among all traues no tool so easily furnished as that of the writing trade, for it needeth only a goose's wing, of which one shall everywhere find a sufficiency, gratis. Nevertheless, in this employment, the best piece of the human body (as the head) and the noblest member (as the tongue) and the highest work (as speech) must take part and labor most; while, in others, either the fist or the feet or the back, or members of that class alone work; and they that pursue them may sing merrily the while, and jest freely, which a writer cannot do. Three fingers do the work (so they say of writers), but the whole body and soul must co-operate.

I have heard of the worthy and beloved Emperor Maximilian, how, when the great boobies complained that he employed so many writers for missions and other purposes, he is reported to have said: "What shall I do? They will not suffer themselves to be used in this way, therefore I must employ writers." And further: "Knights I can create, but doctors I cannot create." So have I likewise heard of a fine nobleman, that he said: "I will let my son study. It is no great art to hang two legs over a steed and be a rider; he shall soon learn me that; and he shall be fine and well-spoken."

They say, and it is true, the pope was once a pupil too. Therefore despise me not the fellows who say panem propter Deum before the doors and sing the bread song. Thou hearest, as this psalm says, great princes and lords sing. I, too, have been one of these fellows, and have received bread at the houses, especially at Eisenach, my native city. Although, afterward, my dear father maintained me, with all love and faith, in the high school at Erfurt, and, by his sore sweat and labor, has helped me to what I have become,—still I have been a beggar at the doors of the rich, and, according to this psalm, have attained so far by means of the pen, that now I would not compound with the Turkish emperor, to have his wealth and forego my art. Yea, I would not take for it the wealth of the world many times multiplied; and yet, without doubt, I had never attained to it, had I not chanced upon a school and the writers' trade.

Therefore, let thy son study, nothing doubting, and though he should beg his bread the while, yet shalt thou give to our Lord God a fine piece of wood out of which he can whittle thee a lord. And be not disturbed that vulgar niggards contemn the art so disdainfully, and say: Aha! if my son can write German

and read and cipher, he knows enough; I will have him a merchant. They shall soon become so tame that they will be fain to dig with their fingers, ten yards deep in the earth, for a scholar. For my merchant will not be a merchant long, when law and preaching fail. That know I for certain; we theologians and lawyers must remain, or all must go down with us together. It cannot be otherwise. When theologians go, then goes the word of God, and remains nothing but the heathen, yea! mere devils. When jurists go, then goes justice together with peace, and remains only murder, robbery, outrage, force, yea! mere wild beasts. But what the merchant shall earn and win, when peace is gone, I will leave it to his books to inform him. And how much profit all his wealth shall be to him when preaching fails, his conscience, I trow, shall declare to him.

I will say briefly of a diligent, pious schoolteacher or magister, or of whomsoever it is, that faithfully brings up boys and instructs them, that such an one can never be sufficiently recompensed or paid with money; as also the heathen Aristotle says. Yet is this calling so shamefully despised among us as though it were altogether naught. And we call ourselves Christians!

And if I must or could relinquish the office of preacher and other matters, there is no office I would more willingly have than that of schoolmaster or teacher of boys. For I know that this work, next to the office of preacher, is the most profitable, the greatest, and the best. Besides, I know not even which is the best of the two. For it is hard to make old dogs tame and old rogues upright; at which task, nevertheless, the preacher's office labors, and often labors in vain. But young trees be more easily bent and trained, howbeit some should break in the effort. Beloved! count it one of the highest virtues upon earth, to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.

From a discourse on the "Furtherance

of Schools,» etc.

SIR CHARLES LYELL

(1797-1875)

IR CHARLES LYELL was born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland, November 14th, 1797. He took his degree at Oxford in

1819 and began practice at the bar, but from his boyhood he had had a strong leaning towards scientific research which drew him under the influence of Cuvier, Humboldt, and other great investigators, who were just beginning to rid science of the limitations imposed on it by the Middle Ages. Lyell's researches in geology gave them effective support and made him one of the founders of geology as a true science. His works include "Principles of Geology," 18301833; "Travels in North America," 1845; "The Antiquity of Man," 1863; and "The Student's Elements of Geology," 1871. He died at London, February 22d, 1875.

IN

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON

N NO part of the volcanic region of southern Europe has so tremendous an earthquake occurred in modern times as that which began on the first of November, 1755, at Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately afterwards a violent shock threw down the greater part of that city. In the course of about six minutes, sixty thousand persons perished. The sea first retired and laid the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising fifty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arrabida, Estrella, Julio, Marvan, and Cintra, being some of the largest in Portugal, were impetuously shaken, as it were, from their very foundations; and some of them opened at their summits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, huge masses of them being thrown down into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric; they are also said to have smoked; but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this appearance.

The most extraordinary circumstance which occurred at Lisbon during the catastrophe, was the subsidence of a new quay, built

entirely of marble, at an immense expense.

A great concourse of people had collected there for safety, as a spot where they might be beyond the reach of falling ruins; but suddenly the quay sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A great number of boats and small vessels anchored near it, all full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface, and the water in the place where the quay had stood is stated, in many accounts, to be unfathomable; but Whitehurst says he ascertained it to be one hundred fathoms.

In this case, we must either suppose that a certain tract sank down into a subterranean hollow, which would cause a "fault” in the strata to the depth of six hundred feet, or we may infer, as some have done, from the entire disappearance of the substances engulfed, that a chasm opened and closed again. Yet in adopting this latter hypothesis, we must suppose that the upper part of the chasm, to the depth of one hundred fathoms, remained open after the shock. According to the observations made at Lisbon, in 1837, by Mr. Sharpe, the destroying effects of this earthquake were confined to the tertiary strata, and were most violent on the blue clay, on which the lower part of the city is constructed. Not a building, he says, on the secondary limestone or the basalt was injured.

The great area over which this Lisbon earthquake extended is very remarkable. The movement was most violent in Spain, Portugal, and the north of Africa; but nearly the whole of Europe, and even the West Indies, felt the shock on the same day. A seaport called St. Ubes, about twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed. At Algiers and Fez, in Africa, the agitation of the earth was equally violent; and at the distance of eight leagues from Morocco, a village with the inhabitants, to the number of about eight or ten thousand persons, together with all their cattle, were swallowed up. Soon after, the earth closed again over them.

The shock was felt at sea on the deck of a ship to the west of Lisbon, and produced very much the same sensation as on dry land. Off St. Lucar, the captain of the ship Nancy felt his vessel so violently shaken, that he thought she had struck the ground, but, on heaving the lead, found a great depth of water. Captain Clark, from Denia, in latitude 36° 24' N., between nine and ten in the morning, had his ship shaken and strained as if

she had struck upon a rock. Another ship forty leagues west of St. Vincent experienced so violent a concussion that the men were thrown a foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as also in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors and slight oscillations of the ground were felt.

The agitation of lakes, rivers, and springs in Great Britain was remarkable. At Loch Lomond, in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause, rose against its banks, and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest perpendicular height of this swell was two feet four inches. It is said that the movement of this earthquake was undulatory, and that it traveled at the rate of twenty miles a minute. A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been sixty feet high at Cadiz. At Tangier, in Africa, it rose and fell eighteen times on the coast; at Funchal, in Madeira, it rose full fifteen feet perpendicular above high-water mark, although the tide, which ebbs and flows there seven feet, was then at half-ebb. Besides entering the city and committing great havoc, it overflowed other seaports in the island. At Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water rushed into the harbor, whirled round several vessels, and poured into the market place.

It was before stated that the sea first retired at Lisbon; and this retreat of the ocean from the shore at the commencement of an earthquake, and its subsequent return in a violent wave, is a common occurrence. In order to account for the phenomenon, Michell imagined a subsidence at the bottom of the sea from the giving way of the roof of some cavity, in consequence of a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. Such condensation, he observes, might be the first effect of the introduction of a large body of water into fissures and cavities already filled with steam, before there had been sufficient time for the heat of the incandescent lava to turn so large a supply of water into steam, which, being soon accomplished, causes a greater explosion.