NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 224, 26 February 1875, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(From the Spectator.') The Rev Richard Temple West has created a greater sensation amongst the Episcopate than even the lad in the German tale who carried a golden goose possessing the property of drawing after it all who touched its owner, including priests and bishops ; and ', yet he really does not seem to have been at aware of the power of the amulet he wielded. ] He stated at a clerical meeting that after the ( defeat of the attempt to rescind the appeal j given by the Public Worship Regulation 1 Bill, in its revised form, from the Bishops to < the Archbishop, Mr Gladstone said to the .j Bishops of Ely and Winchester, "If this < appeal to the Archbishop is carried, then I \ am perfectly free as to Disestablishment" ; i that this threat alarmed the Bishops, and ( that urgent telegrams were sent in all direc- t tions to bring them up to vote against the t clause, the formula being " Come up and vote 1 on the appeal ; Disestablishment touched e by it." Whereupon, some tranquil-minded i Bishop replied, " "Very sorry, I can't come ; g have got a garden party." Upon reading v this story, the Bishops began to write to the s papers. The Bishop of Oxford had never f heard of such a telegram. The Bishop of t Winchester had "no means of knowing" h whether Mr West had " heard or invented " e his statement, but did know that it was t untrue. The Bishop of Peterborough—who h is not usually excited about nothing—re- n garded Mr West's conduct as a "refinement f] in the art of false accusation, more to be e admired for its ingenuity than imitated for d its morality." In fact, the Bishops were o almost as much fluttered as if the excuse 0 of the garden party had reminded them of c the excuses offered in the parable for not t; coming to the Great King's supper—which, a however, can hardly have been a " type" of tj a division in the House of Lords. Mr n West foolishly inquired, a day after the fair, g< indeed not till the Episcopal shots began h to whistle round him, into the authenticity of his story, and found apparently d that it had none, which he mipht have anti- v cipated. But there is no reason on that r< account to treat his fable as so very wicked. » He told an on dit, in a loose sort of way, w without verifying it, it is true. But it took ti< no one's reputation away, not even the im- ti

aginary Bishop's with the garden party, still less the Bishop of Winchester's or Ely's. But the Bishops are evidently suffering on the nerves just now. Perhaps the complete secrecy in which Mr Disraeli's ecclesiastical intentions are still veiled it too much for them, and hysteria is coming on. A women's suffrage meeting took place recently at Hanover Square rooms, Sir Robert Anstruther, M.P., in the chair. The chairman declared that no other public cause had advanced with such rapid strides since Mr John Stuart Mill first advocated it in Parliament, and he proceeded to give reasons for the rapidity of that advance. But would it not have been better first to establish the fact of the advance before looking for ihe explanation of it ? Is it not possible that the investigation of reasons may turn out something like that asked for by Charles 11. from the Roypl Society, namely, the reason why a lub of water with a living fish in it weighs no heavier than the tub of water without the fish ? Sir R. Anstruther's only evidence for the assumption of a rapid advance, was that the Times has recently written, though not favourably, yet respectfully, and with a good deal of candour, of the case for the concession of women's suffrage,—which is quite true ; but it hardly follows that because the Times has committed the subject to an able man who knows what he is about, and does not choose to affect a contempt he does not feel, therefore the country is becoming more favorable to the proposal. Sir R. Anstruther added that the Government would do well to take up the Women's Suffrage measure, and " he believed they would do so," —the strongest evidence he could have given that the Conservatives think of female suffrage as a new guarantee for Conservative victories. Sir R. Anstruther was himself favorable to admitting women even into the House of Commons, and unquestionably both that, and the admission of married women to the suffrage, are logical corollaries of the rather infinitesimal instalment of female rights at present proposed. The same may be said of their admission into the Army and Navy, to which, if we interpret rightly Sir R. Anstruther's panegyric on women's physical strength, he himself is favorable. Were only all the advocates of women's suffrage equally frank and logical the movement of the women's suffrage fraction would be rapid indeed, but rapidly retrograde. The " Shakers " in the New Forest seem to be undergoing a very painful trial of their faith. It seems that these persons, who hold curious views as to the immorality of selling their own products to the world, though they do not object to buy at times what they need—therein grounding themselves on the example of Christ—had a large house and thirty acres of good land near Lymington, purchased with the money of a lady of property, Miss Wood, who joined their community a year or two ago. Their leader is a Mrs Girling, and they are sometimes called Girlingites. With their peculiar views, they have very naturally failed in the management of this land, have had to mortgage it, did not pay the interest on the mortgage, and, no notice having been taken by them of the writ of ejectment, the community were ejected by the sheriff's officers, and sat quietly down by the roadside to wait for the Lord's help, on which they entirely rely. There are 140 of these poor people in all, and they are now permitted to make use of a barn as a shelter from the cold weather, for they do not seem to intend making any effort for their own living. Apparently they worked for themselves, while they still held the property, though not to much effect; but they cannot fall into the world's ways of work, and would rather watt for the end than do so. It is a strange and perhaps the most painful of all kinds of superstition to see at work—this absolute quietism, which stands aside for God to intervene without my result but the enduring silence. Evidently these Shakers are a pure and harmless folk. Some clever thief, aware that Lord Dudley is fond of jewels, china, and all kinds of portable property, has stolen Lady Dudley's travelling jewel-case, with about £25,000 in stones within it. Miss Scott, one of her ladyship's women, it appears, took the case in a cab to Paddington station, put it on the pavement for a moment, and her attention being distracted, missed it. Lord Dudley has offered a reward of £IOOO, and promised to treat all communications as confidential, for which he has been soundly and deservedly rated by the daily press, which reminds him of the law against that species of advertisement. Perhaps, however, his lordship does not mind the loss; He has bits of china in his collection which cost nearly as much, and which an active rat could break with the greatest ease. A correspondent of the Times, who signs himself "C. J. G.," gives some curious practical evidence of what on scientific grounds must, we take it, be regarded as certain, —that there are in this world numbers of sounds within the range of human hearing, which, from the character or number of the vibrations on which they depend, are never heard by man. "C. J. G." states that he himself raised a few years ago from the caterpillar stage a female tiger-moth, and -put it in a gauze cage in a smoking-room opening into a town garden; yet in less than two hours no less than five male tiger-moths flew to the cage, and this though no flutter of the wings or other sound was audible to the human ear. "Set "C.J. G." had sat in the same room with a window open and a light burning hundreds of nights without ever seeing a tiger-moth in the room. He infers very rationally that the insect made some peculiar noise, inaudible to our ears, by which the other moths were attracted. We suspect that different kinds of Jdogs hear different kinds of sounds, some of them inaudible to us, though quite within our range of hearing. One dog will howl dismally at the netes of a piano, and another, its companion, though quite indifferent to the piano, will howl equally dismally at the sounds of a musical-box which do not at all affect the first. Is it not very likely that the ear of each of them is sensitive to vibrations which do not affect us at all, but some of which Duly affect one, and some, again, only the other ? The Norse god who declared that he 3ould hear the grass grow, probably maintained do more than many an insect could affirm, if it could affirm anything, with truth. Nay, even the undulations of light may themselves be exquisite symphonies to some ears, —the ears, for instance, which fieard "the morning stars sing together." The hospital for the treatment of women's liseases by women, hitherto established on a rery small scale in Seymour place, Edgware ■oad, is about to be enlarged. Two very jood houses, 222 and 224, Marylebone road, were purchased during the autumn, and aiv iow undergoing the necessary alterations to it them for a hospital holding thirty beds,

Of course money is urgently needed for the charitable work. The opposition by the great Medical Trades Union to women's cooperation in a department not only peculiarly fitted for them, but which, so far as skilled nursing is concerned, has been recognised by medical men as in a very special sense their own, for generations back, has been so violent and so perverse, that even against this modest attempt there will be much and bitterly hostile prejudice; This it will take a good deal of energy to overcome. The week ending 12th December was as unfavorable to old people as the week ending sth December. The average for that week in London rose 33 per cent, and half the excess is attributed to bronchitis, which killed 465 people, against an average of 244 for the same week in the previous ten years. Tn 211 cases the victims were over sixty, and the cause of their deaths is believed to have been the excessive changeability of the temperature. A sudden fall of even lOdeg is often dangerous, and as we have tried to explain elsewhere people often expose themselves voluntarily, by mismanagement of their fires, to a fall of 18deg. A correspondent of the Times, who signs himself " C.R.8.," Jmakes a timely suggestion to the poor who keenly feel the cold just now, and who cannot afford additional blankets. It is that they should sleep with a Times' supplement or two spread beneath the quilt —even a penny paper would do, if it did not tear so easily—the paper acting as a very powerful non-conductor of heat. We happen to know that the expedient is effectual enough—indeed, that in less cold weather than we have lately had the complaint of it is that it is too effectual, that the paper blanket is oppressively hot. The crinkling sound would be annoying for a time : but a halfpenny blanket is too cheap to carp at on grounds like these. It is quite conceivable that the newspaper may yet become more popular as a sheet to prevent the diffusion of warmth, than as a sheet to promote the diffusion of kuowledge. Lord Acton's reply to the criticisms on his charge against Fenelon does not show his usual candour. The sting of that charge lay in two words. Lord Acton wrote, in reference to Fenelon's mode of treating the Pope's condemnation, " He publicly accepted the judgment as the voice of God. He declared that he adhered to the decree absolutely and without a shadow of reserve, and there were no bounds to his submission. In private, he wrote that his opinions were perfectly orthodox and remained unchanged, that his opponents were in the wrong, and that .Borne was getting religion into peril." Now, the real accusation there is contained in the contrast between the words "in public" and in '• private." What they imply is, that Fenelon held one doctrine to the world and another to his intimates. That is precisely what has been disproved, and what Lord Acton in his letter to the Times of last Saturday makes no attempt even to sustain. He shows what the Roman Catholic apologists of Fenelon not only admitted, but maintained, that Fenelon did not believe himself to have been in error at all in his real view, —that the condemnation applied not to what he really held, but to the language in which he had inadvertently clothed his meaning. But what is more, Lord Acton now shows that Fenelon's language was explicitly understood in this sense, not merely by his private friends, but by the Pope, by the Bishop of Meaux, by the public authorities of the Church. If that be so, surely Lord Acton's charge that Fenelon held one language publicly and another privately, falls at once to the ground, and yet he neither regrets it nor withdraws it, but says that his new extracts leave nothing in it " unproved." They do leave the one material thing not merely unproved, but disproved,—the insinuation of duplicity. Lord Acton says that he never charged Fenelon with " equivocation." Perhaps not. But he did charge him with saying one thing to the world at large and another to his friends. That accusation he has dropped, and indeed actually shown to be untrue, but he has not retracted, and in words has even reaffirmed it.

On Sunday, December 11th, Dr Colenso was to have preached for Mr Stopford Brooke at St James's, York street, but he was prevented doing so by a virtual, though not formal, inhibition of the Bishop of London's. Dr Jackson did what we suppose he held to be a disagreeable duty in the mildest possible way, by writing to Mr Brooke to say that he had seen the advertisement of the intended sermon, and that he hoped the intention would be quietly given up, as otherwise he should be obliged to inhibit the Bishop from preaching there. Mr Brooke in communicating the disappointment to his congregation, added that, in his private letter, Bishop Jackson " spoke almost with fervour of his sympathy with the efforts the Bishop of Natal had made to bring about justice in the colony over which he was bishop." We have discussed elsewhere the moral right of the Bishops to close in this way the mouths of clergymen of the Church of England who have never been convicted of any heresy, and probably could not be convicted of any before the only ecclesiastical tribunals which have any authority to pronounce on this matter in the British Empire. We may add here that the notion of Dr Colenso leading astray the flock of Mr Stopford Brooke is a preposterous one. Amongst the rationalisers of the Church of England, assuredly Dr Colenso does not by any means lead the advanced gunrd.