FOOTNOTES:

"Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself for one moment to sink under want of encouragement; energy nerved the one, and endurance upheld the other. They were both prepared to try again; I would fain think that hope and the sense of power was yet strong within them. But a great change approached: affliction came in that shape which to anticipate, is dread; to look back on, grief. In the very heat and burden of the day, the laborers failed over their work. My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in any thing. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service was exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can render. Two cruel months of hope and fear passed painfully by, and the day came at last when the terrors and pains of death were to be undergone by this treasure, which had grown dearer and dearer to our hearts as it wasted before our eyes. Towards the decline of that day, we had nothing of Emily but her mortal remains as consumption left them. She died December 19, 1848. We thought this enough; but we were utterly and presumptuously wrong. She was not buried ere Anne fell ill. She had not been committed to the grave a fortnight, before we received distinct intimation that it was necessary to prepare our minds to see the younger sister go after the elder. Accordingly, she followed in the same path with slower step, and with a patience that equalled the other's fortitude. I have said that she was religious, and it was by leaning on those Christian doctrines in which she firmly believed that she found support through her most painful journey. I witnessed their efficacy in her latest hour and greatest trial, and must bear my testimony to the calm triumph with which they brought her through. She died May 28, 1849. What more shall I say about them? I cannot and need not say much more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits."

Though the above particulars be little more than the filling-up of an outline already clearly traced and constantly present whenever those characteristic tales recurred to us,—by those who have held other ideas with regard to the authorship of "Jane Eyre" they will be found at once curious and interesting from the plain and earnest sincerity of the writer. She subsequently enters on an analysis and discussion of "Wuthering Heights" as a work of art;—in the closing paragraph of her preface to that novel, insinuating an argument, if not a defence, the urgency of which is not sufficiently admitted by the bulk of the world of readers. Speaking of the fiendlike hero of her sister's work, she says:—

"Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent 'to harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'—when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'—when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as fate or inspiration directs. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question—that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice."

It might have been added, that to those whose experience of men and manners is neither extensive nor various, the construction of a self-consistent monster is easier than the delineation of an imperfect or inconsistent reality—with all its fallings-short, its fitful aspirations, its mixed enterprises, and its interrupted dreams. But we must refrain from further speculation and illustration:—enough having been given to justify our characterizing this volume, with its preface, as a more than usually interesting contribution to the history of female authorship in England.

Pertinently of these biographies, theAthenæumremarks that "some of the most daring and original have owed their parentage, not to defyingBritomarts, at war with society, who choose to make their literature match with their lives,—not to brilliant women figuring in the world, in whom every gift and faculty has been enriched, and whetted sharp, and encouraged into creative utterance, by perpetual communication with the most distinguished men of the time,—but to writers living retired lives in retired places, stimulated to activity by no outward influence, driven to confession by no history that demands apologetic parable or subtle plea."

FOOTNOTES:[13]Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.By Ellis and Acton Bell. A new Edition Revised, with a Biographical Notice of the Authors, a Selection from their Literary Remains, and a Preface. By Currer Bell. Smith, Elder & Co.

[13]Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.By Ellis and Acton Bell. A new Edition Revised, with a Biographical Notice of the Authors, a Selection from their Literary Remains, and a Preface. By Currer Bell. Smith, Elder & Co.

In 1802, the late reverend and venerableDr. Millerof New Jersey, then an active minister of the Presbyterian church in this city, published here, in two large octavo volumes, the First Part ofA Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, containing a Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvements in Science, Arts and Literature, during that Period. Six other volumes were contemplated, to cover grounds since occupied by the great work upon the Eighteenth Century, by Dr. Schlosser, but they never appeared. The facts embraced in Dr. Miller's Retrospect illustrated an extraordinary and successful intellectual activity in the preceding hundred years; but the fruits of investigation and reflection in that time were less remarkable and important than those which have marked the first half of the Nineteenth Century, of which the Rev.Emerson Davis, D.D., has attempted to give us a survey in a single duodecimo. Within such brief limits completeness and fulness were out of the question, but we had a right to ask a judicious selection of topics, and—however brief and imperfect,—a careful and an honest statement of facts. We are sorry to perceive that brevity is the only redeeming quality of Dr. Davis's performance. It is altogether worthless, in almost every respect, and unless it tempt some competent person to the composition of an Account of the Progress of Society from 1800 to 1851, its appearance will be a public misfortune, as well as a private disgrace. Perfectly to justify this condemnation we will copy a single section—the one treating of the discovery of

"LETHEON, OR SULPHURIC ETHER, &c."In the autumn of 1846, it was announced in the public journals that a dentist in Boston, W. T. G. Morton, had discovered a method of extracting teeth without pain. Dr. Morton, it seems, was satisfied that he could increase his business to any extent he pleased, if he could only discover a method by which he could extract and insert teeth without any pain to the patient. Having some knowledge of the fact that, by inhaling the vapor of ether, a state of insensibility could be produced, he applied to Dr. Charles T. Jackson to know if it could be done with safety. It occurred to him that it might produce such a degree of stupor that a tooth might be extracted without a consciousness of what was doing [meaningbeing done]. On the 30th of September, 1846, he inhaled the vapor himself, and found that he remained in an unconscious state eight minutes. On the same day, he administered it with success to a man who called to have a tooth extracted. The man, on recovering his consciousness, did not know that any instrument had been applied to his tooth. On the 16th and 17th of October, at the suggestion of Dr. Morton, ether was administered to two patients at the hospital, who were to have surgical operations performed. The experiment was successful. As soon as the fact was known, it was generally applauded by the newspapers as a wonderful discovery, and the question came up, To whom belongs the honor, and who shall reap the reward? Dr. Jackson, in a letter to M. Beaumont, published in Galignani's Messenger, in Paris, January, 1847, says, 'I request permission to communicate to the Academy, through you, a discovery which I have made, and which I regard as important to suffering humanity.' It appears that the idea of using ether to render a person insensibleto pain, was original with Dr. Morton, and that Dr. Jackson did no more than give Dr. Morton some information respecting the nature of ether, and the best mode of inhaling it. But as Dr. Jackson was better known as a man of science, Dr. Morton consented to take the patent in the name of both, and Dr. Jackson sold out his share to Dr. Morton for ten per cent. of the income that might be derived from the sale of rights to use the discovery."In February, 1847, another letter appeared in Galignani's Messenger, from Dr. H. Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, in which he claimed to be the discoverer of the fact that the respiring of gas would produce insensibility to pain. Dr. Wells had been about the country for a few years previous,lecturing upon gases, and had often administered the exhilarating, or nitrous oxide, gas. There isno evidencethat he ever administered ether. He might, in his experiments, have found that persons under the influence of the nitrous gas were insensible to pain, but he had no right to claim that he discovered that the vapor of ether would produce that effect. The French Academy, however, conferred rewards of merit upon both Jackson and Wells, and, in 1848, the American Congress awarded to Morton the honor of the discovery."In 1847, several sharp articles appeared in the Boston papers, some favorable to Morton, and others to Jackson. Wells committed suicide that year, and nothing more was said respecting his claims. Some spicy pamphlets were written. The result has been that, under the shelter of the smoke of controversy, every one that chose has made use of the discovery without paying Morton for the right, and that he has been actually impoverished by the attention he gave to the subject."

"In the autumn of 1846, it was announced in the public journals that a dentist in Boston, W. T. G. Morton, had discovered a method of extracting teeth without pain. Dr. Morton, it seems, was satisfied that he could increase his business to any extent he pleased, if he could only discover a method by which he could extract and insert teeth without any pain to the patient. Having some knowledge of the fact that, by inhaling the vapor of ether, a state of insensibility could be produced, he applied to Dr. Charles T. Jackson to know if it could be done with safety. It occurred to him that it might produce such a degree of stupor that a tooth might be extracted without a consciousness of what was doing [meaningbeing done]. On the 30th of September, 1846, he inhaled the vapor himself, and found that he remained in an unconscious state eight minutes. On the same day, he administered it with success to a man who called to have a tooth extracted. The man, on recovering his consciousness, did not know that any instrument had been applied to his tooth. On the 16th and 17th of October, at the suggestion of Dr. Morton, ether was administered to two patients at the hospital, who were to have surgical operations performed. The experiment was successful. As soon as the fact was known, it was generally applauded by the newspapers as a wonderful discovery, and the question came up, To whom belongs the honor, and who shall reap the reward? Dr. Jackson, in a letter to M. Beaumont, published in Galignani's Messenger, in Paris, January, 1847, says, 'I request permission to communicate to the Academy, through you, a discovery which I have made, and which I regard as important to suffering humanity.' It appears that the idea of using ether to render a person insensibleto pain, was original with Dr. Morton, and that Dr. Jackson did no more than give Dr. Morton some information respecting the nature of ether, and the best mode of inhaling it. But as Dr. Jackson was better known as a man of science, Dr. Morton consented to take the patent in the name of both, and Dr. Jackson sold out his share to Dr. Morton for ten per cent. of the income that might be derived from the sale of rights to use the discovery.

"In February, 1847, another letter appeared in Galignani's Messenger, from Dr. H. Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, in which he claimed to be the discoverer of the fact that the respiring of gas would produce insensibility to pain. Dr. Wells had been about the country for a few years previous,lecturing upon gases, and had often administered the exhilarating, or nitrous oxide, gas. There isno evidencethat he ever administered ether. He might, in his experiments, have found that persons under the influence of the nitrous gas were insensible to pain, but he had no right to claim that he discovered that the vapor of ether would produce that effect. The French Academy, however, conferred rewards of merit upon both Jackson and Wells, and, in 1848, the American Congress awarded to Morton the honor of the discovery.

"In 1847, several sharp articles appeared in the Boston papers, some favorable to Morton, and others to Jackson. Wells committed suicide that year, and nothing more was said respecting his claims. Some spicy pamphlets were written. The result has been that, under the shelter of the smoke of controversy, every one that chose has made use of the discovery without paying Morton for the right, and that he has been actually impoverished by the attention he gave to the subject."

This statement is a tissue of falsehood and absurdity. To deny to Dr. Wells theentirecredit of this discovery, argues simply gross ignorance or insolence. Whenever any matter deserving of historical commemoration is submitted to controversy, and the evidence is not full and absolute, and the decision is not unanimous or nearly so, the historian musthimselfenter into the investigation, and in his own person pronounce judgment. Therefore Dr. Davis has no excuse for so scandalous a misrepresentation of these events, in any communications or suggestions by unknown parties. It was easy to be rightly informed, and under such circumstances, ignorance is scarcely less criminal than designed falsehood. In this case, the decision has plainly been in favor of Dr. Wells, wherever there was authority of action. By means which we do not care to state, but which are well known to us, Drs. Jackson and Morton did indeed procure of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, a recognition of their joint claims to be regarded as the discoverersof etherization. The Academy of Sciences is not a fit tribunal. The Paris Medical Society (of which the celebrated Chevalier Ricord is President) is; and this society, after an elaborate investigation of the whole subject, during which it listened to a speech of several hours by Mr. Warren, the agent of Drs. Jackson and Morton, decided with the utmost unanimity that Dr. Wells made the discovery, and awarded him therefor the sum of 25,000 francs.

The statement that Dr. Wells "went about the country lecturing upon gases," is characteristically false. He never delivered even one lecture, upon any subject whatever, in his life. It is equally false that "the American Congress awarded to Morton the credit of the discovery." Congress has never made any decision or award at all in the premises. A committee was hastily appointed, and it presented a report, probably prepared in Boston. The friends of Dr. Wells were not advised of any such attempt, and it was thought this report, with agreeing resolutions, could be smuggled through the House. But a counter report was immediately offered, nevertheless, and so the game stopped.

We cannot, in these pages, enter into any detail of the history of this important discovery; but those who wish to investigate it, are referred to a pamphlet lately issued at Hartford, entitled, "Discovery by the late Dr. Horace Wells of the Applicability of Nitrous Oxide Gas, Sulphuric Ether, and other Vapors, in Surgical Operations, nearly two years before the Patented Discovery of Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W. T. G. Morton." This pamphlet was prepared by Mr. Toucey, recently Attorney General of the United States, and nothing can be more conclusive and satisfactory, to a fair inquirer, than the evidence contained in it, that Drs. Jackson and Morton had never even the slightest thought of any thing like etherization, until Dr. Wells, some time after the discovery, proceeded to Boston, in the hope that Dr. Morton (who was under especial private obligations to him, and therefore was regarded by him as a friend) would assist him in procuring for it larger publicity and recognition. Poor Wells was only laughed at by these gentlemen, who, two years afterward, claimed the discovery as their own!

How complete the discovery, and how successful the application of it, will appear from the affidavit of Dr. Marcy. Mr. Toucey says:

"Dr. E. E. Marcy, formerly of Hartford, now of the city of New-York, was present at the rooms of Dr. Wells, by his special request, to witness the operation upon Mr. F. C. Goodrich, and witnessed it with the strong sensations produced by a new and wonderful discovery upon a scientific observer. He says, not only was the extraction accomplished without pain, but the inhalation of the gas was effected without any of those indications of excitement, or attempts at muscular exertion, which do commonly obtain when the gas is administeredwithout a definite object or previous mental preparation. 'By this experiment,' says Dr. Marcy, 'two important, and, to myself,entirely new factswere demonstrated: 1st. That the body could be rendered insensible to pain by the inhalation of a gas or vapor, capable of producing certain effects upon the organism. And 2d. When such agents were administered, to a sufficient extent, for a definite object, and with a suitable impression being previously produced upon the mind, that no unusual mental excitement, or attempts at physical effort would follow the inhalation."'Witnessing these wonderful phenomena, these new and astounding facts, the idea at once occurred to me whether there were not other substances analogous in effect to the gas, and which might be employed with more convenience and with equal efficacy and safety. Knowing that the inhalation of sulphuric-ether vapor gave rise to precisely the same effects as those of the gas, from numerous former trials with both these substances, I suggested to Dr. Wells, the employment of the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether—at the same time detailing to him its ordinary effects upon the economy, and the method of preparing the articles for use. Our first impression was, that it possessed all the anæsthetic properties of the nitrous oxyd, was equally safe, and could be prepared with less trouble, thus affording an article which was not expensive, and could always be kept at hand. At the same time, I told Dr. Wells that I would prepare some ether, and furnish him some of it to administer, and also make a trial of it myself, in a surgical case which I expected to operate upon in a few days. Not long after this conversation (to which allusion is made by Mr. Goodrich, in his affidavit) I administered the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether, in my office, to the young man above alluded to, and after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head an encysted tumor of about the size of an English walnut. The operation was entirely unattended with pain, and demonstrated to Dr. Wells and myself, in the most conclusive manner, the anæsthetic properties of ether vapor.'"We have narrated this important experiment in the language of Dr. Marcy, to whose affidavit we take leave to refer, as no part of it can, with any propriety or justice, be overlooked by any one who proposes to subject this matter to a searching examination. It shows the progress and the successful result of these inquiries and experiments of Dr. Wells, and of those skilful and liberal professional gentlemen who co-operated with him. It shows that the opinion was then entertained by Dr. Marcy, that the constituents of the gas were more nearly allied to the atmospheric air than were those of ether vapor—that the former was more agreeable and easy to inhale than the latter, and upon the whole was more safe and equally efficacious as an anæsthetic agent—and that this opinion was fully confirmed by numerous experiments subsequently made by Drs. Ellsworth, Beresford, Riggs, Terry, Wells and himself. It shows further, thatDr. Wells visited Boston in 1844, for the purpose of communicating his discovery to the faculty of that city, and that, on his return, he informed Dr. Marcy that he had communicated it to Dr. C. T. Jackson, and to Dr. Morton, and received from the former, and from other medical gentlemen of Boston, nothing but ridicule for his pains."

"'Witnessing these wonderful phenomena, these new and astounding facts, the idea at once occurred to me whether there were not other substances analogous in effect to the gas, and which might be employed with more convenience and with equal efficacy and safety. Knowing that the inhalation of sulphuric-ether vapor gave rise to precisely the same effects as those of the gas, from numerous former trials with both these substances, I suggested to Dr. Wells, the employment of the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether—at the same time detailing to him its ordinary effects upon the economy, and the method of preparing the articles for use. Our first impression was, that it possessed all the anæsthetic properties of the nitrous oxyd, was equally safe, and could be prepared with less trouble, thus affording an article which was not expensive, and could always be kept at hand. At the same time, I told Dr. Wells that I would prepare some ether, and furnish him some of it to administer, and also make a trial of it myself, in a surgical case which I expected to operate upon in a few days. Not long after this conversation (to which allusion is made by Mr. Goodrich, in his affidavit) I administered the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether, in my office, to the young man above alluded to, and after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head an encysted tumor of about the size of an English walnut. The operation was entirely unattended with pain, and demonstrated to Dr. Wells and myself, in the most conclusive manner, the anæsthetic properties of ether vapor.'

"We have narrated this important experiment in the language of Dr. Marcy, to whose affidavit we take leave to refer, as no part of it can, with any propriety or justice, be overlooked by any one who proposes to subject this matter to a searching examination. It shows the progress and the successful result of these inquiries and experiments of Dr. Wells, and of those skilful and liberal professional gentlemen who co-operated with him. It shows that the opinion was then entertained by Dr. Marcy, that the constituents of the gas were more nearly allied to the atmospheric air than were those of ether vapor—that the former was more agreeable and easy to inhale than the latter, and upon the whole was more safe and equally efficacious as an anæsthetic agent—and that this opinion was fully confirmed by numerous experiments subsequently made by Drs. Ellsworth, Beresford, Riggs, Terry, Wells and himself. It shows further, thatDr. Wells visited Boston in 1844, for the purpose of communicating his discovery to the faculty of that city, and that, on his return, he informed Dr. Marcy that he had communicated it to Dr. C. T. Jackson, and to Dr. Morton, and received from the former, and from other medical gentlemen of Boston, nothing but ridicule for his pains."

We have no room for testimony. Mr. Toucey concludes his statement in the following manner:—

"More than a year and a half after Dr. Wells had personally made known to Dr. Jackson, and to Dr. Morton, his former pupil, the result of his experiments, more than one year after the announcement in the BostonMedical and Surgical Journal, published at their doors, we find Dr. Jackson and Dr. Morton confederating together, taking out a patent for this principle, and attempting ineffectually to appropriate it to their joint pecuniary benefit! Dr. Jackson as the philosopher, Dr. Morton as the operator! And shortly afterwards, differing in almost every thing else, agreeing nevertheless in one thing—each affirming of the other that he was not entitled to the merit of the discovery!"Such is a brief statement of the proof, by which the mere matter of fact is established, which induced the Legislature of Connecticut to hail the late Dr. Horace Wells as a public benefactor. With this accumulation of evidence on one side, bearing directly upon the point, andnothing to countervail it on the other, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that he was the fortunate author of this great discovery, unless one or the other of two propositions can be established, namely, either that such a paralysis of the nervous system as would render the subject insensible to pain during the process of extracting teeth, would not embrace the principle of it, or on the other hand, that nitrous oxyd gas is arbitrarily to be excluded from its proper place in a class of agents, all of which are nearly identical in their operation. And even if this difficult task could be accomplished, there would still remain another equally difficult to be encountered; because it has already been shown that Dr. Wells went beyond these limits, and that Dr. Marcy, in conjunction with him, subjected the use of sulphuric ether in a larger surgical operation, to the test of successful experiment. But either of the foregoing propositions would be too absurd to require a moment's consideration. The principle is as fully developed by the painless extraction of teeth, as by the painless amputation of a limb; by the successful use of nitrous oxyd gas, as of rectified sulphuric ether. In the language of Dr. Marcy: 'The man who first discovered the fact that the inhalation of a gaseous substance would render the body insensible to pain under surgical operations, should be entitled to all the credit or emolument which may accrue from the use of any substances of this nature. This is theprinciple—this is thefact—this is thediscovery. The mere substitution of ether vapor or any other article for the gas, no more entitles one to the claim of adiscovery, than the substitution of coal for wood in generating steam, would entitle one to be called the discoverer of the powers of steam.'"It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further. It would be one of the greatest marvels of this wonderful age, if the world, with these facts before it, did not confirm the decision which it has already pronounced, and award to Dr. Wells the merit of a discovery, which will be remembered and appreciated as long as mankind shall be exposed to suffering, or have occasion to apply an antidote."

"Such is a brief statement of the proof, by which the mere matter of fact is established, which induced the Legislature of Connecticut to hail the late Dr. Horace Wells as a public benefactor. With this accumulation of evidence on one side, bearing directly upon the point, andnothing to countervail it on the other, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that he was the fortunate author of this great discovery, unless one or the other of two propositions can be established, namely, either that such a paralysis of the nervous system as would render the subject insensible to pain during the process of extracting teeth, would not embrace the principle of it, or on the other hand, that nitrous oxyd gas is arbitrarily to be excluded from its proper place in a class of agents, all of which are nearly identical in their operation. And even if this difficult task could be accomplished, there would still remain another equally difficult to be encountered; because it has already been shown that Dr. Wells went beyond these limits, and that Dr. Marcy, in conjunction with him, subjected the use of sulphuric ether in a larger surgical operation, to the test of successful experiment. But either of the foregoing propositions would be too absurd to require a moment's consideration. The principle is as fully developed by the painless extraction of teeth, as by the painless amputation of a limb; by the successful use of nitrous oxyd gas, as of rectified sulphuric ether. In the language of Dr. Marcy: 'The man who first discovered the fact that the inhalation of a gaseous substance would render the body insensible to pain under surgical operations, should be entitled to all the credit or emolument which may accrue from the use of any substances of this nature. This is theprinciple—this is thefact—this is thediscovery. The mere substitution of ether vapor or any other article for the gas, no more entitles one to the claim of adiscovery, than the substitution of coal for wood in generating steam, would entitle one to be called the discoverer of the powers of steam.'

"It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further. It would be one of the greatest marvels of this wonderful age, if the world, with these facts before it, did not confirm the decision which it has already pronounced, and award to Dr. Wells the merit of a discovery, which will be remembered and appreciated as long as mankind shall be exposed to suffering, or have occasion to apply an antidote."

The section upon etherization, we presume, will serve as a specimen of Dr. Davis'sHistoryof the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.

FOOTNOTES:[14]The Half Century; or a History of changes that have taken place, and events that have transpired, chiefly in the United States, between 1800 and 1850; with an introduction by Mark Hopkins, D.D. By Emerson Davis. D.D. Boston: Tappan & Whittenmore.

[14]The Half Century; or a History of changes that have taken place, and events that have transpired, chiefly in the United States, between 1800 and 1850; with an introduction by Mark Hopkins, D.D. By Emerson Davis. D.D. Boston: Tappan & Whittenmore.

Thus far this season, there has been even more than the usual amount of lecturing in our principal cities. The mania lasts longer than was thought possible. The "phenomenon" has really become a feature of the times. It absorbs a great share of the current literary enthusiasm—much of which it has created, and will, it is to be feared, entirely satisfy. Professor Pease, of the University of Vermont, in an essay upon the subject, seeks to determine its import and value; to trace the feeling which gives it birth to its source, and to determine as accurately as possible the grounds of promise or of fear which it affords. "These interpretations," he says, "vary between the widest extremes. On the one side is heard the exulting shout of those who whirl unresistingly in the vortex—'Does not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice?' behold the 'progress of the species' and the 'march of mind!' And, on the other side, the contemptuous murmur of those who will be overwhelmed rather than gyrate against their will, they know not whither—'What meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears?'"

This mania for lectures, taken in connection with the prevailing literary taste (of which it is in some sort an index), is regarded as pointing, more or less directly, to a want of the human spirit—to its cry—strong and importunate, though often stifled and but dimly felt, for light—the light of science and of truth. Many feel this want only as atraditionalneed—one which their fathers before them have felt and have taught them to feel—andtheyare apt to be satisfied with a traditional supply. Others ask for science because it will help them make, or work, and perchancebecomemachines, whereby they may earn bread: and oftentimes, says the writer, "does this mere irritability of the coating of the stomach pass itself off as the waking up the life of the soul, and the sublime and pure aspirations of the spirit, for high and ultimate truths, pure as itself." Then, it is the fashion to be learned, and the fops of literature, who must "follow the fashion," of course, get wisdom as quickly and easily as possible. These are the main features of that demand for science, which is now so clamorous. Mr. Pease divides the lectures of the day into three classes; first those of which the object is instruction, then those designed to amuse, and last, those which profess to serve both these purposes; and he thinks it may be said of all, that they have novital, form-giving, organific principle, running through them, developing properly each separate part, and uniting them all by its own power.

In these discourses he says: "The carpenter is the actual model; for like him the discourser cuts and fits his timber according to rules the grounds of which it concerns not him to understand, with little labor beyond that of hacking and hewing—materials being ever ready at his hand: for the world is full of books as the forest is of trees and the market of lumber.And this is done to instruct us; to build us up inwardly; to administer food to our intellect; to nourish our souls; to kindle the imagination and awaken to energetic action the living but slumbering world within. But, alas! this inner world cannot be kindled like a smouldering fire, by a basket of chips and a puff of wind! This inner world is a world of spirits, which feed on thoughts full of truth and living energy. And thought alone can kindle thought: and truth alone can waken truth: not veracity, not fact, but truth vital,

'Truth that wakesTo perish never.'

This is the bread for which the soul is pining, and such are the husks with which its calls are answered."

There is in this statement of the predominant character of our popular lectures much that is true, as we could easily show by a definite examination of the most popular discourses to which our audiences listen. Every one can see that their aim is, not to announce great truths, which are essential to the well-being of society, and the instruction of the soul, but so to shape their sentences, so to point their paragraphs, and to give such a turn to their expressions, as to tickle most effectually the fancy of those who hear them, and to call down that round of applause which tells them they have made ahit. Now just so far as this is the case, popular lecturing not only seeks to supply the place of the theatre, but actually becomes theatrical; and lacking the essential worth and dignity of the drama, assumes its tricks and shallow vanities.

Nevertheless, the author whom we have quoted sees in this fashion signs of promise, for it signifies the existence and the struggling toward the light, of the absolute want of the soul—which will soon rectify the public taste, and teach men that pleasure lies only in the life-giving and the true.

"In this," he says, "lives an abiding ground of hope and cheerful confidence; for it teaches us that every human heart has those depths and living powers in it, the healthful action of which is the true life and well-being of the soul—and in none, we hope, are they forever dormant; and no heart, we hope, is wholly closed. Light, though in rays feeble and scattered, may shine in upon it, and it shall awake—for it is not dead, but sleepeth.... The feeling of wants that lie deeper and farther inward than the sensual appetites, must be supplied or suppressed; and hence arise a struggle and conflict between the antagonist principles of our being. Firm peace, and healthful, quiet energy of soul, are the fruit of victory, and of victory only. Therefore, though attended with a 'troubled sea of noises, and hoarse disputes,' the contest, with its hubbub and vain clamor, is the door to quietness and clear intelligence. Pedantry and pretension, quackery and imposture, shall, in spite of themselves, conduct to their own exposure and extinction; for a higher sway than ours guides all affairs, causing even the wrath of man to praise Him, and making folly itself the guide to wisdom. Hooker characterized his own times as 'full of tongue, and weak of brain;' and Luther said to the same effect, of the preachers and scholars of his day: 'If they were not permitted to prate and clatter about it, they would burst with the greatness of their art and science, so hot and eager are they to teach.' But the noise and dust having subsided, there is left us, of those very times, works which men will not willingly let die. Noise and smoke causeless do not come. There is a force at bottom which will ultimately work itself clear, and produce good and substantial fruits. There is a force somewhere, or no foam and dust would rise: but there is little force in the foam and dust themselves. And the immediate instruments areonlyinstruments, working without knowledge what they do, like puppets, dancing and swinging their arms, while far behind resides the force that works the wires. All wonder bestowed uponthemis, most certainly, foolish wonder. But there is no ground for discouragement, or for any but good hopes, although ignorance and pretension stand in high places, and vainly babble concerning things beautiful and profound. This uproar comes only from the troubling of the stream—the foam and roar will not continue always; the smooth plain lies below, along which it shall soon flow, quietly, but strongly, murmuring sweet music. And for the ambitious rainbows painted in the mists above, there shall be the sweet reflection of earth and heaven from its calm bosom."

Governor William Livingston, of New Jersey, "poet, philosopher and sage," in a letter written November 17th, 1744, gives the following insight into life, as it then was, in New-York. He is describing a "party:"

"The feast as usual was preceded by cards, and the company so numerous that they filled two tables; after a few games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand order and decorum—the frolic was closed up by ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus's Newfoundland, and sundry other female exercises; besides a play of my own invention, which I have not room enough to describe at present; however, kissing constitutes a great part of its entertainment."

In 1759, Livingston's father died, and his funeral obsequies were performed in all the pomp and attended with all the expense customary in colonial times. These took place in New-York. The lower apartments of most of the stores in Broad-street, where he resided, were thrown open—a pipe of wine was spiced—there were eight pall-bearers, and to each was presented a pair of gloves, a mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief, and a spoon. These services were repeated at the manor, his country-seat, and a handkerchief and pair of black gloves presented to each of the tenants.

The last accounts of Rossini, if we are to credit the pleasant stories told of him by the Parisian wit, Louis Huart, are highly characteristic of the greatmaestro. The followingcanardis one of the mostveritableand amusing:—

"The newspapers announce that Rossini has shut himself up at Bologna with the celebrated tenor Donzelli, and that they pass their days in rehearsing a new opera, of which Rossini is finishing the score. After the sea-serpent, I know of no story which returns more periodically than the announcement of a new opera by Rossini. It is now fifteen years since this pleasantry began to be invariably reproduced at the commencement of every winter, and always with the same success. One begins to meet in society a few Parisians who shrug their shoulders with an air of incredulity when you speak to them of the sea-serpent, but no one dares to evince the least skepticism touching the new opera of Rossini. We received this morning a letter from our correspondent at Bologna, and he furnishes us with details which explain the announcements in the newspapers.

"Rossini is living in rather a retired way just now; and only receives the regular visits of one person; there is an error, however, in the orthography of the appellation of this visitor. Instead of Donzelli, he is named Pastafrollo. He is no tenor! he is a cook! Rossini, in company with Pastafrollo, is now busily occupied in endeavoring to discover a new way of dressing turbot. Rossini has invented, up to the present day, sixty-two different ways of dressing this fish, but he repeats to whoever will listen to him, that he will not die content until he has discovered a sixty-third method, which will satisfy him completely—then he will divulge his secret, and have inscribed on thecartesof all therestaurantsin Europe—turbot à la Rossini. On that day, but that day only, Rossini will make up his mind to open his piano and compose acantatain honor of fish in general, and turbot in particular. The passion of Rossini for cooking has been rendered more ardent from the fact that the family of this illustrious personage do all they can to cross him in it. The relatives and friends of Rossini wish to make him believe that it is unworthy of a musician, and more especially of a musician of his genius, to occupy himself with turbot; but Rossini replies, history in hand, that a whole senate once devoted a long sitting to find out what sauce would eat best with this fish. Rossini's family do not consider themselves beaten as yet, and they have organized a sort ofcordon sanitaireround the house of the composer, to prevent the cooks from getting to him. Before this determination was arrived at, Bologna overflowed withchefs, who arrived from every part of Italy, to consult Rossini on the best methods to be employed in dressing salmon, skate, carp, eels, and gudgeons.

"This furnishes us with an explanation of the reason why Pastafrollo was forced to employ a stratagem in order to prevent his being stopped in the hall by the family of Rossini. Pastafrollo arrived at Bologna, under the name of Donzelli, and took care to have inscribed on his passporttenorinstead ofcook.

"We cannot conclude without giving expression to an earnest hope, that the conferences established between Rossini and Pastafrollo may give birth to the sixty-third mode of dressing turbot."

In an entertaining article on "The Abbé de Saint-Pierre," in the lastGentleman's Magazine, there is this curious account of a "Peace Society."

"The Abbé de Polignac took Saint Pierre with him to the Congress of Utrecht. Witnessing all the difficulties which stood in the way of reconciliation between the contending parties, Saint-Pierre conceived that the truest benefit which could be conferred on mankind would be the abolition of war. He at once proceeded to embody his idea, and published in 1713, the year in which peace was concluded, his 'Projet de Paix Perpetuelle,' in three volumes. The means by which he proposed that this perpetual peace should be preserved was the formation of a senate to be composed of all nations, and to be calledThe European Diet, and before which princes should be bound to state their grievances and demand redress. The Bishop of Fréjus, afterwards Cardinal de Fleury, to whom Saint-Pierre communicated his plan, replied to him, 'You have forgotten the most essential article, that of sending forth a troop of missionaries to persuade the hearts of princes, and induce them to adopt your views.' D'Alembert has made one or two just remarks on Saint-Pierre's dream of universal peace, which are as applicable now as they were a hundred years ago: 'The misfortune of those metaphysical projects for the benefit of nations consists in supposing all princes equitable and moderate, in attributing to men whose power is absolute, and who have the perfect consciousness of their power, who are often exceedingly unenlightened, and who live always in an atmosphere of adulation and falsehood, dispositions which the force of law and the fear of censure so rarely inspire even in private persons. Whosoever, in forming enterprises for the happiness of humanity, does not take into calculation the passions and vices of men, has imagined only a beautiful chimera.' Rousseau thought that, even if Saint Pierre's project were practicable, it would cause more evil all at once than it would prevent during many ages."

The writer of this memoir of Saint Pierre presents the character of that remarkable person in a more favorable light than that in which we have been accustomed to regard it. The author of "Paul and Virginia" was very likely a far better man than has been supposed.

All nations turn to Egypt, as to the mother of civility, and the Christian sees there the prison where are detained, until the end of the world, the witnesses of truths which vindicate his religion. How much the Holy Land is our country, appears from this, that to all Christians, however remote the places where they live, the scenes about Jerusalem are more familiar than those about the capital of his own nation; and with Egypt we are scarcely less intimately, though much less perfectly, acquainted. Within the last half century, great researches have been made, by individual or national enterprise, into the poetry and antiquities of Egypt, by the enterprise of travellers and the diligence of archæologists, among whom England claims the names of Young, Wilkinson, and Vyse. But comparatively few know what has been the result of these researches. They lie scattered over a number of works in different languages, beyond the reach even of the ordinary student, much more of the general reader. Mr. Kenrick (of whose "Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs" we copy below the main portion of a reviewal in the LondonTimes) has undertaken the task of supplying a synopsis, and this task he appears to us to have accomplished excellently well. Mr. Kenrick is a very estimable as well as a very accomplished man. Like the great majority of the abler historical, philosophical and religious writers of England at this time, he is aDissenter, which perhaps lessens somewhat the warmth of the critic's commendations. We hope to see his work, as well as that of Mr. Sharpe, relating to Egypt under the Ptolemies, reproduced, by some of our own publishers. Of Mr. Kenrick, theTimessays:—

"He commences with the land of Egypt. In the East great rivers are the parents of civilized nations. A great river, which by its deposit forms a long valley and a broad delta of rich alluvial soil in the midst of deserts, was the parent, the nourisher, and the god of the oldest civilized nation of the earth. The Nile is Egypt; the Egyptians were those who lived below the cataracts and drank of the Nile. Above the cataracts they pushed their arms into Ethiopia, and left there the monuments of their dominion. To the west they were at once defended and confined by a desert impassable to armies, but which the oasis rendered passable to the caravan. On the north was an almost harborless sea. On the east was another desert, through which roads led to the ports of the Red Sea and the mines of Sinai. On the north-east the Arabian desert formed an imperfect barrier. It was traversed by the hosts of Sesostris and Sheshonk, of Nebuchadnezzar and Cambyses, and across its sands Egypt communicated commercially and politically with the other seats of ancient civilization which, broken by the recurring desert, formed an irregular chain from Philistia to China.

"Of the singular productions of Egypt, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the ibis, the papyrus, we need not speak. There were few beasts of chase, and the Egyptian conquerors did not begin like those of central Asia by being mighty hunters. It was a land of corn, and of the vine, of fruit trees, and all herbs. The nations sought its granaries in famine; the Israelites in the wilderness thirsted for the cooling vegetables of its gardens. Fish abounded in the Nile, waterfowl in the marshes. Nature yielded freely, but perhaps for that very reason the mind of man was less exercised and less active. And the unvarying landscape, the unchanging sky, the small number and unpoetic or even grotesque forms of the plants and animals, may partly account for the lack of imagination evinced by the most formal and most stationary of nations, scarcely excepting the Chinese.

"Who and whence were the Egyptians? This question Mr. Kenrick has to ask, and, like others, to leave unanswered. This is the secret which the grave of the Pharaohs will not yield. Physiology supplies no clue. The mummy cases, the paintings and sculptures, depict a race short, slight, with low foreheads, high cheek bones, long eyes, hair now crisp now curled, and a complexion which the conventionality of the painter's art makes to differ in men and women, but which probably was brown with a tinge of red, dark compared with that of the Syrian, black compared with that of the Greek. Thick lips are frequently seen, but they are supposed to indicate intermarriage with Ethiopians. From the negro the Egyptians were far removed, nor can they be connected with any other known race. If we turn to language, a surer guide perhaps than physiology, we are again completely baffled. The Coptic has been identified through many etymologies with the old Egyptian; and of the Coptic, though it became a dead language in the twelfth century, much literature remains. It is an uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude inflexions totally different from the neighboring languages of Syria and Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and polished Sanscrit. The last fact at once severs Egypt from India, and destroys every presumption of affinity that may arise from the presence in both countries of caste, of animal worship, and of a religion derivable from a primitive adoration of the powers of nature. The hypothesis of an Ethiopian origin sprang from the notion, natural but untrue, that population would follow the course of the descending river. And no tradition among the Egyptians themselves told of a parent stock or of another land.

"Respecting the mighty works of Egypt, little mystery remains. The great Pyramids had been rifled by the Caliphs, if not by earlier hands, and no inscriptions have been found. But no doubt exists that they were the sepulchresof the Kings of Memphis. The Queens and the "princes of Noph" reposed in smaller pyramids beside the Kings. These mountains of wasted masonry belong to the earliest ages of the Pharaonic monarchy, before the time of the Sesostrian conquests, and therefore they bespeak the toil and suffering, not of captives, but of native slaves. Before them couches the Sphinx, hewn from the rock, to spare, as a Greek inscription says, each spot of cultivable land. His riddle—for it isa male—is read. He represents, perhaps portrays, the reigning King, and the thick lips may indicate Ethiopian blood. The lion's body represents the monarch's might—the human head his wisdom. The rock, from which the figure is cut, broke the view of the Pyramids, and to convert it into the Sphinx was a stroke of Egyptian genius. Pyramids were, in the Pharaonic times, peculiar to Memphis. The countless tombs of Thebes are excavated in the rocky face of the Libyan hills. Those of the Theban Pharaohs stand apart, and we approach through a narrow gorge called the "Gate of Kings." The paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions on these tombs, literally the eternalhousesof the dead, are the Pompeii of the Egyptian antiquary. At Thebes are the magnificent and temple-like palaces of the greatest of the Pharaohs, the halls of their assemblies and their counsels, the records of their wars and conquests. At Thebes, too, is the Memnon, a mutilated statue of Amnoph, which never was vocal except by trick or in imagination, and the Obelisks, whose form is sufficiently explained, without obscenity or mystery, by the fancy for monolithic monuments and the possession of large blocks of granite. The remains of the Labyrinth do not enable us to pronounce whether its twenty-seven halls were a burial-place for kings or crocodiles, or a place of assembly for the provinces of Egypt.

"Very various and very extravagant notions have been formed of the population of ancient Egypt. That it was dense may well be inferred from the length of time through which it multiplied in a limited space, and from that evident parsimony of land which drove tombs and monuments to the rocks, and cities to the edge of the desert. Calculations based on the number of cities, and on the number of men of military age, have plausibly placed the sum at about five millions.

"Agriculture was the chief business of the Egyptians, and the chief business of agriculture consisted in distributing and detaining, by canals and dams, the precious waters of the Nile. The sheep and cattle were numerous. A grandee of Eilytheia possessed one hundred and twenty two cows and oxen, three hundred rams, twelve hundred goats, and fifteen hundred swine. Lower Egypt contained the great pasture lands, and was the abode of the herdsmen—a lawless race, and,therefore, an abomination to their more civilized countrymen. The ass was the beast of burden. The horse was bred for the war-chariot—that great attribute of ancient power. The breed was small but fine and peculiar to the country. They were kept in stables along the Nile, and hence they do not appear in the landscapes. Horticulture was extensively and elaborately practised, both for use and pleasure; and the Pharaohs, like Solomon, 'made them gardens and orchards, planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit, and made them pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.'

"When forced to serve on shipboard by the enterprise of their own Monarchs or by their Persian conquerors, the Egyptians appear not to have made bad sailors. They fought well at Salamis. But their natural tendency was to shun the sea, which they regarded as the element of the Destroyer Typhon. Their navigation was on the Nile, which formed the highway of their commerce, the path of their processions and their pilgrimages, and their passage to the tomb. The river being thus the universal road, and being moreover without bridges, must have swarmed with boats of all descriptions—the heavy bari of the merchant, the light papyrus or earthenware skiffs of the common people, and the sumptuous barge of Royalty, whose golden pavilion, masts, and rudder, fringed and embroidered sails, and sculptured prow, remind us of the galley of Cleopatra. The caravans of surrounding nations visited Egypt with their precious and fragrant merchandise to exchange for her corn and manufactures. But the Egyptian trader appears seldom to have visited other countries either by land or sea.

"The army was a warrior caste. Its might consisted in its chariots. No mounted cavalry appear in any of the monuments. With this exception they had every kind of force and every weapon known to ancient warfare. They used the long bow and drew the arrow, like the English archers, to the ear. Their armor was imperfect, and more often of quilting than of mail. They had regular divisions, with standards, and regular camps. Their sieges were unscientific, and their means of assault scaling ladders, sapping hatchets, and long pikes brought up to the walls under a sort of shed. Of their battles no definite notion can be formed. All is lost in the King, whose gigantic figure, drawn by gigantic horses, crushes, massacres, or grasps by the hair scores of his pigmy enemies, whose hands after the victory are laid in heaps before him and counted by attendant scribes. Thus it is that Rameses the Great and the other Pharaohs are seen warring against the Assyrian, and Chaldean against the Jew, the Edomite, the Ethiopian, and the 'nine bows' of Libya, and assailing the 'fenced cities' of strange races that have long passed away.

"In the lower parts of civilization and the mechanical arts, the Egyptians had attained high perfection. Their machinery and tools appear to have been defective, but the defect was supplied by skill of hand, traditional and acquired, as it is among the Chinese. They were cunning workmen in metals, in jewelry,in engravings, in enamel, in glass, in porcelain, and in pottery. Their fine linen and embroidery were famous. For their chariots Solomon gave 600 shekels of silver; and they fashioned into a hundred articles of luxury the ivory of Africa, the mahogany of India, and the cedar of Lebanon. As no specimens remain of their domestic architecture, it is supposed rather than ascertained that their houses were of a single story with a terraced roof. The rooms of great men at least were richly and elegantly painted, and furnished with tables, chairs, and couches, which have supplied models for the upholstery of modern times.

"Architecture is the most material of the arts. It was the art in which the Egyptians most excelled. They seem to have understood in some degree the grandeur which results from proportion and arrangement, as well as that which results from size. The profuse and elaborate sculpture with which their temples are covered, does not mar their majesty. Their heaviness is relieved by the glowing sun and the deep sky. But the impression produced must always have been that of cost and power rather than of art. Some changes of style are noticed. The golden age was that of the Pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, when the power and greatness of the nation were at the highest. More florid and less majestic forms mark the era of the Ptolemies. But in this respect, as in others, the Egyptians seem to have maintained their stationary character, and the remains of Meroe, which are now known to be among the latest, have been taken for the earliest of all the monuments.

"In sculpture the summit of manual skill was reached. But religion, the mistress and tyrant of Egyptian art, prescribed for the images of the gods her unalterable and often hideous forms, and the rules of an hereditary craft, which fixed certain proportions for each part of the statue, and gave the execution of the several parts to several workmen, laid another chain on the genius of the artist. Painting seems not to have advanced beyond the barbarous excellence of brilliant colors. Drawing and design were monstrous, and the laws of perspective and even of vision unknown or disregarded. Of music, we learn from Plato that it was restricted to certain established tunes of approved moral tendency, and the wayward Athenian thought all restraint wholesome as he saw that some license was pernicious.

"If we pass to science, we shall find no reason for supposing that the advances of modern times were anticipated by the mysterious wisdom of the Egyptians. Something they must have known of astronomy to practise astrology, to divide the ecliptic, and to effect the exact orientation of the Pyramids. Some knowledge of chemistry is implied in their manufacture of porcelain; some knowledge of physiology, pathology, pharmaceutics and surgery, in their division of the medical art; something of geometry in their measurement of land; and something of mechanics in their enormous buildings and monuments. But their great engines were multitudes of laborers, aided by such natural expedients as the lever, the roller, and the inclined plane, which can scarcely be called machines. In other sciences there is evidence of long and careful observation, but nothing to prove an acquaintance with thelawsof nature. Progress in the medical art was precluded by the necessity of adhering to the precepts of the sacred books. Science was monopolized by the priests; and it is said that by them the King was regularly sworn to retain the old and unintercalated year. The want of decimal notation, and the consequent clumsiness of the system of numeration, would go far to preclude the improvement of arithmetic, or any science into which calculation entered.

"Literature the Egyptians appear to have had none, except of the monumental or sacred kind, including under the latter head the sacred books of science. But the art of writing was practised by them, or at least by the learned part of them, more extensively than by any contemporary nation. Mr. Kenrick gives us a full history of the interpretation of hieroglyphics, the key to which was first given by the parallel inscriptions in hieroglyphic and Greek found on the famous Rosetta stone, and metes to Young and Champollion their due shares in that discovery, of which each uncandidly claimed the whole. The hieroglyphics are now known to be of three kinds, all of which are generally mingled in the same inscription—the pictorial, the symbolical, and the phonetic. The pictorial hieroglyphic is the simple picture of the thing signified. Symbolical hieroglyphics are, among others, a crescent for a month, the maternal vulture formaternity, the filial vulpanser forson, the bee fora people obedient to their king, the bull forstrength, the ostrich feather with its equal filaments fortruth, the lotus for Upper and the papyrus for Lower Egypt. To these we may add the bird, which denotes a cycle of time (in Copticphanech), and about which such wild fables were received by the credulity of Herodotus and by that of the Fathers. But the greater part of the hieroglyphics are phonetic like our alphabet, and are being slowly and precariously deciphered into the words of a language which is identified with the ancient form of Coptic.

"The religion of the Egyptians must be gathered chiefly from the sculptures and paintings. The religious inscriptions and funeral papyri remain undeciphered. The account of Herodotus is rendered suspicious by his solicitude to force the Pantheon of Egypt into a conformity with that of Greece. The accounts of the later Greeks are tainted by their philosophizing and mysticizing spirit. That the Egyptian theology embodied no profound physical or metaphysical system is evident from the fact that it was not formed at once, but by gradual addition and development, and that it was to the last partly local. It appears to have been, likethe other religions of the Pagan world—of Greece and Italy, of Phœnicia and India—a worship of the powers of nature represented by great natural objects, such as the sun and moon, or by forms bestial or human, which were selected as symbolical of their attributes.

"On this groundwork imagination wrought, as among the Greeks, though to a less extent and in a different way. We cannot tell how far the more reflective minds may have advanced towards the conception of a single God, either independent of or permeating the material world; but contact with the philosophic Greeks in the age of the Ptolemies can hardly have failed to lead to some speculations of this kind, and the accounts derived from Greek sources of Egyptian mysticism, though false of early, were no doubt, in part at least, true of later times. Amuna or Ammon appears to have been nominally the chief of the gods. His attributes are to some extent identified with those of the sun; but they are not easily distinguished from the attributes of several subordinate deities. His ram's head is still a mystery. Thoth was the god of intellect and learning. His representatives were the ape and the ibis: the former, it is supposed, because it approaches nearest in intellect to man; the latter, because its black and white feather resemble, or may be imagined to resemble, writing. Thepopulardivinity was Osiris, the god at once of the Nile and the realms below. Typhon, the scorching wind of the desert which dries up the waters of the Nile, was the antagonist and the murderer of Osiris; and at a more advanced stage of religious speculation the two may have represented the conflicting powers of Good and Evil. Sacrifices were offered for the ordinary purposes—to conciliate the favor of the gods, to requite their benefits, and to avert their wrath. Typhonian, that is, red-haired men, were immolated when they fell into the hands of the natives in honor of Osiris, whose name is concealed in that of the fabled Busiris. That the practice of offering human sacrifices is compatible with a high degree of civilization we know from the examples of Greece, of Rome, and Mexico. There were great gatherings in honor of the gods, in the nature of pilgrimages or holy fairs, which were celebrated with festivity, with noisy music, with illuminations, and with license. There were mysteries, which were not, in Egypt at least, initiations into any thing different from the popular religion; but merely representations—celebrated amidst nocturnal gloom—of the sufferings of Osiris. If strangers in Egypt underwent painful initiation, it was an initiation into the knowledge of the priests, and not into their mysteries. The Egyptians believed in the existence of the soul after death; they believed that it would be judged in Amenthe by Osiris and his forty-two assessors, before whom it was brought by Analis; they had an Elysium, surrounded by waters, where the Osirian—that is, the happy dead—ploughed, sowed, reaped, and threshed, as on earth—a singular want of fancy. Retributive pains, by fire and steel, are also supposed to have been detected among the paintings. At the same time they held and taught to the Greeks the doctrine of metempsychosis. It is difficult to reconcile with either of these notions their belief that the spirit dwelt in the body so long as the body could be rescued from decay, and the reason which they give for bestowing such prodigality of labor on their sepulchres—that the tomb was man's eternal home. The darkness of uninterpreted hieroglyphics still rests to a great extent on the religious creed and practices of the Egyptians. But three things we think we can discern from the information which Mr. Kenrick has collected:—1. That the Egyptian religion was in all essential respects like the other religions of Paganism, and traceable to the same sources; and consequently that whatever may be Egypt's 'place in universal history,' she is not likely to assume an extraordinarily important place in the history of theology, or to affect, in any material respect, our views as to the origin of religion. 2. That no connection is to be traced between the religion of the Egyptians and the religion of the Hebrews. A more decided polytheism than that of Egypt cannot be imagined. So far from recognizing any thing like thesupremacyof a single Divine Being in their theological system, we can scarcely even trace any thing answering to that primacy of Jupiter which preserves at least a vestige of monotheism in the religion of the Greeks. The rite of circumcision, which is supposed to have been borrowed by one nation from the other, was not practised by the Egyptians as a religious ceremony, nor upon infants, nor universally. And it is remarkable that the belief in the conscious existence of the soul and a retributive state after death—a doctrine hardly to be lost when once imparted—seems to have been so prominent in the one faith while it was so much the reverse of prominent in the other. 3. That there was no connection between the mythology of Egypt and that of Greece. Subtract what is common to all polytheistic systems, and what is common to all systems of natural religions, and absolutely no similarity remains. On the one side are forms of human beauty, majesty, and passion, in which the original groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working of a plastic imagination; on the other side are forms bestial or grotesque, featureless and passionless, exhibiting nature-worship in one of its lowest stages. But in every respect, in language, in physiognomy, in mind, in political tendencies, in manners, as well as in religion, the contrariety between the Egyptian and the Athenian is complete. There is nothing on the other side except the vain pretensions of the priests of Thebes, the credulity of Herodotus, and the wildest legends of the mythical age; and we are surprised that so strict an ethnologist as Mr. Kenrick should be inclinedto admit even the general fact of an Egyptian colonization.

"The most degrading part of the religion of the Egyptians was their animal worship, which they carried to a higher pitch than any other people, not excepting the Hindoos. Almost the whole animal and some part of the vegetable kingdom enjoyed either a national or a local sanctity. Gods it was said grew in the gardens. The most cogent reasons of policy and the terrible name of Rome failed to save from death the Roman who had killed a cat. Fancy had first assigned to each god his favorites or symbols among beasts or plants. Then the beasts and plants themselves were reverenced, and at last worshipped. Stately avenues of colossal statues, magnificent porticoes and columned courts ushered the awe-stricken devotee into the sacred presence of an ibis or an ape. The highest object of this superstition, the bull Apis, was regarded as an actual incarnation of Osiris. No rational account of such a system can be given. The serpent cannot have been respected for its utility. The ibis cannot have been honored as the destroyer of the sacred serpent. Nothing divine can have been perceived in the beetle or the ape. The connection between the god and the beast was originally the offspring of a grotesque imagination, and priestcraft and the superstitious tendency of the people did the rest.

"The political constitution of Egypt was based on caste. The privileged castes were those of the warriors and the priests, who, with the Pharaoh, held in fee all the land of Egypt. The Government was an hereditary monarchy. When election was necessary the two privileged castes chose from among their own numbers; the people enjoyed only the right of acclamation. If the choice fell on a warrior, he was at once received into the order and initiated into the wisdom of the priests. Legislation was the prerogative of the King; but he was bound to rule and judge according to the law. He was much in the hands of the priests, who imposed strict rules upon his life, and by a daily homily made the duties and virtues of sovereignty familiar, perhaps too familiar, to the royal ear. The priests, in fact, were the lords of Egypt. Exclusively possessed of science, and even of letters, numerous, wealthy, united, in a single polity, a confined territory and an isolated people, unchecked by any literary, philosophical, or foreign influence, they must have exercised a dominion unrivalled by any priesthood in the history of the world. The result was a land of temples, of deified apes and consecrated onions, a literature of religious inscriptions and funeral scrolls, a Government apparently mild and humane, an enduring polity and long internal peace, and intense and stubborn nationality, a civilization wonderful but low, which in every department, from the act of government to the art of writing, appears to have remained as nearly as possible at a fixed point for about two thousand years. The mummy, as it is the characteristic product, is the fit emblem of ancient Egypt. Yet material happiness appears to have been enjoyed. From sports, from caricatures, from the fanciful decorations of their houses, from their use of music as a daily recreation, we should judge that the Egyptians were not a gloomy people; and that their social and political system aimed, though imperfectly, at a high standard, may be inferred from the reverence, however exaggerated, which was entertained for it by the Greeks.

"Egyptian history is the 'dynasties' of Manetho partly filled up and illustrated, and in time it is to be hoped to be filled up and illustrated still more from the monuments, paintings, and inscriptions. For this, with its thirty dynasties, its twenty centuries, and its chronological difficulties, still formidable though much reduced, we must refer the reader entirely to Mr. Kenrick's second volume, of which it occupies nearly the whole. The slight sketch above given indicates the contents of what will be to the general reader the more interesting part of the work. In conclusion, we once more cordially commend the book. It displays not only the ordinary merits of a good synopsis, such as clearness of style and of arrangement, but also a high power of combination, and, where the author treats of philosophical questions, a sound and sensible philosophy. On some points, perhaps, Mr. Kenrick might have spoken with more authority had he personally visited Egypt, and the imagination of his reader would be assisted by a well selected volume of plates. We are glad to see that Syria and Phœnicia are to form the subject of another publication by the same hand."

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