of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford. The rule which most authorities are now agreed upon, that the names of peers should be arranged under their titles and not their family names, is subject to numerous recognized exceptions. Though Lord Lytton would now go under Lytton, and the Earl of Oxford under Oxford, the Earl of Orford would be classed under Walpole, because that is the name by which he is familiarly known to the public. Another source of confusion is afforded by women who assume a new name with every marriage and remarriage. A still more delicate point is involved in the case of George Eliot. During the larger portion of her authorial life she was known as Mrs. Lewes ; but she was never legally Mrs. Lewes. Her maiden name was Mary Ann Evans, her name by her last and only legal union was Mrs. Cross. Yet, on the whole, librarians prefer to catalogue her as Mrs. Lewes. Cross-references are a frequent source of confusion to the careless or incompetent. We can all sympathize with Cobbett's complaint in his "Woodlands:" "Many years ago I wished to know whether I could raise birch-trees from the seed. I then looked into the great book of knowledge, the Encyclopædia Britannica :' there I found in the general dictionary, BIRCH tree-see Betula (Botany Index). I hastened to Betula with great eagerness, and there I found,— That was all; and this was pretty encouragement." Again, in Eadie's "Dictionary of the Bible" (1850) there is a reference "Dorcas, see Tabitha," but there is no Tabitha to be seen when one looks where she ought to be. Cross-referencing has other curiosities. In Hawkins's "Pleas of the Crown" there are some most amusing instances of apparent non sequiturs: Assault, see Son. Chastity, see Homicide. Death, see Appeal. King, see Treason. Some index-makers make no cross-references, but enter the same subject under all its possible heads. This often leads to unnecessary duplications and increases the bulk of the index without corresponding gain. An instance may be cited from the index to St. George Mivart's Origin of Human Reason," where a short story of a cockatoo appears no fewer than fifteen times: Absurd tale about a Cockatoo, 136. Anecdote, absurd one, about a Cockatoo, 136. Cockatoo, absurd tale concerning one, 136. Discourse held with a Cockatoo, 136. Incredibly absurd tale of a Cockatoo, 136. Tale about a rational Cockatoo, as asserted, 136. Wonderfully foolish tale about a Cockatoo, 136. In the card catalogue at the Public Library in Boston is an interesting entry, "God, see Fiske, J.," which reminds one that the heading to one of the shelves is "D. The Poor." This at first blush sounds like an echo of William K. Vanderbilt's phrase, "D the people." A tombstone might seem a strange place on which to find a cross-reference. In Barnes church-yard, England, the following inscription appears on the monument to a once-famous actor : Mr. J. Moody, A native of the Parish of Saint Clement Danes For his Memoirs see the European Magazine; for his professional abilities see Churchill's Rosciad. Obiit Dec. 26, 1812, Anno tatis 85. Great inconvenience often results from the ignoring of the important catchwords to which readers would naturally refer. Thus, of the index to the handsome edition of Jewell's "Apology" by Isaacson (1825), Mr. Wheatley sweepingly asserts, "I think I may say that there is hardly an entry in the index that would be of any use to the consulter," and he gives a few speci mens: Belief of a resurrection. If Protestants are Heretics, let the Papists prove them so from Scripture. In withdrawing themselves from the Church of Rome, Protestants have not erred from Christ and the Apostles. The Pope assumes regal power. He finds equal reason to disapprove of the Catalogue of the British Museum. "Could any plan be adopted," he asks, "by which the following books would more thoroughly be hidden out of sight than by the following arrangement?— KIND. A Kind of a Dialogue in Hudibrasticks; designed for the use of the unthinking and unlearned. (1739.) KINDS. How to make several kinds of miniature pumps and a fire-engine; a book for boys. (1860.) And he also pathetically describes a vain search for the date of the first edition of the Latin “Gradus,” which eventually turned up among “Dictionaries." Worse than the neglect of the proper catch-word is the total omission of the very things which ought to be chronicled in an index. Paradoxical as it may seem, the fact remains a fact that it is the less important details which are most important in an index. The important topics you can easily find without an index. They belong to the essential logic of the work, therefore you know not only that they are there, but, approximately, where to find them. Not so with some minor point of detail, some name, some title, some minute fact, some illustrative anecdote or quotation, which, being embedded in the general discussion, may therefore be anywhere. Now, the mechanical indexmaker too often argues that these things do not matter to the main story, so they need not be in the index. But it is precisely because they do not matter to the main story that they ought to be put in the index. It is exactly for the kind of things which the index-maker leaves out that the index is really wanted. The things which he puts in we could find without his help. With the things for which we really need his help he refuses to help us. The path of the index-maker, therefore, is beset with difficulties. And the reason that indexes are seldom done well is, that they are quite above the powers of those who commonly undertake them, while they are thought to be beneath the powers of the only people who really can do them. Most people think that an index is a purely mechanical work, which can safely be intrusted to any harmless drudge. Now, this idea is all wrong. Index-making is no merely mechanical business. It calls for careful thought, for a considerable knowledge of the subject of the book indexed, for some sort of sympathy not only with the author but with his readers. A perfect index can perhaps be made only by the author himself; even a tolerable one cannot be made except by one who has thoroughly familiarized himself with the author's matter and manner. And as we have few perfect indexes, nay, few tolerable ones, we cannot but admit the justice of the following acrostic, contributed to Notes and Queries, second series, i. 481: I Never Did Ensure Indo-European, of India and Europe, a term applied to the Aryan race, which was the parent stock of both Hindoo and European. Max Müller once said that the coining of this word not only marked a new epoch in the study of language, but ushered in a new period in the history of the world. Alien races, who had long looked upon each other with averted eyes as strangers and inferiors, found in the linguistic bond evidenced by consonants, vowels, and accents an intellectual fraternity, if not an actual genealogical relationship. It was not so much that either the one or the other party felt very much raised in their own eyes by this discovery, as that a feeling sprang up between them that, after all, they might be chips of the same block. And he quotes approvingly from an American authority, who affirms that “the discovery of the Sanskrit language and literature has been of more value to England in the retention and increase of her Indian Empire than an army of one hundred thousand men." Perhaps we may doubt whether the practical humanizing effect of the conclusions of philology is quite as great in overcoming race-prejudice as Max Müller believes; but their power in broadening the minds of men is certainly very great. Questions of politics and statesmanship will hardly be influenced by linguistic generalizations; but any sense of the antiquity of our Aryan relationships ought to give us a fuller sympathy with the other civilizations of our stock, and a sounder foundation for our respect for those of our own Germanic branch. Indulgence, in the terminology of the Roman Catholic Church, does not mean, as many imagine, a permission to commit sin, or the purchase of forgiveness for sins committed. It is taken from Roman jurisprudence, where indulgentia, meaning graciousness, is used as the opposite of severitas. A parent, a creditor, or a magistrate shows indulgence when he mitigates or remits a fine or punishment. That is all. In the Catholic Church an indulgence is not the pardon of sin, but the remission or mitigation of ecclesiastical penalties. It is never exercised save towards the penitent whose sin has been forgiven. Indulgences came up in the early Church, when persons had to be dealt with who had renounced the Christian religion and then asked for reinstatement in the Church. Among the first indulgences in the Christian Church is St. Paul's (II. Cor. ii. 6-11) towards the sinner at Corinth (I. Cor. v.). Such kindness towards a repenting sinner was called philanthropy, a term used repeatedly in the New Testament and also at the council at Ancyra (the modern Angora in Asia Minor), A.D. 314, where bishops were authorized to mitigate the length of an offender's penitence, this act being called philanthrop ing. The schoolmen tried to find a working theory for such clemency, by assuming that the Church could administer the treasure of good works accumulated by the saints and by the founder of the Christian religion. Christ, so they taught, had done more than to satisfy for all sins of repentant mankind, and the excess of his work could be applied to the benefit of penitent sinners. In the same way many saints, through works of supererogation, had done more than vindicate their right to heaven, and the balance due them lay in the ecclesiastical treasury, ready to be applied to the sufferers in purgatory or the repentant on earth. This theory is offered by Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Protestant Church rejected the theory, but in practice retained the exercise of indulgences, precisely as parents, teachers, employers, creditors, judges, and heads of government practise indulgence, either by mitigating a sentence or by its entire remission. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, affirmed at the Council of Trent (sess. xxv., ch. 21, s. 538) that it had the right to grant indulgences, that they are "most salutary," that they are to be retained, and that those are anathema who affirm them to be useless. The people at large, even many in the Catholic Church, have frequently misunderstood the nature of indulgences, and many Catholic agents have scandalously abused the privilege. The official doctrine of the modern Catholic Church is simply this, that it may exercise clemency towards the penitent whose sins are forgiven, and that the privilege of granting indulgences is vested in the Pope, not in the bishops, and still less in the priests. Influence. In American current phrase, to have political influence is to have power to secure appointment to public office, or by hugger-mugger to be able to secure favors from legislative and other public functionaries and from organized political parties. The ward-boss, in the words of his heelers, has "inflooence." Inn. To many writers, an inn appears to be the ideal of comfort and happiness. Indeed, Dr. Johnson expressly called a tavern-chair "the throne of human felicity," and declared that nothing that had been contrived by man had produced so much happiness as a good tavern or inn. (BOSWELL: Life, 1776.) Falstaff asks, “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" (Henry IV., Part I., Act iii., Sc. 2),-which seems to have been a proverbial saying, for in Heywood's "Proverbs" we find the line, Let the world wagge, and take mine ease in mine inne. A very curious coincidence is worth noting. Miss Reynolds informs us that while Johnson was reciting Shenstone's poem "The Sun" he slipped in the following extempore lines: Now, before Johnson, Shenstone himself had written on the window of an inn at Henley, Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, But Cato the Censor (B.C. 234-149) looked upon an inn as a poor substitute for a home, if we may judge inferentially from his comparison, “Man must depart from life as from an inn, not as from a dwelling." Later writers have adopted and amplified the comparison: Like pilgrims to th' appointed place we tend : In Heaven is our home, in the world is our inn: do not so entertain yourself in the inn of this world for a day as to have thy mind withdrawn from longings after the heavenly home, -Gerhard: Meditations, xxviii. Our life is nothing but a winter's day: FRANCIS QUARLES: Divine Fancies (1633). The verses of Quarles have passed into church-yard literature, and, varied, amplified, and paraphrased, appear on numerous English tombstones. Here is an example from Barnwell church-yard, near Cambridge, England: Man's life is like a winter's day, Innocuous desuetude. On January 28, 1886, President Cleveland, through Attorney-General Garland, refused to transmit to the Senate, in executive session, the papers with reference to certain suspensions from office made during a recess of the Senate. On February 18, resolutions were presented in the Senate by the Republicans censuring the Attorney-General for refusing to give information as to the suspensions, and announcing that it would not confirm persons nominated to succeed suspended officials where the reasons for suspension were not given. The Republicans based their action mainly on an Act of Congress, passed in 1867, which provided that "in cases of suspension from office during a recess of the Senate, the President should report, within twenty days after the next meeting of the Senate, such suspension, with the evidence and reasons for his action in the case." President Cleveland stood by his Attorney-General, and in a message to the Senate, March 1, 1886, he argued that the Constitution gives to the President the sole right of removal or suspension, and that he is responsible to the people alone, that those sections of the Tenure of Office Act which directed the President to report to the Senate his reasons for suspension had been repealed, or had become obsolete : And so it happens that after an existence of nearly twenty years of an almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth, apparently the repealed as well as the unrepealed, and put in the way of an executive who is willing, if permitted, to attempt an improvement in the methods of administration. The words "innocuous desuetude" were caught up by the newspapers, imitated, burlesqued, and ridiculed. Ins and Outs, i.e., those who are in power and in possession of the political offices, and those who are not but would like to be. The words are more definite and distinctive of the real difference between opposing factions of political partisans than ordinary party names, which latter often stand for certain sets of political principles and convictions, at one time or in one State, and something quite different at or in another. Inside track, in politics, as on the race-course, the shortest route to victory. Sometimes used synonymously with "influence” (q. v.). Institution. "The institution" was a common euphemism for slavery in America. I am not going into the slavery question. I am not an advocate for "the institution."— THACKERAY: Roundabout Papers, No. 17. |