6 stands now so high in natural science was a student, and was about to relinquish his studies for want of means, Humboldt happened to meet him in Paris, observed his depression, and asked its cause. Next morning his servant bore a note to the student, which contained these words: My friend, I hear that you are leaving Paris in consequence of some embarrassments: that shall not be. I wish you to remain here as long as the object for which you came is not accomplished. I enclose you a cheque for 50%. it is a loan which you may repay when you can.' By Humboldt's liberality in 1833, Agassiz was enabled to begin the publication of his great work on Fossil Fishes. On his eighty-ninth birthday his last volume of Cosmos' was published; but as his friends met around his table he hinted that he did not expect to meet them again. He lived through the winter and even the spring, but took to his bed on the 3rd May, 1859, and continued to sink. On the 6th, after two o'clock, the blinds of his chamber were opened, and the full blaze of the sun shone upon his face. How grand those rays,' he murmured; 'they seem to beckon earth to heaven.' At half-past two his sun, which had shone for ninety years, sank in this sphere which he did so much to illuminate. The 10th of May was his funeral. The houses in the Orianburger-strasse were hung with crape and decorated with black flags. The mourners crowded by Frederick-strasse and Unter den Linden. Friends, citizens, students, divines, philosophers, court, and king (represented by the prince regent), were in the funeral train. Carriages half a mile in length followed the bier. They laid him in the Dom Church, and the king lifted up his voice and wept, and all the people wept. Dr. Hoffmann, chaplain to the king, gave the address, as he had been requested by the deceased. The organ began to peal; the congregation tion sang, "Jesus, my trust." "Blessed are the dead," said the priest, "who die in the Lord." " Yea, saith the Spirit," the choir answered, "for they rest from their labours. Halleluia." A prayer was then said. Then the grand old chorals, "Be comforted and most happy," and "Christ is my life," were sung, and the ceremony was over. The procession departed as it came, with pattering feet and melancholy music. The church was soon deserted, but the dead remained, in the oaken coffin under the solemn dome, alone with God.' The body was at night removed to Tegel, beside ancestral dust. Humboldt,' says Principal Forbes, in his learned Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science, prefixed to the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica '- Humboldt has contributed more to physical geography than any other man now living, and that not only by his individual efforts, but 6 by by the direction and encouragement which he has given to innumerable travellers and naturalists. His career seems to have been more closely modelled upon that of De Saussure than of any other of his contemporaries or predecessors. Those branches of physical geography which admit of numerical treatment seem most congenial to him; and he has left more of the impress of his personal influence upon the sciences of meteorology and magnetism than upon any others which he cultivated. His conception of isothermal lines, and his treatment of the subject of climatology, in his remarkable paper of 1817, gave a new impulse to the former subject.' Physical geography is one of the most interesting and diversified objects of study. It presents to the mind the phenomena of earth, sea, and sky-scenes at once grand and beautiful; and forms of life of wondrous mechanism and adaptation to their position and purpose. It conducts us over the inorganic world—the mountains in their lofty ranges or insulated peaks, or volcanic craters; the plains in their varied aspects in different continents; the ocean-three-fourths of the globe in its three great basins, Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian, with manifold smaller seas, and presenting so many interesting subjects of inquiry relative to depths, temperature, and motion; the rivers, the great arteries of countries for fertility and trade; and the atmosphere and its different winds, its effect on climate and on life. It introduces to us organic life, vegetable and animal, as it is distributed over the whole surface of the globe, in the waters of the deep, and in the air. Nor are these the only branches of this great science. The influences which the natural features, climate, and produce of countries have exercised over the inhabitants in their industry, habits, and even government are disclosed by the study of physical geography. It opens up to our view many most interesting aspects of the all-wise and beneficent providence of God, and shows how the earth was made the furnished apartments in which man, as its highest and ultimate inhabitant, was to dwell-all prepared and fashioned by the great Father of all for the comfort of his human children. To this study Alexander von Humboldt has introduced us by his tracts and books; and the legacy and the lesson of his long career are the Cosmos,' which spreads before us the wonders of the universe. The pages of his work are the keys for opening nature, and the reader of the philosopher's words will go forth to gaze at the great world-book with more intelligent eye, and with a more devout heart, ready to say, with the quaint poet 'For us the winds do blow, The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow; As our delight or as our treasure. The whole is, either our cupboard of food Or cabinet of pleasure. The Co-operative Societies. The stars have us to bed; Night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws; All things unto our flesh are kind 'Each thing is full of duty: Distinguished, our habitation; Below, our drink; above, our meat; 'More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of: in every path He treads down that which doth befriend him Oh, mighty love! Man is one world, and hath HERBERT. 295 ART. II.-Co-operative Societies. An Essay by Dr. John Watts. Read at the Social Science Conference, Glasgow. NE of the most interesting contributions to the last meeting of the one whose title stands at the head of this article. Interesting, because it introduces us to a new phase of industrial life, and exhibits as a great fact' and a great success one of a class of experiments which have hitherto been generally treated either with pity or contempt, according to the disposition of the observer. The science of production has progressed marvellously amongst us: sixty or seventy years have sufficed to replace the spinning-wheel, twisting one thread at a time, by the double-decked self-acting mule, spinning a thousand threads and upwards; looms work five or six times as rapidly as formerly, and a single individual tends four instead of one; the bleacher does the work in a day which formerly would have occupied him for weeks; the sempstress sits down to her machine, and instead of occupying a day at making a child's frock, she back-stitches a hundred yards of cloth in the same time. But whilst all this economy has obtained in the production of wealth, its distribution is as costly as ever. Everything passes from the manufacturer through the wholesale and the retail dealer before it reaches the working-man consumer. Immense sums are spent in the building and decoration of warehouses and sale shops, vast quantities of goods are spoiled by shop-window exposure, and vast numbers of men and women make their own useless work in dressing and undressing windows, folding, unfolding, and refolding goods, or they remain idle behind counters for the greater part of their lives. Walk through the principal streets of London, and observe the shop windows; they constitute the largest and richest exhibition exhibition of industrial and artistic products in the world; and the panorama not only changes in character with the change of locality, but even in the same shop the articles are exchanged every few days until the whole stock has been exhibited. In the larger shops a certain measure of economy is necessitated by the great expense at which the establishment' is kept up, and a wet day turns hundreds of drapers' assistants into the streets; but this economy does not much improve the body politic, since the persons dismissed are not productively employed. But turn now into the side streets, and look into the places where the proprietors manage each his own business with the aid of one or two assistants, where a single sale per day upon the average will furnish the ten or fifteen pounds. which constitute the weekly receipts; and remember that of this class are the great bulk of the miles of shops which throng our great cities; and then try to calculate the proportion of the receipts which will be necessary to maintain the concern, the whole or nearly the whole of which per centage is an unnecessary deduction from the stock handed over to the consumer. In articles of food this deduction is not less than from 7 to 10 per cent., and in textile fabrics it is from 15 to 20 per cent., whilst in articles for ornament it often rises to 50 per cent. What wonder if, when people realize the losses thus sustained, they should seek to avoid them by any and every feasible means! We must all pay national and local taxation for the protection of life and property, for sanitary measures, and for the relief of the destitute; and in these taxes there is at least an attempt at fairness by levying upon each individual in proportion to his rental: we say an attempt at fairness, for since cottage property gives a far larger return for capital than is derived from any other class of houses, it necessarily follows that the poor man is overtaxed. A man's rental is always a very imperfect measure of his wealth; for a city workman earning fifty pounds per annum can scarcely pay less than six pounds per annum rent, but will the man who gets ten thousand pounds pay twelve hundred per annum for his house? And a shopkeeper, in order to realize a hundred pounds per annum, must pay as much in rent and taxes as the man who gets a thousand pounds per annum from realized property. Thus, for protection from violence, for shelter, for food and clothing, for all the necessaries and conveniences of life, the poor man is overcharged as compared with his richer neighbour; and the poor man is not only overcharged in the taxes levied directly upon himself, but he also pays indirectly, in the increased cost of commodities, the overcharge upon the shopkeeper also. If it be urged that labour is created by the subdivision of articles into minute quantities to suit the working man's convenience, and that the army of retailers are his servants, ready to do his bidding, and must be paid for their work; we reply that if they be his servants, it is only in the sense that the officials of the Court of Bankruptcy are the servants of the creditors; and there is no objection to pay for necessary work, but that there is great objection to pay for useless or injurious work, or for officious idleness in the shop or in the court at the cost of one-third of the estate. And the deduction for the profit of the shopkeeper is not the worst feature of the case against the retail salesman. The anxiety of each new shopkeeper to accumulate wealth has led to a spurious cheapness achieved by adulterations of every possible kind, until health is sacrificed, and usefulness destroyed, by the ceaseless efforts to make things seem to be something which they are not. Old woollen cloth is torn up into fibres by a machine called 'the devil,' re-spun with a small proportion of new wool, woven and dressed and passed again into the market as new cloth; fustians are scratched (perched) on the back, thus partially destroying the fibre before they get into wear, in order to make them appear to be full of cotton; they are woven twenty-four inches wide, put into a steambox, and stretched upon a moving frame to twenty-seven inches; the interstices being filled with starch, with silicate of soda, or with bone dust, to make them pass for rich and heavy goods; and the deception lasts until they get into wear, when if the workman chances to get his trousers wet, he will find it difficult to get them off his legs, so greatly will they shrink in dimensions. Calico prints are similarly filled and stretched, so that not until the washerwoman has performed her office upon them can their real quality be ascertained. Wooden bobbins thinly wrapped with sewing cotton are sold for cotton, and trade marks and the names of celebrated firms are forged, until the name of a maker of genuine articles is no longer a protection to the purchaser. Sixteen ounces of raw silk is sent to be dyed black, and comes home again weighted with logwood and gum to such an extent that it weighs thirty, forty, fifty, or even sixty ounces. Of this stuff are the dulllooking heavy black ribbons for trimmings, and the broad silks for dresses made. In articles of food the adulteration is not less: wheaten flour is let down with lime and alum, oatmeal with peameal, butter with lard, and is filled with water; coffee is adulterated with chicory, tea is painted with verdigris or black lead; mustard is adulterated with flour and pepper; anchovies are coloured with red lead, sugar is mixed with sand; tobacco is made of plantain leaves, fine hay, and treacle; and the wine and spirit trade has called into existence a new industry followed by men whose common designation is 'adulterator; and so throughout, until we feel inclined to believe not only that language was given to man to enable him to hide his thoughts, but that the ingenuity which has sought out many inventions was given to enable men to cheat each other. But every evil by its effect upon human nature |