ate in a vacuum; the process continues till there is a complete disappearance of the oxygen dissolved in the serum, and of that which is fixed in the hæmaglobin. If this explanation is correct, the experiment ought to succeed, even when the blood is separated from the yeast diffused in water or serum by means of a membrane permeable to gas and to liquids, but capable of preventing all direct contact between the yeast-cells and the red globules. This is, in fact, what takes place. I have thus been able, by arranging a suitable apparatus, to imitate artificially that which takes place in the organs and tissues of animals, when the red and oxygenated arterial blood traverses the network of capillary vessels, and passes out into the veins under the form of black and partially deoxygenated blood.

For this purpose, it is only necessary to cause red blood to circulate slowly through a sufficiently long system of hollow tubes, the walls of which are formed of thin gold-beaters' skin, which is immersed in a mixture of yeast diffused in fresh serum, without globules, kept at 35° C. (95° F.).

We see the red blood pass out black and venous at the other extremity. A confirmatory experiment, made at the same time, with a system of tubes precisely similar, but immersed in serum without yeast, proves that yeast is indispensable for thus rapidly effecting the deoxidation of the blood. This experiment is the exact representation of what takes place in the animal organism, with the exception of the perfect method employed by nature to multiply contacts and surfaces.

In the latter case, the cellular and histological elements of the tissues play the part of the yeast; they absorb the oxygen dissolved in the plasmic liquids which bathe them, and constantly tend to bring down to zero their oxymetric condition. The oxygen, but feebly fixed in the hemaglobin, re-establishes the equilibrium by a series of gaseous diffusions from the red globules to the plasm of the blood, and from the plasm of the blood to that of the organs. These continual diffusions are the inevitable consequence of the disturbance of equilibrium produced by the aëration of the organic cells, or of the cells of yeast in the experiment just described.

All these facts, then, prove distinctly that yeast breathes when placed in contact with dissolved oxygen. The measure of the respiratory power, under the most favourable conditions, shows us this respiration to be as active, and even more so, than that of fishes."

M. Schützenberger sometimes rather staggers one with apparent inconsistency. Thus in one place he says distinctly, "there is really no chemical vital force." Yet in another we find this passage :

"No one doubts that in organic living cells, whether they be isolated, like those of yeast, or form an integral part of a more complicated organism, there resides a special force, capable of producing chemical reactions under conditions quite different from those which we employ in our laboratories, and to produce results of the same class. This force, which we imagine to be as material as heat, reveals to us its activity by decompositions effected on complex molecules. Whether we reduce the problem to the action of a soluble product elaborated by the organic ferment, and to which it has communicated its power, or suppose that the whole of the ferment exercises an action of this kind, we ultimately arrive at a motion communicated, more or less directly, by vital force, and dependent on it."

This vital force, which the author here says "we imagine to be as material as heat," is elsewhere positively asserted to be "as material as all those which we are accustomed to utilize." Mere imagination is rather slender ground for professedly scientific assertion, and we are surprised it should even be alleged in a work of this nature.

Terra Incognita; or, The Convents of the United Kingdom. By John Nicholas Murphy, author of "Ireland, Industrial, Political, and Social."-London, Burns & Oates. 1876. We noticed at some length

*

the first edition of this work, when it appeared, some three years ago. The present is a "popular edition," with several new chapters, and the statistics of convents in the United Kingdom brought down to the present day. The spirit in which Mr. Murphy writes is highly commendable, while his object is laudable. Great ignorance and prejudice, he affirms, prevail in Protestant minds. on the subject of conventual institutions, and he is anxious "to dissipate the mists and darkness that envelope the truth." No doubt the great body of Mr. Murphy's statistical information may be taken as perfectly reliable, but the contents of his volume do not realize the idea conveyed by its title. The terra incognita is not revealed to us. We are not led through the unknown land, and permitted to explore its mysteries.

We are supplied, in the first instance, with very partial and imperfect sketches of the origin of monks and nuns; of early British and Irish Monachism, and of ancient religious orders; a list of convents is given, with their characteristics, rules, and constitutions; but, as regards the inner life, the terra incognita of such institutions as are not devoted to the active charities of life, we have absolutely no information whatever. We have, it is true, Mr. Murphy's general assertion that there is no unhappiness in conventual life-that "there is no life happier than that of a nun;" but it is impossible to credit this, and consider such establishments so entirely free from abuses as he would represent them, unless we utterly discredit and repudiate a vast body of Roman Catholic testimony respecting the operation of monastic and conventual institutions in Roman Catholic countries. One great fact stands before us

that there is not a single Roman Catholic country in the whole world which has not been compelled to exercise some sort of supervising authority over such institutions. The conclusion to which this fact inevitably leads is irresistible—that had not serious abuses existed no such authority would ever have been exercised.

There is a very wide distinction to be drawn between monastic and conventual institutions whose inmates, engaged in the active charities of life, enjoy a comparative freedom as regards vows and action, and those established the inmates of which take vows for life, and are practically dead to the world. In his chapter on "Objections to Convents," Mr. Murphy has failed even to notice those which have been urged, not against such as are charitable or educational institutions, but against such as bind their inmates by perpetual vows, immure them in what may be hopeless confinement, and maintain, respecting their internal discipline and government, an impenetrable mystery.

Mr. Murphy has failed to see, or at least to notice, that public policy is involved that the State has duties to perform to its subjects. -that rights are relative. In return for allegiance the State is bound to maintain personal rights inviolate, and the simple question is, how can the proper performance of such unavoidable duty be reconciled with the State permitting institutions to exist wherein its subjects may possibly be immured against their will. No one can rationally hold that such confinement is impossible-is it not, therefore, the imperative duty of the State to inspect, and, if necessary, to protect?

Rightly considered, the matter of

religion does not enter into this question at all. It is not because convents are established and conducted as Roman Catholic institutions that a right of inspection by the State should be exercised. That right exists entirely apart from any form of religious belief. There are now several conventual institutions established for charitable purposes on professedly Protestant foundations; we are not aware, however, of there being any that require their inmates to take Vows involving rigid seclusion for life; but were there such, the mere profession of Protestantism should not exclude them from inspection by the State-should not deprive the inmates of that protection against imprisonment for life

which it is the duty of the State to afford.

Thus, the question is not one of mere religious belief, but broadly and simply one of public policy. Is it consistent with the preservation of the natural rights of subjects that institutions should exist in a free country under the sole irresponsible control of private parties, or Churches, in which persons are bound by vows to confine themselves for life, without the State adopting such precautions as will ensure that the confinement is entirely voluntary and in no wise compulsory?

This is the real question at issue, and with its decision the mere form of religious profession has nothing whatever to do.

THE state of life and the progress of politics in the far Orient have, at all times indeed, a very especial claim on our attention. Not merely on the universal-brotherhood principle of philosophers, which, as far as the East is from the West, would unite all men on the common ground of humanity, but as drawn still closer to our Asiatic fellows within the magic ring of one imperial crown. Now, too, the feverish progress of events in Turkey-the one, so to speak, oriental kingdom in Europe-invests all the circumstances of their law, politics, and religion with a deeper interest. We have a nearer kindred, a greater similarity, with all the other European nations, Russia, perhaps, excepted. We can, as the tide of history rolls on, argue from them to ourselves and vice versá, and guess at the hidden springs of action and character.

But, to theorize with any degree of probability on Mohammedan forms of government, to under

stand the development of their moral and social life, we have to leave our own standpoint, and search sympathetically into the causes which underlie the distinc tive forms which influence them most strongly.

Sympathetically, for there is no use in studying such questions from the outside. By looking at the dialplate of a clock we can watch the progress of the hour hand, but if we would understand the how and the why of its motion, we must know something of the machinery behind.

Sir Rutherford Alcock, in a paper on our Colonial Empire, quotes the remark made in a Parliamentary speech by Mr. Forster, that "ideas rule the world." Commenting thereon, he says, "Then it is

essential to take note of such ideas. In the dealings of Western Powers with the East, it will be found that a knowledge of the leading ideas of Eastern races, and of the influences most constant with their rulers, constitutes the

best foundation for successful policy."

"Their common faith in the Koran and its precepts as of Divine authority, is stronger even than race affinities, and makes common cause against all giaours and infidels."

Thus the Koran is one of the sources where we are to seek for some of these ruling "leading ideas." One of these, perhaps the very chiefest, is the idea, the ineffaceable impression, left on every chapter of the Koran, of its author, Mohammed. Louis XIV. used to say "L'état c'est moi"-Mohammed, with far greater truth, might have said "The Koran is myself." To quote from Dean Stanley's "Eastern Church," "it is to the Mussulman, in one sense, far more than the Bible is to the Christian. It is his code of laws, his creed, and, to a great extent, his liturgy."

Thus in the Koran we find at once the mainspring and the complex machinery which it sets in motion.

"If," observes Mr. Bosworth Smith, "our Scriptures are they which testify of Christ,' here (in the Koran), if anywhere, we have a mirror of one of the Master-spirits of the world, often inartistic, incoherent, self-contradictory, dull, but impregnated with a few grand ideas which stand out from the whole, a mind seething with the inspiration pent within it, 'intoxicated with God,' but full of human weaknesses from which he never pretended, and it is his lasting glory that he never pretended, to be free." *

The Arabs had a proverb that "Mohammed's character is the Korān," He himself used to call it his one "standing miracle," and

used to appeal to it as the proof of his mission. There may be differences of opinion as to its style. The Prophet himself said (Korān, Sura XVII.), "If men and genii. were assembled together that they might produce a book like the Koran, they must fail." The Moslem world fully endorses this judgment. They challenge the world to rival this book, this "Reading," "Thing to be read," as its name implies. They think it impious to translate it. “We hear of Mahometan doctors that had read it seventy thousand times." t

By Europeans of the Aryan race, the book is generally regarded as almost unreadable. Mr. Bosworth Smith tells us that Bunsen, Sprenger, and Renan found the task of reading it through all but impossible, and for himself, after reading it through repeatedly, he pronounces that "dulness is, to a European who is ignorant of Arabic, the prevailing characteristic of the book, until he begins to make a minute study of it." Mr. Carlyle's verdict is, "I must say it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook.

.. Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran." Such is this strange book to Mohammedans, and such to Christians. Most probably no degree of insight would awaken us to the enthusiasm of the Moslem for his book, but is there an "open, Sesame" which would admit us to a better vantage-point of study?

It seems to us that sympathy is the clue, as we said before; and of this we find an apt illustration in Mr. Carlyle himself. To him, after all, it is not unintelligible how the Arabs could so love it. Behind "the confused coil" he begins to