Notes On Literature, Science And Art.

NOTES ON LITERATURE , SCIENCE AND ART .

BY BRO . GEORGE MABKIIAM TWEDDELL . "Author of " Shakspere , his Times , und Contemporaries" "The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham , " " The People ' s History of Cleveland and its Vicinage ' ;' " The Visitor ' s Handbook to Redcar , Coatham , and Salthm ' ti b y the Sea" "The Ifi * lort / of the Stockton and Darlington Bail way , " § e ., < jv ,

npi-TE following cutting sarcasm was written by the late Mortimer Collins : — " There was an ape in the days that were earlier ; Centuries pass'd , and his hair became curlier : Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist—Then he was a MAN , —and a Positivist . " It is a factnot altogether creditable to the poets of the past agesthat War has

, , been more sung than the blessings of peace ; and that convivial songs have been more the rage than any hymnings of sobriety . Not that I would throw all the blame on the bards ; for in literature , as in commerce , the laws of supjdy and demand will prevail . The great masters painted altar pieces principally in the past , because the Church was worth all their other customers . Had they painted cabinet pictures merelythey must have starved . It is a good sign of the times in which we live that

, the pulpit , the platform , the bench , and the press , are each rapidly awakening to a true sense of the evils of drunkenness ; and there are sweet singers not ashamed to tune their lyres to chant the blessings of sobriety . I have been pleased to see a small volume of really good poetry , neatly printed at the Orphan ' s Printing Press , Leominster , entitled The Wasted Grain , and other Poems , by A . L . IF . To the earnest teetotaller the little book is a gemand no sensible moderate drinker can read it without pleasure .

, But why should the fair authoress—for I have reasons for supposing the writer is a lady—include dancing as one of " the fatal three " sins 1 Surely she cannot be so veritable a bigot as to believe that there is anything wicked in dancing itself ? The ancient Greeks , the finest people of antiquity , wisely encouraged the dance , aud it

helped , rather than otherwise , to give them that fine physical form which distinguished them from all other nations . But then they were Pagans , and our authoress would say we ought to shun Pagan practices . But did not the Pagan Romans discountenance dancing ? And is it not their surly example which the Quakers and others have copied in looking upon the graceful exercise as accurst , rather than " the Volume of the Sacred law , " which A . L . W . evidently takes as her standard of morality and relig ion 1 If the Salii danced through the streets of Eome as riests of Marshad

p , not the holy David . daneed before the ark of the Lord as he brought it up from the house of Obed-edom , 1042 B . C ., for which , Samuel tells us , "Michal , Saul ' s daughter , looked through a window , and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord , and she despised him in her heart . " Surely Michal was the precursor of our sourest Puritans ? No careful reader of the Bible can have helped noticing that dancing was a part of the ancient worship of the true God , Jehovah , as well as of the false gods

of the heathen . That sweet song of Miriam , the prophetess , the sister of Aaron , which for three thousand three hundred and sixty eight years has sounded through the vaults of time as one of the noblest hymns of thanksgiving—was sung to the timbrels and dances of the women of Israel , just delivered from their bondage to the Egyptians . And in a still older composition , the book of Job , it was stated nearl y lour thousand years ago of the wicked , that " they sent forth their little ones like a flock , and their children dance ; " not that dancing was looked upon by this oldest of poets as sinful , but is merely mentioned as a sign of happiness . It was at an annual " feast of the Lord , " 1406 B . C ., that the lovely virgins ol Shiloh were dancing , according to their