I call his extravagant grief, that made him forget faithful people who had risked their lives in his service; and there were such complaints growing in the army, and such surprise was felt at his unreasonable conduct, that I was compelled to go to him, and tell him almost roughly, that if he did not rouse himself and act like a reasonable man, the kingdom would altogether fall away from him. He resented my interference, and called me some strong names; but he saw the peril of the policy he was pursuing, and began to act, but to act in a selfwilled sort of way, as if he would have nothing more to do with me, but manage his return to Jerusalem in his own way.

"Not without good reason, I was vexed and angry. Actually, as if he scorned all those who had helped him through his trouble, he cast himself into the hands of the tribe of Judah, and set me aside to make Amasa, the general of Absalom's rebellious army, his new commander-in-chief. There is nobody on earth who could quietly abide such an insult. And I did not mean to. To displace a conquering general, and put in his place the general he defeated, was surely never heard of before. To crown with garlands the enemy, and heap insults on the victors, surely nobody but David ever did before.

"Wait awhile; I know that Amasa is unfit for leadership. He is a brave soldier, but he is no general. David will want me yet.

"It proved so quicker than I had expected. David's way of managing matters only increased jealousies, which broke out into open revolt under one Sheba. Amasa could not act promptly, so David, afraid to face me, called Abishai to his help. I was not going to see things go wrong, because I was personally ill-treated, so

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I joined Abishai, and managed to secure my chance of killing this rival Amasa, as a warning to David that he must not play with me in this style. I was sorry indeed to have to slay my cousin, but it was no use keeping up a rivalry. While I live no man takes my post. I have given my best of life and energy to the service of David, and whether he likes it or not, I mean to be the chief man in his kingdom as long as I live.

"We are old, very old now, both David and I. He loves me no better than he did when he tried to put Amasa in my place. On his sick bed he lies, and they tell me that he never speaks a kind word of me, or the services I have rendered to him all thro' his reign. He thinks of nothing but the one or two terrible things I had to do to help him when he was making weak compromises, that could only have been fruitful in mischief. I fear that he has made Solomon his successor, the son of that Bathsheba who has caused most of the trouble of his later reign; and has committed to him to punish me, a thing which he dare not attempt himself. Poor David, weak to the last, weak even in his very vengeance. At my age, it little matters what becomes of me, but I am not going to acknowledge Bathsheba's son. She has played hard for this success; and they say the succession of Solomon is declared to be the will of Jehovah, by both priest and prophet; but I have been too much of a soldier to do much religion; and if Adonijah makes any claim to the throne, he shall certainly have my support.

"But I have had my time and cannot now manage the future. And indeed, sometimes, when the other world seems near, and thoughts go back over the long years, I question whether my life has been really a no

ble one. I have served self, and deceived myself into the idea that I was serving the king. I have followed ambition, and paid the usual penalty; I have soiled my hands, and soiled my soul. Oftentimes I see dead Abner; I see his comrades hurrying away, and leaving Uriah to his fate; I see Amasa wallowing in his blood, and I wish these things had not been. Perhaps I have been too masterful with David. Perhaps my life must go out in shame and blood because I have followed the devices of my own heart. If I had lived for Jehovah, in all holy service, how many, many things would have been otherwise."

(Concluded.)

THE WELSH COLONY OF

PATAGONIA.

The United States Consul in Buenos Ayres in his report for the past year on the Argentine Republic refers to the explorations of Colonel Fontana, the Governor of Southern Patagonia. One expedition made by that officer was with a company of Welsh pioneers from Chupat up to the headwaters of the river of that name in the Subandean regions. During an absence of four months-during which they traversed over 3,000 miles he reports they discovered "a most magnificent country, with great lakes, rich valleys, fine pastures, dense woods, and all the elements necessary for supporting a large population, close under the Cordilleras, with passes quite accessible through to the Pacific." Colonel Fontana says of this region:-"Who could have believed that such a paradise could have remained unknown for so many centuries? Who could have supposed that the barren wastes and stony steppes of the Patagonian seaboard were the outer margin of a land teeming with fertility, and delightful

watercourses near the Andine slopes?" He collected specimens of 11 kinds of timber, among which were red cedar, white and red pine, two varie ties of beech, a pitch tree (calafate), and others suitable for cabinet work. There was a profusion of cryptogams, mosses, lichens, and mushrooms; and game, large and small, of great varie ty and immense quantities. "In fact," says Governor Fontana, "in these regions nature has been as exuberant and lavish as in the Misiones or the Gran Chaco." Mr. Baker adds that explorations have also been made south of the river Gallegos, and such excellent pasturage has been found along the northern shores of the Straits of Magellan that large numbers of sheep have already been sent across from the Falkland Islands. In Terra del Fuego, also, there have been several exploring expeditions, and not a little of that inhospitable wilderness is found to be made up of good pasturage and rich valleys, and already stocked with cattle by the natives. The Welsh colony at Chupat appears to be flourishing, and a railway to connect it with the sea is about to be constructed.

The Rev. Michael Jones, of Bala, writing to a Welsh contemporary, referring to Colonel Fontana's report, says that several of the Welsh colonists from Chupat accompanied the exploring expedition, among whom was Mr. Jones's son, Llwyd ap Iwan, who acted as topographer to Mr. Bell, chief engineer of the railway company, who also accompanied Col. Fontana's expedition. Llwyd ap Iwan confirms the statement as to the productiveness of the soil in the newly discovered territory, and promises to send a full account of the journey. Mr. Jones says that it is intended to extend the railway in the direction of the recently explored district, and some of the intervening land is being

surveyed and divided into large estancias or grazing farms, suitable for raising large numbers of sheep, cattle and horses. A woolen factory is being put up in the Colony for converting the wool into home-made Welsh cloth and flannel. The canals and other irrigation works are in full operation, and answer their purpose admirably. It is estimated that 10,000 tons of wheat will be raised in the Colony this year. The railway connecting the settlement with New Bay, a distance of 42 miles, is now almost completed, and will be of immense value to the inhabitants, as it will enable them to bring down their produce easily to the port, Port Madryn, where steamers call at frequent intervals. THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN THE BRITISH POPULATION.

BY PROF. SAYCE, M. A.

The arrival of "Cunedda's men" and the re-Celtization of Wales lead me to the second line of evidence to which I have alluded above. The bearing of a costume of a people upon their ethnography is a matter which has been much neglected. But there are few things about which a population -more especially in an early stage of society is so conservative as in the matter of dress.

When we find the Egyptian sculp tor representing the Hittites of the warm plains of Palestine clad in the snow-shoes of the mountaineer, we are justified in concluding that they must have descended from the ranges of the Taurus, where the bulk of their brethren continued to live, just as the similar shoes with turned-up ends which the Turks have introduced among the upper classes of Syria, Egypt, and northern Africa, point to the northern origin of the Turks themselves. Such shoes are utterly unsuited for walking in over a country

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covered with grass, brush-wood, or even stones; they are, on the contrary, admirably adapted for walking on

snow.

Now, the dress of Celtic Gaul and of southern Britain, also, when the Romans first became acquainted with it, was the same as the dress which "linguistic palæontology" teaches us. had been worn by the primitive Aryans in their first home. One of its chief constituents were the braccæ, or trousers, which accordingly became to the Roman the symbol of the barbarian. We learn, however, from sculptures and other works of art that before the retirement of the Romans from the northern part of Europe they had adopted this article of clothing, at all events during the winter months. That the natives of southern Britain continued to wear it after their separation from Rome is clear from a statement of Gildas ("Hist., 19"), in which he refers in no flattering terms to the kilt of the Pict and the Scot. Yet from within a century after the time of Gildas there are indications that the northern kilt which he regards as so strange and curious had become the common garb of Wales. Wher we come down to the 12th century we find that it is the national costume. Giraldus Cambrensis gives us a description of the Welsh dress in his own time, from which we learn that it consisted simply of a tunic and plaid. It was not until the age of the Tudors, according to Lluyd, the Welsh historian of the reign of Elizabeth, that the Welsh exchanged their own for the English dress. The Welsh who served in the army of Edward II. at Bannockburn were remarked even by the Lowland Scotch for the scantiness of their attire, and we have evidence that it was the same a century later.

If we turn to Ireland we find that in the days of Spenser, and later, the

national costume of the Irish was the same as that of the Welsh and the Highland Scotch. The knee-breeches and sword-coat which characterize the typical Irishman in the comic papers are survivals of the dress worn by the English when it was adopted in Ireland. The Highland dress, therefore, was once worn not only in the Scotch Highlands and in Ireland, but also in Wales. It characterized the Celtic parts of Britain with the exception of Cornwall and Devonshire. Yet we have seen that up to the middle of the sixth century, at the period when Latin was still the language of the fellow countrymen of Gildas, and when "Cunedda's men" had not as yet imposed their domination upon Wales, the old Celtic dress with trousers must have been in common use. Now, we can easily understand how a dress of the kind could have been replaced by the kilt in warm countries like Italy and Greece; what is not easily conceivable is that such a dress could have been replaced by the kilt in the cold regions of the north. In warm climates a lighter form of. clothing is readily adopted; in cold climates the converse is the case.

I see, consequently, but one solution of the problem before us. On the one hand there was the distinctive Celtic dress of the Roman age, which was the same as the dress of the primitive Aryan, and was worn alike by the Celts of Gaul and Britain and the Teutons of Germany; on the other hand there was the scantier and colder dress which originally characterized the coldest part of Britain and subsequently mediæval Wales also. Must we not infer, in the first place, that the aboriginal population of Caledonia and Ireland was not Celtic-or at least not Aryan Celtic; and, secondly, that the dominant class in Wales after the 6th century came from that northern portion of the Island where the

kilt was worn? Both inferences, at all events, agree with the conclusions which ethnologists and historians have arrived at upon other grounds. Perhaps what I have been saying will show that even a subject like the history of dress will yield more results to ethnological study than is usually supposed. It will be another illustration of the fact that the student of humanity cannot afford to neglect any department of research which has to do with the life of man, however widely removed it may seem to be from science and scientific methods of inquiry. "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto."

THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

BY THE REV. PROF. STANLEY LEATHES, D. D.

Our Lord, in well-known words in the third chapter of St. John, makes reference to the incident of the brazen serpent recorded in the twentyfirst chapter of the Book of Numbers. He says that as the brazen serpent was lifted up by Moses to be the means of healing to the Israelites who were bitten by poisonous serpents in the wilderness, so should the Son of Man be lifted up upon the cross to be the means of salvation to the world. We can hardly doubt, therefore, that our Lord accepts and confirms the historic truth of the incident to which He refers. It is remarkable, however, that throughout the whole of the Old Testament there is no allusion to the narrative of the brazen serpent but one, which tends to confirm its historic reality, in the eighteenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, where we are told that Hezekiah, some seven centuries afterwards, brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it. We know, then, for a certainty that in the time of Hezekiah a memorial was still

in existence, and was the object of superstitious reverence, because it was believed to be, and no doubt was, the identical brazen image which had been made by Moses, and had been the means of healing the stricken Israelites in the desert. The one narrative may certainly be regarded as a confirmation of the other. The writer of the uncanonical Book of Wisdom also speaks of the brazen serpent as a sign of salvation," and says, "He that turned himself towards it was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by thee that art the Saviour of all,” (xvi. 7). With these two exceptions, however, there is no reference to the brazen serpent till our Lord's mention of it in his discourse to Nicodemus.

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The difficulty, however, in the matter by no mans ends here, for, assuming the general truth of the narrative, what possible object could there have been in directing Moses to resort to any such means for the recovery of the people? It cannot have been for the purpose of furnishing our Lord with the occasion for the use which He afterwards made of it. That would have been as far-seeing and supernatural as the means itself was extraordinary and miraculous. The brazen serpent uninterpreted could not possibly point as a sign to Him, could not possibly be understood as indicating a salvation like His in such a way that the knowledge of it could be derived therefrom. Nor is there the slightest evidence that it was so understood.

Not only was the way in which the healing was effected unintelligible to us, but it must have been equally unintelligible to the persons healed, as also was any reason undiscoverable for the selection of the means employed; and thus for fourteen centuries this incident would remain unintelligible to every one who read it

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till that night on which Nicodemus came to Christ, when our Lord revealed the impossibility of its application to Himself. It seems, therefore, that we may reasonably desiderate a better explanation of this remarkable incident, and the explanation I have to offer is one which will increase rather than diminish the appropriateness of our Lord's allusion, and will show likewise the special appropriateness of the means selected by God in such a way that we may suppose all the persons directly concerned would be able to understand it. Now I, for my part, cannot doubt that all the people who came out of Egypt were thoroughly acquainted with the history of their ancestors— Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as preserved to us in Genesis. The frequent references to the promise made to their fathers of the land flowing with milk and honey and the like, as well as the fact that they carried up with them the bones of Joseph out of Egypt, show this. There can, I conceive, be no reasonable doubt, whatever rash modern critics may say to the contrary, that the book of Genesis was known, and well known, in its main features to the generation that came up out of Egypt. The fourth commandment alone is proof of acquaintance with the first chapter of Genesis. It would be acknowledged to be so in any other sphere than that of Biblical criticism. Genesis must have preceded Exodus-must have been in existence before Exodus. Parts of Genesis, at all events, must have been in the hands of the people who came up out of Egypt. Unless we are prepared to deal with these records as we should not think of dealing with any others, we must admit that there is strong reason to believe that that generation was as well acquainted with Genesis as we ourselves are. The promise to Abraham,