bartolo was appointed Director-General of the Bank of Sicily, a position which he owed not only to his honesty and business capacity, but also because he was expected to be courageous in protecting the bank against the peculations of certain officials. His signal success in this special work naturally aroused the enmity of those who wished to misuse the bank, and in particular of one Palizzolo, who secretly plotted against Notarbartolo, and, by an outrageous twisting of bank documents, finally elicited from the Board of Directors a vote of censure against the Director-General. Signor Notarbartolo did not resign, however, as he felt his conscience clear. In order to get him out of the way, Palizzolo then invoked the offices of the Mafia, that famous or rather infamous Sicilian secret society which has undermined the morals not only of the island but also of much of the Peninsula itself. Thus armed, Palizzolo appealed to Prime Minister Crispi to depose Notarbartolo from the directorship of a Government bank; and the Premier, a Sicilian, who knew perfectly well the mighty power which lay behind the request, basely sacrificed the man of integrity to the false witness of a thief. Crispi appointed Palizzolo's nominee Director-General, and from this time forth the bank was gradually looted by the Mafia, until finally those of Notarbartolo's friends who were still in the Directory petitioned Parliament to order an inquiry. The Government dared not refuse, and it uncovered an unsavory history. Notarbartolo's name was again in every one's mouth, and it was thought that he must inevitably be reinstated, when, in 1893, all Italy was shocked at the news of his murder.

The Government arrested Justice in Italy certain persons on suspicion of having committed the crime, and would have arrested others but for the fact that most of the police were found to be in the Mafia's pay. The very persons who were arrested were encouraged at their trial, when the witnesses against them faltered in testifying-as was only natural at the thought of certain and terrible vengeance from the Mafia. The Government itself actually transferred magistrates and otherwise paltered with the course of justice. The trial dragged dis

couragingly. If others were terrified, there was one witness, however, for the prosecution, namely, Notarbartolo's son, a young army lieutenant, who worked body and soul, day and night, towards an unmasking of the murderers. With infinite pains he collected and sifted evidence until all the circumstances leading up to the dreadful deed stood out clear as daylight. Then he transmitted his zeal to those whom he begged to testify. They did so, and at the psychological moment Lieutenant Notarbartolo appeared and capped the climax of testimony with such intimate and compelling knowledge that the Court actually convicted Palizzolo and his accomplices. and his accomplices. As capital punishment does not exist in Italy, the men were sentenced each to thirty years' penal servitude. Thus ends a nine years' trial. In its progress the Government has summoned about twenty-one hundred witnesses, involving a total expense of nearly a million dollars. This trial and that of Musolino may be the death-blow to a worse than mediæval tyranny; they ought correspondingly to encourage the administration of justice throughout Italy. all events, not only the Government at Rome, but every individual Italian, will feel a certain sense of relief from what has been an intolerable secret domination.

At

The British Academy King Edward VII. has just granted a charter for the incorporation of the British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical, and Philological Studies. The petition for the charter was signed last January by fifty-one eminent persons, of whom Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the historian, Lord Acton, the erudite authority on history, and the Rev. A. B. Davidson, the Hebrew scholar, have since died. In the opinion of many, the petitioners made one mistake: instead of asking for a chartered Society, they asked for a chartered Academy, thereby occasioning much popular confusion of thought. Through the brilliant history of that literary oligarchy, the Académie Française, the word "academy" has come to mean in many countries a kind of official aristocracy of letters. Thus so apparently slight, after all, has been the influence in England of the word in connection with

the time-honored work in the domain of art of the British Royal Academy! The specification in the title of the studies to be promoted shows at once, however, that the new organization seeks no comparison with what we know as the French Academy, but rather with those affiliated French academies which compose the Institute of France. As a scientific body, then, the British Academy should be of undoubted value. It will deal with facts and with obvious matters of competency or incompetency. In its three departments it will establish a higher standard of scholarship; it will both co-ordinate and concentrate research. While the dream of Matthew Arnold and others for a British literary authority is not yet realized (and it could never be realized in England as in France), it is, nevertheless, a rather felicitous accident that a certain connection with literature is established at the outset by four members of the new Academy; for a more permanent place in the world of letters than in the world of history seems to be assured to Lord Rosebery, while literature pure and simple, rather than mere biography, has apparently been the gainer through the work of Mr. Morley and Sir Leslie Stephen; and Mr. Balfour's place in literature also seems more distinguished than his place in metaphysics. Though British historical, philosophical, and philological scholarship is adequately represented in the membership of the Academy, it is unfortunate for its influence in one department-philosophy-that the most eminent among English philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer, must be omitted from the new academicians, owing to the great scholar's habitual refusal of all honors.

will always arise, the Bishop formally demands that they be separated. He declares truly that each loses in dignity and in prestige in these continually renewed quarrels. While a concordat between them exists, it can be abrogated if both parties agree. The Bishop's letter will not be pleasant reading to many of his co-religionists, even to some of those who would see Church and State separated, for, while they might consent to a separation of the two bodies, they would hardly forego the financial support which comes from the State. They would affirm that in 1789 the Church in France was outrageously despoiled, and that the Constituante, or Parliament, in decreeing that ecclesiastical property was henceforth at the nation's disposition, made itself guilty of theft, hence it is but just that, even in case of separation, the State should still contribute its present large annuity to the Church. Another comment is from the pen of ex-Abbé Bourrier, now the editor of the "Chrétien Français." In a recent number of that paper he also protests against the continuance of the present partnership between the Church and State, and, in particular, says that the present conflict in France is but the battle of the mediæval against the modern spirit. This has been caused, not by the priests, but by the monks; the work of the latter, so far as it conflicts with republican loyalty, must be destroyed. Many French monks have been only "the exploiters of religion." M. Bourrier warmly resents the charge of MM. Brunetière, Charmes, and others that the Government's recent action had at its base an opposition to religion itself; and he quotes Premier Combes's declaration the other day in Parliament that religion is the greatest moral force in humanity.

Bishop-elect Warnsdorff, of Austria, stated that the Old Catholics had gained no less than seven thousand Austrian members since the beginning of the emancipatory mission. Most of these are Germans in speech, the minority being Czechs. It is interesting to compare this proportion with that, as reported, coming from the Roman Catholic Church in Austria, and affiliating with either the Lutheran or the Reformed branches of the Protestant Church nearly nineteen thousand persons. Another interesting feature of the Bonn Congress was the address of Bishop Webber, of Germany. Referring to the dogma of Papal infallibility, proclaimed in 1870, he said that a reform of the Roman Catholic communion in a proper Christian spirit-that is to say, working from within outward-has never been possible since that date. In this many critics, Protestant as well as Roman, will not agree with the prelate. Bishop Webber added that religious catholicity, in distinction from the political Ultramontanism of the Roman Catholic Church, is organized in the Swiss, Dutch, German, and Austrian Old Catholic Churches, and that these churches will never allow themselves to be reabsorbed in the communion of Rome. In a similar strain Archbishop Gul spoke for Holland, and Bishop Koslowski for the Poles of Chicago. The Bishop of Salisbury extended the sympathy of the Church of England, and the Rev. Dr. Nevin, acting for the Bishop of New York, did the same service for the Protestant Episcopal Church of America.

Young Men's

Prince Bernadotte, son Christian Association of King Oscar of NorWorld's Convention way and Sweden, was elected President of the World's Convention of Young Men's Christian Associations recently held in Christiania, toward the expenses of which the Norwegian Parliament made a special grant. King Oscar held a reception of the two thousand delegates in attendance. The Prince is President of the Stockholm Association, which has a building valued at $120,000, and is a leader in the Association movement among his countrymen. There were thirty-eight delegates from the United States, among whom Mr. James Stokes, of New York, was elected one of

the honorary Presidents of the Convention, and Dr. Canfield, Librarian of Columbia University, read a paper on the American Association, commented on elsewhere. The papers were presented in Swedish, but with translations into other languages represented in the Convention.

Thomas Gallaudet

The news of the death of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Gallaudet will cause mourning in many lands. He was the worthy son of a worthy father. When a young man, that father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, living at Hartford, Conn., had frequent occasion to pity a neighbor's little daughter who, through scarlet fever, had lost the power of speech and hearing. He finally managed to communicate with her by a system of signals with the fingers, and it was not long before he taught the girl how to read. Others similarly afflicted applied to Mr. Gallaudet for similar instruction, and the result was the young man's consecration to the noble life-work of promoting the welfare of deaf-mutes. He went abroad to perfect himself in the sign language, and, returning in 1817, founded the celebrated institution at Hartford, the first permanent school in America for the deaf and dumb. It is interesting to note that, as the elder Gallaudet married a deaf-mute, the son, Thomas Gallaudet, did likewise, devoting himself to his father's endeavor and consecrating himself specially to the work of the ministry. The story is told that at the outset of his career he found a young girl dying with consumption. She was a deaf-mute and could not even read, as she had never been instructed. The young clergyman succeeded finally in making her understand his sign language, and in that way gave her the consolations of religion. She died shortly after having signaled: "I leave content and sure of my welcome." Dr. Gallaudet then called his mission "The Awakening of Sleeping Souls." Not only did he found St. Ann's Church in New York City for deaf-mutes as far back as 1851, but he was constantly traveling from State to State and across the Atlantic to preach his silent sermons to the afflicted. At least eight deaf-mutes have been ordained as clergymen in the Protestant Episcopal Church through Dr. Gallaudet's work, which over a quarter of a century ago

became organized as the Church Mission for Deaf-Mutes. Appreciative of the loneliness of these peculiarly afflicted persons, he formed clubs for them, the most famous of which met in the closed bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel on Sunday afternoon; for years it has been the custom of the proprietor to give up this room on Sunday to quite other uses from those of week-days. Dr. Gallaudet died at the ripe age of eighty years. There are few cases in history of finer work done for humanity by father and son than that presented by the two men who have made their name a synonym for the loftiest charity.

The establishment of The New Seminary a Congregational The

at Atlanta

ological Seminary as far South as Atlanta, Georgia, a thousand miles from the line in which such institutions extend from Maine to California, is a noteworthy event. Two or three hundred churches of white people in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, formerly known as "Congregational Methodists and "Free Methodists," were recently received into the fellowship of the Congregational churches. Their pastors were, generally speaking, below the educational standard which Congregationalists have maintained. The Seminary at Atlanta has been established for their benefit and that of the young men hereafter entering the ministry of those churches, or of others likely to be organized by Southern Congregationalists. The seminary expenses of a student there are reckoned as barely one-third of what is requisite at the North. At present the new Seminary is well housed and in progress with three instructors and nineteen students, mostly pastors of churches. It owes its existence to the Congregational Education. Society (at Boston), organized nearly ninety years ago. Not to mention a score of strong and prosperous colleges which owe their life to this Society, the numerous academies it sustains in the newer sections of the country are doing a work of National importance.

ciety met to report progress. Their statements showed a great advance in work done, and in popular appreciation of that work, over last year's report. It has not been realized as it should be that the school vacation of July and August is the richest opportunity of the year for the churches of the poorer quarters of any city. In the metropolis, despite the Department of Education's commendable act in opening public-school playgrounds, thousands of children have still no resort but the heated streets. The Rev. R. G. Boville, the Secretary of the New York City Baptist Mission Society, and Mrs. L. J. P. Bishop, an authority on work among children, have long recognized, as have others, the need for the daily opening of every church building to help in housing, entertaining, and teaching thousands of boys and girls whose tenement homes are too hot to hold them during July and August. Mr. Boville was successful this year in obtaining ten church buildings to be used as daily schools which should not only supplement the humane work of the Department of Education, but should at the same time give an hour's daily Bible instruction, dealing naturally with. those elementary moral problems which enter into every child's life. Mr. Boville wisely opened these schools to children of all races and creeds, and obtained the services of a dozen or more student workers, mostly from Union and Rochester Theological Seminaries. sessions began at 9:30 A.M., with devotional service consisting of music, Scripture reading, and Bible drills; at ten o'clock occurred the Bible study for the day; at 10:30, some industrial work; at eleven, games; and half an hour later a march and dismissal. The half-hour designated as the working period gave a wide range— drawing, clay-modeling, basketry, color work, sewing, elementary housekeeping,

music-all

The school

were found interesting to children. In truth, the children of New York City streets are generally busy at something; these vacation schools, therefore, have afforded golden opportunities for directing child-energies into proper channels. Mr. Boville and his co-workers are to be congratulated on the success which has attended their efforts. Their example might well be followed in the poorer quarters of every city.

Mosquitoes and Malaria

When mosquitoes were discovered to be the means of transmitting malaria, it was evident that boards of health and sanitary commissions everywhere should undertake more seriously than ever the problem of mosquito extermination. In many places strenuous efforts to extirpate these pests have been made, and nowhere, we believe, has this work been more intelligently performed during the past two years than in the community of Montclair, N. J. According to the circular which the Montclair Board of Health has just issued, mosquitoes breed in slow-running, quiet, or stagnant water; it may surprise some to read that the Board adds, "and nowhere else." By doing away with such pools or streams, therefore, the Board believes that the insects may be exterminated. In Montclair it has endeavored to make the chief breeding-places uninhabitable by spraying them with oil, but it must be remembered that any small pool which remains on the surface of the ground, even if only for a few days, is likely to become infested with larvæ. Not only must these pools and damp places be drained or filled in, but rain-barrels and water-tanks should be done away with wherever possible; if they must be maintained, they should be carefully covered with mosquito-netting. Under no circumstances should flowervases, wash-tubs, and pails be allowed to stand half filled with water. Cisterns and vaults should be made so tight that mosquitoes cannot enter them to lay their eggs, and gutters should be kept unclogged so that no puddles may form in them. Manure-piles should be covered and frequently remove'. Empty bottles and cans must not be allo ved to accumulate.

The Southern Presby"Foreign Pastors " terian Church has begun to participate in the movement initiated a few years since at the North, in which local congregations sustain their own foreign missionary, who is sometimes designated as the "foreign pastor." The Presbyterian church at Selma, Ala., has undertaken the support of its own missionary to Africa, a negro, Dr. De Yampert, who has sailed to join the Congo Mission, of which we gave an account by Southern correspondents, August 16. Dr. De Yampert, a graduate of the Tuscaloosa Insti

tute, sustained by the Southern Presbyterian Church, goes out as a qualified medical missionary. Miss Althea Brown, a graduate of Fisk University, Nashville, also went by the same ship to join the mission.

Arbitrate the Arbitrable Points

Last week Mr. Abram S. Hewitt gave out from Bar Harbor, Maine, a statement of reasons why the coal companies could not accept arbitration, and this statement, published by the daily press all over the country, has been adopted by President Baer, the spokesman of the operators, as an exact presentation of the whole case. In substance it is as follows:

The unhappy controversy now existing is not based upon any reasonable claim which labor can make for shorter hours or better wages. It is true that Mr. Mitchell alleges this to be the object of the strike, but as a matter of fact it is notorious that the real object is to secure the recognition of his National organization as an authority entitled to decide upon the rates of wages and the conditions of labor in the coal fields wherever situated.

If this demand be conceded, it will not be possible for any man not holding a union card to secure employment in the coal fields. This will amount to a denial of the right of every man to sell his labor in a free market. The

concession of this demand will make Mr.

Mitchell the dictator of the coal business and put him in control of votes enough to decide the next Presidential election.

The right to labor is inherent in every human being, and cannot be surrendered without the sacrifice of individual liberty and of private property. It therefore cannot be arbitrated any more than the right of a man to his own home if it shall be claimed by an outsider who proffers arbitration.

The demand of any man or set of men, no occupying public office, to decide upon the conditions upon which labor shall seek its living, and to make it subject to a license from irresponsible leaders, whether representing capital or labor, is in effect a claim to the power of life and death, and can never be conceded without a base surrender of duty to greed.

The only solution of the trouble is for Mr.. Mitchell to order the strike off without delay. When this is done, if there be grievances to be arbitrated, they will be promptly adjusted between the local operators and focal unions. The right of association is not in question. This is admitted by both employers and employees. What is denied, and properly so, is the power, by the issue of union cards, to refuse employment to non-union men, and thus condemn them to ostracism, starvation, and death. In this day of free discussion and the publicity of all the facts through the news