body of ecclesiastics, and was regarded by almost all of them as an enemy.

The doctrines of the Gallican church were in some degree identified with Gerson; he was, in fact, the soul of those great assemblies, in which they were debated and established during the schism. The doctrines of Wickliffe included the different opinions of many celebrated men who had gone before him, for example, Claude of Turin, Arnold of Brescia, Berenger, and Peter Waldo. Wickliffe arranged their ideas in a more complete and regular form. He embodied them afresh. He grounded them, on the one hand, upon the downfal of that church authority which was considered infallible in spiritual things, and independent of the civil power in worldly matters. But he also, on the other hand, based them upon the declarations of Scripture, interpreted by enlightened reason, the first translation of which was made by him into the English language.

Gerson was the great forerunner of Bossuet. Wickliffe prepared the way for Luther, by his bold language, his mental abilities, and his exemplary life; he was really the forefather of the great reformation of the sixteenth century, to which the name of Luther has been attached. This honour has been seldom given to Wickliffe, because the success of human opinions depends less on their own worth, than on the circumstances of the times in which they are set forth. To insure triumph to the principles stated by Wickliffe with such logical force and eloquence, in one corner of the Christian world, it was necessary that these doctrines, after having crossed the seas, should take root, at a favourable season, in the heart of Europe. It was needful that men of deep understanding, and of high moral character, should first send them forth by their words, and then seal them by their blood. This actually took place at the time of the great western schism; it was the work of a Christian who sacrificed his life in the cause of spiritual freedom-this martyr was John Huss.

TREASURES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. No. II.

THE MASTODON.

WHO that visits the British Museum, can behold without emotions of wonder

A celebrated French divine in the seventeenth century.

the skeleton of the huge, the colossal mastodon giganteus, compared with which that of the elephant is puny? And who that beholds and wonders, is not anxious for some information respecting an animal so stupendous, and furnished with such enormous tusks?

At no very remote period, America, Europe, and Asia, possessed amongst them about eleven recognised species of the now extinct genus mastodon, of which the mastodon giganteus is the largest. The relics of this animal are found in North America, especially at the Big-bone Lick, in the north part of Kentucky, near the Ohio, and along the borders of the river of the Great Osages, which runs into the Missouri a little above its confluence with the Mississippi.

Contemporary with the gigantic mastodon were several species of mammoth or elephant, the ponderous megatherium and the mylodon, besides other gigantic forms, now bloited out of creation. The large animals at present extant on the land are reduced to a very few; they are summed up in a brief catalogue: two species of elephant, the hippopotamus (perhaps two species,) and six ascertained species of rhinoceros. These are the relics of the mammoths, the mastodons, the megatherium, the mylodon, of vast hippopotami, and of huge rhinoceroses, which once appear to have been spread respectively over almost all the habitable portions of the globe; and that not thinly, but in considerable numbers, attended, as we have reason to believe, by carnivorous animals bearing the same relative proportions to them that the lion, the tiger, and the hyena of the present day do to the modern elephants and rhinoceroses. Nor is the date of their existence remote; their remains are found in the superficial deposits of the tertiary series; and could the traditions of ancient nations be thoroughly sifted, it is not improbable that some accounts might be gleaned, which, however obscured by fable, related to some of these terrestrial giants. Indeed, in North America, the red men till very lately held traditionary accounts relative to the mastodon, which, although greatly distorted and mixed up with absurdities, as might be expected, are not to be set aside with utter contempt. Mons. Fabri, a French officer, informed Buffon that the savages regarded these bones scattered over various parts of Louisiana and Canada as belonging to an animal which they named "Father of the oxen," or

"Père aux bœufs." The Shawnee Indians | believed that men of proportionate stature existed contemporarily with these enormous creatures, and that the Great Being destroyed both with thunderbolts. The Indians of Virginia state that once a troop of these tremendous quadrupeds advanced onwards, destroying the bisons, the deer, and the other animals created for the use of the Indians; and that the Great Being, in order to avert the threatened catastrophe, slew them all with his thunderbolts, except the big bull, who, nothing daunted, presented his enormous head to the bolts, and shook them off as they fell, till at last being wounded by one in the side, he bounded away towards the Great Lakes, where to the present time, he continues concealed in the deepest recesses of the forests. This tradition, though no stress must be laid upon it, seems to point to some convulsion of nature, as the cause of the ultimate destruction of the gigantic mastodon. It is, however, remarkable that the bones of this animal, so abundant at Big-bone Lick, and other saline morasses elsewhere, exhibit no appearance of having been rolled, but seem to have lain undisturbed since the creature's death; many, in fact, especially on the banks of the river of the Great Osages, are in a vertical position, as if the animal had sunk in soft mud, or a quagmire, and so perished. With these relics are found those of buffaloes, stags, etc., and all are impregnated with ferruginous matter.

In its general form the mastodon resembled the elephant, but was more massive. It had a large proboscis, or trunk, and the tusks grew to a great size-those of the skeleton in the British Museum are enormous. The grinders, instead of presenting on the surface transverse laminæ as those of the elephant, are crowned with numerous large conical elevations, which wear down by use. These bold projections led Dr. W. Hunter and some other men of deserved celebrity to regard this animal as having been carnivorous, overlooking the utter incompatibility of every part of the frame with predatory habits. There can be no doubt that the mastodon fed in the same manner as the modern elephant, using its proboscis in tearing down the branches of trees, and in otherwise collecting bundles of herbage. If we are to trust to some accounts, skulls with a portion of the flesh, and with the proboscis preserved, have been occasionally noticed.

Barton states that, in 1762, out of five skeletons examined by the natives, one skull still possessed what they termed a long nose with the mouth under it; and Kalm describes an enormous skeleton discovered by the savages in the country of the Illinois, in which the trunk was apparent, but half decomposed.

Formerly the mastodon was confounded with the fossil elephant or mammoth so abundant in Siberia, and though the learned Pallas pointed out the distinctions, the error prevailed till Cuvier laid the results of his investigations before the scientific world, and cleared up this and other points of difficulty. Since the time of Cuvier the increase of knowledge has been rapid; nor is this confined to the scientific world alone. Public institutions, lectures, museums, and zoological gardens show how general the thirst for information is, and how widely it is beginning to be disseminated. The British Museum is in itself a world of wonders; and the crowds that throng the noble rooms, which contain the treasures of zoology, demonstrate the improving state of the public mind, and the interest which the works of art and of nature have already excited. The light of knowledge is spreading, and if religion goes hand in hand with science, the happiest results may be anticipated.

We need not enter into the minute points of distinction between the mastodon and the mammoth or fossil elephant of Siberia, the bones of which are scattered so abundantly in that country, and in such preservation that the tusks are collected for the sake of the ivory, which is very firm and excellent. Strange to say, a mammoth with its hair and skin and flesh, all as perfect and fresh as if the animal had just died, has been seen and examined in modern days. It was in the year 1799 that a Tungusian, employed in collecting mammoth's tusks in Siberia, perceived the enormous carcass at the mouth of the river Lena in a large block of ice. During the course of the year 1801, the gradual melting of the rock of ice rendered it still more distinct. In 1803 it had become partially exposed, and in 1804 it was so free that a Tungusian cut off its tusks and sold them to a merchant for fifty rubles. For two years after this did the mammoth remain on that icy shore, where Mr. Adams found it, but considerably mutilated; bears, wolves, foxes, etc., had feasted upon it, and the Yakutski had taken away a

great quantity of its flesh as food for their | dogs. The proboscis was gone, and one foreleg; the skin, however, was almost perfect, and one ear with a tuft of reddish hair. The skin was thick and strong and of a dark tint, and was covered with long wiry blackish hairs overlaying a reddish furry undercoat. Great quantities of this fur were trampled into the mud by the bears. These remains were now, at last, carefully collected, the tusks repurchased, and the whole transported to St. Petersburgh, where the skeleton and other relics adorn the museum of the academy. This is not the only instance of the kind on record. A mammoth preserved in ice was found on the banks of the Alascia river, which flows into the Icy ocean, beyond the Indigirska. Its hair and its structural characters were precisely those of the Lena specimen. In 1771, the body of a huge extinct species of rhinoceros was found preserved in frozen earth and gravel near the Velhoui; its head and feet were sent to St. Petersburgh. Besides these, the head and feet of the mammoth, with the flesh, have at various times been observed in the ice; and could the shores of the Icy ocean and mouths of the Siberian rivers that flow into it be diligently explored, other specimens might probably be obtained. It must produce an indescribable sensation in the mind to gaze upon a perfect animal, the race of which has passed away, preserved in the ice, during a long lapse of ages. How many empires rose and fell; what strange mutations took place; what great events came to pass; what "armies shook the earth with thundering tread;" what monuments of human labour crumbled away, while the massive carcass lay in its icy entombment; embalmed by the power of cold! Time rolls on; and at length it becomes revealed to the wondering eyes of the rude peasant; beasts of prey feed upon its flesh; and its relics ultimately find, in some museum, another restingplace.

We shall not here attempt to enter into any explanation of the causes that may have led to the extinction of the mastodon, the mammoth, or other colossal animals coeval with them; for although probable theories on the subject have been advanced, nothing is determinately known. They once existed, they once abounded in the regions where their remains are buried; but they do not now exist, and have not existed for ages.

This is the sum and substance of all that is certain concerning them, with the exception of what their structure palpably declares relative to their habits and manners. The British Museum is rich in the fossil relics of the mastodon and the mammoth. M.

SCENE AT A CUSTOM-HOUSE.

LORD John Russell, a few months ago, when in Edinburgh, mentioned, in one of his public addresses, the case of a friend of his who had been put to considerable annoyance, somewhere on the continent, in consequence of having a copy of the works of Plato in his portmanteau. Whilst the noble lord was narrating the circumstance, I felt myself able to lend his friend the fullest sympathy, from having narrowly escaped being exposed myself, from the same cause, to the same annoyance. In the course of my tour I had picked up several books here and there, and finding, on my arrival at Basle, to which I had, for the most part, transmitted them, that my collection was becoming rather bulky, I had them done up by a bookseller in two tolerably large packages, which, after some hesitation, I determined, as the best course, to carry with me. On our arrival at the frontier of Baden, these packages were of course turned out with the rest of the luggage for inspection; but as the examining officer, who was a portly German, lazy, phlegmatic, and pipe-loving, seemed to make a mere form of his duties, I was in hopes that my word would be taken for their contents, and that their wellsecured fastenings would not be unloosed. Accordingly, when he came to them, I said, "These two parcels contain nothing but books which I have bought for my private use." I could not have, apparently, said anything more dreadful. My inquisitor immediately dropped his dull leaden look, and fixing on me an eye of keen scrutiny, said, "Books! I must see them, meinherr."

"Oh! of course, if you wish it," I replied, "but I can assure you it is just as I say.'

"Books! so! (puff! puff!) what sort of books?"

"Chiefly theological, and a few classical."

"So! (puff! puff! puff!) There are a great many of them, meinherr." "I only wish there were more of them."

THE CAVE AT IPSAMBUL.

THE purpose of the Egyptians in their use of the art of design was very different to that of the Greeks, from whom modern art has been altogether derived. It was not to excite the imagination, but to inform the understanding; not to give pleasure, but to convey facts, that painting and sculpture were employed in Egypt. According to Clement of Alexandria, an Egyptian temple was yoápua, "a writing;" it addressed itself to the mind in the same manner as a book. And, to proceed with the metaphor, the groups of figures which covered it with their hieroglyphic explanations were the several chapters or sections of which the book was composed. So that it was designed to be a written record of the historical facts which led to its erection, and of the Mythic fables, in conformity to which it was dedicated.

It will usefully illustrate the extent to which this mode of speaking of an Egyptian temple was literal rather than metaphorical, if we give here some account of the devices which were engraved at the entrance, generally on the propyla, which are two truncated pyramids placed on either side of the gateway. On each of these was designed a gigantic figure of the Pharaoh by whom the temple was built,

grasping with his left hand the hair of one or more captives who are kneeling before him, and brandishing a sword or club in his right hand. These captives represent the nations who were conquered in the war, the events of which are detailed on the walls in the interior of the temple, and whose spoils had contributed to its erection, having been consecrated to that use by the conqueror. So that these designs really answer the purpose both of title pages and tables of contents. We have prefixed an example, which is the title-page to the cave at Ipsambul.

The four lines immediately above the hero in the act of striking, the second of which is somewhat defaced at the top, read-"The living good god, the glorious guardian, smiting the south country," (that is, Africa,) treading down the north country," (that is, Asia; some of the captives he is smiting have the features and complexions of Africans, others of Asiatics: the walls of the temple itself are covered with an immense scene, representing his campaigns in both these continents,) "the victorious king_cometh smiting with the sword the boundaries of all the nations of the world." Then follow the names of the hero, "The lord of the world (sun, guardian of justice, approved of the sun, Sesostris.) The Lord of Egypt, (Ramses, beloved of Amon.)"

M