all women, have higher reputation for modesty, and gentleness of speech, and all womanly virtues, than these same Quaker ladies? I cannot forbear noticing, too, the official responsibility put upon women, in that venerable church, which is, in some sort, the mother of us all, and whose vitality has been a subject of wonder and speculation up to the present moment. No less a person than Lord Macaulay has made the suggestion that the Roman Church may have owed its success largely to the opportunities it has always opened to women, for honorable work and the attainment of authoritative positions. In his review of "Ranke's History of the Popes," occurs the following passage, which all Christian denominations would do well to ponder : For female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of religion, the chance is that, though she may disapprove of no one doctrine or ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a new schism. If a pious and benevolent woman enters the cells of a prison, to pray with the most unhappy and degraded of her own sex, she does so without any authority from the Church. No line of action is traced out for her; and it is well if the Ordinary does not complain of her intrusion, and if the Bishop does not shake his head at such irregular benevolence. At Rome, the Countess of Huntington would have a place in the calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first Superior of the Blessed Order of Sisters of the Gaols. In fact, Christian churches everywhere should, it seems to me, lead the way in this reform, as in all others, where the moral elevation of mankind is proposed. And were not authority and tradition arrayed against it, they would hardly be so far behind their privilege in this matter as they are. Let us, then, hope for increased grace and knowledge; and, just so far as they are able to make wise interpretations of Scripture, following the spirit rather than the letter of apostolic teaching, and entering fully into the mind of Christ in these matters, they will come to an increase of power and to the realization of that old prom ise given to the prophet Joel, in the days of his seership, so many years ago: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit." Is it not the duty, then, of the women of this day, as a part of their contribution to human progress, to maintain this doctrine of individual freedom and responsibility, even at some cost to their personal comfort? At first glance this may seem to imply a greater sacrifice of feeling than the case requires; but you will agree with me when I say that nothing could be much more trying to a woman of delicacy and sensibility than such assertions of herself as are commonly stigmatized as immodest, unfeminine, unnatural, and the like; especially if she be the mother of sensitive children, on whom the recoil of rebuke may fall so heavily as to more than double her own pain. And does not this become the best of reasons why men should prepare the way for her in these matters, rather than call upon her to make a way for herself? Of course they must do this, so far as mere legislation is concerned, they only having the power; but in all departments of life, how easily can they invite her companionship, without incurring any loss or bringing any odium to themselves; whereas, she must suffer in various ways, if left to claim and actually enforce her rights and privileges, as a free, responsible being, owing, like man, allegiance to God and her own conscience alone. It is on this account that I would call upon man, rather than because he seems to me to be, par excellence, a wrong-doer, or even the wilful cause of his own present acknowledged supremacy. There are many important considerations affecting this subject practically, which I should be glad to present to you; but these must wait your leisure and mine. Meantime, I subscribe myself, once more, Your affectionate MOTHER. A PINCH OF SALT. "Salt is good."-S. Mark ix. 50. THE servant of the great chemist Berzelius was once approached by one of his countrymen with the question, "What is that chemistry, by which they say your master has made himself so famous?" "I will tell you," was the ready answer. "First, I have to fetch all manner of things in large vessels; then he pours them into bottles, and at last into quite small phials; when he has done that, he pours them all once more into two big buckets, which I carry out and empty into the river. That is chemistry." he digs into the bowels of the earth, and fashions the hidden treasures into bright ornaments and useful tools, or he transforms even the worthless sand and the shapeless clay into costly wares of brilliant splendor. But a few years pass away, and his beautiful handiwork changes in shape and in color; a century more, and they crumble into dust. His magnificent temples, his lofty walls, his graceful bridges, his proud monuments that were to give immo.tality to his name and his deeds-they all succumb, sooner or later, to the silent The popular idea of the science is not but unfailing efforts of Nature to reclaim much clearer in our day. The name conjures up, in many minds, a large laboratory, with quaint retorts and vile smells, or at best a huge factory sending forth clouds of disgusting smoke. In many a lively imagination the chemist is still surrounded by stuffed monsters and bottled infants, after the manner of Hogarth's admirable etching, and his labors are looked upon with timid admiration and doubtful wonder; for the alchemist has not yet entirely faded away into a myth, and the Black Art has still its votaries in our midst. Few among us are really aware how deeply and practically the chemist's science affects our daily life and contributes to our happiness upon earth. And yet he has a duty to perform which ranks but little below the very highest that falls to the lot of man here below. He is the self-appointed guardian of the indestructible part of our globe. Man glories in his absolute sway over all Nature, whose gifts he employs for his pleasure, and whose creatures he treats as his vassals. But his dominion is of short duration, and soon Nature resumes her own sway again, unimpeded by his hand. He wrests massive rocks from her bosom, and tears gigantic trees from their ancient homes, and changes them into houses and palaces and ships; As her own children. What the waters of the ocean and the winds of heaven have left undestroyed, falls under the unseen attacks of frost and rain and heat. worms feed under the green turf on his body, fearfully and wonderfully made though it was, so tiny lichens and minute mosses consume, little by little, his obelisks and his pyramids. Diminutive seeds, flying unseen through the air, come and nestle in the cracks and crevices of his castles and palaces, and strike their frail roots in the rents of his massive walls, while treacherous ivy sends its tendrils into every cleft of the ruin. Insects, creeping about by night, undermine the foundations of colossal structures, and animal-life teems cre long among the débris of his loftiest edifices. The trees he has planted and the animals he has raised, return to the dust from whence they sprang; the wood he has carved with cunning craft, decays into impalpable powder; the metals he has wrought into shapes of wondrous beauty, are eaten up by rust, and the very stones he has piled up in lofty structures, are consumed by wind and weather. And whither go all these fading, fleeting elements, which thus continually pass from his sight, and return, as he calls it, to the bosom of their mother Nature? The chemist alone can answer the question; for he alone watches them forever, and never for a moment fails to trace them to their new home, though they assume, with Protean power, a thousand new forms, and defy him, for a time, by their incessant and marvellous changes. But his power is greater yet. For this knowledge of the eternal duration of the elements in nature endows him with a power that might almost be called creative; for though he may not absolutely produce them out of naught, like the one great Creator above us, he can at least make them assume the form which he wishes. He can take the dust, that seems worthless, and endow it with priceless value; he can gather impalpable powder and hardly perceptible vapor, and bid them combine in a form that shall rejoice our eye by its beauty, and prove itself a blessing like few others to all mankind. One of the most striking instances of this power is the manner in which his science transforms an unsightly gift of nature into the most precious boon that man receives at her hands a little gray substance into a priceless crystal, far more valuable than all the most costly jewels he possesses, and indispensable to his very existence upon earth. This precious treasure is a little squarefashioned grain, of gray color, born far down in the darkest recesses of the earth, in times when fierce fires raged below; and there it has lain for thousands of years, along with countless little grains of like shape, never seeing a beautiful flower by its side or hearing the sweet notes of a bird as it sings of spring and budding love. Its ancestors were two strange beings, that have but quite lately become known to us: a metal with a silver sheen and a gas of yellowish-green color. The former is perhaps the oddest of its kind. Other metals are heavy and hard; this is so light that it swims on the water, and so soft that it can be cut with a knife and kneaded with the hand. Other metals resist all impressions from without; this is so yielding that if exposed for a little while to damp air, it oxydizes quickly and changes into a white powder! While its near cousins, gold and silver, sink quickly to the bottom of a vessel filled with water, Sodium, on the contrary, floats like a very gnome of the mountains, and the little silvery globes, in which it is ordinarily seen, swim merrily for a while on the surface. But after a few moments, they begin to glow and to shine like liquid fire, and now perform a dance so weird and wild that it startles us by its strange, fantastic figures. The smooth surface of the water becomes the well-polished floor of a ball-room, on which the bright pearls of shining metal perform their quaint dance like enchanted princesses dressed in silver robes. If you attempt to hold the lovely little dames by force, they know at once how to escape from your violence and to regain their liberty. A beautiful bluish flame begins to surround the little globules, and a few moments after the metal has vanished. No trace is left, and only the peculiar smell of the water betrays their secret : they have sought refuge in the friendly element, and water, the stanch enemy of fire from of old and ever ready to conquer it by its own power, has been forced by the little magicians to burn, for a little while, in a bright, flickering flame, before it could afford them a new home and safe shelter. Nor is the other ancestor of the tiny grain less odd in its nature. While every other substance on earth has some shape and form of its own, by which it may be known, and even water, though ever changing and restless, never fails to fashion itself in lovely globules, Chlorine has no form or substance of its own. Like a prince of the air, it passes unheeded through the atmosphere, visible only as a faint, yellowish-green vapor. You catch it and imprison it in a glass, you compress it by all the means at your disposal with terrible force, and at last it comes down, reluctantly, in the shape of a bubbling liquid. But relieve it for a moment of the enormous pressure, and it rises instantly again as a vapor, and escapes from your grasp. Unfit to be breathed by man or beast, whom it would smother in a few moments, it yet is not merely fatal to life, but has its good use in the wonderful household of nature, where every atom finds its noble vocation, and serves its great though often unseen purpose to the glory of the Most High. Chlorine has been endowed with a truly wonderful power of combining with all other elements without exception, and hence becomes of vast importance to the chemist and the manufacturer. But it serves us most faithfully where danger threatens us most nearly, and carries off, with unfailing fidelity, the death-bringing gases of wells and neglected cellars, and purifies our sick-rooms and hospitals. These two strange beings, the flitting gas with its repulsive color and fatal breath, and the quaint metal whose merry dance forces water to turn into fire, seek each other, throughout nature, with unceasing longing. And yet, whenever they meet, they embrace each other only for a moment, and for their own destruction. The bright silvery substance has no sooner been breathed upon by the foul gas, than it vanishes as if by magic, and all that remains of the two is a tiny crystal of white color and silvery sheen. You examine it closely, and you find that it resembles a hollow cube; every minute particle of the grain is clear and transparent, like the most perfect of crystals, and it is only when many are lying close to each other that the broken rays of light give them a pure, white hue. The poisonous power of chlorine and the fiery nature of sodium have utterly disappeared, and in their stead man is presented by his beneficent mother Nature with a little grain of salt, without which his life would be a burden and happiness upon carth forever out of question! Fortunately, Nature is as bountiful as she is wise, and hence the indispensable grain of salt is provided by her with such a lavish hand, that it may be found in immense quantities all over the earth. The land hides it in its dark caves, and holds it forth in large shining masses on the surface; and the sea is filled with it, from the topmost wave to the bottomless abyss. For the unsightly grain, little noticed by careless man, and taken as a matter of course by most of us, is the great guardian of health throughout our world; without it the waters of the earth would soon stink with corruption and all flesh would be foul with decay; without it the plants would no longer deck the land with their beauty, and man would die a death of misery and unspeakable horror. Hence, the mercy of the Creator has scattered it broadcast over our domain, and we have but to stretch out our hand to gather the precious gift from on high. Far away, in Eastern Europe, the traveller comes upon a long, low range of hills, stretching from east to west, which enclose, with their soft outlines and well-wooded slopes, a lovely valley, dotted here and there with smaller hills and little knolls. A cluster of low but well-kept houses lies towards the opening, from which he approaches the plain, and the eye wanders freely beyond them into distant lowlands. It is a busy scene to which he comes, and men are moving briskly about through the narrow streets and the countless paths that lead over the common. They wear a strange costume of sombre black, and have thick leather aprons tied on behind instead of in front; but they look cheerful and happy, and many a merry song and sweet carol is heard far and near. The traveller engages one of these men, who all greet him with a pious wish for his soul's welfare, to show him the way into the mysterious world below, of which he has heard much; and soon he finds himself arrayed in a white blouse and black velvet cap, such as are kept ready for visitors, at the mouth of a shaft which seems to lead down to the very bowels of the earth. When his eye has become somewhat better accustomed to the dim light of the candle stuck in his hat, he notices that wooden rails are laid all the way down the gentlyinclined plane; and he is invited to mount a wooden contrivance, wondrously like the hobby horse of our happy childhood. The miner sits down before him; the horse-a sausage, it is called in local parlance-starts with alarming swiftness on the smooth, oiled rails, and his right hand, armed with a stout, leathern gauntlet, grasps frantically the rope that runs along the wall, to check the painful velocity. At last the two horsemen are stopped, by reaching a piece of level ground, and the traveller finds himself in a vast, subterranean corridor, cut out of the live salt. Huge blocks of the precious material are lying about, some colorless, some shining in beautiful though subdued blue; the roof rises high above him, and looks gray and grim in the dim light, and on his right the vaulted ceiling rests on gigantic pillars, in which each tiny grain shines brightly and sparkles as the light falls upon it; and yet they all hold so firmly to each other that there is no danger of their ever giving way and proving faithless to their trust. A little further on the miners are hard at work; they attack the mountain-side by cutting out immense blocks in the shape of huge casks; then water is poured down the furrows, and allowed to remain standing there a few days, so as to soften the rock; at the proper time wedges are driven in, which soon swell in the water and blast out, as it were, without further help from human hands, the great blocks in the desired form. As the traveller wanders on through the long dark passages, with statues in niches and holy images at the corners, he passes large vaulted rooms, dark caves, and huge recesses, that seem to have no end, and at times he comes upon stairs, cut in the rock, which he has to descend cautiously, so smooth and slippery is the material of which they are formed. Every now and then he sees, at a distance, a bell-shaped shaft, from the top of which hangs a frail ladder, free in the air, swaying and swinging to and fro with the cold currents that blow here perpetually; and he looks with wonder and fear at the poor miner, who trembles and crosses himself piously, as he sets foot on the slim rounds and descends slowly into the apparently unfathomable darkness below. All of a sudden he sees bright lights before him, and, dazzled and surprised, he enters a vast cathedral, the walls of which shine and shimmer all around in fanciful, flitting lights, as the light of torches and candles fall upon the bright masses of salt; there is the altar with its colossal cross, and at the side the organ and choir; here also statues and images abound on all sides, and even human worshippers, kneeling down in silent adoration, are cut out in the yielding material. He has little relish, perhaps, for the vast ball-room, with its orchestra on high and its brilliant chandeliers, glittering and glistening like the fairest of crystals, and bedchambers with mocking couches; for the whole upper world is repeated here below in grotesque caricature. Gradually the passages become lower; the ceiling sinks more and more on the left, and at last the traveller is forced to bend, until he fairly creeps along on all fours. But suddenly he sees before him a fairy scene: dark waters, sparkling bright in the light of torches fastened to the glistening walls. Like a vast black mirror, the subterranean lake, silent and motionless, stretches far into the endless darkness. Never has wing of bird dipped its feathers into the mysterious water; never has a breath of air ruffled its placid, patient surface. Like walls of iron, the rocks of salt rise all around in grim solemnity, and hold the restless element bound in eternal silence and peace. The scene is beautiful, and yet fearful in its utter loneliness and death-like stillness. A few shells and débris of marineplants are found on the banks of the black tarn, but they belong to generations as old as the Deluge. No life has ever been known to grace the lake. Only ages and ages ago, when the waters that now rest deep below the world of men, were purling merrily down the mountain-side, they bore with them the tiny houses of friendly animals; and in their wanderings through the hidden depths of the earth, carried them with them to their silent home. At the fur |