SELF-HELP: NATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL. (From Self-Help,' by Mr. Smiles.) stim'-u-lus, that which rouses the mind ex-tir-pate, to root out or spirits le-gis-la'-tion, law-making func'-tion, office or duty ab-o-li'-tion, the doing away with a thing ag'-gre-gate, the result of a number of. considerations taken together rad'-i-cal-ly, originality, from the very pa'-tri-ot-ism, love of one's country ig-no'-bly, meanly, dishonourably pat'-ine, the cover of a chalice or cup 'HEAVEN helps those who help themselves,' is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual, and exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless. Even the best institutions can give a man no active aid. Perhaps the utmost they can do is to leave him free to develop himself and improve his individual condition. But in all times men have been prone to believe that their happiness and wellbeing were to be secured by means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has always been greatly over-estimated. To constitute the millionth part of a legislature, by voting for one or two men once in three or five years, however conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little active influence upon any man's life and character. Moreover, it is every day becoming more clearly understood, that the function of government is negative and restrictive, rather than positive and active, being resolvable principally into protection-protection of life, liberty, and property. Hence the chief 'reforms' of the last fifty years have consisted mainly in abolitions and disenactments. But there is no power of law that can make the idle man industrious, the thrifty less provident, or the drunken sober, though any individual can be each and all of these, if he will, by the exercise of his own free powers of action and selfdenial. Indeed, all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilisation itself is but a question of personal improvement. National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be only the outgrowth of our own perverted life; and though we may endeavour to cut them down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of human life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent action. The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up. In the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt, ignobly. Indeed, liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth-the result of free individual action, energy, and independence. It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst everything depends upon how he governs himself from within. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice. There have been, and perhaps there still are, so-called patriots abroad, who hold it to be the greatest stroke for liberty to kill a tyrant, forgetting that the tyrant usually represents only too faithfully the millions of people over whom he reigns. But nations who are enslaved at heart cannot be freed by any mere changes of masters or of institutions; and so long as the fatal delusion prevails, that liberty solely depends upon and consists in government, so long will such changes, no matter at what cost they be effected, have as little practical and lasting results as the shifting of the figures in a phantasmagoria. solid foundations of liberty must rest upon individual character; which is also the only sure guarantee for social security and national progress. In this consists the real strength of English liberty. Englishmen feel that they are free, not merely because they live under those free institutions which they have so The laboriously built up, but because each member of society has to a greater or less extent got the root of the matter within himself; and they continue to hold fast and enjoy their liberty, not by freedom of speech merely, but by their steadfast life and energetic action as free individual men. Such as England is, she has been made by the thinking and working of many generations; the action of even the least significant person having contributed towards the production of the general result. Laborious and patient men of all rankscultivators of the soil and explorers of the mine-inventors and discoverers tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers poets, thinkers, and politicians-all have worked together, one generation carrying forward the labours of another, building up the character of the country, and establishing its prosperity on solid foundations. This succession of noble workers-the artizans of civilisation-has created order out of chaos, in industry, science, and art: and as our forefathers laboured for us, and we have succeeded to the inheritance which they have bequeathed to us, so is it our duty to hand it down, not only unimpaired, but improved, to our successors. This spirit of selfhelp, as exhibited in the energetic action of individuals, has in all times been a marked feature in the English character, and furnishes the true measure of our power as a nation. Rising above the heads of the mass, there have always been a series of individuals distinguished beyond others, who have commanded the public homage. But our progress has been owing also to multitudes of smaller and unknown men. Though only the generals' names may be remembered in the history of any great campaign, it has been mainly through the individual valour and heroism of the privates that victories have been won. And life, too, is a soldier's battle,' men in the ranks having in all times been amongst the greatest of workers. Many are the lives of men, unwritten, which have nevertheless as powerfully influenced civilisation and progress as the more fortunate great whose names are recorded in biography. Even the humblest person, who sets before his fellows an example of industry, sobriety, and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a future influence upon the well-being of his country; for his life and character pass unconsciously into the lives of others, and propagate good example for all time to come. Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are, nevertheless, most instructive and useful, as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels-teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action for their own and the world's good. British biography is studded over, as with 'patines of bright gold,' with illus trious examples of the power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working, and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble and manly character; exhibiting in language not to be misunderstood, what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself; and illustrating the efficacy of selfrespect and self-reliance in enabling men of even the humblest rank to work out for themselves an honourable competency and a solid reputation. MENSURATION. To find the solid content of a parallelopipedon : (1) A piece of timber is 25 ft. long, 10 in. broad, and 9 in. deep; what is its solid content? (2) What is the solid content of a piece of timber 25 in. square at the ends, and 40 ft. long? (3) What length must be cut off a piece of timber 15 in. square at each end to measure 5 cubic feet? (4) How many cubic feet are contained in a block of marble which measures 7 ft. 6 in. in length, 3 ft. 2 in. in breadth, and 1 ft. 3 in. in thickness? (5) What is the weight of an iron beam 35 ft. long, 18 in. wide, and 14 in. thick, its specific gravity being 7.8? SPRINGS, CAVES, OIL-WELLS, ETC. (From Physical Geography,' by Sir John Herschel.) con-verge', to tend to one point re-spec'-tive-ly, as belonging to each com pound into the parts of which it consists sul-phu-ret-ted, combined with sulphur per-co-late, to strain through, to filter lu'-bri-cate, to make smooth, or slippery THE welling forth of streams from perennial springs is of the most ordinary occurrence, but it is seldom more than a rivulet which rises in this manner. There are, however, some instances of considerable streams so originating. When this is the case they issue from caverns, and these occur usually either in ice or in limestone. In the former case, they are evidently only the drainage of melted snow, which pours out at the foot of a glacier by the contribution of subglacial streams converging to the lowest point. Such is the source of the Arve, from the Glacier des Bois, at Chamouni; and such that of the Ganges, which emerges as a stream, already forty yards in breadth, from a huge cavern in a perpendicular wall of ice near the 6 temple of Gangutri. Limestone formations are very apt to be hollowed into caverns by the solvent power of carbonic, and perhaps also of other acids derived from vegetable decomposition, held in solution in the percolating water. Such caverns often run to great distances under ground, and frequently contain running streams, even considerable rivers, as is the case in the caverns of the Peak and Castleton in Derbyshire, and in that of the Nicojack Cave in Georgia, U.S., on the Tennessee river, where a waterfall occurs, at a distance of three miles under ground. When such streams emerge to-day, we have the phenomenon in question, as in the cavern of the Gaucheros, in the valley of Caripe, in Cumana, described by Humboldt; in the celebrated fountain of Vaucluse, which issues as a considerable stream from a cave at the foot of a perpendicular limestone cliff; and in a great number of caves in Carniola and Illyria, where almost every lake or river has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. The Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again swallowed up by earth before it makes its final appearance.'* The rivers Sarapa and Blanco, which flow from the lake of Yojoa, in Honduras, both enter subterraneous channels, through which having passed, in the one case a mile, and in the other a mile and a half under ground, they reappear. When water, carried down to a great depth into the earth, is forced up again by hydrostatic pressure through other channels, and rises as a spring, it brings up the temperature of the greatest depth to which it has penetrated, and that sometimes a very high one, even out of the neighbourhood of any volcanic formation. The warm springs at Bath have a temperature from 93° to 117° Fahr., those of Bareges and Bagneres 120° and 123°. In the county of Bath, in Virginia, a warm spring' issues in sufficient volume to turn a mill, and a 'hot spring' rises at a few miles' distance. Three springs at Yom Mack, near Macao, have temperatures of 132°, 150°, and 186° Fahr. respectively. On the Arkansas river are springs of 180° and 190°; at Broussa, in Asia Minor, the water rises scalding hot; at La Trinchera, near Valencia, 1945°, in a stream 2 feet deep and 18 feet broad; at Jumnotri, in the Himalaya, nearly boiling; at Urijino, in Japan, fully boiling; and in the Geyser fountains at Reikiavik, in Iceland, it is spouted intermittently, in a torrent, to the height of 150 to 200 feet, actually boiling. In this case there can be no doubt of its having traversed a bed of lava not yet cold. A simple and perfect imitation of the phenomenon is produced by heating the stem of a tobacco-pipe red hot, and holding it horizontal, the bowl being filled with cold water. * Davy. |