and not dissembling his own conclusions if he is led to any, or his doubts if he is not, he invariably submits himself to the authority of the Holy See. His own view was that the dogmas of the faith should be few and plain. He would have had theology brought back from scholastic subtilty to Evangelical simplicity. He would have had fewer and better priests, fewer and better monks. He earnestly desired the abatement of the corruptions, the abuses, the superstitions, which he combated so vigorously from first to last. But anything seemed to him a less evil than the breaking up of the religious unity of Europe. To Catholics he preached conciliation; to Lutherans, moderation. In vain. He might have said with the Psalmist, 'I labour for peace; but when I speak unto them thereof, they make themselves ready to battle.'

The battle came. It was his happiness that he did not live to see it. Indeed his last year of life was gladdened by a gleam of hope that the amiable peace of the Church' for which he laboured, might even yet be achieved. In 1534 the troubled pontificate of Clement VII. came to an end. Erasmus had little cause to complain of that Pope. Like Leo and Adrian, Clement too, in his feeble and irresolute way, had protected the great Humanist. Paul III., immediately after his election, had announced his intention of calling a General Council in order to the pacification of the Church. In view of it he proposed to raise to the Cardinalate learned and pious men in various countries. Among them was Erasmus, to whom, in reply to a congratulatory letter upon his accession, he had addressed a very complimentary brief. Such an honour had never been in the thoughts of Erasmus. It was out of keeping with his antecedents. He wrote to the Bishop of Cracow that it would be like saddling an ox. He was much gratified at this token of the Pope's good dispositions towards him- Pontificis animum lubens amplector.' It was a recognition of his labours for and his loyalty to the Church. It was of good omen for the cause of reform and comprehension to which he had devoted his life. But old age, want of fortune, a state of health quite incompatible with the due discharge of a Cardinal's duties, were sufficient reasons for declining it. 'Animalculum nμepóẞiov,'' a wretched little creature with but a day's life in him'-he calls himself, in his usual mocking way. It was true. The end was near; nearer perhaps than he supposed. Of late his infirmities and sufferings had greatly increased. His physicians, at their wits' end, prescribed change of air. In June 1535 he left Freiburg, intending, as would appear, to proceed eventually to Besançon. He set out in a litter-for Vol. 180.-No. 359.

D

the

the last year or two he had been obliged to give up riding— and in a few days reached Basle, where he proposed to halt for some time in order to see an edition of his Ecclesiastes' through the press. Shortly his sickness increased so much that he determined to winter there. The place was dear to him from the recollection of many years of fruitful toil passed within its walls; of many tried and valued friends, some of whom still remained. So, as he told Goclenius in the last letter he ever wrote, he had made up his mind to winter there. He would rather die elsewhere, he added, because of theological differences. But it was appointed unto him to die there and not elsewhere. The exercise of the Catholic religion was interdicted. Erasmus passed away on July 12, 1536, without the last Sacraments of the Church which he had so faithfully served. The zealots of her communion, who had thwarted and marred the work of his life, called it an ill death. He had answered them by anticipation in wise and pious words, written twelve years before: God knows what is best for each. . . . Let Him choose what He will. No one can die badly who has lived well.'

And now let us briefly consider what is the debt of the modern world to this memorable man. If we were required to sum up his work in one sentence, we should call it the vindication of the essential and inalienable prerogatives of human reason. The fundamental difference between Luther and Erasmus is indicated by M. Nisard: 'Erasme s'adressait aux intelligences, Luther aux passions.' Müller complains of Erasmus as a rationalising (raisonnirenden) theologian.' He was that in the best sense of the word. It was in the name of reason that he annihilated the effete scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It was in the name of reason that he waged war upon the stupid superstitions and dull despotism of degenerate monachism. It was in the name of reason that he attacked Luther's new scholasticism based upon the doctrine of the slavery of the will. He was the apostle of that true liberty which with right reason dwells.' It is not merely that he abhorred religious persecution no less heartily than he abhorred sects and schisms; that he regarded candid and moderate discussion-not rigour, not violence—as the proper weapons wherewith to combat error; that, as he finely says in one of his letters-the sentiment must have seemed passing strange to most of his generation-he considered 'the man who errs in good faith an object of pity.' It is that in every department of his intellectual labour there breathes, not the atmosphere of sectarian bitterness, but the ampler ether, the diviner air of rational freedom. He introduced the new biblical exegesis,

and

and shares with Reuchlin the honour of being its founder. Superstitions about words appeared to him as slavish as superstitions concerning monkish habits. He was a pioneer of the method of interpreting the canonical books, not by isolated texts arbitrarily construed, not by traditional glosses ignorantly followed, but in the true and natural sense of the writers, without regard to consequences; the same canons of criticism, the same apparatus of scholarship, being applied to them as to other ancient writings. Once more. Erasmus felt that in

ethics the true starting-point is reason speaking through conscience, not simply an external but an internal revelation. As the Middle Ages drew to their close, the conception of the moral law as an order of verities, absolute and eternal, had been largely effaced. It came to be regarded chiefly as a branch of theology. In the hands of the later scholastics ethical science was little more than a system of casuistry. Now no thoughtful student will deny that casuistry has its quite legitimate uses. As undeniable are its quite illegitimate abuses. By misapplied subtilties, by nice or nasty distinctions, by the exclusive employment of logic as the sole guide of life, those who cultivated casuistry in the fifteenth century had well-nigh achieved the petrification of the moral idea. Luther did nothing to vivify it. Indeed the inevitable effect of his doctrine of the absolute slavery and nullity of the human will was to reduce morality to a department of police. Erasmus saw clearly that ethics rest on self-evident principles and the nature of things, and on rational deductions therefrom. It was reserved for the great moralists of a later generationSuarez and Vasquez conspicuous among them—to vindicate scientifically this primary verity. But Erasmus indicated the true way. Here, as in the domain of religious toleration and exegetical criticism, he-not Luther-is the precursor of a better age. Not in the storm of theological controversy, not in the earthquake of religious revolution, but in the still small voice of the scholar urging the pleas of reason, do we discern the promise and presage of the liberties of the modern world.

ART. II.-1. Report of the Progress of the Ordnance Survey to the 31st December, 1893.

2. Notes sur le Cadastre en France et sur l'Impôt foncier et le Cadastre à l'étranger. Par Ed. Arnoux. Paris, 1891. 3. Memoir of the Life of Major-General Colby, R. E.

1869.

By Lieut.

Col. Portlock, R.E. 4. Memoir of Thomas Drummond, R.E. By John F. McLennan, M.A. 1867.

THE art HE art or science of correctly ascertaining and describing the form and features of the earth's surface may be broadly divided into four main branches:-geodesy, which determines mathematically the general figure of the earth, and the shapes and areas of large tracts of the earth's surface : geography, which describes, by maps or otherwise, the peculiarities of different countries in relation chiefly to the conditions of civilized life: topography, called also chorography, which may be described as the geography of particular districts or neighbourhoods: and, finally, a development of landsurveying for statistical and other purposes, of which the 'cadastral maps' of the present century are the outcome, but to which no generic name has yet, so far as we are aware, been assigned. In each of these four departments of labour the Ordnance Survey is taking, or has taken, a part.

The geodetic work of the Survey began when the department was still in embryo, as we shall presently see, and has been carried on together with its more popular branches ever since. The original trigonometrical survey of the kingdom was virtually a geodetic work, and, besides this, numerous arcs of the earth's surface in these islands have been accurately determined, both separately and in conjunction with other nations, in the present century.

In geography too, several foreign surveys, required for diplomatic, colonial, historical, and other purposes of general utility or interest, have been undertaken by Ordnance Survey officers. Also, as soon as the engraving of the 1-inch map of the United Kingdom is completed, that is to say, about the year 1902, the department is to publish two geographical maps of the British Islands, on scales of 4 miles and 10 miles to the inch respectively, the latter being of the very manageable size of 7 ft. long by 5 ft. across. Some three years ago, the unfinished sheets of the 4-mile map were published, by special request and for special purposes, in a form which was misunderstood by the press, and was strongly condemned in letters

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and articles. A note in the margin now indicates the incomplete character of this publication.

The topographical branch of the Survey, better known as the 1-inch map,' is the one which originally called the department into being, and, though it now forms only a small fraction of the task appointed to be performed (the cadastral maps being, as regards bulk and intricacy, by far the greater work), it is nevertheless the most generally popular and interesting portion of the whole undertaking. We shall therefore treat it with the fulness which this consideration requires.

Topographical maps are probably the oldest form of cartography. There exists at the present moment at Turin a papyrus roll more than 3,000 years old, which has been identified as the route map of a mining district in Nubia, and other remains of a like character have been found in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. Apart from indirect evidence of the use of maps for trade and military purposes by the Greeks, it is definitely recorded of Alexander the Great that his military routes were carefully surveyed. The Romans, besides route maps in early times, appear to have made a complete government survey of the Empire under Augustus, and another under Domitian, and to have had maps of extensive tracts, on large scales, painted up on the walls of public buildings. Unfortunately none of these originals have been preserved to us, though there is in Vienna a thirteenth-century copy of a map of the time of Alexander Severus. It is in twelve folio sheets of parchment, probably intended to be mounted on a cylinder. In the sixteenth century trigonometry was introduced, and enabled fairly correct topographical maps covering considerable areas to be made. They appeared first on the Continent, there being three maps of parts of Switzerland as early as 1513, but in 1569 Humphrey Lhuyd published his 'Corographia' of Wales, and Christopher Saxton in 1575 produced a British Atlas' in thirty-six sheets from actual surveys.

The first modern Government survey of a whole country appears to be that known as the Carte géométrique de la France,' dated 1744, but really commenced long before that, and not completed till long afterwards. As early as 1683 the great Domenico Cassini, director of the Paris Observatory, began the triangulation on which the map was founded. The triangulation was completed by his son and successor Jacques, between 1700 and 1720. In the year 1744 the King (Louis XV.) definitely committed to MM. Maraldi and César François Cassini, Comte de Thury, the grandson of Domenico, the task of actually making the map. Thury, the third of his family

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