chapel; where most of those who worship in church think they have fulfilled the obligations of Sunday by listening to matins, and where only a tiny minority offer the Lord's service on the Lord's Day."

The writer laments the apparent indifference of Italians during the most solemn act of worship, yet hazards the opinion that "Italians realize more than we do the privilege and the duty of prayer. Yet prayer is often regarded as a charm rather than an intelligent devotion." Of prayer to the blessed Lord, he says, we find very little; of prayer to the Eternal Father, hardly a trace. The Madonna is the principal object of worship. He says that devotion to our Lord is maintained in Italy chiefly by reverence to the blessed sacrament.

THE ITALIANS' LOVE OF ORATORY.

The great and increasing need of definite religious instruction is urged. The writer gathers that in the majority of communal schools there is a certain amount of religious instruction, but that in many places it does not go beyond the recitation of a prayer, and perhaps a slight amount of teaching of gospel history from a manual. In the government schools of a higher grade, the Ginnasio and the Liceo, there is no religious teaching at all, so that it is possible for a lad to be trained for one of the learned professions without ever learning a word of the Christian faith."

THE MORALITY OF THE CLERGY.

As to the moral character of the clergy, witnesses who can hardly be charged with clerical prejudices give, on the whole, a favorable account of the northern priesthood.

"We cannot speak with equal assurance of the south. An eminent Roman priest lent us a pamphlet by a German pastor in Naples, which gives a horrible account of clerical immorality. We returned the pamphlet to him with the remark that it was the work of an enemy. Yes,' he replied, but of an enemy who speaks the truth.' The worst statement in this book is the assertion that people are not shocked by clerical immorality, but regard it as natural and inevi

table. It is to be feared that the standard of sexual morality is not high. An Anglican friend tells us that a prelate lamented to him that a certain cardinal was not elected at the last conclave. But,' our friend replied, he is a man of conspicuous immorality.' No doubt,' was the answer; but you Anglicans seem to think there is no virtue but chastity. The cardinal has not that, but he is an honest man.'

Nevertheless, the writer regards clerical marriage as outside the limits of practical reform. He says, "We have never come across an authenticated case of the misuse of the confessional for the service of vice." Not profligacy but sloth is the besetting sin of the Italian priest. The writer adds that he cannot "welcome the movement which bears the name of Christian Democracy," and laments the lack of the intelligent study of theology. He sees few signs of Protestant progress, and dissuades from proselytism. He reports that Italians seem no more oppressed by the dogma of Papal infallibility than Englishmen are by the dictum that "the King can do no wrong.'

JAPANESE FORMOSA.

IN the Scottish Geographical Magazine, the Rev. W. Campbell pays well-deserved praise to the results of Japanese colonization in Formosa. His descriptions of the reforms and improvements introduced are of great value, in that they show to the ignorant that the Japanese are thoroughly convinced of the necessity of intelligence and common sense in such work. Mr. Campbell visited the Taichu prison, and says of it:

"The whole thing was intensely interesting to me, because on every hand one could see the operation of high intelligence, firmness, and even of mercy in grappling with evils which are found among people of every land. Before coming away the governor remarked to me that the entire group of buildings, including the surrounding walls, was the outcome of convict labor; and it did, indeed, seem to be a feature of the system here that no prisoner was allowed to shirk duty who was really able to work. Nor can any one question the soundness of this principle, for the healthful appearance of the large companies I saw engaged in the manufacture of straw mattresses, and as brickmakers, builders, carpenters, and coolies, was in favor of it; while statistics given me regarding the after-career of those who had served their terms of confinement also showed that prison life in Taichu was both bearable and distinctly reformatory in its tendency."

JAPAN AND THE OPIUM TRADE.

Dealing with the question of the opium traffic, which in Formosa is one of the government monopolies, Mr. Campbell writes:

"As to the attitude of Japan in regard to the opium trade, it may be said that the government at Tokyo has never wavered in its opposition to opium as an article of commerce; and this opposition, coupled with a general knowledge throughout Japan of the origin and consequences of the trade elsewhere, has led to the Japanese having kept themselves wholly clean from the enervating effects of the opium curse."

WHAT JAPAN HAS ACCOMPLISHED.

Mr. Campbell sums up what has been done in Formosa as follows:

"At the outset it should be remembered that, when they arrived in 1895, instead of being allowed to take quiet possession, they found the people everywhere up in arms against them, and had literally to fight their way from north to south before anything like settled government could be established. . . . Immediately after some measure of peace had been restored, the executive sent out qualified experts to engage in survey work, and to report on the resources of their newly ceded territory.

"A complete census of the population was taken in 1897, 800 miles of roads were made, and a tramway line laid down from Takow to Sin-tek. This was followed by construction of the main line of railway from Kelung to Takow, about one-half of which has already been opened for goods and passenger traffic. Three cables were also laid down, connecting Formosa with Japan, Foochow, and the Pescadores, and over the existing 1,500 miles of telegraph and telephone wires immediate communication

has been made possible with every important inland center. The post offices recently opened in Formosa number over a hundred, and letters can now be sent to any part of the empire for two cents each. Up till the close of 1899, one hundred and twenty-two government educational institutions had been established, only nine of those being for Japanese, and one hundred and thirteen for natives. There are at present ten principal gov

ernment hospitals in the island, at which about 60,000 patients are treated gratuitously every year, while sanitary precautions and free vaccination have become so general that the danger from visitations like smallpox and plague has been very much reduced."

WHE

THE SIZE OF ALASKA.

HEN we say that the area of Alaska is about 600,000 square miles, only a vague idea is conveyed to most minds. In order to visualize the statement, we must have the outline of the Territory superimposed upon the map of some country with which we are familiar. The accompanying illustration represents a chart prepared by Mr. Alfred A. Brooks, geologist of the United States Survey, in charge of the Government work of exploration and geological investigation of the Territory. Mr. Brooks has drawn upon the map of the United States this map of Alaska in solid black, in order to show the relative areas most effectively. The scale used in both instances is the same.

As pointed out by Mr. George B. Hollister, of the Geological Survey, in the Popular Science Monthly for December, when Point Barrow, the most northerly extremity of Alaska, is placed upon the Canadian border in northern Minnesota, Mount St. Elias falls near the Ohio River between western Kentucky and Indiana, and the main portion of the Territory covers almost the entire area of the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley as far south as Arkansas. The extreme southeasterly portion of the narrow strip of Alaska, upon which Sitka and Juneau are situated, would extend to the Atlantic Ocean at

BA

C York

Melville

Bay

I N

70

North Cornwall and Findlay Island. In addition to the main Arctic problem which is thus solved, it is likely that the region discovered will be of exceptional interest, from the winds and currents, the varying character of the ice, the existence of coal beds, and the abundance of animal life. A systematic survey has been made of these important discoveries, checked by astronomical observations. We must look forward to an account of these things, and to the details of the expedition, with the deepest interest; and meanwhile we may well express admiration for the way in which the work was conceived and executed, and at the perfect harmony with which all loyally worked under their chief. Without such harmonious work success was not possible."

CABLEGRAMS AT TWO CENTS A WORD.

THE

HE nationalization of ocean cables is the subject of an article by Mr. Henniker Heaton in the Magazine of Commerce. In the course of his argument this writer says:

"People in the United Kingdom who study these tables, know that they annually spend £1,000,000 in cabling to America (including Canada), £412,000 in cabling to Australia, £366,000 in cabling to South Africa, £300,000 in cabling to India, and another £300,000 in cabling to China, Hongkong, and the East. John Bull, in brief, puts his hand into his capacious pocket to the tune of £6,755 every day of the week, except Sundays, to cable to his customers and clients and cousins over seas,”or a total sum every year of £3,278,000 ($16,390,000). At the same time England's mail packet service to America, Australia, India, and China costs $7,500,000 only, and he thinks that for Britain's $4,500,000,000 worth of exports a less costly cable communication is necessary. Mr. Heaton proceeds:

"I assert that we shall have imperial federation in a true sense only when we can telegraph from London to New Zealand as cheaply as we now telegraph from London to Ireland. And why not? In Australia we send a word three thousand miles for a penny-the same distance, within five hundred miles, that divides England from India, to which a word now sent costs us, not one penny, as it ought, but thirty-six pennies. All parts of the world, excepting America, can be cable-connected by land, barring one thin blue line of sea; and land lines cost only onefifth of submarine cables-in other words, land lines are laid at an outlay of £40 a mile, and sea-cables at £200 a mile. On the other hand, land lines carry five times more messages than are carried by cables."

ANOMALIES IN PRESENT RATES.

He goes beyond the imperialization of the cables, and urges that in any question of purchasing the cables the American and British governments should join hands. He enforces all these contentions by one of his delightful collections of anomalies :

"It costs 64d. a word to telegraph from London to Fao, the head of the Persian Gulf; it costs ls. 2d. to Egypt, half the distance. It costs 6s. 3d. a word to telegraph to Lagos, halfway to the Cape, and it costs only 3s. to telegraph to the Cape. But the most striking instance of how the French look after their colonists is afforded by their treatment of the people of Senegal and the Ivory Coast, as compared with our treatment of our people, also on the

west coast of Africa. From Paris to Senegal the French charge is only 1 franc a word. From London to Lagos (British), 100 miles beyond, the charge is 6s. 5d. a word. In 18991900, my friend at Lagos sent his telegrams to London via Senegal and Paris. Surely an imperial postmaster will remedy this state of things!"

E

A NEW DEVICE IN ARCHITECTURAL METHOD. VER since the first employment of "staff" on a large scale, at the World's Fair of 1893, the architects have been finding new uses for this beautiful and inexpensive imitation of white marble. This material is especially attractive to those who are fond of experimentation. The most notable instance of such utilization of "staff" is the erection, in full size, of a whole bay of the great New York Public Library, the corner stone of which has only recently been laid. Some of the reasons for this unusual procedure on the part of the architects of the building are set forth by a writer in the Architectural Record as follows:

"The layman is apt to assume that it is part of the art and mystery of the architect's craft, that he knows, ex-officio, how details on a drawing-board are going to look, when they are executed from drawings in which they are not seen in their real relations or at their proper distance. An eminent engineer has been heard to say scornfully of the present experiment, that it was a confession of incompetency.' But, in fact, it is such a confession as a candid architect can very well afford to make. An architect of great eminence and long experience was once addressed by a lay acquaintance: With your experience, I suppose you can tell beforehand just how your detail will look at a given distance from the eye and at a given elevation,' and he rejoined On the contrary, I find myself deceiving myself on just that point all the time.'

:

FULL-SIZE MODELS OF ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES.

"The modern practice of carving detail in the place, instead of much more handily and cheaply at the stoneyard, is a very inadequate resource. It has been remarked that if the carver could stand on the sidewalk, from which his work is to be apprehended, and cut it on the cornice, say, the device would be effectual. Not so when his own nose is buried in it, nor is the matter greatly bettered if the designer stands on the sidewalk and throws suggestions to him. But to put the detail actually in place and try the effect of it is a very different business. This is a kind of help which no architect in the world

"When the designer has satisfied himself as to the effect of his bay, he has in effect satisfied himself about the effect of the whole curtain wall of which it is to form an integral part. To set up a fragment which is also a unit, so that not only the designer but the wayfaring man may study and appraise it, and search out what, if anything, is the matter with it, is a process for which, quite irrespectively of the merits of the architecture it embodies, the judicious can find nothing but praise. It is as different as possible from the order of Pietro de Medici to Michael Angelo to build him a statue in snow, which Ruskin holds up to the odium of succeeding generations. If the order had been for a model to be subsequently done in marble, and the monarch had been able to guarantee the sculptor against a thaw until he had studied, marked, and inwardly digested the effect of the snow image, the procedure, if accompanied with a bona fide order for the production of the work of art, would have, whether from an artistic or a 'professional' point of view, been entirely unobjectionable and even praiseworthy. And it is such an opportunity that the clients of the archi tects of the New York Public Library have afforded to those designers. It is so commendable an example that it seems likely to impose itself upon all owners and representatives of owners in charge of public and monumental architecture."

DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD IN CITIES.

HE burial of the dead of our great cities is

ford to make use of it. And a full-size model of one feature, or of a dozen features, of so important and costly a work as the new Public Library of New York is to be is worth many multiples of its comparatively trifling cost. And evidently the device is more useful according to the extent to which you can carry it. Here not merely a detail but a whole feature is reproduced, and a feature, moreover, which constitutes one of the main architectural units of the building, for such is a whole bay of the long curtain wall which is to connect the central pavilion that contains the entrance with the terminal pavilions. It is in this curtain that the effect of length, in a front very noteworthy indeed in New York in that dimension, is mainly to be conveyed, and that the actual dimension is as much as possible to be increased to the eye by architectural device, by that magnitude and repetition which, according to one æsthetician, constitute the artificial infinite.' Upon the effect of the unit very largely depends the effect of the series.

ficult as the years go by, although it seldom receives the attention that its importance merits. The distance of the cemeteries from the population centers required by sanitary considerations and the growing values of suburban real estate combine to add to the cost of city funerals, which is already a great burden on the poor. The advocates of cremation have as yet made very slight headway in this country, but theirs is the only plan that promises relief from the present unsatisfactory conditions. The believer in this method of disposal of the dead inevitably runs counter to the sensibilities of many of his readers in anything that he may write on the subject, but this should not prevent a candid examination of his arguments.

The most recent statement of the cremation proposition in its social and economic aspects is contained in an article contributed by Mr. Louis Windmüller to the current number of Municipal Affairs. This writer's account of the process of cremation as it is actually conducted in many