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because they left the body plunged in refined debauchery. Both had greatly erred. Neither the extinction nor the idealisation of the body satisfies the highest conceptions of humanity. Drink deeply, says the oracle of the Holy Bottle, at the spring of science and of learning, for all the abuses of society are the monstrous brood of ignorance; seize not on one or the other side of man's dual being, but cultivate the whole of humanity and not this or that part. Let spirit and body pursue the same end in unison; exercise all the faculties at once, spiritual as well as animal, immaterial as well as sensual; labour to attain the true wisdom, but disdain not to pluck the flowers of enjoyment that bloom by the way. Accept life cheerfully, not sadly. Draw from the senses whatever of pleasure they have to offer; kiudle the mind with all that the heart possesses of passion and of enthusiasm; but permit not the spirit to be overwhelmed by that which is its vehicle; suffer not the soul to be degraded by the mere gratification of sensual appetites, or chilled by the exclusive culture of the intellect, or stunted by withdrawal from the practical affairs of men. Refuse not the wisdom of antiquity, but pay it no extravagant reverence, lest the learning of the ancients become a burden rather than an aid. Use it as the foundation on which to build, each one for himself raising his own edifice, independently and unhampered by his predecessors. Culture alone will quicken the mental vision, so that men may see by what mists of ignorance they are blinded. Till culture is spread abroad universally, the leisured, refined ataraxia of the Abbey of Theleme must necessarily remain a vain, impossible dream. And, meanwhile, what is the true Pantagruelian philosophy? Acquiesce in the present, says Rabelais, so far as it is unalterable; pay no heed to the contest between the bigots of Rome and Geneva, for their strife is as meaningless as the bells of the Ringing Island, as void of living warmth as the frozen words that fell on the deck of Pantagruel's ship. Drink ever at the fount of science; strive to the utmost to help forward the cause of progress by spreading abroad learning and culture; and preserve une certaine gaieté d'esprit confite en mespris des 'choses fortuites,' for the true Pantagruelian philosopher ever maintains a spirit of jollity pickled in scorn of for'tune.'

Rabelais will always retain the fresh interest which he derives from his intellectual connexion, through the Renaissance and the Reformation, with the French Revolution. Of

that momentous movement he is the earliest harbinger. His doctrine of human liberty was not far removed from the theory of return to Nature, seeing that both were based on enthusiasm for the natural goodness of humanity. But Rabelais not only supplied his countrymen with great dynamic ideas; he also gave them the forms in which they might be expressed. His services to the French vernacular tongue are so incalculably great that they cannot here be wholly ignored. When he began to write, the grammar of his native tongue was in complete confusion; verbs were conjugated differently according to the custom of each province; words were disguised beyond detection by the fashion of the day, the caprice of individual writers, or the lawlessness of dialects; spelling and pronunciation were entirely divorced. Before the powers and proper use of the letters or the original roots of the language could be ascertained, it was necessary to study the patois. It was in this respect especially that Rabelais was the predecessor of the great French grammarians, a pioneer of discovery in fields where Ramus and the Estiennes subsequently laboured. But it was not in grammar that Rabelais did his most useful work. When he began to write, French prose was not only ungrammatical, but in style involved, slow-moving, heavy, and in command of words meagre and poverty-stricken. Bringing to bear upon his style a mind trained in the niceties of the classics, he gave his prose epigrammatic neatness and supple flexibility, secured simple and logical forms for his constructions, studied the balance of his phrases, added point and energy to his sentences. Above all, he bestowed upon the language its richness and its amplitude of resource. Collectively, French dialects were wealthy, individually they were poor. There was no vernacular official language, for Latin was the language of the Church and the law-courts. Each group within the langue d'oil and the langue d'oe was infinitely divided, so that speech varied as you passed from province to province, village to village, and even from one part of a city to another. Travelling, as Rabelais did, from one end of France to the other, everywhere registering the sayings of the fields, the streets, the markets, and the taverns, he was peculiarly qualified to effect the requisite work of accumulation. Not only did he seek new creations in coinages from Greek, Latin, and Italian, but he gathered together all the original resources of the different dialects. He saw that the best mode of reviving the strength of the language was to bring back into use the pictu

resque phrases and lively idioms of the provinces, to restore the almost obsolete words on which the popular imagination had stamped its energetic impress. Here is an oath from Lorraine, here an affirmation from Champagne, here a salute from the shores of the Mediterranean, here an interrogative from Provence, here a descriptive epithet from Normandy. But naturally he is peculiarly rich in the patois of the centre, and especially of Touraine, Anjou, and Poitou. If space permitted, a curious collection of words might be compiled from Pantagruel' which may still be heard in the Garden of France. Nothing escaped his far-reaching net. Every word that was coined in the esprit gaulois to discriminate nice shades of character, to satirise, ridicule, or banter, Rabelais has saved from loss and preserved for future use. It is not the least of his claims to the gratitude of his countrymen-and it is one which will be most universally conceded-that he so enriched and amplified the literary resources of his native tongue that the civilised world is content to be the debtor of France.

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ART. VI.-1. Krakatau. Par M. VERBEEK. Publié par ordre de Son Excellence le Gouverneur Général des Indes Néerlandaises. Batavia: 1884 and 1885. Paris: 1885 and 1886.

2. The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena. Report of a Committee appointed by the Royal Society. 4to. 1888.

3. Untersuchungen über Dämmerungserscheinungen zur Erklärung der nach dem Krakatau-Ausbruch beobachteten atmosphärischoptischen Störung. Von J. KIESSLING. Hamburg and Leipzig: 1888.

4. Osservazioni e Studii dei Crepuscoli Rossi, 1883-6. Dal Professore Riccò. Estratto degli Annali della Meteorologia Italiana,' Parte I. 1885.

ACCOUNTS of the great eruption ascribed to Skaptá Jökull

in Iceland, in the year 1783, and of subsequent atmospheric appearances, bring before us, with some degree of detail, the more obvious character of those phenomena, but a comparison with the recently issued volumes dealing with the outburst of Krakatoa serves to mark the wide stretches of intellectual territory which the energy of scientific research

has, within a century, added to human knowledge. To the poet Cowper the strange aspect of the heavens was 'portentous, unexampled, unexplained;' the present generation has learnt that the recent phenomena of 1883 were neither unexampled, except in magnitude, nor portentous, nor, except in a remote sense, unexplained. Both of these tremendous catastrophes occurred within the most active volcanic regions of the earth's crust; both were preceded by manifestations of strong activity, but insufficient to produce alarm, and both arose from places which had long been more or less quiescent and undreaded. The submarine volcano off the south-west cape of Iceland, which had been burning for weeks before the outburst on the mainland in the following June, corresponds with the Strombolian condition of Krakatoa in the months of June and July 1883, when columns of vapour were rising from two craters on the island, with occasional violent detonations. In the case of Krakatoa, however, the grand explosion of the end of August had been preceded by a considerable eruption on May 20 and three following days. The terrible earthquakes which desolated Calabria in February 1783 had no parallel in the eastern hemisphere in 1883, though there does appear to be evidence of an unusual prevalence of earthquakes in the neighbourhood of Sunda Strait, which might, after the event, be regarded as premonitory of the approaching destruction.

The islands of Java and Iceland have throughout historic times been remarkable for the number and activity of their volcanoes, and for the calamities which have overtaken their inhabitants. The Tenger mountain in Java, one of the largest volcanoes in the world, measures four and a half by three and a half miles in diameter, and, like a lunar crater, contains volcanic peaks within its arena, a plain covered with shifting sand. In 1772, the volcano Papandayang threw out an immense quantity of scoria and ashes in one night, and covered an area of seven miles in diameter with a layer nearly fifty feet thick. But perhaps the most suddenly violent eruption on record was that of Galungoon, a few miles from Papandayang, on October 8, 1822. At noon all was peaceful and quiet in the thriving districts around; soon after midday a dense mass rapidly rose into the air with appalling noise, and in a few minutes the whole landscape was plunged in darkness, pierced only by incessant flashes of lightning. Stones and sand, which had been projected to an enormous height, covered up and destroyed almost everything within a radius of twenty miles. On the 12th, another

eruption of equal intensity followed, a large part of the mountain was broken off, and blocks of basalt were thrown to a distance of seven miles. By such manifestations, and the great number of craters within its area, Java came to be regarded as the chief focus of volcanic activity on the surface of the globe.

In our own hemisphere Iceland has probably no equal in the frequency and violence of its eruptions, and it may well be doubted whether a land so fatally subject to the worst influences of frost and fire should be allowed to retain its present struggling and dwindling population.

The eruption of 1783, above alluded to, is stated in most geological treatises to have belonged to the frozen mountain of Skaptá, but in reality issued from a large number of craters to the south-west, north and east of Mont Laki.* Immense masses of pumice and lava were thrown out; some of the stones fell at a distance of about seventy miles. The lava streams were more extensive than any single eruption had before produced in historic times, and their volume, according to Lyell, considerably exceeded that of Mont Blanc. Pumice covered the sea for long distances, and ashes fell in the north of Scotland. For months afterwards a thick dry mist spread over Europe. In Italy objects at a distance of three miles could not be distinguished, the sun was invisible near the horizon, and red or pale like the moon during the daytime, and the nights were strangely luminous.

The great eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 entered the violent stage on August 26, producing effects in the neighbourhood which must have been quite appalling. The sky presented the most terrible appearance, fierce flashes of lightning pene trating the dense masses of cloud over the island, clouds of black matter were rushing across the sky, rapidly recurring detonations like discharges of artillery, with a crackling noise in the atmosphere, were heard continuously, and large pieces of pumice, quite warm, rained down at a distance of ten miles. At a point seventy-six miles from Krakatoa, the height of the black cloud projected from the volcano was estimated at seventeen miles. At forty miles distance this cloud looked like an immense wall with bursts of forked lightning at 'times like large serpents rushing through the air.' Balls of fire (corposants) rested on the mastheads and on the extremities of the yard-arms. During the night the intense darkness was relieved by a peculiar pinky flame' which

* Smithsonian Report, 1885, Part i.

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