Pro embrowning of the skin; but in our own experience we have found it as readily to follow the exposure to the hot air of a Turkish bath, and to be most easily produced in midsummer and autumn, when actinism is lessening in its power. bably relative degrees of humidity have a considerable influence in preventing, or favouring, the tanning of the skin. As a rule, hothouse gardeners are not very brown, whilst sailors might frequently pass for foreigners. A dry air would appear to be most favourable to the enrichment of the blood and the deepening of the skin tint. The effect of a tropical sun upon the blood has frequently been noticed by scientific inquirers, and the bright tinge it acquires presents us with a most interesting problem. Dr. Mayer found in this the starting point of his various works upon organic and inorganic force, which led up to his Celestial Dynamics,' and the Meteoric Theory of the Sun.' He found, or had gathered from secondary sources, that the venous blood of a feverish patient in the tropics was redder than in more northern latitudes, and with this empirical observation he climbed up to his grand dynamics. Everybody knows that the blood is not the simple fluid it was ordinarily thought to be formerly, and that iron is the chief agent in giving it colour through its oxidisation in the lungs, and its power to increase the number of blood corpuscles, of which it is a chief constituent. In chlorosis, produced by developmental changes, as in females, or by confinement and darkness, the blood pines for its iron. The corpuscles diminish by one-fourth, and the proportion of iron in the ashes of the blood is in the same ratio. It is quite certain,' says Liebig, 'that if iron be excluded from the food organic life cannot be supported.' Meat, vegetables, and bread contain iron in considerable quantities, and he thinks the effect aimed at in religious prescriptions and rules by the exclusion of flesh, and especially of red meat, are to be accounted for by the deficiency of iron.'* For the very opposite reason pugilists and pedestrians eat half-cooked meat. In spite of the iron contained in the food, it is found necessary to administer it artificially in medicines; but are these two the only ways and forms in which iron reaches the blood? If so, the lighter meats and vegetables of tropical countries must contain more iron, or an additional supply is obtained from the sun. The latter is most likely. The revelations of spectrum analysis show that iron is a very large element in the constitution of the sun, although it was at first replied to Professor Kirchhoff, that the absorption lines of the solar spectrum, that is the * Familiar Letters on Chemistry,' p. 450. Walton and Maberly. 1859. dark lines, were produced by the vapour of iron either in the atmosphere of the sun or the earth, but most likely the latter. He said it was incredible that the latter could be the case, or the lines would appreciably alter as the sun approached the horizon. Ceding, however, the fact of iron in the sun as a probability of more than one septillion to one, as put by Tyndall, and that the phenomenon of Fraunhofer's lines arises from the power of an incandescent vapour to absorb precisely those rays which it itself can emit, is the presence of iron vapour in the air to be thereby considered unproved? We think not. The vapour of mercury will act through the skin, and why not the vapour of iron? The bright tinge acquired by the blood under a tropical sun would seem to indicate that iron is taken into the human system by the lungs and the skin. A sun-bath is, therefore, an iron bath, and the brightness of the insects and of the gorgeous flowers of the tropics is only, it would seem, an effect of this great colouring agent. Man is made beautiful by that which makes the earth beautiful. The red river that rushes rich with life through artery and vein is tinged with the same force that dyes the purple of the slates, specks the rich porphyries, flushes the rosy granite of Egypt, and pencils the changing blue of Welsh and Highland hills. The rich colour and cosy warmth of an English town, set in a fringe of green, are due to the same agent which burns in brick and tile. All those beautiful violet veinings and variegations of the marbles of Sicily and Spain, the glowing orange and amber tint of those of Sienna, the deep russet of the Rosso-antico, and the bloodcolour of all the precious jaspers that enrich the temples of Italy; and, finally, all the lovely transitions of tint in the pebbles of Scotland and the Rhine, which form, though not the most precious, by far the most interesting portion of our modern jeweller's work ;-all these are painted by nature with this one material only, variously portioned and applied-the oxide of iron that stains your Tunbridge springs.'* We have left ourselves no space to enter into the curious speculations brought together by Dr. Winslow relative to the influence of sol-lunar light in insanity, and upon the periodicity of fevers. The first he considers doubtful; but the second is pretty well established, so far as Indian fevers are concerned, by the evidence and observations of Dr. Balfour and others. We may have occasion to refer to these at some future time. Dr. Winslow's book, we may add, in conclusion, is full of facts, collected from various sources, and presenting nearly every aspect of the main question considered. It is essentially * The Two Paths.' By John Ruskin, M.A. London: 1859. what it professes to be, a compilation, and the only regret the reader will feel is that the worthy physician has not worked some portion of the wide field himself, especially that having reference to the influence of colours upon the brain in disease, and of sol-lunar influence on the insane. The book will set any intelligent mind at work, and most likely direct more attention to a much-neglected source of public health. THOMAS SHILLITOE, QUAKER AND PHILANTHROPIST. THANK HANKS to Mr. Tallack, we now know something about Thomas Shillitoe,* a Quaker, born in London in 1754, a very remarkable man in more respects than one, and entitled for his works' sake to a place of no mean esteem as a pioneer in various fields of philanthropic enterprise. Thomas Shillitoe's father was librarian of Gray's Inn when his son was born, but resigned that post some twelve years afterwards in order to become landlord of the Three Tuns, at Islington. Three years sufficed to exhaust the new publican's resources, and to compel him to seek a quiet retreat once more in connection with Gray's Inn; and it was well for his son that this was so, for public-house-life is no school of virtue, and a lad could hardly come to any good whilst rambling about the village,' as it was then called, till late at nights, carrying out beer to a publican's customers. Happily the public-house scheme failed, and the changes that ensued led to Thomas's promotion from publican's potboy to grocer's apprentice, and to his removal from Islington to Wapping. Scarcely, however, had he been twelve months in the grocery trade ere his master was compelled to abandon his business at Wapping through having fallen into drunkenness. This led to his removal to Portsmouth, whither his apprentice accompanied him; but the situation of the shop, in the lowest part of the town, caused young Shillitoe to be surrounded with scenes of profligacy from which he shrank with horror, so that at length he was compelled to write to his parents, entreating them to release him from such contaminating circumstances, and thus was enabled to return to London as assistant to a sober and devout tradesman, from whose example and influence Thomas Shillitoe, the Quaker Missionary and Temperance Pioneer. By William Tallack, author of Paul Bedford, the Spitalfields Philanthropist,' &c. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row. he received much benefit. It was here that Thomas, who had been brought up in the Established Church, became acquainted with a young man connected with members of the Society of Friends, and in the habit of attending their first day' meetings. To these, at his persuasion, Thomas accompanied him, and soon acquired a habit of so doing. His new friend, however, was by no means a true Quaker, for in his society Thomas learned to neglect all except a morning attendance at a place of worship, and to frequent tea-gardens and other places of public resort, where they spent the afternoons, and occasionally the evenings, of the day that ought to be 'most fair, most calm, and bright.' But not much more than a year of this sort of life had passed ere Shillitoe's mind became very uneasy. He had very early been the subject of strong religious impressions, and he now resolutely determined to follow the leadings of his conscience. From that time forward, we are told, his career was an uninterrupted advance in godliness. Never again was he prevailed upon to forsake either the profession or the practice of a decidedly religious life. He had at first attended Quaker meetings merely for the sake of the companionship of his friend, but gradually he formed an attachment for the peculiarities of the Quakers, became a member of their society, and continued such until the end. He had, however, much trouble to pass through on this account, owing to the dislike of Quakerism which his parents entertained, and the opposition they consequently manifested. They grieved over him as having forsaken the road in which they had carefully taught him to go; and it cost him and them much pain whilst he chose the strange path to which, as he thought, his soul's best interests invited him. In the midst of his troubles on this score, Margaret Bell, a motherly Quaker, became actively concerned' on his behalf, and procured for him what she presumed would be a more congenial situation as a clerk in a Quaker banking house in Lombard-street, where his associates, being of similar tenets, might be expected to sympathise with and appreciate his feelings. It was with hopeful expectation that young Shillitoe accepted this situation, and in it he conscientiously strove to perform his duties to his employers' satisfaction; but trouble and disappointment followed him, for he found that his new companions, though members of the Society of Friends, were by no means elevated above the mass of humanity. Amongst them were many who seemed to him 'as much given up to the world and its delusive pleasures as other professors of the Christian name;' and he was shocked that even his employers saw no harm in issuing lottery-tickets to their customers, in compliance with the gambling spirit which at that time of religious deadness and moral laxity pervaded all ranks of society. He, therefore, deemed it to be his bounden duty to quit an employment that proved to be so religiously distasteful to him; and he anxiously looked round for some means of relieving himself from it. After very serious consideration, he resolved to give up superior worldly advantages in order to obtain freedom to act according to his conscience; and he chose the unromantic occupation of a shoemaker as most likely to enable him to do this. Could anything appear more unaccountably stupid than this to the common sense of ordinary mortals? His relatives, and even his Quaker friends, thought him foolish and deluded. Again and again they remonstrated with him on his absurd preference of the awl, last, and waxed thread to clerkship in a first-rate bank with excellent prospects of advancement. Nor was the change without its abundant immediate humiliations. The respectable appearance he had maintained had now to be relinquished. Quaker though he was, he had up to that time worn a plain sword at his side, after the fashion of the day. He had much more to give up than this; and he had the humble garb of a working shoemaker to assume. To add to the difficulty of the change, the bankers, appreciating his faithfulness as a servant, would not at first entertain his proposal to leave their employment. Margaret Bell, however, advised him to look at the matter simply in its probable bearing on his religious advancement as in the sight of the Lord. From this point of view duty seemed plain. Thomas promptly decided and resigned his clerkship. At this distance of time, and with only imperfect knowledge of the circumstances, it is not possible to condemn Shillitoe for the step thus taken. But certainly the noblest spectacle of all is that which is seen when the flag of honesty and piety is borne unflinchingly along in that very part of the field in which Providence has placed us. To withdraw to a quieter station, is virtually to admit an inability in the arm of the Lord to sustain us in the thick of the fight. The fact that his employers valued Shillitoe, shows that they would have most probably allowed him to retain their service whilst refusing to sell their lottery-tickets; and who can tell what influence his elevated character might have had at length on his fellowclerks, had he remained amongst them? Was he not set there, in order to be a preacher of righteousness to them? What business, then, had he to withdraw? We can only ask such questions now; we cannot judge how far Shillitoe |