VICTOR EMANUEL'S RECEPTION IN VIENNA AND BERLIN. drained of its specie immediately. If for a 100l debt contracted and by law required to be repaid only in paper, the bank were to pay 100/ in gold-gold being at a premium fluctuating from 10 to 16-the bank would be giving a bonus of from 10 to 16 per cent. as a favour to those of its customers who joined in a run upon it. It would not be repaying its debts, it would be overpaying them; and any bank or system of banks which in so absurd a manner stimulated a demand upon it could not last long, however strong it might be. The real condition of the New York banks by their last published return was, that they were just, and only just, within their legal limit of reserve, but that a large part of that reserve was held in a form which would make it useless if it was ever wanted. The danger of such a state of things to the credit of the New York banks is plain. A law which prescribes a compulsory limit of reserve must always be subject to very grave objections. The moment the banks approach the legal limit the public begins to take alarm. The law having said that such and such a proportion was necessary as a basis for credit, the public naturally take the law as a guide for their opinion, and strongly suspect that there may be something wrong when that proportion is in any danger of being infringed. We can well imagine, if in this country the banking department of the Bank of England were to be required to keep, say, a fixed proportion of the liabilities in cash, how feverish would be the state of opinion, and how critical the public credit, if there were only 2 or 300,000/ between the actual cash and the legal limit. And a law of this nature has the inevitable absurdity in it, that if you say that, "as a precaution against panic, banks must always keep a fixed proportion of their liabilities in reserve," you are in fact saying that in a panic the Bank shall not use that "proportion to meet the liabilities; if you lock it up by law at all times, you lock it up as much at the time at which it is wanted as at any other. And by allowing part of the reserve to be in specie the American law has this maximum of inconsistency in it - that the reserve which it prescribes for a panic in part cannot be used for a panic from its own nature. If Government issued "a letter of licence," and suspended the legal enactment, yet so much of the reserve as is held in specie could not be 255 used in a panic without being a bounty on that panic and a premium on its continuance. What will be the end of the run on the New York banks, of which we give the particulars elsewhere, it would be very premature to foretell, but there is already enough evidence to show that its history will strongly confirm two great maxims of economical science. First, that a currency of inconvertible paper is among the greatest of possible evils to a country which begins it, and that in a rapidly progressive country even a fixed amount of such currency works an amount of harm which never could have been imagined beforehand. Secondly, that the interference of Government with the trade of banking is as sure to work mischief as its interference with any other trade; that the mischief will be often of the very kind which Government meant to prevent, and that in trying to prevent a run it incurs great risk of causing and encouraging one. From The Spectator. RECEPTION IN VIENNA AND BERLIN. VICTOR EMANUEL'S APART from the extraordinary picturesqueness of the event which, as it were, ends an Italian cycle, stretching from the day when the King of Piedmont swore to avenge his father and to maintain the Statuto, to the day when he was received as an honoured equal by the Emperor of Germany-the journey of Victor Emanuel has evidently had one result of moment. No treaties have been signed, no agreements interchanged, and no offensive and defensive alliances have been contracted, either with Vienna or Berlin; but the world has been made to understand that the Papacy, in its great struggle with modern ideas, must rely on its spiritual force alone. The use of material force on its behalf would, it is clear, be resisted by the whole force of Germany, Austria, and Italy, three Powers whose military relationship is of a most close, though little perceived order. So complete is now the railway communication in mid-Europe, that a train of artillery could be sent from Dantzic to Naples without changing trucks, and on a line absolutely inaccessible to an enemy who has not first fought and won a pitched battle. So long as Germany, Austria, and Italy are agreed, it is doubtful if the 256 VICTOR EMANUEL'S RECEPTION IN VIENNA AND BERLIN. whole Catholic world could get an army is the civil spear-head of the resistance to Rome without crushing three king-to the civil pretensions to the Papacy. doms first, for a rush from Civita Vecchia Suppose all Italians to be as he is, and would be a mere sacrifice of 50,000 men Italy, however Catholic, would still be to the forces which a week afterwards free, and still seated in her own capital would be gathering round them. This city. situation, which is explicitly recognized It is stated that although on all other by both the French Government and the points, official and secular, agreement was Comte de Chambord, makes Italy abso- avoided, certain resolves were taken by lutely impregnable for the time, and must all three Courts to act with decision on a of itself tend to moderate those Ultra- subject of ecclesiastical importance. It montane aspirations which were consid-appears to be clearly understood that no ered not many weeks ago likely to end in novel method of election to the Papacy a religious war. They cannot be gratified till the world is changed, and Rome, apart from her spiritual forces, must either reconcile herself with Italy, accepting Capri or Elba as the seat of her great ecclesiastical establishments, or wait in patience the operation of causes which may break up the standing league against the Temporal Power, or may, on the other hand, make its extinction one of those accepted facts which, like the sovereignty of Turkey over Jerusalem, Christendom does not like, but never dreams of annulling. Italy is at liberty to go on with her work, which in a quarter of a century ought to make her powerful enough to be regardless of alliances, and to stand alone, defended only by the millions who, having passed through military discipline, have become at once patriots and riflemen. Time is all to Italy, and she will now survive without effort the spasm of Ultramontane feeling passing over France and Belgium. The population once safe, all is safe, for the spiritual assault, irresistible by Bismarck's merely secular laws, breaks helplessly against the force, equally spiritual, which we call patriotism. The last hope of restoring England by force to Catholicism died away when Elizabeth dared to trust the destruction of the Armada to the Catholic Lord Howard of Effingham. Italian can hardly become more fervently and utterly Catholic than Victor Emanuel is, though, like our own James II., his private life needs a good deal of absolution; and he will be allowed any validity whatever, and ACCORDING to Dr. Fritsch, the discovery | below and decomposed above, and supporting has lately been made of lacustrine dwellings in the vicinity of Leipsic, as the result of certain engineering operations undertaken to regulate the course of the River Elster. After passing through a series of layers at a certain depth, the workmen found a series of oak piles pointed a certain number of oak trunks placed horizontally; and on the same level with these were found certain lower jaws and teeth of oxen, fragments of antlers, broken bones of various mammifers, shells of an Anodon, fragments of pottery, two polished stone hatchets, &c. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. From The British Quarterly Review. THE MONOTHEISM OF PAGANISM.* wither; but the whole goes on as before, regardless of, and unaffected by the change. He gazes next on earth and sea, and his ideal is not there. But there is yet a something which pervades and influences all, which gladdens and revivifies all, without which the whole earth seems dead: this is light or heat, for he has not yet learnt to separate the two. Here, then, is the agent of which he has been far higher than even his mental flight can reach, is the orb from whence this universal power proceeds. And in the East, the region of the sun, is it to be wondered at that man in early ages bowed down before the Lord of day and owned him for his God? "Ex Oriente lux" is true in more senses than one, for from the rising of the sun came man's first dim idea of a God; and from the East came the first rays of intellectual light into the world. EVERYTHING which tends to strengthen the tie that links the individual to his fellow-man is, of necessity, a contribution to the common good. Thus it is that all those discoveries of science, and all those revelations of philosophy, which teach us the existence of the ties of kinship and common nature, are justly ranked amongst the most important gains to humanity. in search; and above him, in all its glory, Philology and ethnology have contributed much to this end: the latter has taught men that they are members of one great family; the former has pointed out the relationship existing between the various members of that dominant branch of it the Aryan race-to which the world owes nearly everything that is useful or great. It has pointed out proofs of this wide relationship in the languages of Hellenes, Teutons, Indians, and Persians tracing throughout their various tongues the vestiges of a remote archetype. No one, however, has attempted to trace a similar common origin for the various forms of Theosophic idea which are found amongst these various peoples; and yet there are indications, both historical and intrinsic, of an Aryan Theosophic Archetype no less tangible and distinct than the Philological one to which we have referred. The adoration of light is the natural outcome of that tendency to the observation of physical phenomena which has ever characterized the Aryan race; the Irání shepherd, as he watched his flocks by night beneath the calm great stars of an Eastern sky, and saw in their myriad lights so many reflections of the Deity, was but unconsciously pursuing the same course of investigation which led to the discoveries of Galileo and Newton. which are made up entirely of preconceived notions. Our conclusions can, therefore, have no weight, for the primæval mind had no such traditional prejudices, and could not have reasoned in the same way. To imagine that man in his infancy But we must start with what man has solved the great problem of existence, by done; not with what he might or probathe intuitive conception of a divine Au-bly would do. In trying to realize man's thor of all things, is to assume too much, primary conception of a God, we are, and to assign to him an acumen in theo- after all, only analyzing our own minds, sophic investigation to which the history of human progress in other directions offers no analogy. Amazed at the phenomena around him, man with instinctive curiosity seeks to penetrate their cause, and examines them with a view to discovering the agency to which they are due. He looks around him, reviews in turn the animal and vegetable world, but in neither of them can he discover that of which he is in search, the great cause of all. Men and beasts live their allotted time and pass away; trees spring up and El Bákúrat es Suleimániyeh, an Exposition of the Nuseírfyeh Doctrines and Practices (in Arabic). By Suleiman Effendi El Adaniy. Beyrout. We are led to the conclusion that old Aryan ideas lurk in our religious systems, as certainly as old Sanscrit words lurk in our languages, not by mere theoretical hypothesis, but by the examination of historical facts; by no other process, indeed, could a result of any value be obtained, for, as Bacon has postulated — Sola spes est in verâ inductione. |