must vote pine-apple money to bishops, let it at least economise by dividing its crumbs among a smaller number of what it would call the inferior clergy, and endow its new livings with means for the pastor and his family actually to taste meat every day. But the all-wise commissioners, not stopping at the mismanagement of what they have to distribute, actually divert gifts from the Church, and slam their doors in the faces of men who bring offerings for the service of God and for the maintenance of an efficient clergy. They are known to some of their brethren as Commissioners for the Prevention of Church-building. If any man, having a good practical title to his land, wishes to give a part of it to the commissioners for a church, down they come upon him with a solicitor, who, instead of being paid by a salary for making requisite inquiries, makes, as the valuer does, his separate charges for every bit of work, and in this case inflicts his charge on the benevolent donor for a searching scrutiny into his title to his own estate. No offer of land is entertained by the commission till the donor agrees to pay law charges for investigation of his titles, and will run the risk of having a flaw found for him that may damage the value of his whole estate. A wise man will think twice before he gives land upon such ungracious terms. A salaried law adviser might include in the duty, for which he should be paid by the commission, all requisite inquiry of this sort, and nothing would have been easier than for the commissioners to have obtained long since a short act, giving them, under proper restriction, parliamentary titles to gifts of this sort. But even this incredible energy of obstruction to the cause they are bound to support is not enough for the most mighty commissioners. Why must they deny to a man who will build or endow a church the patronage of the living he has given, and insist that it shall go to enrich patrons of the adjoining living? The Dissenters, free from all these arbitrary and offensive trammels upon generosity, are always eager to meet spiritual destitution, and the chapel-building, as we know, goes on where church-building is at a stand-still. by very considerably more than a hundred thousand pounds. More than a hundred and twelve thousand have thus been transferred from the account of the poor clergy to meet the wants of bishops. Even the augmentation of poor livings has gone on most actively among men who, if they are not the rose, live near the rose. Before the year 'forty-four, less money had gone to the great populous towns and town districts than to the cathedral cities blessed already with large and strong bodies of clergy. More money had been allotted to Norwich than to Manchester; more to York than to Liverpool; more to Ripon than to Birmingham. From that year to the end of 'fifty-nine, the small towns enjoyed not less favour. Manchester had fifty pounds, Liverpool nothing. The grants of additional income went to two hundred and thirty-one places with a population under a thousand, and to three hundred and twenty-four with a population under two thousand, but only to a hundred and fifty-nine with a population greater than two thousand. In respect of local claims on account of tithes, there has been the same inequality. Thus, while a hundred and thirty-five pounds a year is practically considered an extreme income for the hard-working town clergy, we find that the vicar of West Tarring, with a population of about a thousand, has granted to him three hundred and eighty pounds a year from the Ecclesiastical Commission, raising his income to four hundred and seventy-four. Similarly the vicar of Figheldean, with a population of five hundred and twentyseven, receives within ten pounds of the sum of the grants made to the whole of Manchester, besides two acres of land, to raise to three hundred and fifty pounds a year an income already greater than the commissioners' ideal for a clergyman in a populous town district! The hard-working posts in those town districts, were they twice as well paid as they are, could not be given away as matters of favour or reward. The favour-if there is to be any in question-is conferred by the man who, with a stout heart and earnest Christian spirit, undertakes to do the work. Is it for this reason that so much of the money entrusted to the commisThere was, indeed, a fund given to the com- sion for increasing the efficiency of the Church, missioners twenty-one years ago, by the Cathedral is diverted from the populous places ill furnished Act, for the augmentation of benefices. Good with religious instruction, and spent on those resolutions were made as the conditions of aug- quiet country livings, of which the enrichmentation in February, 'forty-four, and, for wantinent goes to the bettering of great man's of means, suspended in the following August for patronage? the next twelve years, at the end of which time there was again a surplus; and the earlier resolutions having been rescinded, it was determined", that grants, no longer of annual aids, but of capital sums, never exceeding six hundred pounds, should be made, only when met by a benefaction of equivalent amount. The common fund has been mixed with the episcopal fund since eighteen fifty. The deficiencies, therefore, arising out of grants to bishops, when in excess of the episcopal fund, are covered by deduction from the fund available for augmentation of small benefices; and that fund has accordingly been lessened The accounts of this bad commission are imperfect and confused. As the secretary has testified, capital and income and all sorts of things are mixed up together." The commissioners themselves said, in their second report, that the accounts did not include all sums paid-agent's charges, for example, are habitually omitted. But upon the best calculation that can be made, the gross result appears to be, that of the large funds entrusted, for the benefit of the poor clergy and of populous town districts needing spiritual aid, to the mismanagement of this precious commission, one-third part has been sunk in costs of management and favours done to the high dignitaries of the unequally paid Church. Has no exemplary person in power anything to say, or do, about this? ON THE TIGHT ROPE. Herr Groddeck did right to withdraw his hard words, so long as the funambulist risks his own life only. What a task it is that a man undertakes-or which more frequently is undertaken for him by his parents and guardians--when he sets to work to earn his bread by juggling with the laws of gravity, his own person being the "DANCING," say learned ballet-masters, "is object juggled with! Before the rope-walker distinguished into High Dance, or Funambulism, can exercise his art, two distinct difficulties have consisting of Capers, Gambols, and Low Dance, to be overcome: first, the maintenance of his which is Terra à Terrâ, or close to the Ground." equilibrium, and secondly, the faculty of reachFunambulism may therefore claim to be one of ing and remaining at precipitous heights withthe highest branches of the dance. But art not out feeling fear or turning giddy. But although unfrequently moves in a circle, reverting, after these two difficulties, in combination, appear a certain time, to some ancient phase of its pre- almost insurmountable to persons unused to vious career. Such is the case with dancing on them, they are, nevertheless, frequently surropes. Rope-dancing, which began with rope-mounted unconsciously and instinctively by creeping (funerepus, qui in fune repit) and with many animals and many men. rope-walking, after passing through pas seuls The very act of walking upright, with which and pas de deux on single and double tight ropes, has returned to primitive rope-walking and rope-running again, it must be confessed, with additions, if not with embellishments. The funambulus of Terence, despising minor feats of grace and agility, is once more a high funambulus at the Crystal Palace. The Greek expression was like the Latin; the oxowoBarns mentioned by Chrysostom was literally a walker on a rope of rushes. And now, the Terpsichore of the straightened cord sends her pupils to take lessons and gymnastic training of Hercules and Mercury. Herr Groddeck, in his day Professor of Philosophy at Dantzic, in his learned dissertation, De Funambulis, defines, in Hibernian vein, a rope-dancer, a person who walks on a thick rope fastened to two opposite posts. The ancients, he tells us, undoubtedly had their rope-dancers as well as we, who exercised their art in four several ways. The first vaulted or turned round the rope, like a wheel round its axis, and there hung by the heels or the neck. The second flew, or slid from above, downwards, resting on their stomachs, with their arms and legs extended; a modification of this feat has been performed by elephants. The third ran along a rope stretched in a right line, or up and down. Lastly, the fourth not only walked on a rope, but made surprising leaps and turns thereon; in short, their funambular aesthetics were those of the rope school now flourishing. Passing from historical to moral considerations, Herr Groddeck maintains that the profession of a rope-dancer is not lawful; that the professors are infamous and their art of no use to society; that they expose their bodies to very great dangers; and that they ought not to be tolerated in a well-regulated state. Afterwards, tempering the severity of his sentence, perhaps also yielding a little to his own private and particular tastes-for who would write an erudite essay, "De Funambulis," unless he took some interest in funambuli and funambulæ ?he admits that there are sometimes reasons for patronising persons of precarious lives; that the people must have their shows; that one of the secrets of government is to furnish them therewith, and other pretexts of equal plausibility. -- the human species is gifted, is a complicated and continued process of balancing, effected by adapting very small supports-the feet-to the varying position of the centre of gravity of the whole body. The child has to acquire the art in his infancy; and the adult loses it, temporarily, whenever intemperance, congestion of blood, convulsion, or faintness affects his mental faculties. Let a statue of a man be fabricated out of any solid material of the same specific gravity as the human body, and it will require a skilful artist to make it stand on its feet unsupported by a prop and unfastened to its pedestal. Even when it has been made to stand upright, a very slight shock above or shaking below will cause it to fall. This really wonderful feat of equilibrium is performed by every living biped, without being considered anything extraordinary. Quadrupeds, with their four supports, have a mere nothing to do in comparison. They stand, like tables or chairs, of themselves; even in case of accident to one leg, they would still keep up and avoid falling, as tripods, so long as their muscular powers remained unimpaired. Certain quadrupeds do, however, attain considerable proficiency in the equilibrist's art. The chamois will balance itself adroitly on narrow pinnacles and ledges of rock; the goat the same; and may also be taught tricks as surprising as human performances on the slack wire. Mountain sheep show great steadiness and courage in picking their way along dangerous paths. Mules enjoy an undisputed celebrity. All these animals seem to take a perverse and foolhardy pleasure in skirting the very brink of the precipice. What occasional accidents may happen to the chamois is hard for lowlanders to ascertain, but neither of the latter species are absolutely perfect in their training. Poor Madame d'Herlincourt, only the other day, was pitched over the precipice of the Gemmi Pass, through the fault of a very fallible mule, and smashed to bits, literally. In the basins of waterfalls of any respectable height, it is not rare to see floating the body of a sheep or a lamb that has fallen into the upper stream, and then, carried away by the current, has been shot over the rock into the caldron below. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that elephants have been taught to walk on ropes. The bibliography of the subject, which we spare the reader, may be found in Aldrovandi, De Quadrupedibus, lib. i. From this it appears that the funambula species was the African, not the Asiatic, elephant. To show the preciseness of these records, one statement is, "Nero, according to Xiphilinus's account, gave great and most magnificent games in honour of his mother; on which occasion, an elephant, introduced into the theatre, mounted an arch on the top of it, and from thence walked upon a rope with a man on his back." Whoever, now, should go to the expense of training elephants to walk a rope, would probably receive very considerable returns for his outlay. With the exception, however, of elephants, we may hold quadruped funambulists to have mistaken their vocation. The animals who are really at home amidst giddy heights, delighting to traverse suspension-bridges composed of a single rope or cane, are the quadrumani, the four-handed animals, the monkeys, great and small. In fact, the best rope-dancers imitate their personal mechanism as far as they can. Truc, Blondin has no prehensile tail; but his hands are prehensile to an eminent degree, while his feet are quite handy, grasping the rope. Without wishing to offend those gentlemen (on the contrary, to pay them a compliment), we may take Léotard to be a flying squirrel of superior grace, and Blondin an experienced gorilla of surpassing abilities and suavity. From walking erect upon a boarded floor to walking along one of its narrow planks, and thence to walking along a plank across a stream, to walking along the top of a single-brick wall, along a square bar of iron or wood, along a very stout rope like a ship's cable, the transition seems natural and easy. It would be so in reality, but for the entrance of the second element of difficulty in the practical problemthe influence of height on the human nervous systema. Come on, sir; here's the place: Stand still. fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. How There ought to be no more difficulty in walking along the top of a wall thirty feet than on one only three feet from the ground. To cross the joists of the fourth story of an unfinished and unfloored house ought to be just as easy as to cross those of the ground-floor with no cellar beneath it. To run up a rope to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, and to run up a rope to a first floor window, requires exactly the same conditions of equilibrium, exerted for a longer interval of time in the former case; and yet most persons would rather attempt the one than the other. The power of resisting giddiness in looking down from precipitous heights is partly constitutional and partly the effect of habit. The safest way is not to look down at all, if it can be avoided; but it cannot always be avoided. This is the reason why it is so much easier to ascend an upright cliff or crag than it is to descend it. It is not the mere elevation which tries the nerves, but the sheerness of the precipice, the abruptness of the slope, the angle of inclination, the danger in fact. Many persons who would look with indifference down an inclined plane of forty-five degrees, shrink at the brink of a perpendicular descent. At Cape Blaney, on the French coast, opposite to Folkestone, there is a chalk cliff varying from two to three hundred feet, which gives goose-flesh sensations, and causes cold water to run down your backbone in a way unfelt on the top of Snowdon, Vesuvius, and the Righi. To resist this feeling is a point of honour with mountaineers, sailors, and several other professions. Hence, Nelson's invitations to his midshipmen to meet him at the masthead. In Martyn's time (see his Voyage) no young man of St. Kilda could pay his addresses to a girl, until he had previously performed the ceremony, which consisted in standing on the top of a lofty, precipitous rock overhanging the sea, with both his feet half over the edge of the rock, and with his face towards the sea, and then bowing forwards until he touched the tips of his toes with both hands; being then only at liberty to resume his upright position, and to retire inland to his lady fair. The curious may practise the evolution on their private door-step with a horse-hair mattress spread before it. In respect to the resistance to giddiness, it is probable that many mariners, shipwrights, Swiss guides, finishers of cathedral spires and weathercocks, and members of the Alpine Club, with Professor Tyndal at their head, are quite as accomplished and as sure of themselves as any funambulist that ever mounted a rope. Vauxhall, now historical, displayed during a considerable period remarkable rope ascents, rendered still more trying by the accompaniment of fireworks. Of the rope-runners who have attained celebrity by mounting up to great heights, one of the most famous is Madame Saqui, a Frenchwoman married to an Italian, who for years and years danced on the cord, to the delight of Parisian and other audiences. Her style was fantastic rather than graceful, abrupt and fearless, striking by its originality instead of charming by its elegance. This might be a matter of necessity more than of choice; for she was a short, thin, wiry little woman, so badly made that some people said she was deformed, and she artistically exaggerated her natural defects by the eccentricity of her costume. She established a small theatre in Paris, for the display of her funambular feats, named after herself, the Théâtre Saqui, which, like the still existing Funambules, subsequently discarded rope-dancing for vaudeville and farce. The Théâtre de la Gaîté also, in its infancy, derived its support from athletic displays and rope-dancing. Madame Saqui may still retain a place in the 540 [August 31, 1861.] ́ memories of veteran English playgoers, from her performances at Covent Garden Theatre-the Covent Garden of the Kembles and the Youngs. It was little enough indeed that she did there to make up for encumbering the house with her rope, and marring the effect of the dramatic portion of the evening's entertainment; but that little sufficed to make people's flesh crawl on their bones, and to give them, if not a new, at least a violent sensation. The rope was stretched from the back of the stage to the back of the one-shilling gallery. At the appointed moment, Madame, suddenly becoming visible, like a fiendish apparition, climbed to her station on the foot of the rope, with the agility of an ape, and then, with nothing to balance her but a short wand held between her two hands, and with her eyes fixed on the upper end of the rope, started on her ascending course at what appeared to be a rapid run, but which, doubtless, was a skilfully regulated pace, consisting of a quick succession of short steps. The eye of the spectator would be more likely to be caught by a brilliant vibration of the feet, and by the apparent effort, than by Anxious the actual onward progress made. were the looks upturned from the pit, as the overhead. human meteor sped on its way Arrived at the summit of her aërial mount, she turned round abruptly and immediately began the descent, which, unlike other faciles descensus, was by no means easy, especially as she had to combine apparent rapidity with the power of putting a continual break upon herself -a constant restraint upon her own impetus down such a slope. In this, her light weight would be in her favour, seeing that the momentum of an object is made up of the velocity and the mass. Her journey ended, she leaped away and out of sight with the same imp-like briskness as she had begun. The apparition was gone-until the clock struck the following evening. One of the last, if not the very last, and certainly not the least surprising of her appearances, occurred at Havre, in August, 1852. Political events in France had then taken so clear and decided a course, that it was deemed expedient to celebrate them by a Venetian Fête," got up with properties sent down by "The Administration of National Pleasures;" the same properties which have since contributed to national pleasures at Chambery and Nice. Madame Saqui was then decrepid, poor, and old; she had seen some seventy hard-working winters; but she was game to the last. In politics, she was a staunch Bonapartist. She had danced for the First Consulate and for the first Empire, and she would dance for the second Empire. The authorities could not refuse her. The rope, fixed to the ground at each end, and then raised by props, so as to leave a horizontal portion, or rather a gentle catenary curve in the middle, at a sufficient elevation to be dangerous, was located in one of the largest open spaces belonging to the town, for the accommodation of the crowds of spectators. The day of the Venetian Fête was stormy, with wind, rain, and heavy squalls from the sea. At four in the afternoon, the hour fixed for Madame's exhibition, it blew almost a hurricane. The rope quivered in the gale. With her costume (an enchanter's robe with flowing sleeves, and a long white beard) and her fleshless frame, she was altogether as light a body as one of Mr. Waterton's owls stuffed with cotton wool. The gale would have carried her But about seven in the away past finding, and she consented not to make the attempt then. evening there was a temporary lull, and the old acrobat's heart glowed to renew her triumphs. Confidently she set foot on her beloved rope, mounted steadily, took the level portion undismayed, and descended safely. She had done it; she had run the rope for the second Empire, and so sealed its prosperity. She considered it next door to a coronation. On this occasion it was observed that Madame Saqui, in consequence of age and infirmity, walked not too well on vulgar earth, but that as soon as she set foot on hempen ground, her vigour returned and she became inspired; also, that she grasped the rope with her feet, Blondin-wise, and likewise chimpanzee-wise, with the exception of having no pedestrian thumb. Madame Saqui does not seem to have ever imagined omelette-cookery or other operations at her giddy eminence. An amateur, who might never have heard her named, improvised a pleasant interlude of the kind. As soon as the first chain of the Menai-bridge was fairly hung and fixed between its points of suspension on the opposite shores, a Welsh cobbler walked along it to the middle, sat down, and there made a pair of shoes. He was followed by a less courageous individual, who crossed the Strait on the single chain astride. HAPPY AS A PRINCESS. FOR is it not the ultimate of human happiness to be a princess and a queen's daughter? Is there anything more beautiful, more enchanting, than her rose-coloured existence? Does she not live in the most magnificent palace in the world, always dressed in gold and silver, ladies with a diamond crown on her head, surrounded by the most amiable and beautiful young -none of whom are to be compared in any manner to herself, though-and with a thousand kings and princes, all handsome young men, of undeniable territories, fighting at tournaments, and doing the most incredible prodigies of valour, for sake of her smiles alone? To be sure she has the trifling inconvenience sometimes of a fairy godmother, as spiteful as she is ugly; of a dwarf, or an evil genius, or an ogre, or a Saracen, for her lover, who may carry her off and bury her in some enchanted cave, guarded by dragons, and only lighted by carbuncles or sapphires; but then she is always sure to be delivered by the most charming prince that was ever seen, and her very sufferings are only so many enhancements of her future joys. Who would not be a princess, to live always on cakes, and fruits, and bonbons; to have as much money and as many lovers as she can possibly manage, and more than she wants; to be the darling of the whole world about her; and finally to be married to a young king, as beautiful as Love, and as amiable as he is beautiful? "As happy as a princess!" What female imagination can go beyond that? fisted, German queen, who darned her stockings and slapped her daughters at Windsor, had never been popular; of the Regent all good men were ashamed; for the Regent's wife all good women blushed and sorrowed. The young Princess Charlotte alone was left as the hope and darling of the people; whose virtues were not mere dust and ashes, and in whose future there might be expectation and delight. And yet there was once a princess living here But what a life of petty trials and home huon this island, and during the lives of some of miliations she went through! As happy as a us, with whose fate not the meanest of the sis- princess? The heiress of three kingdoms, a terhood might have wished to exchange her principality, and a crowd of conquests and own: a princess who, when a marriageable young colonies, was not half so happy as red-cheeked woman, was treated with the disrespect and Betty, who trundled her mop in the kitchen, tyranny of a naughty child; who was kept close and was of too little importance to be made prisoner in an ugly and unhealthy place, and miserable by tyranny and intrigues. A more denied even the privilege of change of air for melancholy picture of the inner life of royalty her health; who was tyrannised over by her cannot well be imagined than that which father, separated from her mother-which last Miss Cornelia Knight gives us in her Autobiowas no great loss, though-neglected and ill-graphy; nor can a much more sorrowful lesson treated by her grandmother, surrounded by spies and gaolers; at one time almost forced into a marriage with a man she did not and could not love; and who passed her days in alternate terror and despair, not knowing what new humiliation her tormentors might not have imagined against her since the last had had time to cool. This was a princess who would have sat on the throne of England had her life been spared, and who, at the very moment of her worst humiliations, had apparently a better chance than the worn-out debauchee, her father, of wearing the crown which would have made her sovereign of the most powerful kingdom in the world. Poor Princess Charlotte! on the debasing influence of a court on the souls of courtiers be met with anywhere. I doubt, indeed, if courtiers have any souls, and rather incline to the belief that they have burnt them all away in incense to their earthly gods; that they have kowtowed so long and so lowlily they are no longer able to stand erect and look before them like men. What can we say of a poor weak slavish creature who goes into hysterics if majesty looks coldly on her; who manoeuvres, and studies, and plans, and plots, for her fitting presentation at the next drawing-room, as if a queen's feathers were literally angel's wings, and a queen's familiar word the passport to heaven itself? I wonder if any poor sinning soul kneels at Saint Peter's feet before the gate with half the unction and self-abasement of a thorough-going courtier grovelling before majesty in the throne-room! The daughter of a reckless woman and an abandoned unprincipled man, the marvel was that she had any virtues of her own, and had not rather inherited all the vices on both sides with which nature had so liberally endowed her Well! Weak, intelligent, intensely proper, parents. As it was, she was even beyond the humble, cautious, kowtowing Miss Cornelia average in good feeling and ability; and, not- Knight, was put into the uncomfortable little withstanding a hasty temper and more than the temple where the Princess Charlotte was the ordinary amount of royal imperiousness, she presiding deity, and she burnt her incense to gave fair promise of a capable and noble woman- her heart's content, and exhaled all her indehood, and of sufficient good sense and discretion pendence, and self-respect, and womanhood, in to have made her reign as rational and judicious magnificent clouds of perfumed smoke, accordas the present. She was handsome in person, ing to the fashion of time and place. In the dignified and yet kindly in manner, with the mean time the princess did not care a straw for good personal habits traditional to most of her all the incense in the world. What she wanted, race, and of a very warm and loving nature. with her solid character and material matter-ofMoreover, she was the passive symbol and rally-fact imperiousness, was more personal, liberty ing word of the liberal party, and without hav- more personal consideration, a finer house, and ing ever done anything marked in life, good or a more appropriate establishment; her purse in bad, was the idol and the hope of the whole her own hands, and not held by both ends by nation. She was, in fact, all the more beloved, gouvernante or lady; she wanted a husband of and showed to all the more advantage, because her own choice; a private little court of her own of her freshness and untainted girlhood, con- ruling; she wanted to be freed from the unkindtrasted as she was with the regent, whose very ness of her father, and the prim old maidenisms name was synonymous with vice, and contrasted of her aunts; from her coarse old grandmother's with the princess, whose grave errors her best insolence and dislike; from her state of pupilage friends could only excuse, not deny. She was and dependence generally; and she kicked over the only one of the sovereigns in present being, Miss Cornelia Knight's burning censer without or in future time, for whom the nation could feel the least remorse, as she paced backwards and pride or love. The familiar, domestic, "family forwards through the dark uncomfortable little man," was a moping idiot; the mean, close-temple, where she was nothing better than a |