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NOTES AND QUERIES-FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

Notes and Queries.

H. J.-The a is long in Diana. From all we can gather, she was rather an Asiatic than a Grecian goddess. Magic seems to have been, in some way, linked with her worship in Ephesus, and the miracles which were wrought were intended to rebuke this current form of superstition. The silver shrines of Diana which Demetrius made were small models of the temple of Ephesus.

G. D.-" The love of the Spirit" in Rom. xv. 30, means, the love which the Spirit creates, the love, that is, of the brethren. The apostle urges his "brethren" to pray for him on two accounts: this is one of them. The other is, their love for the common Lord.

S. G. L.-Yes: Herodias was an ambitious, clever, shameless woman.

There is a legend that her daughter Salome, when walking on the ice, fell in, and was decapitated by the blocks of ice as they jostled together.

W. W. M.-It is as you say: the people of Capernaum wished Christ to stay with them. It was selfish, and met with a gentle rebuke.

C. C. N. Not unless you think the words of the English version are inspired.

T. B. T.-The case is hardly clear enough. State it more fully.

A. A. L. We do not think so. Herod the tetrarch is also called Antipas. He is styled "King" once, but this was a title of courtesy. He was banished to Lyons when seeking in Rome to be made King.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Facts.

Paris has 41 daily papers. Queen Victoria has 26 grandchildren. The colour, indigo-blue, is now produced from coal oil.

Milk has been found to contain one part of iron in 57,000 parts.

India is now producing over thirty million pounds of good tea annually.

The finest flour in Germany is now said to be made with glass millstones.

Chinese labourers are to be introduced into Algeria for timber cutting and mining.

There are over 1,000,000 sheep in Colorado, and over 5,000,000 head of cattle.

Australia has carried off the highest diploma for wheat at the Paris Ex

hibition.

A new guano island has been discovered off the coast of Guayaquil, Ecuador, Pacific Ocean.

Hints.

An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.-Bossuet.

The greatest difficulties are always found where we are not looking for them.-Goethe.

Make but few explanations; the character that cannot defend itself is not worth vindicating.-F. W. Robertson.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct even our friends.-Colton.

Give a man such a heart as the Son of God describes in the beatitudes, and a whole universe of sorrow cannot rob him of his blessedness.-Spurgeon.

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

When thou seest thine enemy in trouble, curl not thy whiskers in contempt; for in every bone there is marrow, and within every jacket there is a man.-Saadi.

There are men who no more grasp the truth they seem to hold than a sparrow grasps the message passing through the electric wire on which it perches.-Norman Macleod.

Gems

Truth is not drowned in water, nor burned in fire.-Oriental Proverb.

Learning is pleasurable, but doing is the height of enjoyment.-Novalis.

That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.-Quintilian.

The most beautiful thing in human life is attainment to a resemblance of the Divine.-Plato.

He who reports to you the faults of others, is likely to report your faults to others.-Oriental Proverb.

While it is so undesirable that any man should receive what he has not examined, a far more frequent danger is that of flippant irreverence.-Goethe. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide its loss.-Emerson.

Poetic Selections.

THREE TIMES THE SAME WORDS.

"Too weak," I cried, "am I to bear my pain, Life's troubled waters so against me beat, With refluent, maddened waves, I feel my feet

Lose hold of Faith's firm rock. Useless again

To struggle, crying forth to God, 'Sustain !'
It is a breath-worn cry, and is it meet
To mock His patience? Wherefore now
entreat

New strength, as surely to be spent in vain As that last given ?" But to my failing heart

Sounded a sweet voice, with instrength'ning thrill:

"Knowest thou not what conflict was the

Lord's?

He in thine every struggle hath had part. Though once thou fall, He will uphold thee still;

For three times prayed He, using the same words." -Independent.

THE INWARD EAR.

A LIGHT, a guide, a warning,
A presence ever near,

Through the deep silence of the flesh
I reach the inward ear.

My Gerizim and Ebal

Are in each human soul,
The still small voice of blessing,
And Sinai's thunder-roll.
The stern behests of duty,

The doom-books open thrown; The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, Are with yourselves alone.

-Whittier.

DRIFTING, DRIFTING. DRIFTING, drifting, to lands unknown, From a world of love and care; Drifting away to a home untried,

And a heart that is waiting there. O ship! sail swiftly-O waters deep!

Bear me safe to that haven unknownSafe to the tender love that waits

To be forever my own;

Till we drift away from the sea of life,
The tempescs of passion, the storm-winds
of strife-

Out to a haven, out to a shore
Where life is love forever more.

-Good Words.

THE VOICE WITHIN.

A VOICE to me calling-calling!

And what doth it say through the shine? "Oh, life is so vain, with its endless refrain OfThat which hath been is what cometh again,'

Till death puts the wretched 'In fine.'" A voice to me calling-calling!

And what doth it say through the gloom? "Oh, life is so sweet at the dear Lord's feet, In the light of His smile it is sequence complete,

And a door into glory, the tomb."

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY STANLEY.

STANLEY'S narrative gives us a vivid idea of travel in Africa under its best conditions; that is to say, through a country fairly known, which has been visited by white men, and is now traversed by frequent caravans. Sometimes they crossed "broad and bleak plains, where food was scarce, and clothes vanished fast," and sometimes they came to hilly countries, where the people were civil and hospitable. Sometimes they were in troublesome districts, where there were warring tribes, where the people were treacherous or hostile, and then Stanley could only sleep with his hand on his rifle. There were furious tempests, "and some days nature and man alike warred against us, while on others both seemed combined to bless us." Other troubles came to the intrepid commander and his small army, more especially that potent and untiring enemy of all African travel-Typhus. This was the enemy who menaced Stanley at Zanzibar, and never left his footsteps until he embarked at Loanda; who followed him night and day, doing his awful will upon the expedition. And so from these misfortunes-from famine and fatigue, from fever and massacre, from mutiny and death-the little army dwindled away; and it is a wonder that it did not return, or at least content itself with visiting Livingstone's country and exploring Victoria N'yanza, and return with the report which has been brought for so many centuries-that Africa continued hostile to those who came to woo her, and would not be won. Nor does it surprise us that, amid all these discouragements, the heart of Stanley should have faltered. "The expedition seemed doomed. Promises of reward, kindness, threats, punishments, had no effect." But at the same time the spirit of the leader was felt in the command. "The white men," he says, "although elected out of the ordinary class of Englishmen, did their work bravely, heroically. Though suffering from fever and dysentery, insulted by natives, marching under the heat and equatorial rain-storms, they at all times proved themselves of noble, manly natures,-stout-hearted, brave, and, better than all, true Christians." These are the men by whom empires are made; but for them there was no empire but the memory of duty well done; no trophy, no reward, unless what is to come as the reward for well-doing in the final day of account. Two of them were to sleep near the banks of Victoria N'yanza, victims of disease; the other was to be whirled into eternity over the rapids of the Congo, when his journey was almost at an end.

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY STANLEY.

Sometimes Stanley was in the wilderness without guides. This, however, seemed a happiness compared to his position when he did have guides, who betrayed him, as happened early in his expedition in Ukimbu, near the elephant country. In Ukimbu the guides ran away, and Stanley found himself on the edge of a wilderness with but ten days' provisions. He had trusted his guides, and purchased but a small quantity of food. He endeavoured to pierce the wilderness, but his track was lost in a maze of elephant and rhinoceros trails. He could only depend upon his compass. The second day found a jungle of acacia and euphorbia, through which the men had to crawl and scramble along the ground, "under natural tunnels of embracing shrubbery, cutting the convolvuli and creepers, thrusting aside stout, thorny bushes, and by various detours taking advantage of every slight opening the jungle afforded." There was no water. Overcome with hunger and thirst, the command began to straggle and faint. Some managed to reach camp, where medicine and restoratives brought them strength. Five never returned. One of them was found dead in the woods, and of the other four it is believed "they hopelessly wandered on until they also fell down and died." On the fifth day they came to a village, but the village comprised only four negroes, their wives and little ones, and had no food for such a large command. Stanley learned that there was another village twenty-nine miles away, named Suna, and he sent a picked band of twenty, the strongest and most enduring, to visit Suna and bring food. He scoured the woods for game, but there was no game. A lion's den found. In this den were two young lions, which were killed and skinned. But of what avail were two lion cubs to an expedition of starved men? Surely, here was death at last-death, defeat, annihilation; and this proud expedition which had set out so gloriously from Zanzibar, resolved to force the mystery of a continent and fight its way to the Atlantic—why, all that could happen to it was to perish in an African jungle of lions and elephants: to perish as so many had done before, leaving only the name of Stanley to be added to the sad, dismal roll of martyrs to African discovery. "Returning to camp," says Stanley, "from the fruitless hunt,-nothing in all that wilderness but the two lion cubs-"I was so struck with the pinched faces of my poor people that I could have almost wept, if I might have done so without exciting fear of our fate in their minds. I resolved to do something toward relieving the pressing needs of fierce hunger." Stanley had medical stores, which, in such an expedition, are a sacred trust. He opened a sheet-iron trunk, and made it serve as a pot. Into this pot he doled out five pounds of Scotch oatmeal-perhaps the most precious of all

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ORIGIN OF WHIG AND TORY.

his possessions and three tins of "revalenta arabica,” and made a gruel. It was a rare sight," he says, "to see these poor famine-stricken people hasten to that Torquay dress trunk and assist me to cook the huge pot of gruel; to watch them fan the fire to a fiercer heat; and, with their gourds full of water, stand by to cool the foaming liquid when it threatened to overflow." The porridge kept the expedition alive for forty-eight hours, when Stanley heard the musketry of his returning embassy coming in from Suna with food. "The grain was most greedily seized by the hungry people, and so animating was the report of the purveyors that the soldiers, one and all, clamoured to be led away that afternoon."

ORIGIN OF WHIG AND TORY.

WHIG and Tory are old party names in English and American history. The Tories, during the American War of Independence, were those who favoured English rule, and the Whigs were advocates of the independence of the Colonies. In England the Whigs have always been known as the defenders of rights popular, while the advocates of the rights of the Crown and the Church have been called Tories. Mr. Lecky, in his recent "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," gives a curious account of the origin of these party names.

A Tory, he says, was originally an Irish robber, and the term was applied by the notorious Titus Oates to those who disbelieved in the Popish plot. It was afterwards extended to the Irish Catholics who opposed the Exclusion Bill, cutting off the Duke of York from succession to the throne. Then it was gradually used to include the whole body of those who supported the pretensions of King and Church against the claims of the people.

The term Whig came from the Scotch Presbyterians. Some consider it a nick-name given to the Cameronians, from their use of "whey" or refuse milk, on account of their poverty. Others derive it from "Whiggam," a word employed by Scotch cattledrivers of the West in driving their horses. It soon came to include all who oppose royal or Church usurpations of power.

Some, more fanciful than learned, have seen in the name an acrostic, which expressed the pious hope and trust of those who "resisted unto blood "the tyranny of kings and ecclesiastics. Whig, such say, is composed of the first letters of the following sentence: "We hope in God."

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