back to the Hindoos may be regarded as well sustained. In view of this fact, and especially when we consider how much addicted this worship was to the observation of heavenly phenomena and the cardinal points of the sky, nothing in more natural ti un dot

it should choose to lay the buried body with the head towards the sacred land of the East. The motive would be precisely parallel with that which determined the position of the cruciform church of the Middle Ages. When, therefore, old Belarius, in the play, prescribes that mode of interment, and "hath a reason for 't," we may be willing to travel to the East Indies to discover what that reason was. And there is fair ground for thinking that there we find it. We are confirmed in this conclusion by a certain air of mys

tery that seems to hang over the passage which is so singularly and abruptly introduced into the dialogue. And since the burial usage in Christian countries was exactly the reverse of the instruction here given, may we not entertain the thought that the universal mind of Shakespeare meant to mark that difference, and to show, by one touch of his art, that the persons of his drama lived at a time when a foreign faith ruled in his native island, and there was as yet no Christendom?

HEROES

THE old Fathers supposed that the terrestrial paradise was situated in Central Africa, and the two Chinese gentlemen who lately visited Great Britain "for literary purposes" probably noted down that some such superstition still prevails in that benighted land. How else could they explain the great social event of last season? Would they dare to assert in their book (which is doubtless by this time advertised in the Celestial Gazette) that an English gentleman of wealth and leisure, who had it in his power to visit any part of the world, not excepting even China itself, preferred to pass several years in a series of swamps near the African equator, exposed to every kind of danger, discomfort, and disease, excluded from all society save that of illiterate and ignoble savages, and that, on his return home, instead of being clapped into a lunatic asylum, he was welcomed by the voice of the nation, conducted to the foot of the throne, and made a mandarin of many tails? And why? Because he had discovered that a river which did not belong to Great Britain came out of a lake which did not belong to Great Britain, -and this same practical people, who show themselves so anxious to establish VOL. XIX. NO. 115. 40

their factories at the mouths of riv

ers in China (without displaying the least curiosity respecting the sources of these rivers) could yet burn with universal enthusiasm and pride because their countryman had performed this difficult but utterly useless feat? No, that kind of thing would not go down at Pekin. The travellers might quote in their defence all that in the West is considered sacred and unchangeable, — a speech by Sir Roderick Murchison, or a leader in the Times. That would not help them in the least: they would be scouted by society, their tails would be cut off, they would be beaten with the Great Bamboo, and their publisher would be covered with shame.

But what would they say if they heard of the Alpine Club, that insane association of Englishmen who repair to Switzerland at certain seasons for the purpose of climbing up and sliding down the steepest places which they can find? Two or three of them break their necks every year, and their companions write picturesque letters to the daily journals, describing the catastrophe.

One would suppose that it was not in the power of man to devise anything more absurdly dangerous than this; but that honor has

been reserved for a barrister named McGregor, who, after helping to establish ragged schools and the bootblacking brigade, suddenly took to paddling over waterfalls, &c. in a kind of pocket-canoe, and has lived sufficiently long to publish a book about it. A Canoe Club has been started in consequence, which, if a few members are drowned at once, may prove a brilliant success. African exploration, therefore, is a sober and business-like pursuit when compared with these. There is usually some scientific pretext for the expedition, there are always some scientific results from it, and there is a prevalent idea that explorers are the harbingers of Christianity, commerce, and civilization.

Now that the physical sciences are at length becoming part of a gentleman's education, we may hope that the future generation of explorers will adopt a course of training in geology, botany, &c. And as for civilization, we know the undeviating sequence of events; that after the traveller comes the mission-house; after the missionhouse, the factory; after the factory, the fort. But do not let us delude ourselves with these dreams as far as Central Africa is concerned. While so many fertile and healthy regions of the earth offer immediate reward to capital and labor, it would be ridiculous to waste efforts upon a continent which does not possess a single great navigable river, which has no doubt immense resources in its bosom, but which at present yields little beyond ivory, inferior rubber, inferior ebony, and a scanty supply of gold, and which is girdled by sullen, treacherous natives, and by marshes in which no white man can live. Let us not sing of "Africa and golden joys," but take the common-sense view of the question, by putting common sense out of the question altogether. Central Africa is the Holy Land of the present day. The old Crusading spirit lives; it is only the equipments that have been changed, the newest breech-loader for the palmer's staff, and Scotch tweed for chain ar

mor. Explorers resemble the knightserrant of olden times; they exile themselves from Society, and return (if living) after many years to be crowned with her laurels and rewarded by her smiles. It is all so romantic and mediæval that I am only afraid it cannot last. Some modern Cervantes will arise, and, with a typical John Bull as Don Quixote, and some native Sambo as Sancho Panza, will "smile all our chivalry away," at least the little that is left. Well, that day must come at last. When all our coal and iron are exhausted, and England is made a meadow, and Central Africa has been rendered habitable, its swamps nicely drained, and its deserts covered with alluvium, some remote descendant of Sir Samuel Baker may perhaps take a villa on the shores of the Albert Nyanza, and go there in the dry season for the purpose of reading, "in the quaint characters of the nineteenth century," the travels of his great ancestor upon the spot celebrated by his triumph. Nothing more romantic than those travels ever occurred in the ages of romance; nothing more poetical was ever invented by a poet's brain. It is all like a dream from the enchanted past, and, as if to crown the illusion, not even the gilt spurs are wanting. Sir Samuel is the first African explorer whose services have received public recognition; and this innovation proceeded from a Tory government, — a solemn warning to those who disbelieve in supernatural influences.

This is the story of the Nile. There are two rivers, the Blue and the White. Bruce discovered the sources of the Blue Nile, previously described by the Portuguese Jesuits, and it was not known till some time afterwards that the White Nile was really the main stream. Its sources are derived from two lake basins (as Ptolemy asserted in ancient days). Burton and Speke discovered one of these lakes, the Victoria Nyanza, and returned to the eastern coast, whence they had started. Speke and Grant found the Nile flowing out of the Victoria Nyanza, and

followed it down towards the sea. As they arrived at Gondokoro, a dirty little slave-station upon the White Nile, they met another party entering the arena which they were about to leave. That must have been a remarkable sight. On the one side two weary, ragged men, sick of Africa, and emaciated by disease. On the other an English sportsman in good health and spirits, with armed men, horses, astronomical instruments, elephant guns, gaudy presents, and all the paraphernalia of exploration. At first Baker was mightily disconsolate: he feared that there was nothing left for him to do. But Speke informed him of the other great lake, which he himself had been unable to reach on account of a native war. This was the Albert Nyanza; and Speke, by putting Baker upon its scent, has earned his share in the honors of the second lake, as well as of the first. On the other hand, he never realized the importance of this second basin; he always maintained that he had "settled the Nile question," and died, like Columbus, without having grasped the meaning of his own discoveries.

Baker stands supreme above other explorers on account of the remarkable obstacles which he overcame. It must be understood that the natural road to the Nile sources, by going up the river towards them, had been abandoned after repeated failures. The British government had sent in their two last expeditions (on the suggestion, I believe, of Dr. Beke) from the eastern coast, with the view of striking in upon the head-waters of the Nile by this more indirect but more practicable route. Sir Samuel, however, accomplished that which Mr. Petherick and other competent judges had pronounced to be impossible. It had been supposed that Gondokoro could be opened only from the inside; and that the Turkish slavetraders, who justly regard British travellers as the forerunners of "Abolition," would never allow one to pass that barrier. In fact, those who have read "The Albert Nyanza," which is as fascinating

and dramatic as a novel, will remember how these gentry corrupted his escort, and threatened his life; and how it was solely by the exercise of a quality which, had he been killed, would have been called "lamentable rashness," that he succeeded in penetrating into Central Africa at all.

Sir Samuel was accompanied during his four years' hard travel by his wife, a young, handsome, and very delicatelooking Hungarian lady, who on one occasion saved the expedition from ruin by her promptitude and tact; who, after they had discovered the lake, urged her husband to extend their explorations, in order to solve a certain geographical problem, although at that time she could scarcely walk; and who even showed that she could handle a sword, and mingle in a mêlée when his life appeared to be in danger. It may be remarked, by the way, that this young heroine does not consider it necessary to wear any such hermaphrodite costume as that lately adopted by Doctor Mary Walker, but dresses with taste, is perfectly feminine in every way, and has passed through the somewhat difficult ordeal of a London season with considerable éclat.

Sir Samuel declares that he will never go to Africa again, and it is to be hoped that he will keep his word. He could add nothing to his reputation, and he has fairly earned repose. But there is one explorer who makes no such resolutions, and who would inevitably break them if he did. In fact, Dr. Livingstone may be considered as a resident in unknown parts of Central Africa, and an occasional traveller in England. He speaks our language with a Bechuana accent, and has been seen wandering down St. James's Street, in the height of the London season, in a gold-laced cap and a thick Inverness cape. It is evident that he is not at home in civilization, and as the Greenlander, decoyed to the sunny south, pines for his whale's blubber and his snow hut, so Dr. Livingstone escapes with relief from the pleasures and luxuries of the great metropolis to his dear Caffres and