cription of wonder-working efficiency to the different forms of the Divine name. The tetragrammaton, or name of four letters, which the fourth commandment forbade to be taken in vain, was pronounced, among the Jews only, by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. It was uttered aloud nine times in the course of the services of that day, and to pronounce it at any other time was, according to most authorities, a capital offence.

The tetragrammaton appears to be indicated as the Shemhamphorash, or expressed name of God, by which, according to the book Caphtor, Moses wrought all his miracles. In the Codex Kiduschin of the Talmud, it is said that the nomen, or hidden name, was expressed first in twelve, and secondly in forty-two letters, and that the latter tradition had been lost. The Ghemara of the treatise Sabbath of the Talmud speaks of miracles performed by the son of Satda by the use of the sacred name; and Luther, who has written on the Shemhamphorash, identifies this personage with Christ. It is probable that much of the ancient magical lore sprang from giving a literal sense to the Agada, or poetical allegories of the sacred books, and of their commentators. The mighty power ascribed to Solomon comes under the same category. The general idea of magic is that the elementary or demiurgic spirits can be compelled, by proper adjurations, to obey the invoker. Before this mighty agency all the ordinary laws of nature were supposed to bend, and it was thus the firm belief of many ages that nothing was impossible to the magician.

We find repeated references to this idea of the power of a name in the New Testament, as in the case of certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists,' at Ephesus.* All the magic, part of the necromancy, and even part of the alchemy, of the middle ages, hold to this parent source.

Connected with the power of words are the allied, though distinct, ideas of the power of rhyme, of song, and of music. In this relation we pass from the transcendental region of magic to that which is chiefly emotional. The effect of music on some animals, and notably on snakes, is not unknown in our days, and this knowledge formed a portion of the

*Acts xix. 13.

arcana of the ancient sorcerer. Music, so far as we are aware, has been connected with every ancient form of worship, and its connection with worship still exists. We find a close relation between music and the access of the prophetic spirit to be fully accepted in the Old Testament. It was on meeting the company of prophets, with lute, and tambour, and pipe, and lyre, that the Royal Spirit descended on Saul. The effect of the lyre of David on the spiritvexed king is a well-remembered story. And when Elisha consented to inquire into the future at the request of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah (2 Kings iii. 15), he said, 'But now bring me a minstrel.'*

We have seen that the forms of sorcery already mentioned may be regarded as either perversions of religious worship, or attempts to acquire a knowledge of the secrets of nature by means which are not those employed by true science. With changes in creed and in forms of worship, the rights of the diviner have sunk into discredit and disuse. The torch of physical investigation has lit up the dark places of the herbalist, the snake-charmer, and the alchemist. There remains a third branch of sorcery, which may be defined as a perversion of human nature itself. It is one which is unchanged since the dawn of history, because, by its very nature, it is incapable of progress. Long practised only by stealth, it has, within the past quarter of a century, been avowedly followed by millions of people. To describe its ancient form is to identify the sorcery of America and of England with that of Syria and of Moab.

The sixth species, then, of sorcery, is denoted by the words Baal Obh, or Shaul Obh, the Lord, or the slave of the Spirit of Python. The Septuagint translators, here slightly differing from the Mishna, from Jerome, and from our own version, have used the word εγγαστρίμυθος. Α1though this word is no other than the name of that rare and curious power that we term ventriloquism, no such harmless application of the term was intended by the Greek writers. Like legerdemain of all kinds, ventriloquism is now chiefly known as a source of public amusement. In early times it was regarded as the de

*Pulsator-the species of instrument is not further indicated than by this word.

mon who spoke from within the body of the magician, not always employing the natural organs of speech. All books on demonology, down to a very late date, are full of instances of the kind, in which they enter into details not fit for reproduction in our pages.

With the above qualification, which is rather nominal than real, all accounts of this order of sorcery are in full accordance with one another. The quaint Hebrew terms have their English equivalent in the expression, the familiar spirit.' The Greek synonym, 'the spirit of Python,' is the phrase employed in the New Testament to describe the case of the damsel who was exorcised by the Apostle Paul at Philippi,* Macedonia being, according to the Jewish writers, a part of the world especially liable to supernatural visitation. Down to the time when the most active fanaticism was enlisted in the pursuit of persons accused of witchcraft, the idea of the character of this form of sorcery was unchanged., It is the form in which demoniac influence was supposed to be chiefly sought by witches. It is closely connected with the next species of forbidden research, for which we have, or rather had, until recently, no English name. Nor are we aware of any equivalent to the Hebrew word in any other language. The learned Surenhuse has transliterated the word in question into the quaint form of Jiddoa. Another school of Hebrew pronunciation spells it, in Latin, as Idgnoni. Translators have been content with the general terms of diviner, wizard, ariolus, Tepaσкóлoç, or diseuse de bonne aventure.

But the judiciary treatise of the Mishna, which sentences the follower of the Obh to be stoned to death, is accompanied by full comments on the character of these forms of sorcery. Bartenora gravely gives a description of the Idgnoni in language such as would be used by a writer in speaking of some rare, but wellknown kind of animal. The account partakes too much of the character of the Agada, or romantic part of the Talmud, to be fully intelligible. But all the authorities agree that the special peculiarity of the Idgnoni was that of automatic utterance, by the mouth of the

*Acts xvii. 16-18. Sanhedrin, cap. vii. 4.

wizard or pythoness. The Obh communicated in various modes. Sounds that appeared purely natural to the ordinary ear, were articulate to that of the wizard under this influence. Thus, in the case of Balaam, it is not intimated that the voice of the ass conveyed any meaning to the two servants of the prophet, or to the princes of Moab who accompanied him. The large and obscure category of what are called impressions on the mind, which at times obtain, as is well known, the force of objective reality, are connected with the domain of the familiar spirit.' But absolute possession; the use of the organs of speech as if only a speaking-tube; the use of the hand of a sleeping person to write; in a word, the direction of the mechanism of the human body by a spirit which is not its own, is the function of the Idgnoni.

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It is probably that the furor of the Pythia of Delphos was an instance of this kind of magic. The degree to which any abnormal utterance is or is not uncontrollable, is always extremely obscure. The cases of demoniac possession mentioned by the Evangelists, in which the demons are said to cry out, are in exact accordance with the descriptions of the Talmudical writers. As a physiological observation, there exists a long series of disturbances, rising from the inspiration of the poet or of the orator to the most terrible form of temporary derangement, that of delirium tremens, as to which the hypothesis of external spiritual agency furnishes at all events an intelligible theory. Hysteria, again, in its wonderful mimetic power, is closely allied to disturbances of this nature. The wild epidemics which have not been confined to the dark ages, the fanaticism of the flagellants, the repeated outbreaks of cases of asserted possession, are all closely linked together. But it has been reserved for the present age of enlightenment to regard the unhappy subject of such disturbances, whatever be its source, as the accredited apostle of a new revelation; and to take down his utterances-whether involuntary or otherwise under the name of the communications of the trance medium.

As to the ninth and last of those things which, in the language of the Ancient Law, the Lord abominates, all translators and commentators agree.

It is necromancy, or appeal to the spirits of the dead. Of this we have a clear example in the account given in the Book of Samuel of the visit of King Saul to the Witch of Endor. It is worthy of note that the one insoluble difficulty which, on the admission of necromancers themselves, attends this branch of sorcery, has arisen, to the confusion of commentators, in this early instance. Dismissing, for the sake of argument, the idea that the witch is an impostor, the doubt whether the influence which she invokes can in any way be relied on, is incapable of resolution. Apart, therefore, from any question as to the criminality of necromancy, the fact of the utter futility of the pursuit is placed beyond the possibility of question.

The mention of necromancy as the last of the nine idolatrous and magical pursuits denounced by the Ancient Law is significant of the fact that it was regarded by the Great Legislator as the extreme form of abomination. The pollution that was incurred, not only by the touch of a corpse, or of a bone of the human body, but even by the remotest relation to such an object, was more feared by the Jews than any other form of ceremonial or physical defilement. This pollution was communicable from person to person, or from person to object, and from object to person, to the fourth degree. A special rite, that of the Sacrifice of the Red Heifer, followed by the use of the water in which the ashes of that sacrifice had been steeped, was instituted for the purification of those who were necessarily polluted on the occasion of a death in the family. And the entire course of the temple ritual depended on perfect legal purity in this special respect.

It is thus clear that those rites which were often carried on in cemeteries, in tombs, or in presence of skulls, skeletons, or human bones, were regarded with unusual horror by the countrymen of Jesus Christ. In all forms of sorcery some aid to the display of the spiritual influence was sought from locality, from perfumes, from the introduction of plants, from the use of drugs, or from some other physical agency. Thus the Pythia was both subjected to the mephitic vapor that issued from the earth, and was further influenced by the chewing of laurel leaves. The Cumaan Sibyl was NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXIII., No. 2

affected by the sulphureous vapors that ascended from the lake Agnano, in the immediate vicinity of her cavern. The votaries of the oracle of Amphiaraus slept on the skins of the victims. Even in the supreme case of the consultation of the oracle of Urim, by the High Priest at Jerusalem, the fumes of incense and the blood of constant and numerous sacrifices gave a special atmosphere to the Holy House. The fact that some external aid of this nature was invoked, in every form either of religious or of magical rite, is very striking. And it has a direct bearing on modern sorcery.

The writers of the Ghemara speak of the cadaverous aspect peculiar to those who sought communion with the spiritual world as a well-established and wellknown characteristic. It is evident that, of all forms of magic, that which sought to establish communion with the departed was the most criminal. It not only violated those laws which forbade the observance of times and portents, and the listening to the voice of the familiar spirit, but it introduced the special element of the worst form of ritual pollution to the very hearth-side.

Human progress finds its limits in those of human capacity. With toil, patience, and perseverance, has each step in the onward path been hitherto attained. To the best of our judgment, this toil has been of as much value in the development and discipline of the powers of the race as in its objective results. Knowledge acquired by any means but patient study, is lightly held and lightly lost. The power and stature of humanity depend far more on the discipline undergone than on the knowledge acquired. All attempts at short cuts to knowledge have hitherto proved disastrous failures. Reliance on authority, rather than the use of the truthful method, is the doctrine of superstition, of obscurantism, and of tyranny. If such be the case when the authority is known, palpable, and surrounded with the attributes of visible power and dignity, as in the case of the papal decrees, what can be said when the authority is invisible, intangible, incapable of defini... tion or of verification? Obedience in such a case is the reversal of human progress. To hearken to the voices of the dead is either a delusion or a reality. If it be the former, no delusion can be more

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mischievous, more degrading, or more revolting. If it be the latter, no pursuit can be more dangerous. It is an attempt to return to the infancy of the human race. It is a revolution against reason, and an arrest of scientific and practical education. It is so opposed in its nature to the

primary laws of human progress and human welfare, that its character must be apparent to every man of calm intelligence, even apart from the emphatic condemnation of the legislators of our race. -British Quarterly Review.

As it is just possible that the word weather may not convey to everybody the same idea, and that different persons may attach somewhat different meanings to it, it will perhaps be useful to begin by indicating the sense in which we are going to use it here. That sense, however, can scarcely be determined by direct definition, for, if Webster is correct in saying that a definition is "a description of a thing by its properties," it follows that it can only be applied to things which possess properties. Weather therefore can never become the subject of a definition, for its essential character is to be always changing, and, consequently, to have no fixed properties at all. When, then, we learn from another grave authority, that weather is "the state or condition of the atmosphere with respect to heat, cold, dryness, moisture, wind, rain, snow, and fogs," we may, if we are satisfied with the phrase, admit it as a general and approximate statement on the subject, but we cannot, certainly, accept it as possessing the qualities of a definition. And even as a mere statement it is incomplete, for it makes no mention of shade, sunlight, hail, dew, and rainbows, all of which are incontestably elements of weather.

But if we cannot establish a definition, we can arrive at the same end by following out a distinction. By determining the differences between weather and climate, by sorting out to each of them its own share of their seemingly somewhat intermingled rights, we shall finally attain a complete view of weather by itself.

Climate is, in the general acceptation of the word, a settled condition; while weather is the most uncertain, the most fluctuating of our surroundings. Climate rests on certain recognised bases; weather shifts about with accidents. Climate depends on distance from the equator, on height, on the formation and exposition

of the soil, on the degree of purity of the atmosphere, on proximity to or distance from the sea, on the action of man through cultivation; but weather is, to a great extent at least, independent of all these influences. Weather is, essentially, the disturber of climate; it improves it or it spoils it, from day to day; it is consequently a part of it, but a part of it as health and disease are parts of our bodies. Climate is geographically fixed, while weather is atmospherically variable; climate is a calculated quantity, while weather is an unknown one. All sorts of rules are applicable to climate, but none are applicable to weather. Climate is monarchy, weather is anarchy. Climate is a constitutional government, whose organisation we see and understand; latitude and altitude are its king and queen; dryness and dampness are its two houses of parliament; animal and vegetable products are its subjects; and the isothermal lines are its newspapers; but weather is a red-hot radical republic, all excitements and uncertainties, a despiser of old rules, a hater of proprieties and order. Climate is a great stately sovereign, whose will determines the whole character of the lives and habits of his retainers, but whose rule is regular, and is therefore so little felt that it seems like liberty; but weather is a capricious, cruel tyrant, who changes his decrees each day, and who forces us, by his ever varying whims, to remember that we are slaves. Climate is local; weather is universal. We are indifferent to climate because we are accustomed to it, but we are dependent on weather because we never know what form it will take to-morrow. Climate is the rule; weather is the exception. Climate is dignity; weather is impudence.

If these comparisons are admitted as exact, it ceases to be impossible to bestow a name on weather; there is a certain

modern locution which seems to have been made expressly to designate it; weather is "a girl of the period." Like that conventional young person, it is impertinent, imperious, and unguidable; like her it is often brilliant, but easily badtempered; like her it is sulky and gay by turns, with no avowable reason for being either; like her it dresses noisily; like her it holds its tongue lazily, or talks loud impetuously; like her it is, on the whole, a mistake. Whichever way we look at it, we find it open to objections. Socially, it is what the novels of the last generation used to call "a heartless coquette," who tempts, stimulates, and lures, and who sets the worst possible example to her neighbors. Morally, it is both a deceiver and a spendthrift, whose conduct would humiliate and pain its ancestors, if it had any. Intellectually, it may be described as an idiot, or its actions are the consequence of no recognisable motives whatever. And yet, with all these unmistakable defects, it exercises an all-pervading power over every fruit of nature, from man to mushrooms. Indeed, poor nature (which, by the way, as Voltaire observed, is most wrongly named, for she is in reality all art, and not nature at all)—poor nature must sometimes feel that, in creating weather, she has afflicted herself with an intolerable master, who wilfully ill-treats both her and her offspring, and spoils irascibly a good deal of her prettiest and brightest handiwork. It would, however, be altogether useless to ask her why she has been so singularly foolish as to permit weather to exist at all, for she never answers inquisitive questions of that kind; and perhaps, even does not know what the answers are. Her ignorance, indeed, is possibly as great as that of weather itself; and, in fact, she proclaimed that it really is so when she made that remarkable confession to the curious philosopher, saying to him, "I am water, earth, fire, air, metal, mineral, stone, vegetable, animal. I feel that I have an intelligence within me; you have one too, but you cannot see it. I cannot see mine either; I feel it, but I cannot measure it. Why then do you, who are but a small part of myself, desire to know what I do not know?" Weather is in the same situation.

And now, as we have, in this way, obtained a general idea of what we mean by

weather, and as we are not likely to learn much more about the hidden reason of things by pausing for a reply, we may as well go on to the technicalities of the question.

Weather includes every modification of the atmosphere by which our organs are sensibly affected. Each one of its agents is a power by itself, exerting a special action of its own upon us, but resembling all its fellows in their common characteristic of capriciousness and instability. Its influence, in some shape or other, is unceasing, for it works upon us through the air, which of all the details of creation is the one with which we are in the most intimate relation. And yet, though almost every other form of matter has become, in some manner or degree, subjected to our will, and can be directed, modified or used by us, more or less, as we like, how we like, and when we like, the air remains mercilessly our master; it imposes itself on us according to its own fancies only, everywhere and always, sleeping or waking. We cannot do without it, but we can in no way control it; life, heat, and sound come to us through it alone; without it we could neither hear, nor be warm, nor breathe; without it we could neither smell the flowers nor listen to the birds. Our food depends upon it, for abundance or starvation are its children. And, finally, we ourselves are materially composed of it, for we, and all the animals and vegetables around us, are in reality, as Thales wisely said, made up of condensed woven air. But yet, notwithstanding all these relationships, the atmosphere keeps us off at arm's-length and will not permit us to use it in any ways but its own. This is vexing, but nothing whatever is to be gained by losing our temper about it; it would be altogether futile to imitate Voltaire and to scornfully call the air "a blue and white heap of exhalations;" that would in no way help us. It is just as well to be polite, in spite of the annoyance we may feel at the attitude of contemptuous mastery which the atmosphere assumes towards us.

It was observed just now that weather has no visible motives for its actions, and that it therefore merits to be called an idiot. But, though it has no motives, it has causes; like a bucket which goes up and down in a well, it has no will of its own, but it obeys impulses which it can