towards the hill, and I got two shots, and following quickly had two more by the time he had again reached the path; but he was always more or less concealed by foliage, and protected by the large branch on which he was walking. Once while loading I had a splendid view of him, moving along a large limb of a tree in a semierect posture, and showing him to be an animal of the largest size. At the path he got on to one of the loftiest trees in the forest, and we could see one leg hanging down useless, having been broken by a ball. He now fixed himself in a fork, where he was hidden by thick foliage, and seemed disinclined to move. I was afraid he would remain and die in this position, and as it was nearly evening I could not have got the tree cut down that day. I therefore fired again, and he then moved off, and going up the hill was obliged to get on to some lower trees, on the branches of one of which he fixed himself in such a position that he could not fall, and lay all in a heap as if dead, or dying.

I now wanted the Dyaks to go up and cut off the branch he was resting on, but they were afraid, saying he was not dead, and would come and attack them. We then shook the adjoining tree, pulled the hanging creepers, and did all we could to disturb him, but without effect; so I thought it best to send for two Chinamen with axes to cut down the tree. While the messenger was gone, however, one of the Dyaks took courage and climbed towards him, but the Mias did not wait for him to get near, moving off to another tree, where he got on to a dense mass of branches and creepers which almost completely hid him from our view. The tree was luckily a small one, so when the axes came we soon had it cut through; but it was so held up by jungle ropes and climbers to adjoining trees that it only fell into a sloping position. The Mias did not move, and I began to fear that after all we should not get him, as it was near evening, and half a dozen more trees would have to be cut down before the one he was on would fall. As a last resource we all began pulling at the creepers, which shook the tree very much, and, after a few minutes, when we had almost given up all hopes, down he came with a crash and a thud like the fall of a giant. And he was a giant, his head and body being full as large as a man's. He was of the kind called by the Dyaks "Mias Chappan," or "Mias Pappan," which has the skin of the face broadened out to a ridge or fold at each side. His outstretched arms measured seven feet three inches across, and his

height, measuring fairly from the top of the head to the heel, was four feet two inches. The body just below the arms was three feet two inches round, and was quite as long as a man's, the legs being exceedingly short in proportion. On examination we found he had been dreadfully wounded. Both legs were broken. One hip joint and the root of the spine completely shattered, and two bullets were found flattened in his neck and jaws! Yet he was still alive when he fell. The two Chinamen carried him home tied to a pole, and I was occupied with Charley the whole of the next day, preparing the skin and boiling the bones to make a perfect skeleton, which are now preserved in the Museum at Derby.

THE MAHOGANY TREE.

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

CHRISTMAS is here:
Winds whistle shrill,

Icy and chill,

Little care we:

Little we fear

Weather without,

Sheltered about

The Mahogany Tree.

Once on the boughs

Birds of rare plume

Sang, in its bloom;

Night birds are we:
Here we carouse,

Singing like them,

Perched round the stem

Of the jolly old tree.

Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit;
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.

Life is but short-
When we are gone,
Let them sing on,
Round the old tree.

[THE RIGHT HONORABLE ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR, P.C., LL.D., F.R.S.: British statesman and scholar; born July 25, 1848. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and held many prominent political offices. From "The Foundation of Belief." By permission of author and Longmans, Green & Co. 8vo., price 128. 6d.

He was admitted to the Cabinet November 19, 1886; was made chief secretary for Ireland, March 5, 1887; and first lord of the treasury in November, 1891. He retired in 1892 on the accession of the Gladstone ministry, and became leader of the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons. He is the author of "Defense of Philosophic Doubt" (1879), and of many contributions to periodical literature.]

I.

THE two subjects on which the professors of every creed, theological and anti-theological, seem least anxious to differ, are the general substance of the Moral Law, and the character of the sentiments with which it should be regarded. That it is worthy of all reverence; that in its main principles it is immutable and eternal; that it demands our ungrudging submission; and that we owe it not merely obedience, but love — these are commonplaces which the preachers of all schools vie with each other in proclaiming. And they are certainly right. Morality is more than a bare code of laws, than a catalogue raisonné of things to be done and left undone. Were it otherwise we must change something more important than the mere customary language of exhortation. The old ideals of the world would have to be uprooted, and no new ones could spring up and flourish in their stead; the very soil on which they grew would be sterilized, and the phrases in which all that has hitherto been regarded as best and noblest in human life has been expressed, nay the words "best" and "noblest" themselves would become as foolish and unmeaning as the incantation of a forgotten superstition.

This unanimity, familiar though it be, is surely very remarkable. And it is the more remarkable because the unanimity prevails only as to conclusions, and is accompanied by the widest divergence of opinion with regard to the premises on which these conclusions are supposed to be founded. Nothing but habit could blind us to the strangeness of the fact that the man who believes that morality is based on a priori principles and the man who believes it to be based on the commands of God, the mystic not less than the evolutionist, should be pretty well at one both as to what morality teaches, and as to the sentiments with which its teaching should be regarded.

It is not my business in this place to examine the Philosophy of Morals, or to find an answer to the charge which this suspicious harmony of opinion among various schools of moralists appears to suggest, namely, that in their speculations they

have taken current morality for granted, and have squared their proofs to their conclusions and not their conclusions to their proofs. I desire now rather to direct the reader's attention to certain questions relating to the origin of ethical systems, not to their justification; to the natural history of morals, not to its philosophy; to the place which the Moral Law occupies in the general chain of causes and effects, not to the nature of its claim on the unquestioning obedience of mankind. I am aware, of course, that many persons have been and are of opinion that these two sets of questions are not merely related but identical; that the validity of a command depends only on the source from which it springs; and that in the investigation into the character and authority of this source consists the principal business of the moral philosopher. I am not concerned here to controvert this theory, though as thus stated I do not agree with it. It will be sufficient if I lay down two propositions of a much less dubious character: (1) that, practically, human beings being what they are, no moral code can be effective which does not inspire, in those who are asked to obey it, emotions of reverence, and (2) that practically the capacity of any code to excite this or any other elevated emotion cannot be wholly independent of the origin from which those who accept that code suppose it to emanate.1

Now what, according to the naturalistic creed, is the origin of the generally accepted, or indeed of any other possible moral law? What position does it occupy in the great web of interdependent phenomena by which the knowable "Whole" is on this hypothesis constituted? The answer is plain as life is but a petty episode in the history of the Universe; as feeling is an attribute of only a fraction of things that live; so moral sentiments and the apprehension of moral rules are found in but an insignificant minority of things that feel. They are not, so to speak, among the necessities of nature; no great spaces are marked out for their accommodation; were they to vanish to-morrow, the great machine would move on with no noticeable variation; the sum of realities would not suffer sensible diminution; the organic world itself would scarcely

1 These are statements, it will be noted, not relating to Ethics proper. They have nothing to do either with the contents of the Moral Law or with its validity; and if we are to class them as belonging to any special department of knowledge at all, it is to Psychology or Anthropology that they should in strictness be assigned.