diffusing learning amongst the people, and writes: 'I was born for my Germans, and will serve them.' You have witnessed his mighty combination of thought and action in the rapid changes around him, developed in his theses and letters, his times and modes of action, and the result of a strong intellect blended with a strong will is to be seen, not only in peculiar instances, but is to be contemplated in the light of a successful course of action.

In illustrating these combined features in Luther's character, we trust that some light has been cast upon his times. One thing let me say amid all the imperfections of this delineation, its main truthfulness is insured, because I have mostly made Luther his own biographer by giving the illustrations from his own letters.

I need not dwell upon the latter period of Luther's life; not only did he still attack Papal superstitions, but he had to correct many serious errors among the Protestants. And now, in February, 1546, when at the house of Dr. Jonas at Halle, illness from which he had before suffered assumes a dangerous character, and in a few hours after committing his spirit into the hands of God, so calmly did he die that the wing of the death-angel passing over the surface of the body left not one ripple on the calm surface which it swept.

But Luther lives now in our world by the work which he wrought. He being dead, yet speaketh. Truth is eternal as its Author, and shall never die. Let us bless Luther that he translated and circulated that Word of truth, which at this day makes our homes so pure and our land so free.

We long to hear around our habitations, not the trembling echoes of the convent bell, nor the Latinian benedictions of the priest, but better, better far, the simple hymn of praise from souls that, justified by faith, have peace with God. It cannot surely be that England's free children are about to return to the iron yoke of Rome, or it might be truly asked, Oh, foolish Britons! who hath bewitched you? When one day we look back upon life's brief but responsible history, may it be seen that our thought about Luther inspired us not with high admiration only, but with imitation too.

Some of the signs of our times are not reassuring; there is undoubtedly a Catholic' movement affecting our religious life, and it becomes us all to examine and see how far we ourselves are personally loyal to the Protestant Reformation.

Our Protestant forefathers felt very differently from the present generation about Rome. They were nearer the days when in court and camp, in palace and parliament, Rome intrigued for supremacy in England. Nay, they were nearer not

rootstock and scales of a single Toothwort, which was literally strangling the Hazel-root. The scales are filled with sap drawn from the host, and abstracted by the unbidden guest.

The second and less outrageous form of Parasite may be seen in the Dodder, a kind of minute Convolvulus in shape. This plant, though leafless, possesses stems, pale-red or yellow in tint, and at first it grows from a root fixed in the earth in a proper manner; but supply it with some Heather, Thyme, Flax, Gorse, or red Clover, and what is the result? Its former root dies away, the Dodder having twined its tiny-coloured stems all round the victim selected to support it, and then, not content with having support from the friendly and unsuspecting Heather, this parasite develops a host of minute sucking-discs at points where its stem touches the woody support of the Heather, and by means of these, it draws from inside the bark the ready-made' elaborated' sap as it flows down from the leaves of the victim. It acts like a sort of botanical Octopus, and presently drains nearly all life out of its host, which very often dies in consequence, dies a double death of starvation and strangulation. Ockshot Heath, near Esher, abounds in Dodder, whose red masses of stems may be discovered easily on a September day. However, in spite of its undoubted parasitism, Dodder does help in a way to its own nourishment, by means of the chlorophyll, sparsely scattered in the cells of its stem, and in early life, by its root.

It

We come lastly to the Aristocrat among parasites, the one who has a considerable amount of honest working-power-the Mistletoe. It is the only green parasite in this country. It has both stems and leaves like an ordinary plant. Suppose that you place one of the white sticky berries on the bark of an apple branch; after a certain time, during which the pulpy nature of the berry enables it to hold fast to the tree, the tiny 'radicle,' or embryo-root inside the seed can be seen pushing through the berry and flattening itself against the bark. now develops a kind of 'sucker' which goes right into the bark, through it, and into the outer ring of wood, under the bark, where its fibres expand like a web-foot; the tissues of parasite and host are intimately joined, but are not actually mingled. By means of this root the Mistletoe sucks up not the descending ready-made sap from the bark, as does the Dodder, but the 'crude' un-made ascending sap from the outer wood, and this it elaborates and gets ready for use by means of the chlorophyll in its own leaves! So it is not a 'parasite' pure and simple, though many books tell you that it is. True it gets sap, etc., from a host on which it resides, but it can get carbon from the air by its leaves, which no real parasite can do. It is a note

worthy fact that the radicle, or young root, does not, according to the law governing root-growth, tend down towards the earth, but it grows towards the body to which the seed is attached, whether it be up, down, or across; so if you suspended a ball in the air, and covered it with the berries, all the radicles all over the surface would be seen pushing towards the centre of the ball. This singular property makes it quite sure that the young plant will grow on a branch, wherever the seed may have happened to adhere. Its favourite host is the Apple; next comes the Poplar; then the Hawthorn; it is only known to grow on the oak in seven places in all England! The general average of mistletoe-bearing trees in apple-orchards is 40 per cent. Its rarity on the Oak doubtless gave such sanctity to oakfed mistletoe, to say nothing of the physiological qualities assigned to it. Only one instance is known to the writer of its occurring in sculpture, that being on one of the tombs in Bristol Cathedral. Why has it not, like its host, the oak, been studied and used by the old sculptors? Many tons of it are sent off every December from Herefordshire at considerable expense to the purchasers. Some one says, 'It is a practical unpoetical time, when commonplace railway-trucks carry off romance-in the shape of Mistletoe-at so much a ton! Never mind, there is romance about it yet! It speaks of the glad meeting-place, 'Home' at merry Yule-tide! It brings back memories of 'vanished hands' that used to help us mingle its glistening berries with those of the ruddy Holly by the old Fireside! It suggests the happy laughter and untrammelled happiness of lad and lassie as they meet beneath its boughs, and . . . but we must not mention the rest in the sober pages of the Evangelical! H. W. S. WORSLEY-BENISON,

RUSKINIANA.

(Continued from p. 12.)

RIGHT AND WRONG USE OF LABOUR.

If you are a young lady, and employ a certain number of sempstresses for a given time in making a given number of simple and serviceable dresses, suppose seven of which you can wear one yourself for half the winter, and give six away to poor girls who have none, you are spending your money unselfishly. But if you employ the same number of sempstresses for the same number of days, in making four, or five, or six, beautiful flounces for your own ball-dress-flounces which will clothe no one but yourself, and which you will yourself be

unable to wear at more than one ball-you are employing your money selfishly. You have maintained, indeed, in each case, the same number of people; but in the one case you have directed their labour to the service of the community, in the other case you have consumed it wholly on yourself. I don't say you are never to do so; I don't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only, and to make yourselves as pretty as you can; only do not confuse coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you it is not so; it is what you yourselves, whether you will or no, must sometimes instinctively feel it to be—it is what those who stand shivering in the streets, forming a line to watch you as you step out of your carriages, know it to be; those fine dresses do not mean that so much has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been taken out of their mouths. The real politico-economical signification of every one of those beautiful toilettes is just this: that you have had a certain number of people put for a certain number of days wholly under your authority, by the sternest of slave-masters-hunger and cold; and you have said to them, 'I will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so many days; but during those days you shall work for me only: your little brothers need clothes, but you shall make none for them: your sick friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her: you yourself will soon need another and a warmer dress, but you shall make none for yourself. You shall make nothing but lace and roses for me; for this fortnight to come you shall work at the patterns and petals, and then I will crush and consume them away in an hour.' You will perhaps answer, 'It may not be particularly benevolent to do this, and we won't call it so; but at any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour when we pay them their wages: if we pay for their work we have a right to it.' No;a thousand times no. The labour which you have paid for does indeed become, by the act of purchase, your owu labour: you have bought the hands and the time of these workers; they are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own time. But have you a right to spend your own time, to work with your own hands, only for your own advantage?-much more, when by purchase you have invested you own person with the strength of others, and added to your own life a part of the life of others? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use their labour for your delight: remember, I am making no general assertions against splendour of dress, or pomp of accessories of life; on the contrary, there are many reasons for thinking that we do not at present attach enough importance to beautiful

CHRISTIAN TABLE-TALK.

PHILANTHROPIC BEGGARS.

We are in no sympathy with literal beggars, and Charles Lamb's Complaint of the Decay of Beggars' we accept in his whimsical spirit, and not otherwise. We are glad that the very word is opprobrious even in the dialect of the lower wageearners, as Punch reminds us in his woodcut wherein the friendly curate's twice-repeated morning greeting to the surly colliers is met by the rejoinder, 'Do yer want to hargue, yer beggar?' We exclude from present consideration the original variety of mendicant, the man or woman who resorts to this mode of getting a living as the most profitable that an unscrupulous pauper can resort to-thanks to the soft hearts and softer heads of the majority of cooks and a large proportion of mistresses, not to say masters. We dismiss therefore the whining mendicant, the canting mendicant, the sturdy beggar, and all the rest of the original species. We are meditating upon a high and exalted class, the class of excellent people who beg not for themselves, but for 'good causes' of all kinds; ladies and gentlemen, in fact, whom it would be impertinent to describe as beggars, but who accost you with a cheerful smile, and a little memorandum-book, and admit they have come a-begging.' Some people 'cannot beg,' but others seem to take as kindly to the work of financial depletion of their fellowcreatures as if descended by evolution from a leech.

Now it is a glaring fact that there exists a class of people to whom any object which is in fact, or is by them esteemed, a 'good cause,' and the aforesaid small memorandum-book, give not only courage to beg, but an air of authority, an inspiration of imperiousness, which are impressive and oppressive. It is not a request, but a demand, that they prefer. We hardly know any visitants, bent on diving into our pockets, who so shake our nerves with the conviction that escape is impossible, as the ladies with a good cause' and a twopenny memorandum-book. You make a feeble excuse about having many calls,' and follow it up by saying you will 'think the matter over;' or you proceed to extremities by suggesting that you and she should together go over your income and expenditure, and see whether the proposed assessment is a fair addition to your burdens: but, like the Ancient Mariner,' she holds you with her glittering eye.' Clerks open the door, look in, and giggle, apprehending the operation. At last the foreseen result arrives. She lets you off, perhaps, with half of the original demand, and departs ;