only the fallacies which spring from the selfhood, and which call evil good, because it favours an indulgence we do not wish to give up. Let New Churchmen set examples in these minor matters, and show that "all religion has relation to life" in the little things as well as in those of more weight and moment.

VERBUM SAP.

A BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF JOHN WEBSTER

HANCOCK.

Ir is much to be regretted that the name of John Webster Hancock, whose bright and vigorous genius was wont to enrich the Intellectual Repository with some of its ablest and most interesting contributions, should lapse from its pages without an earlier memorial, and from an abler hand than that of the writer of these lines.1 The delay is probably to be accounted for by the supposition that, of the number who were competent and ready to discharge this sadly requisite and affectionate office, each has been waiting for the other. It will doubtless be interesting to the readers of the Repository to know something of the career, and especially of the early influences and culture that combined, under the direction of the Divine Providence, in the production of a mind and character of singular intelligence and energy. We are said by some physiologists to reproduce both physically and mentally the characteristics of our remoter progenitors more than of our immediate parents. This was in no small degree exemplified in the case of our deceased friend. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Hancock of Nottingham, engineer of the old waterworks of that town, was for many years a celebrity in every phasis of society that was capable of appreciating sterling wit and practical intelligence; and his portrait, engraved from an original by Richard Bonnington (father of the well-known Parkes) still retains its place on walls that were once the scene of his brilliant essays and conversational talent. Still there never was, we believe, any personal intercourse between John Webster Hancock and his paternal grandfather. Very different in this respect was our friend's relation to his mother's father, Mr. Richard Webster of Mansfield, Nottingham, a man whose apt receptivity of mind and transparent simplicity of character, sweetened with

1 A lengthened obituary notice appeared in a former number.-[ED.]

an exuberant amount of natural benevolence, made him one of the best, as he was also one of the earliest, disciples of our great Expositor. Mr. Webster was indeed a model New Churchman, and the intense affection which the young learner entertained for his grandfather became a fertile medium for the insemination of the truths of the New Church in his rapidly-expanding mind. Precept, example, and filial love thus happily co-operating, it is not surprising that the grandson became from his childhood an ardent lover of the pure theology as well as of the comprehensive philosophy of Swedenborg, which to him were not new in contrast with something he had previously known, and which afterwards became old, but were the first pabulum of his opening powers, and constituted in him the first forms and principles of thought. How great an advantage this preoccupation of the mind with the truth in its purity, may be, will be confessed by every earnest seeker of truth, who has commenced his researches encumbered and bewildered and biassed to boot, with the mental crystallizations of preconceived notions, and erroneous yet tenacious conclusions. If there were, as some observers of him in his controversial aspect may have thought, a trace of satiric impatiencewe will not, dare not, say intolerance-of the unskilled fence of an opponent, it may perhaps be accounted for, at least in part, by this pristine saturation of his mind with unadulterated principles of thought, which disenabled him in some degree from recognising the fact, that an honest but ill-trained mind may be found accepting as fundamental truth something which rests upon propositions that contradict each other.

No less true is the somewhat trite observation that "the mother is the making of the man." Mr. Hancock's mother possessing, like himself, a childhood initiation in the doctrines of the New Dispensation from the hands of such a father, transmitted them to her son with intelligent fidelity, and an ardour equalled only by that of his receptivity. The merely secular part of his education is thus spoken of by one who, of all informants, was most likely to be well informed: "He was sent to school at a very early age, and before he was nine was at the head of every class in English. This I have often heard him say. The early death of his father caused him to be taken from school when only little more than ten. It was intended to educate him for a profession, but his father's death rendered this unattainable." To his mother then was the subject of this memoir indebted chiefly, we may conclude, for the bent and basis of his rudimentary

education; from her he derived much taste and some executive talent in music, for which the Webster family were justly celebrated; and from her, too, was the germ of that æsthetic and poetic temperament which was to be the peculiar mark and charm of his literary productions. What the nursery aliment of his mind might be we may fairly imagine, and those are data for the fancy to work upon in the fact, which he has been heard to affirm, that at an age when other boys-intelligent boys too-are fascinated with the romantic fictions of the "Arabian Nights," et id genus omne, he was equally familiar with the sublimer marvels of the "Memorable Relations." At an unusually early age he was initiated in the routine of business under his uncle (by marriage), Mr. W. Robinson of Park Street, Nottingham, where, granted the relationship, we cannot affirm that he was ever spared, more than the merest stranger, from the exactions of the service. Nevertheless on went the work of his self-education. The prevalent affection of his natural mind being the desire for learning, he made time for study, not only by diligently utilizing the ordinary allowable leisure of the day, but by seizing for profit those scraps and fragmentary intervals which are commonly allowed to pass as unavailable. When we say that his curriculum included Latin and Greek, Italian and French, Mathematics and Euclid (not to mention metaphysical and theological reading), in all of which, as subsequent examinations proved, he acquired no small degree of proficiency, and this, too, while the business hours of every day were faithfully devoted to "Cæsar," shall we not hesitate whether to admire more the force of devotion triumphing in circumstances so adverse, or the genius that could dispense with the usual auxiliaries?

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE HEART AND LUNGS. To understand the correspondence of the heart and lungs, it is essential to know their construction and the functions they fulfil in the human body.

The heart and lungs are situated in the breast, and are protected by the ribs, which arch round them from a bony column behind, to which they are attached by joints; and they are also attached by yielding cartilages to the breastbone in front. Below, they rest upon a fleshy septum, the diaphragm, which separates them from the organs of the abdomen.

FORM AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEART.

The form of the heart in position is that of a partially-inverted rounded cone or spire, not pointed at any part, but rounded off both at its broad base and tapering apex. It is divided primarily by a middle septum into two halves, the septum passing from base to apex, and (after birth) permitting no communication between the two cavities. It may be regarded as two hearts united, a right heart and a left; indeed, in some of the lower animals these two hearts are separated. Each half is again subdivided into two parts, one of which is larger and stronger than the other. The whole organ thus contains four cavities.

The mass of the heart's walls is composed of fleshy substance, consisting of the finest fibrils bound into bundles, and these again into muscular masses. Besides the muscular masses there is cartilaginous tissue at its divisions, from which stretch little curtains or valves marking and separating these divisions and the entrances to and exits from its cavities.

FORM AND STRUCTURE OF THE LUNGS.

The best idea which can be given of the form of the lungs is that of an inverted tree. There is a central trunk, the windpipe, two large branches, the larger bronchi, smaller branches proceeding from these two, and from these, again, lesser branchlets attenuated into twigs terminating in leaf-stalks. These leaf-stalks expand into leaves, which, instead of being flat, are rounded into little bladders called air-cells. This tree, however, is a hollow tree throughout, containing and conveying air to the air-cells. The basis of the structure of the trunk and larger tubes is cartilage, which, ring-like at first, continues into the smallest bronchial tubes, and near the air-cells ceases altogether. The tubes are coated outside, at first by a dense membrane, which becomes thin near the air-cells, surrounds them, and, spreading from cell to cell, holds them by one and the same means open, at a proper distance from each other, in smaller clusters, in larger masses, in great lobes, and lastly, as the lungs of the right and left sides. Inside the tubes, also, there spreads a finer and more highly-organized membrane, called the bronchial membrane, which, commencing at the windpipe, invests every tube to its finest ramifications, and covers also the insides of the air-cells. Around this bronchial membrane there are a few muscular fibres, which make themselves sensible where the tubes open into the air-cells. Outside all, between the ribs and the lungs, there is a membrane called the pleura, which invests both the lungs and

ribs, and in which is secreted an oil-like fluid, which enables the lungs. to move without friction, and permits their free motion during the inspiratory and expiratory acts of breathing.

GENERAL RELATION OF THE HEART AND LUNGS.

At the first glance at the heart and lungs we are struck by their close connection and relation. Both are enclosed in the same cavity. The lungs surround the heart; the heart nestles throbbing in their midst; the lungs expand as if to embrace the heart. At every inspiration the heart pours its living stream more freely around their multitudinous leaf-cells, as if conscious of the purification and animation the blood is about to receive; the lungs fall back, and, passively at least, assist the now scarlet stream of blood back to its friend's reception. What a picture of perfect love, reciprocity, and protection! Each is perfectly adapted to the other, and there is a perfect marriage union.

OFFICE OF THE HEART.

The function of the heart is to propel the blood through the body; it exists for the sake of the blood, and for the uses the blood is to accomplish. It is perfectly adapted to the performance of this function. It expands and contracts with perfect rhythm by virtue of a motive force provided from a nervous centre and nervous branches resident in and spreading over its whole structure. This nervous centre is called the cardiac ganglion. Voluntary nerves represented in the brain only affect the motion secondarily, either retarding or accelerating it, but do not originate it. The origin of the rhythmical motion is, therefore, independent of all voluntary causes. The heart's. expansion is the act of receiving, and its contraction the act of expelling the blood. When it expands, the blood rushes into its lesser cavities or auricles, and thence flows into the larger cavities or ventricles. The contraction commences at its base, by which the auricles flap the blood in them into its ventricles, and as the contraction spreads round and downwards to its apex, the valves of entrance are closed up, those of exit forced open, and the blood is forced into the blood-vessels of the lungs and the whole body. At the moment of returning expansion the valves of exit close, being forced down by the attempt of the blood to rush back into the heart; and thus confined to the vessels, they assist, by their elastic compression, in sending it. to its destination. The compression of the blood by the heart is exerted spirally, which sends the blood whirling through the vessels, and rushing into the smallest openings, so that a perfect supply is.