Masonic Notes And Queries.

presence of Divine Grace , continually supplying an ever-susstamed freshness , and issuing in fruit ; and the fragrance of the aromatic plants with Avhich the lower parts of Mount Lebanon are decked , of its loveliness ancl sweetness ; as a native explains this , ' he takes a second comparison from Mount Lebanon for the abundance of aromatic things ancl odoriferous flowers . ' Such are the myrtles and lavender and the odoriferous reed ; from ivhich ' as you enter the A'alley [ between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ] straihtway the scent

g meets you . ' All these natural things are established and wellknown symbols of things spiritual . The lily , so called in Hebrew from its dazzling whiteness , is in the Canticles the emblem of souls in Avhich Christ takes delight . The lily multiplies exceedingly ; yet hath it a Aveak root , and soon fadeth . The Prophet , then , uniteth with these , plants of unfading green ancl deep root . The seed which had no root , our Lord says , withered away , as , contrarilove

wise , St . Paul speaks of those ivho are rooted and grounded in , , and of being rooted and built tip in Christ . The wide-spreading branches are an emblem of the gradual growth ancl enlargement of the Church , as our Lord says , It becometh a tree , so that the birds ofthe air come and lodge in the branches thereof . The symmetry of the tree ancl its outstretched arms express , at once , grace and protection . Of the olive the Psalmist says , I am like a green olive tree in the house of Cod ; and Jeremiah says , The Lord called thy

name a green olive tree , fair and of goodly fruit ; ancl of'fragrance ;' the spouse says in the Canticles , Because ofthe savour of Thy good ointment , Thy name is as ointment poured forth ,- and the Apostle says , Thantcs he to God , which inaketlt , manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place . Deeds of charity also are an odour of good smell .- the prayers of the saints also are sweet odours . All these are the fruits of the Spirit of God , who says , I will be as the dew unto Israel . Such reunion of equalities , being beyond nature , suggests the more , that that wherein they are all combined , the future Israel , the Church ,. shall flourish with graces beyond nature , in their manifoldness , completeness , unfadingness . "

Dr . H . Bence Jones has been appointed Secretary to the Royal Institution , as successor to the Rev . John Barlow . A new kind of bronze is coming into use ivhich is tenacious as steel , ancl admirably adapted for the bearings of machinery . A polisher who used it for bearings in his lathe , which made 2000 revolutions in a minute , found it to last six times longer than any other metal . It is composed of ten parts of aluminum with ninety

of copper . Dr . Livingstone , in a letter addressed to the Bishop of Oxford , dated April Tth , says -. — " By the Shire you get easily past the unfriendly border tribes , and then the ridge ivhich rises on the east to the height of 8000 ft . affords variations of climate within a few miles of each other . The region bathed by the lal > es is - preeminently a cotton-producing one ; and , as far as ive can learn from

Burton and Spcke , the people iiossess the same comparative mildness of disposition as I observed generally prevailing away from the seacoast . There are difficulties , no doubt—an unreduced language , and people quite ignorant of the motives of missionaries , with all the evils of its being the slave-market , " And , after urging on the English Church the appointment of missionaries , he adds : — " The Preiich have a strong desire to enter before us . A Senor Cruz , the great agent of French emigration from this coast , lately returned

from Bourbon with a sugar-null ancl coffee-cleaning machine , sugarcanes of superior quality , and coffee seed , and two Frenchmen to work the machines . Both , however , soon perished of fever . The Portuguese hate us ancl our objects , partly because of our religion , bufc chiefly because we suppress the slave trade . They desire the French to come and establish their authority over the slaves . Afc present Portuguese slave rule is mild , because the slave can so easily See to independent tribes . If the French slave system Avere

established here , slave hunting would go on till the country ivas depopulated . Even for the incipient plantation of Cruz there is slave hunting among the very people ive lately visited afc Sheiba and Negassa . " A novelty in connection with cattle ancl poultry shoivs has been introduced at Birmingham , lvhere every description of do" -s have had prizes awarded them . Upwards of 300 clogs were shown .

When ivill the poor despised ass have a prize or two set apart at our agricultural shoivs for it ? There is no class of animals in England , "humans" excepted , of which the breed is so capable of improvement . Messrs . Longman ancl Co . will publish next month a new work entitled The Lost Tribes , and the Saxons of the Hast and the West , with New Views of Buddhism , by Dr . George Moore , author of The Power of the Soul over the Body . This ivork is to be

completed in one volume , ancl is intended to prove the Hebrew origin of the Saxon races . This is attempted by tracing their earliest connections in the East , and hy reference to historical events and ' existing monuments , of which latter several engravings are to he given . The Rev . George W . Cox , M . A ., one of the masters in the .

College , Cheltenham , has a juvenile ivork on the eve of publication , entitled , Tales from Greek Mythology . The aim of the volume is to simplify the most beautiful stories of the Grecian legends , so » that the young may be early familiarised with the fine mythologyof the most polished nation of antiquity . Half-Hour Lectures on the History and Practice of the Fine

and Ornamental Arts , is the title of a new work hy Mr . William B . Scott , Head Master of tho Government School of Art afc Newcasfcle-on-Tyne , and brother and biographer of the late David : Scott , U . S . A . The second of Mr . John Chalmers Morton's Aaricultural

Hand-Books is just appearing , under the title ofthe Handbook of Farm Labour , Manual Labour , Steam , Horse , and Water Poiver . Dr . Adling , F . M . S ., Secretary to the Chemical Society , and Professor of Practical Chemistry afc Guy's Hospital , has prepared for the press A Manual of Chemistry , Descriptive and . Theoretical , which will shortly he published . The work is to appear in parts or sections , and is intended as an elementary text-book for the use of

those lecturers ancl students who employ , or ivish to employ , theunitary system of chemistry , according to ivhich the molecule of water is represented by the formula Ha O . Water thus becomes a unit of comparison , to Avhich the majority of oxides , hydrates ,, acids , salts , alcohols , ethers , & c , can be referred . The Critic thus criticises Baron Marochetti ' s equestrian statue of

Richard I .: —¦ " Seldom have Ave experienced feelings of deeper vague disappointment — used to disappointment in artistic matters as ive are—than on first approaching Marochetti's famed equestrian statue of Richard Cceur de Lion , in its present and final position in . the corner of Old Palace-yard . Thafc first view is a somewhat ; grotesque one : of a horse's elevated tail , of the hero ' s brawny back ,, ancl of his uplifted sword on a line ivith the top of fche second-floor

windows of the New Palace . ' On journeying round the statue , and after painful effort discovering the right point of view , ive recognised in the general felicitous pose of the rider—ivith uplifted arm , holding his trusty sword aloof , and in the august magnanimous aspect of that heroic face—those qualities ivhich won general admiration ivhen the original cast Avas exhibited at the Great » Exhibition of 1851 . The vivid picturesque life of the cast loses , however , by translation to bronze . The want of something more is here felt . Life the noble equestrian statue undoubtedl y has—a . quality ivhich afc once elevates the work into a rank infinitely

superior to that of the crowd of modern sculptures . The life ifc . possesses , however , is a ivholly superficial and limited quantum . That bravura , melodramatic attitude — effective , spirited , and . picturesque though it be—is bufc a Scott or Corbould-like kind of rendering of the grand chivalric era . Alewed again ou the merel y aesthetic side , the finished bronze statue is still but a sketch , executed on an imposing scale ; bald and unsatisfying after you have exhausted the not very recondite sentiment it possesses . It

is afc once destitute of the idealism of Greek art , of the realism of Mediieval . The tight-fitting chain-mail of Cceur de Lion is generalised into looking like a jacket of knitted AVOOI , with knittedwool continuations . In all respects the same disdain of realit yfavourable to realistic treatment as was the subject—has resultedin the same loss of golden opportunities . The reins are of a plain modern pattern—or no pattern . Had these and the housings generally been enriched ivith the detail characteristic of Mediawal

decorative art , that principle of contrast on which the Greeks themselves worked in their colossal scul pture ivould have been obeyed—to the infinite advantage of the Avhole . What opportunities , by the way , did the subject offer for glorious effects through enrichment by gilding and colour , according to what is proved to have been the practice of both antique ancl mediaival times ! As ifc isevery parfc is alike and general . And if ive recognise a

, vague feeling for reality anywhere , it is under an unfortunate aspect , —as in the kingly legs , which have the bow-legged look characteristic of the man oftener in the saddle than on foot . Baron Marochetti is said to have personally superintended the casting of the bronze . But its colour is that coaly hue , here and there powdered as with dust , with which we are so familiar in English bronze . The position of the statue , though better than some ivhich ivere at one time