collect, that they asked the district officials to take the matter in hand, they supplying as much food as was required. The distribution was no easy task, for there were many professional and religious mendicants, whose sole endeavor was to obtain more than their proper share either by fair means or foul, often by robbing their weaker brethren. Besides this charity on so large a scale, very large sums were contributed to the general relief fund-people of all creeds and classes, Europeans and natives, all gave, and gave liberally; and nothing but this charity, aided by Government, saved us from a great disaster. The deserted children, where no relations could be traced, or where the relations could not afford to keep them, were made over to the Orphanage of the Church Missionary Society; Government making itself responsible for a monthly payment to cover the cost of their food. At one time the number of these waifs and strays was large, but in spite of all that was done to save them, the mortality among them was great; while of those that survived some few ran away when the famine ceased, and went back to the villages where they originally lived-some perhaps to find their parents returned from exile, others to live on the charity of their neighbors. It would seem as if misfortune had hardly yet done with these poor waifs, for even this last year cholera broke out in the Orphanage among them, and carried off nearly half their number, although they were as well if not better cared for than they would have been with their parents in villages.

It was curious to watch how misfortune after misfortune followed the unfortunate inmates of our relief camps, and not only them, but those villagers who had been able to hold out in their own villages. In 1869 the coming of the monsoon was watched with the most intense anxiety in Jubbulpore it burst in full force on June 29; in the north of the district, where the worst of the distress was, it held off for some days longer. Though only fifty-six miles to the north, not a drop of rain fell in Murwarra until July 12: the heat was intense, the whole country was covered with a dull yellow haze that hung over it like a pall. To go by rail from JubNEW SERIES, VOL. XXVI., No. 6

bulpore, where everything was refreshed by the welcome showers of rain, to Murwarra, where this intense and oppressive heat still clung to the country, and made the people more depressed than ever, was one of the most painful experiences of my life. At last, on July 12, the rain commenced, and before eight A.M. the next morning thirteen inches fell: the whole country was a swamp; our relief camps were flooded. The inmates of the huts, which had not been built for a terrible fall of this description, were drenched; and yet with it all they were cheerful. They had lost the feeling that God had deserted them; and though they suffered from cold and wet, they knew that they were saved from what they most dreaded-another year's drought. But there was still another calamity to come upon them. The rainfall was so unusually heavy that in one night the roads were turned into sloughs of despond. The cattle, weak from long fasting and an absence of proper food, fell down in numbers, and were suffocated in the mud. The morning after this heavy fall I saw more than forty head of cattle dead in one village. Again the cultivators were in despair, seeing their plough bullocks dying one after another,, and knowing they had no means to buy others. They had been kept alive with. the greatest difficulty and only by constant care, and now they were being destroyed in hundreds. They had looked to these few remaining cattle to till their fields, and enable them to raise the cropspromised by the rain; and now these hopes were blasted. Fortunately, Government again came forward with liberal. aid; timely advances to the cultivators. enabled them to obtain a fresh supply of plough cattle, and get in their crops. in due season; this season was very favorable, and the harvest a heavy one, so that the famine may be said to have ceased with the sowing of the crops.

It was merely through the area of the famine being confined to such comparatively narrow limits, and to the fact of its only lasting a year, that so much could be done both to save life, and to assist the sufferers to recover after the ordeal. they had to pass through. What, therefore, must now be the sufferings of the people of the Madras Presidency, where famine has been raging for nearly a

48

year over the larger part of the country, and where it is feared that there is nothing but a second year of famine to look forward to, with all its horrors magnified, owing to a scanty crop being threatened in various other parts of India as well? Up to this most of the other provinces have been able to send of their abundance to Madras and Bombay; if their supply for home consumption runs short, the country will be in terrible straits, and the resources of Government, large as they are, will be taxed to their utmost limit.

For all this past year Government has

been helping the people in the famine districts through their difficulties at an enormous expense, and, doubtless, will continue to do so at any cost; but the strain on all concerned must be terrible. We can only hope that the seasons may yet change, and that thus a part at any rate of this grievous suffering may be averted; it is, however, so late in the year that there seems to be but little room for such hope. In that case India will require not only all the sympathy, but all the help England can give.Cornhill Magazine.

MANY contradictory stories are told about the body of St. Mark, even in Venice, where the relic is believed to be enshrined. Its precise whereabouts are unknown, because,' say the Venetians, the last Doge did not divulge the secret.' The last Doge was Manin (Lodovigo), who abdicated on May 12, 1797, after St. Mark had been the patron saint of Venice for nearly a thousand

years.

According to the most trustworthy accounts, as revealed in documents recently brought to light, the body of St. Mark was taken to Venice for special reasons (and not by mere chance); one of those reasons being that the inhabitants were tired of St. Theodore-their patron saint till the days of the tenth Doge, Angelo Partecipazio. At this period of their history, the Venetians discovered that they were badly represented in Heaven! How could they expect prosperity on earth? St. Theodore was a good saint, but he was lazy; the miracles he performed were of little use; and, people clamoring for a change,. wise men pondered over the problem. Were there not grades of beatitude? was it not possible to have a more powerful protector than St. Theodore? This, then, was the difficulty. A weak saint, but a strong partnership of Doges; a father with his two sons (as assistant Doges) ruling over Venice, but the city badly attended to on the other side of the grave! What remedy could be applied to so glaring an evil? Whose ministry could be appealed to in

the parliament of saints and martyrs? Angelo, and his sons Giovanni and Giustiniano, wearied their saint from day to day with useless prayers, and Giustiniano (afterwards eleventh Doge) finally made up his mind that Venice should have a new guardian. Three Doges, reigning together, were not enough for the young republic; it must have a fourth potentate, that potentate being St. Mark. But the body of the great Evangelist was lying on a distant shore; namely, in Alexandria, in Egypt. How obtain it? How place Venice under the protection of a saint so highly esteemed -and so capable of performing miracles -as the writer of the second gospel?

In the year of grace 827, the eleventh Doge occupying the ducal seat, a number of strange rumors reached Venice; namely, that the body of St. Mark was resting uneasily in its coffin; that the shrine built over his tomb was being desecrated by infidels; that money could buy the relic, if properly offered (ie. with money in one hand and a knife in the other!); and, finally, that the saint himself was anxious to be transferred to Venice. The persons who set this rumor afloat were sailors trading to and fro between the Lagunes and Egypt; men who at an emergency could become pirates or merchants; men to whom theft and murder were acts of grace, if committed in the name of religion. These men, after consultation with the Doge, returned to Egypt, properly supplied with money and properly armed, and entered Alexandria in a very religious frame of

mind,—intent on stealing their saint, if they could not obtain him by other

means.

When they reached the shrine, they found it under repair; masons and builders were at work in the church; the priests who guarded the body were on the tip-toe of expectation for some remarkable occurrence. Visions had appeared of saints and martyrs with wreaths of fire on their foreheads; a lion with wings (the Lion of St. Mark) had been seen prowling about the city; a saint in a white robe (believed to be Santa Claudia) had waylaid one of the priests on his way home. Surely a miracle was at hand! The priests took counsel one with the other. Why not remove the saint's body until the church, now under repair, was thoroughly restored? At this juncture arrived the merchants of Venice-merchants, or sailors, or pirates-call them what we will; in those days the words were pretty well synony

mous.

The priests and the merchants met and deliberated. The former had merchandise to sell; the latter had money in their pockets: how should the transfer be made? How much was a dead saint worth, if a living man-sold as a slave -was worth such and such a sum? A word, a look, a grasp of the hand; the whole thing was settled in a moment. The merchants were to have the saint's body, and the priests were to sew another saint in St. Mark's cerements. What corpse more appropriate than the body of Santa Claudia-she who had appeared in visions in the streets of Alexandria?

St. Mark was taken out of his cerements, and deposited in a basket which the merchants had brought into the church. Over the body were thrown sweet-smelling flowers, and over the flowers a number of joints of pork, the flowers and the pork being introduced for special reasons: the flowers to deaden the odor of sanctity (which was sure to emanate from the body), and the pork to frighten away such Mahomedans as might be tempted to pry into the basket. The corpse of Santa Claudia being exchanged for that of St. Mark, the priests imagined that their work was done; but they were mistaken.

Men and women-the former with sticks and crutches, some of the latter

with children in their arms-rushed into the church, exclaiming wildly: 'Where is St. Mark the Apostle? Where is St. Mark the beloved of God?' Women and girls fell down on their knees; old men laid their foreheads in the dust; the younger and bolder fellows insisted on seeing the body. The basket of pork had had its effect; the inhabitants, drawn from their homes and workshops by the odor of sanctity, had flocked to the church to examine the saint's coffin! But the good priests were equal to the emergency. They exhibited the shroud containing the body of Santa Claudia; they bowed and prayed, they made the sign of the cross before the saint's cerements, and said prayers before the high altar; and the people, pacified, though not altogether convinced, returned in peace to their dwellings. The odor of sanctity was not the odor they had always been accustomed to as the odor of St. Mark, but it was a sweet and comforting odor enough; and moreover it was a miraculous odor, for the new saint had therewith performed her first miracle; making the people believe that she

Santa Claudia was St. Mark the Apostle! The early historians of Venice chuckle over this event; and one and all concur in stating that the fraud was a pious one, and therefore no fraud at all.

But the risks of the enterprise were not confined to the church. While the sailors were conveying their prize to the sea-shore, they were beset by men and women anxious to have a peep at the basket. But for a magic word—a word taught by the priests-the basket and its bearers might have been sorely handled; the word was 'khanzir,' and it meant pig. What have you got in your basket?' 'Pig!' 'Why are you in such a hurry to reach your ship?' Pig! pig!' 'The devil take you and your burden; you are tainting the air for us.' 'Pig! pig! pig!' The sailors were persistent in their replies, and the crowd fell back in trepidation. What was the meaning of this odor of sanctity in the wake of a basketful of pork?

The body of St. Mark was stowed away carefully on board the Venetian ship. The flowers and the pork, with their sediment of saint in the bottom of the basket, disappeared in the hold, and

the sailors, with that word 'khanzir' still ringing in their ears, got ready for departure. But they had reckoned with out their host. Here, for instance, is a man in authority who insists on climbing into the ship. What does he want? He is a custom-house officer; he is on the look-out for contraband goods. Is he, too, afraid of pork? And, if not, are relics contraband? Down went a sailor into the hold of the ship; up came the basket in the sailor's arms, wrapt in an old sail; up went the sail strung to the mainmast, as part of the ship's furniture. Honest seaman! Wise and sensible precaution! The officer withdrew in disgust, and the ship set sail without further adventure for the Port of Venice.

But the voyage was long and troublesome, and the mariners had a hard time of it. Worried by storms, waylaid by fogs-stranded, becalmed, and bedevilled-the captain once or twice gave himself up for lost. One night in a hurricane, the vessel plunging like a mad thing in the midst of the rocks-the moon shining weirdly on the scene through a great gash in the clouds-a tall man in white appeared at the helm with a wreath of fire on his head. The helmsman stepped aside, and running up to the captain (who was asleep) woke him, and told him what had happened. The captain and his crew knelt down on the deck; the wind sank, the sea became suddenly calm! Who was this tall man with a wreath of fire on his head and a white robe, like that of an angel, reaching from head to foot? St. Mark the Evangelist! Who but he would have interceded in this way for the preservation of the basket of pork? The ship got clear of the rocks, and the saint, leaving behind him an odor of sanctity-as fiends leave behind them an odor of sulphur-vanished into thin air.

The ship reached Venice on January 31, 828, two days before the great fête of the Purification. The captain's name was Rustico, the steersman's Buono or Buoni; this last a native of Malamocco. The landing was effected at a place now occupied by the church and convent of San Francesco della Vigna, not far from the Island of St. Michael (the cemetery) and close to the Arsenal. But the Ar

senal did not exist in those days, and the dead were not taken to St. Michael's Island. The whole place was a desert: a wilderness of islands, half swamp and half sand, but considered in ordinary times a safe harbor, and an easy if not a convenient landing-place. Rustico and Buono hastened to the Doge's house near the Rialto, to invite his Excellency to visit the ship.

But a greater than the Doge had given the Saint welcome to Venice. Tradition is so explicit on the matter, and the early Venetians are so positive about it, that I shall not attempt to gainsay it. The figure in white, which stood on the shore to greet the Evangelist, was not a lady or a priest; it was not Santa Claudia; it was not the figure of the fat old Doge; it was an angel from heaven, and the angel's words may be read to this day on monuments and churches all over the city. The utterance of the angel is beyond dispute. It was oracular and made in Latin, and the Latin is as good as any now spoken at the Vatican: Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus. Who can doubt the authenticity of words so explicit-words which, for a thousand years, became the motto of the Republic? Doubt the name of Rustico, if you will; doubt the name of Buono, if you dare; doubt the existence of the Doge, if you can (supposing you to be a whitewasher of history): but do not for a moment doubt the scholarship, or the existence, of the angel who received the body of St. Mark.

The new saint was carried to his temporary shrine near the Rialto, not far from the ducal mansion; and there received with honor. The Doge's palace was not built in those days, and the tract of land now known as the Piazza San Marco was an ugly waste, and in wet weather a marsh, cut up into two unequal parts by a canal, with a bridge over it. But on this ugly waste, games and festivals, the precursors of the tournaments of the Middle Ages, had been held at various times; and here, in honor of St. Mark, a grand procession was formed during the first week in February. St. Theodore was solemnly deposed. The church in the square was rebuilt and reconsecrated, and the new saint, from the beginning of the ninth to the end of the eighteenth century, be

came the patron of Venice. His lion became the symbol of Venetian power; it was painted on shields and woven on standards; it was impressed on coins; it was set up in effigy in various parts of the city. Tourists admire it at the present day over the entrance to the cathedral, and on the clock-tower; a lion with eagle's wings, with the face of a man, having under its paw a book wide open, with the words of the angel, as quoted above, written in golden letters. But the body of St. Mark is believed to have been stolen in the sixteenth century by Carossio, a usurping Doge, and by him sold or otherwise disposed of to religious communities in various part of Europe-a tooth to one, a bone to another, a lock of hair to

another, and so forth; so that, strictly speaking (if these reports be true), Venice no longer possesses a patron saint. No one knows the resting-place of St. Mark's body. Was it really stolen by Carossio, or did it disappear of its own accord when the last Doge abdicated in favor of Buonaparte, the saint being unwilling to survive the fall of the Republic? The answers to these questions are not easy to find. Those who profess to know most about the matter assert gravely that the resting-place of St. Mark's body has been a profound secret for hundreds of years.' Being a secret, and those who knew it being dead, what wonder if the present writer is unable to divulge it?-Belgrava Magazine.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL is a great populariser, and we cannot doubt that his attempt at the Midland Institute on Monday to reason from the principle that the quantity of physical energy in the world is a fixed amount, and that none is ever either lost or gained, to the principle of moral necessity, namely, that every man is merely what his circumstances and his wishes make him, his wishes being as truly circumstances dependent on the hereditary and other conditions of his organisation as any other of the determining forces around him,—may have a great effect on the ripening intelligence of the country, if only from the influence naturally attaching to his name. But though he puts his case with his usual force and vivacity, he adds nothing whatever to the substance of what has been stated and restated hundreds of times by his predecessors in the same field. Indeed, the force with which he states the case conduces, as all force of statement naturally must, to a clear indication of the points at which his view entirely fails to meet the facts; and the natural candour of a genuinely scientific man renders the exposition of these glaring deficiencies of his view more striking still. We hope, therefore, that those who do not merely accept Professor Tyndall's authority as conclusive, but who go over the same ground without his obvious

bias towards the physical explanation of our moral nature, will soon find themselves pulled up by difficulties far more striking than any which are involved in the view of life which Professor Tyndall was endeavoring to refute. These difficulties accordingly we shall attempt to point out, and we shall succeed best probably in doing this by humbly following in Professor Tyndall's footsteps, only pushing to their legitimate consequences all the principles of his address.

Professor Tyndall teaches us, then, first, that as a given stock of heat is generated by a given amount of motion, and that the same amount of motion may be produced by the loss of that stated amount of heat, so also the force we employ in muscular exertion is the force due to a given amount of fuel supplied to the body. The oxidation of food. within the body leads to the development of an exactly equivalent amount of heat, some of it within the body, some of it outside it. "We place food in our stomachs as so much combustible matter. It is first dissolved by purely chemical processes, and the nutritive fluid is poured into the blood. Then it comes into contact with atmospheric oxygen, admitted by the lungs. It unites with oxygen, as wood or coal might unite with it in a furnace. The matter-products of the union, if I may use the