“‘Blushing not (as Hooker says) in any doubt concerning matters of Scripture to think his own bare Yea as good as the Nay of all the wise, grave, and learned judgments that are in the whole world. Which insolency must be repressed, or it will be the very bane of Christian Religion.’—(Ecc. Polity, Book II.) “I believe the St. George’s Company contains the germ of a healthy and vigorous constitution. I see that you are planting that germ, and fostering it with all deliberation and cautious directness of advance; but what Titanic obstacles! It seems to me the fittest plant of this age to survive, but in the complexities of the struggle for existence, its rearing must be a Herculean labour. Yet wherein is this age singular? When was there any time whose sentence we might not write thus: ‘L’état agité par les brigues des ambitieux, par les largesses des riches factieux, par la vénalité des pauvres oiseux, par l’empirisme des orateurs, par l’audace des hommes pervers, par la faiblesse des hommes vertueux,’ was distracted and disintegrate. “When I can get better words than my own I like to use them—and it is seldom I cannot. In the selfish pleasure of writing to you I forget the tax on your time of reading my vagaries; but I feel a kind of filial unburdening in writing thus freely. Will that excuse me? “Always sincerely and affectionately yours, “James Hooper.” Wood versus Coal.—Subject to such correction as may be due to the different quantity of carbon contained in a load of wood as in a ton of coal, the product of the coal-field is seven times as much [of fuel] per mile, as that of the forest. To produce a yield of fuel equal to that obtainable from the known coal measures of the world, if worked with an activity equal to that of our own, seven times the area of cultivated forest is required. But the actual area, as estimated, is not seven, but twenty-seven times that of the coal measures. It is thus four times as important, regarded as a source of fuel. But while the life of the coal-field has been taken at 150 years, that of the forest, if rightly cared for, will endure as long as that of the human family. A wealth such as this is not to be measured in tons of gold.—Edinburgh Review, p. 375, Oct., 1875. “I think Sheffield is more likely ‘Schaf-feld’ than Sheaf-field. ‘Sheep-fold,’ the sheltered hollow with moors all round it. I know a place called ‘Theescombe,’ meaning ‘theaves-combe,’ or ‘young lambs-combe.’”—Note by a Companion. NOTES [1] Seven thousand to St. George’s Company; five, for establishment of Mastership in Drawing in the Oxford Schools; two, and more, in the series of drawings placed in those schools to secure their efficiency. [2] Lamentations v. 13.