having no place to go to, and no business
there at all, it gradually takes refuge and
makes its settlement in the lower and spherical
cells of the cuticle: which it thus bronzes,
from orange-tawny down to negro black,
according to the heat of the climate, the
consequent inactivity of the liver, and the
amount of hæmatin left as refuse in the
system.

Whether this explanation be true or
no we leave to subtler physiologists to
decide. But it strikes us as noteworthy
from its simplicity, and the air of confidence
with which it demolishes one of the ancient
mysteries of ignorance. The base form of the
skull—technically the prognathous or jaw-
protruding—of the negro, is also ascribed to
the same cause. The liver aids immensely in
the working and development of the brain:
and the brain moulds the skull— not the skull
the brain. A man with a diseased or torpid
liver never works healthfully, or with the
full power of his mental organisation. And
what is true of individuals is true also of
races. Thus, the inactive liver of hot
climates creates a smaller, less energetic, less
finely organised, and more basely developed
brain than is found in the temperate latitudes;
passing gradually from the elliptical
skull of the Caucasian—the ideal man— to
the pyramidal head of the red or copper-
coloured man, down to the lowest type of
all, the prognathous, or jaw-protruding skull
of the negro; as the lines fall nearer or
more distant from the equator. So, by this
showing, poor Quashie owes, not only his
skin, but his skull to that unsuspected liver
of his: not only the brand of Cain and the
sign of slavery on his hide, but the cerebral
development and ape likeness which ignorance
seizes hold of, as the cause and excuse
of cruelty.

The same reason lies at the other side of
the extreme. In very high latitudes, where
human life is nothing but a fierce struggle
with nature, the same copper-coloured skin
and degeneration of skull are found as under
the palm-trees and in the date groves, where
man may lie down beneath their shade, and
where nature will feed him unforced. Again
due to the same cause. Cold checks the action
of the liver equally with heat; and the
shivering Esquimaux owes, to his wretched
fare and sluggish circulation, his social
misery and natural desolateness, the excess
of hæmatin which dyes his skin, and the
pyramidal skull which marks his mental
degeneracy: just as the fiery sun and the
languid airs of the tropics brand and disgrace
the Mongolian and the Negro.

We may be allowed, perhaps, to feel a little
sceptical as to the fact that, upon the state of
a man's liver shall depend in any marked
degree the shape of his skull; but in our
common experience there is enough to dispose
us to a little faith in the theory which connects
the liver of the negro or the Indian
with his skin. The black hair and dark skin
belonging to what is called the bilious or the
melancholic temperament naturally occur to
our minds. Only it is to be understood that,
to attribute to the natives of tropical or arctic
climates skins coloured through any disorder
of the liver, would be as great a mistake as
any man could make in reasoning in nature.
It would be to suppose that man was created
only for life in the temperate zone, and that
in the distribution of races there was no
divine design, no divine wisdom.

HANDEL.

THE son of an old surgeon by a second
wife, and grandson to a master coppersmith,
George Frederic Handel was born on the
twenty-third of February in the year sixteen
hundred and eighty-five. His father's age
was sixty-three when the boy came into the
world; born a musician in a house where
music was despised, and where the
determination was that he should be trained to the
law. Because he took with as much aptitude
to music as to ordinary speech, young Handel's
father would not send him to a public
school, for in those days at all public schools
in Germany music was as regular a branch
of education as arithmetic or grammar. Also
the father would not let the son be taken
into any place where music was performed,
forbade him to touch any musical instrument,
and turned everything of that kind out of his
house. But, the boy either found in the house
or smuggled into it and kept in the garret, a
dumb spinet, which is a muffled clavichord—
in the form of a square box—such as the
nuns often used in their cells, and upon this
he used to make music to himself when all
the household was asleep. The same story
is told of Dr. Arne, who also was intended
for the law.

The old doctor had an adult son by a former
marriage, who was something better
than a poor musician, being valet to the
reigning Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The
father set out one day from his house at
Halle, in which George was born, to visit
this prosperous son, and little George, then
seven years old, begged that he also might
be taken, because he had never seen his elder
brother. His petition was rejected; but
being a determined fellow from the first, he
went on foot in the wake of his father's
coach. The father stopped the coach and
scolded. Master George steadily petitioned,
and so he was taken to the palace of the
duke. There, he heard the organ in the
chapel, and creeping up into the organ-loft
after chapel service, could no more keep his
fingers from the keys, than some boys can
keep fingers out of open jam-pots. He began
to make upon the grander instrument such
music as he had devised on his dumb spinet.
The grand-duke could not tell what was the
matter with his organ. Who was playing,