The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-02

and his perceptions should have been con-
fused. If the door was latched the policeman
| of course could not tell that ii was unlocked;
and The criminal, if he retained his self
possession, would have been careful to latch
It. so that the police might not take alarm at
its standing open, and discover the crime
before be got safely away. This explanation
is based upon the superstition that Officer
Mangum did try the doors at the hours he
says he did; but it is within the bounds of
| possibility that in his anxiety to relieve him
self of a suspicion of negligence he has exag-
gerated the story of his own vigilance.
Some surprise is expressed that the MUIR
derer should have left so few marks of blood
in the stairway and in the hall. 1t is assumed
by many people that he must have been
actually drenched in gore and dripping from
every limb; but this is @ great mistake. When
a man is struck down as Mr.. Nathan was
struck, the blood does not gush forth like
water from a hydrant, and it is possible that
the murderer may have stood in such a posi-
ton as to receive comparatively little of the
crimson stain, and to get none at all on his
feet. When the body was found a wide pool
of blood was all about the head; but this pool
it must be remembered had formed gradually
as the veins and arteries drained away. The
murderer may have left the room with COM
paratively few traces of the deed upon his
! person, except such as might be wiped off
with a handkerchief.
It mas been proved that the house was so
built with ''deadened' walls and ceilings that
the nose of the struggle could hardly have
been heard by the sons or the servants, even
had they all been awake. 1t has been shown
that the mysterious carriage seen waiting OPP
posite Mr.. Nathan's stable was there on an
errand sufficiently disreputable indeed, but
not felonious. SO the difficulties and ''sus-
picious circumstance" one by one resolve
themselves into thin air; only the one absorb
- .-o- A. .z.A1z,- y
We have little hope that he will ever be
| found unless the rewards tempt an accomplish
to betray him, and it is very doubtful
whether he has any accomplice. If he be-
longed to a gang of burglars. his companions
would be apt to know that he meant to at
tempt Mr.. Nathan's house that night. But
the police are confident that he was not a
professional house-breaker, because one of
| that class would not have used the uuneces-
sary violence employed in this case, and be-
cause professional house-breakers generally
operate in couples. He was probably a
wretched sneak-thief, working alone, aud
perhaps without a ''pal' to whom his move
ments would have been known. Yet at his
home, if he had a home, there may have been
some creature who saw him return from his
nights work, or saw him put out of the way
the evidences of his crime. The main Deepen
dence of Justice must be on the hope that
immense rewards will tempt some such per-
son to reveal the truth.
MIR. RUSKIN'S NEW GOSPEL OF r.
From the N. Y. Times.
Mr.. John Ruskin. as all the world knows,
has lately become Slade Professor of Fine
Arts at Oxford. Mr.. Ruskin has for SOM
time been held to be a better authority upon
painting than upon political economy, and
contemporary judges have by no means kept
this comparative estimate of his powers in
reserve. Nothing daunted, however, the
author of Modern Painter has taken occasion
in his inaugural lectures at Oxford to affirm
his peculiar tenets with considerable empha-
sis, and to repeat at the same time some of
those unpleasant statements that the English
people so much dislike to hear. He declares,
for example, that his countrymen will never
excel in decorative design. Such design is
usually produced by people of great natural
powers of mind, who have no variety of
subjects to employ themselves on, and no
oppressive anxieties. The English have too
much to do and to think of to attain a high
degree of excellence. Nor can they be sue
cessful in the highest fields of ideal or theo-
logical art, for the reason that ever since
the Conquest, if not earlier, there has ex-
listed in that people a strange delight in the
forms of burlesque (which are connected in
some degree with the foulness in evil" And
yet, bad as such a tendency is, "you will
find" Mr.. Ruskin tells us, 'that whenever
Engllshmen are wholly without this instinct,
their genius is comparatively weak and re-
stricted. Now, the first necessity for
executing any great work in ideal art, he
goes on to explain, is the looking upon all
foulness with horror, as a contemplate,
though dreadful, enemy; and he adds that we
shall easily understand what he means ''by
comparing the feelings with which Dante re-
CARDS any form of obscenity or of base Jest,
with the temper in which the same things
are regarded by Shakespeare" 1t may be
some comfort to the many Anglo-Saxons who
will feel outraged by this slur ON the immor-
tai bard to learn that MIR. Ruskin acknow-
lodges English superiority in portraiture, as
illustrated by Reynolds and Gainsborough,
and confesses that they (the English have a
sympathy with the lower animals which is
peculiarly their own, but which, although sit
has already found some exquisite expression
in the works Of Bewick and Landseer, is yet
quite undeveloped."
In subsequent lectures Mr.. Ruskin proceeds
10 instruct the ingenious young Britons COM
mitted to his charge that there can absolutely
be not alone no right art, but no right
morality or happiness, in a country the cities
of which are built as they are in England. He
said as much twenty-five years ago in the
"Seven Lamps of Architecture;" he SAYS it
again now with increased force and confidence.
"You must have, he urges, 'lovely cities,
crystallized, not coagulated, into form; limited
} in size and not casting out the scum and scurf
OF them into an encircling eruption of shame,
but girded, each with its sacred pomoerium,
and with garlands of gardens full Of blossom
ing trees and softly guided streams" Mr..
Ruskin anticipates that this will be declared
impossible; but, with a fine discrimination
AYERS that he has nothing to do with it's