chaplain would have to be voiceless here, and to adapt himself to the wants of his people, and our present friend can do no more. The other would have worn his professional gown and bands, this has none; but neither needs he any. There is a dignity about him, an earnestness, a solemnity, that want no silk to be made effective, and that come straight from his own poor imprisoned soul. He has to act everything, as it were (since the system he uses is a mixture of the spelling with our old child-learnt dumb alphabet, and the representation of words, and even phrases, by expressive signs), and he is so moved by the poetry of the thoughts he is communicating, his head, and arms, and whole body are idealised by it, and he is a picture in every attitude that he assumes. No Oriental could give a painter or a sculptor more delight. He is elevating his hands now to Heaven in close appeal; and now he has no hope left of mercy, and stands there abased. He is resignation, alarm, hope, and tender love; he is gratitude, humiliation, anger, rapture; he turns from adoration to hate, from joy to despair; he supplicates, he mourns, he worships, he disdains, and all with the swiftness and beauty of a man with a fairy gift. All the congregation are standing with him for a prayer (they cannot kneel, nor yet bow their heads, nor do anything that interferes with the freedom of their eyes), and his fingers are making incessant movements rapidly, magically, madly-and are adding to his expression considerably more. His arms are out, in, up, down; forward, behind, to the left, to the right; his thumbs are together, apart, making emphasis, upraised; his palms slide rapidly by one another, his little fingers hook; he points, he touches, he makes rings and fists; his fingers go over, under, through, on; and they twirl, and twist, and clasp, and throw one

another away, without a moment's pause. Then his whole pose again is trust; and then he triumphs, and then he complains, and then ecstasy carries him completely away. He has scarcely entreated before he confesses he has no right to entreat; he has scarcely sunk under his afflictions before he declares he has received the strength to battle with them, and he is a new man, erect. He shows faith, and submission, and abhorrence, and rage; he yields, he questions, he admits he is unfit; he is tranquil, and then vehement; he adores, and then he scorns; and then, suddenly, his arms drop by his side lifeless, and he is a picture still, but this time of nothing but a light-bearded, long-coated, intelligent-faced man.

The congregation sit. It is the time for the reading of the psalm, and they consult the black board and their Bibles, and turn to the appointed page. Their preacher stretches out his arms to call them to attention, and when he sees they are all heeding him, begins his quick gesturing again. The psalm has been found by us, too, but it is impossible, with the preacher's nimbleness, and use, and genius, to keep up with him; and, the clue once gone, there is no regaining it, and we can once more do nothing but be all-absorbed and look. As may be expected, there is more beauty for us to see still. With the grand words of the Psalmist come grander actions, and we might be in the East, with a type before us of all the fire and imagery of the Hebrew race. Our eloquent mute bows his head, moves his hands above it, as if the waves were fiercely surging there; lays his breast for the storm to touch it; wrestles with his foes; bids them strike him; thrusts them back; pleads for help; exults when it is given; is borne down when it does not come. He shows the wind with its wild rush; the billows as they heave; the arrows of heaven.

descending; the peace that follows: the obedience that takes it all for good. And through all of it, there is no moment's stay in the passion (almost) of his finger-speech. He is still making up the sum of the sublime words he is rendering, with all the velocity of before. His congregation keep their eyes on him intent. He scarcely looks at his book, except now and then to lay one of his charmed fingers upon it (to remind himself, apparently, of how far he has gone), or to hurriedly turn the page. He seems to know all that is coming by heart, and to feel it as though it were his very life. He is on the mountains with the sacred bard; he is beside the waters; he treads the pasture; he scents the flowers; he feels the thorny way. To him the fountains are again opened; he tells of their leaping in the sun, of the dark shades away from them, of the Rock of his heart, of the confusion of his adversaries crowding around. He is a Gamaliel, an Isaiah, a Job, a Jonah; and Israelitish youths are in procession near him, and he sees the smoke of the sacrifice rise. He is hope again, with his face radiant; he is endurance, with his head bent low; he is victory, with his hands up like a crown; he is a captive, with his body chafing under heavy chains. His arms open to receive sweet messengers; his arms are clasped upon his breast with joy that they are come; he points up, with the sign that means the Ruler; he points to the nail-marks in his palms that are the sign for Jesus Christ. He flings away his hands, to imply disdain; he joins them tight, to signify accord; he spreads them wide, to show universal reaching; he gently waves them to denote the shaking of the earth. Long before we are weary of watching him, he has figured all this, and more, and he has stood in cedar groves, and by flocks feeding, and he has drunk in the colours of a Syrian

sunset, and melted under the terrors of a desert blaze; and then the last verse of the psalm is finished, and his arms are again by his sides drooping, and his congregation have once more in a mass risen to their feet.

He is leading them to prayer again. He has changed his one book for the other, has opened it, lighted upon his place, and recommenced his whirl of interpretation. Letter succeeds letter, picture fol lows instantly upon picture, aspect, attitude, expression, pose. There is one, there is the other, there are all: and then the prayer is over, and he points to the black board for the lesson, interprets that (the people again sitting for it), signs to them to stand for the Collect, and in a few minutes his (necessarily) shortened form of church service is done. It is now the time for the sermon, and in this is the marvellous power of this physical language still more displayed. As the preacher, of course, is full of his own thoughts, a different set of phrases clothes them, and a different set of symbols is needed to make them known. He cannot be more rapid-one would think he must be panting now, ready to throw himself prostrate upon the floor,he cannot be more picturesque, but he is (or we fancy he is) more homely, and it seems that he has left poetry, as it were, and is manipulating to us now in prose. He appears to saw, cut, screw, fold, pat, mix, knock, fondle; to hang himself, cut his head off, pull his beard, pluck out his heart, recover, smile, assure every one he is not hurt, blow bubbles, and draw ropes. He appears to tie, twist, twirl, rub, wring, iron, make pies and puddings, hold them up to be admired, congratulate himself that they have turned out so well. There is danger (it seems to us) of a wreck; he sees the peril, cheers on the men, throws a rope to them,

rejoices that they see it, hauls it in, comforts us that it is coming, hauls in still more, and hauls and hauls again, and then snaps off the simile, and is as precipitate over something else. He might be a necromancer, making pastime of occult science. He throws a ball and catches it; taps himself upon the chest ; defies, vanquishes, shrinks, expands; pulls a hair out of his mouth; conjures; throws up a ball again; throws up three or four; pulls more hairs; turns supposed handles somewhere about his ribs; shakes his hands; smoothes them; acts 'Nonsense! pooh! presto! gone!'-climbs, sinks; lifts up his thumbs, lowers them; strikes his fore-finger, his second, his third, his fourth; knocks together his palms; blows; opens his mouth, and shuts it; strikes his forehead, his nose, his chin; and yet never once is a buffoon, or crosses the line beyond which is contempt. His emphasis is surprising. He lays his two hands to beat down the air, and does it as if no one could deny the end; he returns to his velocity of fingering, and then presses down the air again; he is busy above his head, and towards his feet, and among his puzzlement of long and little fingers; and then is pressing out his outstretched hands convincingly once more. His joints seem multiplied in his miraculous celerity, and we grow giddy with looking at his energy and despatch. There has been no break in his movements, let it be remembered. No Litany has changed the order, with the congregation joining in response. No grand old hymn has woven every one into harmony, and made but a single soul out of all those here assembled, with the beauty of its sacred chords. The preacher has had to go on and on, with no comma but those his supple hands have marked, and with his whole labour almost one long continuous phrase. No words can successfully

paint his intricate action; no pen can describe his entanglings, his involutions, his perplexing and pliant skill.

If a

He is so expert, so facile, so swift, so fleet, he fills us with everincreasing wonder, and forces us to think it is we who are imperfect, and not he who leaves us so deeply impressed. He speaks a different language to what we do; that is what we come to think. We cannot feel that he has no language at all. What is this marvellous fluency of his, this pictured eloquence, that we should feel pity for it as an infirmity, simply because it is something we cannot understand! man speaks French (when that language is a blank to us), do we think he lies under such a dreadful ban? It is true his fervour is lost upon us, that we cannot be convinced by his vehemence; but we know it is simply that his words are of one sort and ours of another, and that each is puzzled because each has not the other's key. And that is exactly what we have grown into thinking now. Voice is useless here; sound has no vogue; our speech is dying out; and die it may, since there is no longer any purpose for it. But how, then, shall we ask what we want to know? How shall we get at the hearts of these people, and show them what is beating in our own? Ah! it is there where we are at fault! It is there where we feel our inferiority, and not these people's, whom we have looked upon as deficient because they are deaf and dumb! Would our fingers work the magic of this preacher's we have come to see? Have we this accomplishment he is so perfect in, and with which he is able to move so many souls? No; and so, tongue-tied and, for the moment, humbled, we leave our seats now every one else is leaving them, and prepare thoughtfully to go away.

As we step with the tide down

IT

Tis not a matter upon which the British public can be congratulated that the ignorance still prevailing in this country as to the character of the brightest jewel of the British Crown is almost as benightedly dark as it was two thousand two hundred years ago, when the son of Philip of Macedon tried to fix that gem in the diadem of Greece. We have, undoubtedly, made vast strides in the path of civilisation during the many centuries intervening between the reign of Alexander the Great and that of our gracious Queen Victoria. In science and the useful arts there has been material improvement. We know a great deal more about a great many things than ever came within the knowledge, or was shadowed forth in the wildest visions, of the wisest philosophers of Greece. And if we cannot say quite as much for the arts ornamental,-if the statues recently erected in our metropolis do not excel those of Phidias,-if Mr. Frith's last picture is not immeasurably superior to the greatest effort of Apelles, and if Mr. Boucicault's 'dramas' are not, in point of language and construction, quite as powerful as the works of Euripides, we can, at least, fall back upon our useful inventions and improvements—our electric-telegraph, railway travelling, gas, kerosine oil, constitutional government, parish unions, and divorce courts, and point, triumphantly, to those irrefragable evidences of the progress we have made. In geography above all have we advanced. Whereas to the educated Grecian of the palmiest days of Greece, the world was a flat surface, over the edge of which (if you could find it) you might enjoy the luxury of taking a header into space, we

know that the planet we inhabit is a sphere slightly flattened as an orange (vide Elementary Geographies) at the poles. Further, we know of the existence of vast continents and small islands, wide oceans and land-locked seas, which were wholly excluded from the Atlases of the ancients. We believe that we have discovered the sources of the Nile (though what we are to do with the sources when we find them is not yet made clear to the majority of us). Dr. Livingstone, if he ever returns (and we earnestly pray that he may) will, in his account of his present expedition, add considerably to our knowledge about Central Africa; and, if we have not yet discovered the North-west Passage, we hope some day to find out that route which is to be so eminently useful when we know it, but which hitherto has only resulted in the expenditure of much money, and, what is more to be regretted, the expenditure of the valuable lives of some of our hardy Arctic explorers. Yes, we know a great deal more about the geography of this planet than was ever known before; but about India (the brightest jewel, &c.) there are yet many of us, even in civilised and highly cultured England, who are little less ignorant than were the Grecians of that early period when Alexander met Porus on the plains of the Punjab, and when, there is reason to think, the hardy veterans of Macedon carved their way from the north-west frontier nearly to the site whereon now stands Calcutta. In spite of weekly mails, telegraphic communication, and the enormous interest that India should have for England, the majority of us know as little about