'Initials-humph! Dr. Pliable too-if now (and he raised his wine to the light) if now, dum vivimus vivamus.' But the lady took offence at the Latin, and flung out of the room; muttering, however, as she went, something about trifling with sacred things.' Things, indeed,' soliloquized the gentleman, with a very strongly marked emphasis upon the former word. More I know not, nor care to know. Neither do I admire this husband; I rather blame him. To be sure ridicule has its uses; and you shall sometimes see persons who could in no wise have been reasoned into wisdom, driven remorselessly from their follies amidst peals of inextinguishable laughter: but this course with the wife of one's heart! No, I think there could have been no children in that house. What of this poor lady, however, and her sacred things?' Are 'things' made sacred' at so cheap a rate? May one appropriate them to holy uses with that easy nonchalance? Is there, in short, such virtue in two letters of the alphabet? 'Who can doubt it?' cries Abavunculus. Remember the late Master of the Mint. Is his fatal experiment on our coinage already forgotten? How many years have passed since his omission of " D.G." from the florin caused the potato-rot?' Ho, Abavunculus, is that you? I cry you mercy. Well, we will pass on, then, giving you the full benefit of your example. Yet, surely, these and the like magical letters-nay, the words themselves in full-have not always the same consecrating power. Thus there is one Henry, who is, as he alleges, by divine providence' (or D.V.), Bishop of Exeter; and there is one John Bird, who is likewise, by divine providence,' so he writes it (or D.V.), Archbishop of Canterbury: yet have these three words produced upon the two prelates, respectively, such opposite effects, that one excommunicates the other without mercy, thinking him, I suppose, anything but divine. Perhaps those very words incited the fiery Hotspur of the Church to take up arms against his liege lord. I doubt exceedingly if he would have ventured upon that thick pamphlet of defiance without them. In like manner, as I have been informed, must the Italian brigand procure St. Anthony's blessing for his steed, if he would cut throats with an easy mind. Destitute of that, he will be slow to run any considerable risk, or to engage in any enterprise of moment, lest, either in the attempt itself, or in the flight from justice, his unholy horse should stumble, and leave his master in the lurch; but, let him get that, and he will shoot his man without compunction, relying with confidence upon the efficacy of the good saint's blessing to keep Bucephalus upon his legs. Of a truth, Abavunculus, there are things done upon the earth every day, which not even all the forty letters of the Servian alphabet itself would avail to sanctify. There are many different versions of D.V.' The shipowners have used one from time immemorial; and the curious in such matters may find the printed form of it on all bills of lading to the present hour. Was it in abeyance, I wonder, during the period of the slave-trade? More modern, however, and in some respects more venial, is the version of Blackletter, the bookseller, who, having thriven, let us hope, in his present occupation, is minded to engage a larger shop, and who thus announces his intention in his last catalogue :- Notice. E. Blackletter intends (if permitted) to remove to much larger premises before Christmas.' But whoso would see this practice in perfection, let him repair forthwith to Mohammedan countries. The genuine religious man of the East, when shown a fine horse, or introduced to his host's son, says 'Mashallah' (what the Lord pleases); or when about to do anything whatever, says a lively writer about Scinde-e.g. to light his pipe, sip his coffee, rise from his divan, &c.-utters sonorously Bismillah' (in the name of the Lord). How astonished Pliable would be, now, if we should write him down a Mohammedan! In truth, one scarcely knows which to prefer the Jewish superstition, which would not so much as write the Divine name; the Mohammedan, which uses it as a prelude to the lighting of a pipe; or the pseudo-Christian, which thinks it sufficient to indicate the same upon handbills by means of two letters. O Pliable, Pliable! You often read with due cadence and inflexion the fiery words of the old Hebrew prophets; but what would these men have to say to your curt and irreverent familiarity with the Divine name? Will a man rob God? Will he cut down the Infinite to 'D.V.'? Will he amuse himself with brachygraphy in presence of his Maker? Will he enclose the mighty and exuberant Source of all that is within the briefest possible parenthesis? Will he abbreviate-? But you begin to look confused, my friend; perhaps you had better go to the meeting at once, and take the chair, leaving us to finish the article without you as best we may. Whereupon, exit Pliable; Veridicus shouting after him at the top of his voice, and less kindly than could be wished, Let D. V. mean henceforth, Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt!' . Were the Pliables of the day the only persons who sanctioned this cursory mock homage, it would be simply contemptible; but there are many better men, who, whether from blind habit, or from sincere hazy piety, do the same; some few perhaps who translate the language of their own hearts, at times, into D.V.' These men I must respect; for have not I too a keen conviction, that only in the present, and not in the past, nor in the future, can we truly live? Otherwise assuredly these trifles had never been written. When the grey-haired peasant, therefore, lifts up his eyes to heaven, and reverently says, Please God,' I can understand that, and hope that something more than the mere sentiment of natural piety may be there. I can comprehend also how, on some great occasion, a Christian might even quote the apostle word for word, and say aloud in the fulness of his heart, If the Lord will; although I find it hard to imagine him, even in that case, putting the sentiment into the hands of the printer, and commissioning him to strike off five hundred copies in his largest type: but for this cool pietism, which affixes its brief imprimatur to the awful future, much as the officials at the Assay Office stamp their little lions on our silver spoons, I cannot away with that. Surely the faith which commits its future to God, will be content to do so, for the most part, in humble, thankful silence. What is the real worth of a piety which, in order to make sure of itself, must always be talking, as the schoolboy, in the church-yard, whistles aloud to keep his courage up.' There is a life which shrinks, like the Camellia, from the hot glare of noon; even whilst it craves eagerly the light, and would die without it. So much as there is of this life in each Christian soul, will make its own forms, and find its own expression; not necessarily in floods of copious eloquence, much less by due intercalation of 'D.V.' upon handbills, but often rather by silent, resolute, protest against the falsehood that is; and by manful, breathless, wrestling for the truth that shall be. This, thinks Discipulus, will be the real Christian battle of our times: to get the truth, which is preserved with care in books, made actual in the life. For have we not at last got the Book itself, he asks, weeded of all spurious texts, till only the ipsissima verba remain? Has it not been defended and illustrated, as no other book ever was, by ten thousand times ten thousand pens? Have not all critics paid us, each in his turn, tithe of preposition, particle, and aspirate, drawn from its riches? Are not divines weaving about it their theories of dictation, inspiration, Theopneustia, and the like, more than enough? Have we not, in short, got its existence acknowledged, even by its enemies, as a great fact?' And what more do we need as a ground of real Christian battle? This is no time, he thinks, for Logomachy, still less for Sciomachy, so called, or fight with shadows; for the hosts are mustering for the real battle and the soldiers whose arms consist mainly of well-weeded Bibles, correct theories of inspiration, due payment of tithe in particles, reverent insertion of intercalary letters upon handbills, will be of no use then,-mere camp followers at best, not fighters,-not able to defend the camp itself. He advises, therefore, that we leave these to do the shouting, and reserve our own breath for the battle, where it may be needed. And as for the Bible, he is of opinion that the surest way to understand why that was given us, will be to read it in the intervals of the fight. We shall not then adore it; we shall not even enshrine it: we shall neither handle it as one might handle the volume of the necromancer, nor unclasp it to cull from its pages cabalistic letters; but read it in a warm, earnest, entirely human manner, opening our hearts to it as the sun-burnt soil opens to receive the rain. And, haply, we may look up from it to the everlasting hills; sometimes to smile, sometimes to weep; but always to remember that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth LIFE. X. Y. E. A Chapter on the Indians of British Guiana, · HISTORY is the geology of mankind. A rare fossil is full of poetry, and suggestive of profound speculations. It is treasured up with miserlike secrecy in the oft-visited cabinet, and is eloquent of the old days when the earth was a preparing' for the palace and the workshop of the great innovator, man. And a picture or a chapter of extinct or disappearing races of men, is full of interest, instruction, and reproof; and we, for wisest lessons of social intercourse, may become debtors even to barbarians.' There are two races of men in whom we take a lively interest, of whom, in their own homes, we have seen somewhat, that are alike misunderstood and maligned, and of whom it is hard to say. whether the red or the black man has suffered most at the hand of his haughty conqueror and non-educator, the white man. Both have been despised, oppressed, and hunted down; both have been made Ishmaelites by centuries of grossest misgovernment and treachery; and while Mohammedanism has spread a degree of safety and civilization around the northern coasts of Africa for the black man, the Christendom of Europe and of England has laboured, in its southern, to exterminate his race as savage and irreclaimable. Our connexion with the red man has been equally unrighteous in its character, and disastrous in its results. On the northern coast of South America still survive some remnants of the once mighty hunters of its woods, and proud possessors of its soil. Whether they were in Raleigh's time as fine and athletic a race as he describes them, cannot now be proved; but at present, nothing can be more deplorable than the abject and decrepit appearance of the Indians that venture, for trading purposes, into the precincts of the white man. Short, squalid, repulsive in look, unclean in person, and almost unclothed, when the shy and suspicious Indians are met with, they present a strange and forbidding contradiction to the dreams of our youth respecting these untamed rovers of primæval forests. And although we have never penetrated very far into the interior, and have never seen these children of the forest in all their native wildness, yet we have had the most reliable evidence that Sir Francis Schomburgh's pictures of them, in his British Guiana,' are too much affected with the traveller's frequent complaint of coleur du rose. Apart from this, there can be no doubt that the origin of the Indians in America is fairly accounted for by Sir Francis as follows:-'It appears that ancient Egypt and Hindostan were invaded by a powerful tribe, who introduced their peculiar customs into the conquered country, built temples and pyramids, and covered them with hieroglyphics. Historians here allude to the Cushites, who, after having erected a splendid empire, were dispersed. They are traced, chiefly by the ruins of their mural defences, in a northeasterly direction to Palestine; by the relics found in their tumuli, and their peculiar zodiacal signs, to the north of Siberia, where all further traces of them are lost. Similar tumuli, mural defences, hieroglyphic inscriptions, astronomical divisions of time, and zodiacal signs, were used by the civilized aboriginal race of America; and as the geographical position of Behring's Straits, and the Alcantski Islands, admits the possibility of emigration from Asia to America, we are led to believe that the Toltecans and Aztees arrived that way. The descendants of the latter tribes, the conquerors of the ancient Mexicans, constitute the aboriginal inhabitants of North and South America-tribes who, though dissimilar in language, possess philological affinities, and are distinguished by the same predilections for a nomadic and savage life.' How many these tribes once mustered, it is vain to suppose. Like the Mexicans, they are so rapidly disappearing, that very soon they will no more be found. That vast extent of country called British Guiana, extending certainly over 100,000 miles, although its boundaries on the Brazilian side have never yet been correctly ascertained, contains but a miserable remnant of these once powerful people. Five tribes only are found wandering in its woods, and traversing its mountains, of different language, of different customs, and of unceasing hostility to each other; their names are easily learnt, and so far as through the conjurers of the tribes their numbers can be ascertained, the following enumeration approaches correctness :-the Macoosies about 3,000; the Arrawaks 1,200 or 1,300; the Carabeese (who once gave the name to the Archipelago called Caribean') 700; the Warraws not more than 100; and the Accawais about 600; or altogether, putting these remnants of once mighty spoilers together, not 6,000 souls are now left of the original lords of 100,000 square miles. So rapidly will war and physical degeneracy exterminate man! All these tribes agree in one thing-they hold the white man in proud scorn. They are disappearing fast before him-they know it-it is the will of the Great Spirit, and they sullenly submit; but the instrument they detest. There is not a custom of their forefathers which they will abandon; with the energy of despair, they eat and paint, and marry and bury, just as their tribes from the earliest records of their unwritten history have done before them, and no bribe can purchase, and no threat compel, apostasy. Two things only they have learnt to use with a Caliban perversity— 'You taught me language: and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse.' So the Indians have learnt to use the gun, and to enjoy the fatal pleasure of fire-water' with a skill and an intensity that is fearfully appalling. The old bow and arrow will soon fall into desuetude; and the blowpipe, the simple air-gun of these people, will soon be a rare curiosity; the white man's weapons are in the ascendant. The waters of the clear stream, and the luxurious draught of morn-collected dew, will soon be forsaken for the exciting, maddening draughts of rum bought at twopence the half-pint. We have seen the Indian use the |
