across the sun's disk, and for this reason | It thus happened that the matter dropped M. Leverrier has directed attention to the importance of a close watch upon the same, during these days, such watch, if possible, to extend to distant meridians, so as to insure pretty continuous observation through the forty-eight hours, Paris time. He has already advised American observatories through Prof. Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and it is to be hoped the chance of making an important discovery at this time, may be made known to observers in the East. It will be seen that the aid of the telegraph is indispensable, in order to secure complete evidence of the existence or non-existence of the hypothetical planet this autumn. Other observations may be reconciled with a period of similar length, but the planet to which they may be supposed to refer cannot be identical with the above. Thus if Mr. Lummis's sketch of the path of the small round black spot, which he remarked upon the sun at Manchester on the morning of March 20, 1862, is reliable in the hurried and otherwise disadvantageous circumstances under which it was made, the ascending node was almost diametrically opposite to that of Lescarbault's planet, elements which have been attributed to MM. Valz and Rádau, and exhibiting a near agreement in the position of the line of nodes, being certainly erroneous. Again, one of the most interesting observations bearing upon the existence of an intra-Mercurial planet is that made about the end of June or beginning of July 1847 in this country, which can hardly be supposed to refer to either of the objects seen by Lescarbault and Lummis respectively. The exact date of this observation is unfortunately lost beyond recovery. until the announcement in 1860 of Lescarbault's observation on March 26 in the preceding year, when Mr. Scott, in a communication addressed to the Times, drew attention to his experience in the summer of 1847. It was then discovered that he had not been the only observer of the strange object. Mr. Wray, the wellknown optician, then resident at Whitby, had remarked a small circular black spot upon the sun late one afternoon at the end of June or early in July, though he also had, in 1860, lost the exact date. Both these gentlemen have furnished the writer with every other particular of their observations. That they refer to the same object can hardly be doubted. Mr. Wray had it under observation for forty minutes, when the sun sank into a bank of cloud and was not again visible that day. In this interval the spot appeared to have moved about five minutes of arc, and when last perceived was so near the western wing of the sun that Mr. Wray believes if the cloud had not interfered, in about ten minutes he would have witnessed the egress. This circular spot, the diameter of which he judged to be about six seconds of arc, was not visible early on the following morning, though other spots of ordinary form which were present on the disk remained nearly unchanged. Mr. Scott was observing with a refractor of about four and one half inches aperture, Mr. Wray with a fine six-feet Newtonian reflector of equal aperture, which he was employing at the time in a study of the varying aspect of the solar spots. Notwithstanding the unfortunate loss of the date of these observations, such particulars as are available are still of value as certifying the existence of such objects in transit; there is no observation of the kind resting upon more excellent authority. A letter from Prof. Heis, of Münster, the author of the "Atlas Cælestis Nova," received while closing these remarks, gives full details respecting Weber's observation. The spot was intensely black, perfectly round, and smaller than the Mr. B. Scott, the city chamberlain, observing the sun's disk near London, a short time before sunset late in June or on one of the first days in July, remarked upon it a perfectly circular black disk, and was so confident of the unusual character of the spot that he was on the point of making known his observation through one of the London daily journals on the even-planet Mercury in transit. Prof. Heis ing of the same day, when unfortunately an astronomical friend, under the impression that an ordinary spot had been observed, dissuaded Mr. Scott from so doing. expresses the utmost confidence in this PRIMAVERA. THE spring has passed this way. Look! where she trod The daring crocus sprang up through the sod O'er the hid runnel, that with tinkling tongue For still the fragrance of her breath they keep. And look! here too her floating robes have brushed, Where suddenly these almond-branches flushed To greet her, and in blossoms burst as she Swept by them—gladsomely and gracefully. FORGIVENESS. O GOD, forgive the years and years Forgive the lack of service done Forgive the love that could endure Transcript. AUGUST ON THE MOUNTAINS. THERE is sultry gloom on the mountain's bro w And a sultry glow beneath; Oh, for a breeze from the western sea, Over the barren heath. There are clouds and darkness around God's ways, And though his faithfulness standeth fast Veiling, but changing it not. Send a sweet breeze from thy sea, O Lord, Let the brow grow cool and the footstep light, FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL. From The Contemporary Review. FRENCH PREACHERS. I. THE French are the least poetical nation in Europe. They have neither the exuberant idealism of the north, nor the enthusiastic realism of the south. A brave, brilliant race, with a temperament of great contrasts, and an energy all but fatal in its restlessness, they are deficient in at least two qualities, without which there can be no truly great poetry-in earnestness and in repose. And their very language lends itself with difficulty to express the feelings of imagination. It has neither majestic strength nor ravishing sweetness; it is singularly poor in "concord of sweet sounds; " it has no music - it does not "sing." But the gods have not left themselves without a witness. France is the land of rhetoric; the French are a nation of rhetoricians. Rhetoric reigns supreme, for good or for evil, in every department, from the highest to the lowest. Its authority is unquestioned; Church and State bow before it; truth itself makes it now and then a humble courtesy. You may object that it teaches men to value expression above thought, to devote their chiefest energies to the study of the "how," to sacrifice, if necessary, everything to form; but you cannot do away with the fact that it is in admirable harmony with the temper of the people. Hence it has met with a ready response; and the language is now no longer pressed into a reluctant service; it yields itself gladly. Where shall we find a match for the marvellous prose of France? where shall we look for another Montaigne or a Voltaire ? This national rhetorical tendency, with which the Frenchman is born, shows itself as much in the Church as in the world. The history of the pulpit in France is in reality the history of rhetoric in the Church. Church oratory is but one of the departments of belles-lettres. The unfortunate Protestant preacher has to leave nature behind him whenever he steps across the threshold of the temple of grace. Deeply imbued with the notion of the sanctity of his function, he takes care to remove as far as possible from him all that savors of the wicked world, and his very thoughts are clothed in the patois of Canaan. Not so the French Catholic preacher. The arms of the statesman in the political assembly, the weapon of the lawyer before the judicial tribunal, the power of the littérateur with his motley audience, are transferred to the pulpits of the Church. The theme may be different; the method remains the same. Oh, happy land, where nature is not yet excluded from her pulpits! The natural love for rhetoric finds itself strengthened by the Catholic Church, which, so far from looking upon it as an invasion, uses all its influence to promote it. The atmosphere of Catholicism is favorable to the cultivation of the æsthetic, for two reasons. First of all, the preacher is the mouthpiece of a faith, fixed in the cardinal points, and in the minutest details, and supported by all the authority and strength of an unbroken, united tradition. He asks no questions blessed are they that ask none - he "only believes," as the Evangelicals would say. This repose faith leaves him, as a matter of course, time to devote himself to the development of outward graces. The substance is secured; he can now turn himself to the study of the form. of But the position of the Protestant preacher is altogether different. Whilst the strength of Catholicism lies in affirmation, the force of Protestantism is the grandeur of negation. Its climax is that sublime scene, when the brave Martin Luther defies the world gathered at Worms. Its basis is the right of the individual, its banner is the banner of unfettered criticism; its history, if true to itself, wild therefore be a continual conflict, and its only consolation the mournful yet hopeful "I cannot do otherwise, God help me.” Consumed by the love of truth, and never pausing in its search after it — here is grand and sombre poetry-it gladly leaves vestments, and flowers, and forms, as an amiable weakness, to women and children. In the second place, Catholicism has ever appealed to the latent poetry of humanity. A faith which does not appeal to the imagination is doomed; for what else |mation of certain facts with which we are is religion but the highest form of poetry? familiar, thanks to those articles de luxe — The want of it was at first unfelt in Prot- the creeds of Christendom. Morever, the estantism, for, as we remarked on a for- Shemitic ideas of interpretation are not mer occasion, it was a great moral out-ours. It is true we cannot accept implicburst, and its leaders were religious gen- itly, as our master, a Cicero or a Demosiuses and heroes. But the Protestantism thenes. As Herder has wittily remarked: of later days resembles the perplexed king of Israel in the famous representation of the judgment. Whither shall it to the right or to the left? But it is too weak to be a religion, and too strong to be a philosophical school. turn One may disapprove of the view which Catholicism has taken of art or of the method which it has adopted in regard to it. The distinction between "sacred" and "secular" is in our eyes intensely immoral. To us the music of Offenbach is as sacred as that of Bach; to us the introduction of theology into art is an unpardonable sin. But no one can deny the soundness of the principle of Catholicism or cease to remember the debt of gratitude which we owe to it. The Catholic Church has bound together æsthetics and Christianity. She has attempted to give expression to the religious sentiment, which would otherwise have been condemned to silence; she has imparted to the religious life color and harmony. The many voices of the inner life of adoration have found a tongue in her rites and forms; the heart of humanity, wearied and saddened by the realities of life, has found in her ideals an imperishable source of rest and consolation.† "There is no Philippos at our gates, and we are not called upon either to condemn or to acquit a notorious criminal." Who ever dreamt of anything after a sermon except of going home? But a sermon, being intended to keep alive and stir up within us the ideal temper, is as likely, if not more so, to gain its end by adopting a classical model as by following a Hebrew inspiration. At any rate, we shall now glance at the history of the pulpit, and see what it has become in the hands of succeeding rhetoricians. II. THE Catholic pulpit before the days of Bossuet has only a few names which deserve to be recorded. It was the misfortune of the preachers of the age of Louis XIII. to be succeeded by the three greatest preachers of French Catholicism. But, had it been otherwise, it is far from certain that their fame would have been greater or more lasting than it has proved to be. In fact, their chief title to recognition is simply that they preceded Bossuet. The Renaissance which, like the spirit of the Lord, had gone forth to break the Under the twofold influence, therefore, fetters of unhallowed tradition and tyranof natural proclivity and of the encour-nical authority, had had but little influence agement of the Church, has the rhetorical on the Church. The Church is in all ages element made its power felt in the pulpit. conservative quand-même; in her eyes a Nor is there any reason why the rhetor- thing is good simply because it exists. ical method should not succeed as much She generally looks upon what is new with as any other. We are unable to look to suspicion if not with aversion, and, in nine the Old Testament as our guide, for alas ! cases out of ten, when she utters a word our preachers are in no sense of the word in favor of progress, we may be sure that, prophets. We cannot follow the example like Pilate, she says it not of herself, but of the apostles, for they preached no ser- that another has told her. mons and limited themselves to the procla "The Protestant Pulpit in Germany," Contemporary Review for August, 1874. t I do not forget that the real cause of the hostility of Protestantism to art is to be looked for in its peculiar method of solving the dualism on which all religion is founded. Scholasticism, though it had killed every atom of life in the Church,* still lingered |