SELF CULTURE A MAGAZINE OF KNOWLEDGE as to extort from every intelligent spectator the frankest and heartiest admiration. This is the testimony, we may say, not of the English press, naturally elated over the demonstration, but of the commanders and flag-officers of the fourteen warships of foreign countries sent to do honor to the English nation and its sovereign on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee. It is especially the testimony of the officers of the "Brooklyn," our No. 5 country's magnificent cruiser, present on the occasion, which attracted so much official and professional attention, as well as the judgment of our own ambassador and the express representative of the President at the jubilee ceremonies. This country, of all nations that may be deemed foreign to England, has no reason to withhold honest pride in the triumphs of an English-speaking power or to belittle its splendid naval equipment for defense and not for aggression. can facts wisely be ignored by international churlishness or jealousy, which it is important for this country, itself ambitious of sea-power, to realize and take note of for its own national advantage. G. MERCER ADAM, EDITOR MONTGOMERY B. GIBBS, BUSINESS MANAGER BRITAIN'S The significance has naturally not gone unnoticed of that imperial pageant -the British naval review at Spithead - which closed the recent jubilee festivities in England. No spectacle could well be more impressive than the thirty miles of magnificent ironclads, embracing a fleet of one hundred and sixty-five vessels of war, which were assembled in the waters of the Solent on the 26th of June last, as a demonstration of Britain's unparalleled naval strength and of her unexampled supremacy at sea. In that monster gathering of warships, which, it has to be said, represented only the home-protecting fleet, and was exclusive of Britain's cruisers in the Mediterranean and on foreign stations, the world sees the symbol of Britain's real strength and the might of her imperial power. Nor was the demonstration in the Solent formidable only in the number and armed array of vessels; it was formidable most of all in the fact that the fleet was wholly modern, and in offensive and defensive force-in speed, weight and strength of armament - rivals the combined navy of two, if not three, of the other chief European powers. The spectacle of these myriad monster castles afloat showed unmistakably in whose hands the sceptre of Neptune resides; while the pageant not only revealed grim masses of iron and steel work and colossal examples of mechanical skill and construction, but a remarkable return to the beauty of line and even poetry of motion that used signally to mark the "wooden walls of Old England. The scene off Spithead was so unique Nor The United States, however, in this matter, does neither ignore nor belittle. Between this country and the old motherland there must be always something more than courteous interest or even friendly rivalry. In spite of the schism of the last century, we are inheritors with her of the past glories and traditions of the grand old island realm, and have a present interest in, as we have in no little contributed to, the expanding influence and intellectual and moral power of the English-speaking race. Together we are united by ties not alone of sentiment, but of real and palpable relationship, and especially by the bonds of religion, race-origin, and of a common language and literature. It is to the sense of international duty in these two great powers of Anglo-Saxon origin, as well as to their mutual amity and good will, that modern civilization looks to uphold the peace and advance the moral progress of the world. The day of fraternal strife can no more return to these two great peoples without consequences appalling to contemplate to the entire modern world. Hence, hosannas in the one nation may well evoke hosannas in the other, and a race-citizenship unite them in glorying in the high traditions of the past and in guarding and advancing those beneficent humanitarian interests which belong to each in common. A SWEDISH INVENTOR'S SCIENCE In our February number BEQUEST TO (1897) we gave an account of the career of Alfred Nobel, the ScotoSwedish inventor and manufacturer of blasting explosives, who died in December last, leaving his immense fortune, of over nine million dollars, to an international fund for the furtherance of scientific experimentation and research. Since then further details have come to light of the savant's princely bequest in the interest of his favorite studies, and especially for enlarging the scope of investigation in the science of physics. The will, it seems, provides that the income from Mr. Nobel's fortune shall be divided into five equal parts, one-fifth being appropriated annually to reward. the person who shall make the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, and one-fifth each to those who shall make the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, in physiology or medicine, or produce the most distinguished idealistic work in literature. The remaining fifth, the will stipulates, shall go to the person "who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies, as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace. The competition is to be worldwide, and no discrimination is to be made on the ground of race or nationality. To whose arbitrament the work of competitors for the prizes is to be assigned has not yet been made public; but that the awards, which will amount to $50,000 or $60,000 each, annually, will stimulate research and materially aid social advancement can hardly be gainsaid, while the bequest, otherwise, is a beneficent and enduring one. was born at Smyrna, N. Y., June 1, 1832, and died June 27th last, in his sixty-fifth year. After taking a course at the State Normal School at Albany, in which for a time he was an instructor in mathematics, he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, where he graduated in 1856. From 1857 to 1872 he occupied the chair of civil engineering in the University of Michigan, and in the latter year was called to the professorship of mathematics and mechanics in the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N. J. In 1885 he was transferred to the chair of mechanical engineering. He was a constant experimenter and an instructive writer. Among his inventions are an air-compressor, a pneumatic rock-drill and steam pump. His writings embrace a work on the "Resistance of Materials (1871), and treatises on on "Elementary Mechanics" (1878), "Trigonometry" (1885), and on "Thermo-dynamics" (1887). He was the first president of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering, and was a member of the American societies of Civil Engineers and of Mechanical Engineers. American scholarship suffers a serious loss in the death, at Cambridge, Mass., on the 30th of June last, of Professor George Martin Lane, who for over forty years held the chair of Latin language and literature in Harvard University. Professor Lane was appointed professor of Latin in 1851, and elected Pope professor in 1869, filling the post until the year 1894, when he accepted an emeritus professorship from the college corporation, with the degree of LL.D. He was an enthusiastic Latinist, and in and out of Harvard did much for the study of the classics during his long and active career. In Professor Lane's death Harvard loses one of the last of the bright band of scholars who were the contemporaries of Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, Child, Norton, and Agassiz. Another Cambridge man disappears in Alvan Graham Clark, the eminent telescope maker and astronomer, who died at Cambridge, Mass., on June 9th last. This last of the family of the famous American lens-makers had only just returned from placing the colossal objective his firm had manufactured in position in the great telescope-tube at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. Astronomy, says "Science," is deeply indebted to the senior Alvan Clark, who died in 1887, and to his two sons. In 1859 Mr. Clark began the making of an objectglass 181⁄2 inches in aperture, the largest that had up to that time been attempted. In 1873, the firm made the 26-inch objective for the observatory at Washington, and in 1880 the 30-inch refractor for the Imperial Observatory at St. Petersburg. These were followed by the 36-inch lens of the Lick Observatory and the recently completed 40-inch lens for the Yerkes Observatory. The making of such lenses was a scientific work of the utmost value, as it calls for the greatest accuracy. Mr. Clark had also made direct contributions to astronomy, including the discovery of the companion of Sirius in 1862, for which he was awarded the Lalande medal of the Paris Academy. STENOGRAPHY The increasing use of IN THE SCHOOLS short-hand in connection with the type-writer, in our age of hurry, suggests a more general and early resort to it in the training of youth. In many schools, we are aware, short-hand is taught, but in others, and by far the majority, there is no provision for teaching it, though much time is given to the writing lesson, which is frequently absorbed by elaborate practice in ornamental penmanship. The latter in many instances involves an unnecessary waste of time and patience which would be more serviceably expended in acquiring some practical knowledge of phonography. For literary purposes, and indeed for most of the ordinary purposes of writing, the use of short-hand is of great moment the economy in its use over the present system of writing out in full being a matter instantly verifiable by any one familiar with the system. To the student in making rapid notes of lectures, and in transcribing passages from text-books for future reference and use, acquaintance with phonography phonography would be of great assistance, while in his after career he would find it highly serviceable and profitable to him in whatever occupation or profession he is to engage. Some years ago phonography was made the subject of reference in a Presi dential address before the British Science Association, in some such words as the following: It seems strange that while we actually possess a system of short-hand by which words can be recorded as rapidly as they can be spoken, we should persist in writing a slow and laborious long-hand. It is intelligible that grown-up persons who have acquired the present conventional art of writing should be reluctant to incur the labor of mastering a better system; but there can be no reason why the rising genera tion should not be instructed in a method of writing more in accordance with the activity of mind which now prevails. The utility of short-hand, in this commercial age, is every day becoming more and more an admitted fact, and if the system could be more generally introduced into the schools, as a part say of the writing lesson, we are certain of its immense advantages to those who can acquire facility in writing it. To become a short-hand writer is not, of course, an attainment within the easy reach of all. Like other acquirements, the royal road to it is through application and perseverance. Two things, it has been said, are especially necessary to the complete mastery of short-hand; namely, first, to begin, and next, to go on with its acquirement and practice. The learner must, as it were, grow into the use of short-hand writing, pretty much in the same way that he advances to perfection in any other everyday attainment. The study, we may add, has been further facilitated the other day by the invention of a short-hand type-writer. In these ingenious machines the characters are printed transversely across a continuous strip of paper, a word being printed at one stroke in plain English letters. NEW GOLD DIS- Nature's caprices in the COVERIES ON THE YUKON geographical distribution of the mineral wealth of the world would make a curious study. One day she lures the miner to the ends of the earth in one direction, the next, as if in sport, she lures him to the antipodes of the region. The latest fields of auriferous attraction are the upper reaches of the Yukon river in Alaska, or rather inland from Alaska, beyond the boundary line that separates the latter from the Canadian North-West Territories. Here, in the Clondyke district (which we take to be about 250 miles N.N.E. from Mt. St. Elias, or by water navigation, probably 1500 miles from St. Michael's, on Norton Sound), a tract of gold-producing ore of almost fabulous richness has been discovered. A mining party, some forty in number, has just returned from the region, bringing with them, it is said, gold-dust to the value of $500,000. The steamer, which brought the miners to San Francisco, brought a large additional shipment of gold-dust. As the result of this new find, we may expect the usual frenzied rush into the country, with the accompanying disappointments and distress, though that has been the way the waste-places in the world have been settled and congested regions relieved of their superabundant population. Fortunately, the Yukon, we believe, swarms with salmon, and of proportions that would put the home-angler to the blush were he to name their length and weight. As these fish ascend the river for over a thousand miles, there would be little fear of starvation, during the short summer months at least when the Yukon is not ice-bound, in the case of a vast influx of mining population. In the winter, game, we understand, is still plentiful, for the fur-trade continues to be a profitable industry, and, in the upper reaches of the Yukon, the climate, contrary to general belief, is said to be milder than on the coast. The process of mining the gold, moreover, is not a serious labor, since the yield has, so far, been from placer deposits and from the beds of streams rich in metalliferous silt washed down from the mountains. As the district of the new gold camps lies, as we have said, in Canadian rather than in Alaskan territory, we shall be fortunate if we do not embroil ourselves with the government of the Dominion in permitting our miners to flock into the region. The international boundary is still in dispute and this fact adds to the differences between the two countries, already sufficiently vexed by the seal question in Bering Sea and off the Alaskan peninsula. sympathy, but it is to real and not sham labor that we feel kindly, and we have no emotions to waste on the mere agitator. Nor have we any quarrel with tradeunions, guilds or other associations of industry organized for legitimate purposes, which do not threaten or unnecessarily incommode the community, are not in spirit anti-social, but whose members obey the dictates of reason and refrain from acts of violence and intimidation. We admit, of course, that brotherhoods of labor expect from capital and its em'ploying chiefs the same considerateness and restraint that we should seek to impose upon the Unions and their associate members. Tyranny is hateful, on whatever side it is exercised, and against wrong, whether on the part of capital or of labor, we do well, in the last resort, to fight. But fighting is too apt to be the attitude assumed in most labor conferences, and the wheels of commerce are constantly being clogged by industrial antagonisms. We want more conciliation and the bringing of grievances, unaffected by class enmities, into the court of the arbitrator. With frank and unheated conference, the resort to strikes would often be obviated and social chasms would be bridged that otherwise alienate and perpetuate class distinctions. That there is at times failure, on both sides, to meet and give effect to the counsels of reason is only to say that this is an imperfect world, and that transactions between man and man are, in this mundane state, not yet wholly governed by the maxims of the golden rule. In the present coal-miner's strike, we say it frankly, reason as well as justice may well approve the action. Mining, we all know, is a hazardous and laborious occupation, and competition has of late cut prices so fine as to leave no adequate wages to the miner. The demand for higher pay is therefore both reasonable and just, and public sympathy will naturally go out to the strikers till they obtain, peaceably we trust, what is fair of their claims. At this season, the industry cannot afford to be embarrassed by a long strike, and we trust that the mine operators, who, we know, have not of late done a profitable business, may see their way to adjust prices so that justice may be done to labor, with due consideration for all other interests concerned. EVENTS OF THE MONTH Tuesday, June 15.- General Miles has arrived in London; in addition to visiting the Turkish and Greek armies, he inspected the ordnance made at the Armstrong factory at Naples for the Italian, Spanish, and Argentine governments; he also inspected the gun factories and coast defenses of Austria, Italy, and France.. At a meeting in Dublin, John Redmond announced that the Irish party would move in the House of Commons an amendment to the address of congratulation to the Queen declaring that Ireland is suffering from misgovernment, depopulation, and famine; that the only remedy for this condition of things is the concession of Ireland's demands for national self-government ....Mr. Wilfred Laurier, Premier of Canada, in a speech at a banquet in Glasgow, referred to Canada as "the great republic on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Wednesday, June 16.-President McKinley sent to the Senate, with an accompaning message, a treaty for the annexation of Hawaii to the United States... President McKinley nominated Stewart L. Woodford, of New York, to be minister to Spain....The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon ex-President Cleveland by Princeton University....Count Ito, of Japan, in an interview at Paris, says Japan never had an idea of entering into a conflict with the United States about Hawaii....The Norway Storthing unanimously approved an address to the King in favor of concluding treaties to establish a permanent court of arbitration. Thursday, June 17.-The President has refused permission to the Compagnie Francais Cables Telegraphique to land the new cable of the company at Cape Cod, or anywhere upon the United States coast. Tea importers have made large purchases in China and Japan for immediate delivery, and are having it hurried across the Pacific in order to enter it before the Dingley bill goes into effect; it is said that 1,000 tons have already been landed, and 12,000,000 pounds are on the way.... Ex-Queen LiliuokaÎani filed at the State Department a protest against the ratification of the Hawaiian treaty of annexation....The death is announced at Woerishofen, Bavaria, of the Rev. Father Sebastian Kneipp, known throughout the world for his water cure system, which proved to be reriarkably efficacious in the treatment of chronic cases by the application of water in various forms. Friday, June 18.-Storms caused great damage to property in Kentucky and several of the Western States; in some of the States a number of lives were lost....The Smithsonian Institution has received by bequest a collection of Chinese and other Asiatic coins, consisting of 2,025 pieces, and representing the coinage of China from 700 B.C. to the present time....An inquest was held on the body of Barney Barnato, at Southampton; the coroner's jury found a verdict of death from drowning while temporarily insane...... The Prince of Wales presided over a banquet given by the Imperial Institute to the Colonial Premiers....The Province of Assam, in British India, has been devastated by the earthquake; the monsoon has fully burst, and it is raining heavily and continuously in India.... The State Council of Switzerland has declared in favor of the State acquiring the railroads. Saturday, June 19.-President McKinley, it is stated, has determined to revive the abandoned treaty of general arbitration between the United States and Great Britain, a new treaty having been drafted to serve as the basis of negotiations....Dr. Miguel, who is to replace Dr. von Boetticher, the German minister, will have increased prerogatives and functions....M. Hanotaux announced that the dispute between France and Venezuela had been settled....More than six thousand lives are reported to have been lost in the recent earthquakes in India.... It is said that the draft of the treaty of peace between Greece and Turkey will be submitted to the Powers in a few days. Sunday, June 20.-Two shocks of earthquake occurred throughout California; but little damage was done....The Maine Populist State committee, at Lewiston, have declared against any further alliances with the silver faction of the Democratic party .... Services were held in many churches to commemorate the sixtieth accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne ....The celebration of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee was begun; thanksgiving services were held in St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and in churches throughout the United Kingdom, and in nearly every large city in Europe; the Queen and members of the royal family attended the services at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Monday, June 21.-President McKinley sent a personal letter of congratulation to Queen Victoria....At a meeting of ex-ministers of the Liberal party in Madrid Señor Sagasta denounced the home and the foreign policy of the Premier the Liberals will persist in abstaining from all relations with the Government as long as the Duke of Tetuan is retained in the Cabinet.... The Sultan has submitted to the Peace conference a counter project for the delimitation of the frontier....Queen Victoria went from Windsor to London; in the afternoon she received the royal envoys at Buckingham palace; after entertaining ninety of her most distinguished guests at dinner, her Majesty received the diplomatic corps. Tuesday, June 22.-The Cabinet discussed the Hawaiian annexation treaty; the administra. tion will not press the treaty in Congress until the regular session in December... The secretary of the treasury received information of the capture of the suspected filibuster Dauntless, off Indian Key, Florida, with men, arms, and ammunition on board....The Queen's jubilee procession in London was a magnificent success....An official denial has been made at Madrid of the statement that the United States government has sent a fresh note to the government of Spain on the subject of Cuba. Wednesday, June 23.-The Japanese government has entered a strong protest against the annexation of Hawaii by the United States, on the ground that annexation would be injurious to its interests....The number of immigrants that arrived in this country during the eleven months ended May 3, 1897, was 210,271....The |