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PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE.

The zeal which Albert, Prince Consort, evinced in furthering good works,—his sympathy with the wants of the poor, their bodily health and comfort, and their intellectual and moral culture,—will long endear his memory to the grateful people of the country of his adoption.

It was a characteristic of his genius that he would never consent to take the lead in any movement until he had, as far as possible, satisfied himself of its proper object and practicability. That he fully understood and appreciated the requirements of the age, is evident from the following passage in one of his manly Addresses:

“Whilst formerly the greatest mental energies strove at universal knowledge, and that knowledge was confined to the few, now they are directed on specialities, and in these again even to the minutest points; but the knowledge acquired becomes at once the property of the community at large; for, whilst formerly discovery was wrapped in secrecy, the publicity of the present day causes, that no sooner is a discovery or invention made, than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts. The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose which is the best and the cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are intrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital. So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs His creation, and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use; himself a Divine instrument. Science discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry applies them to the raw matter, which the earth yields us in abundance, but which become valuable only by knowledge. Art teaches us the immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions forms in accordance to them.” Again: “To the human mind nothing is so fascinating as progress. It is not what we have long had that we most prize. We highly prize new accessions; but we enjoy almost unconsciously gifts, of far more value, we have long been in possession of. This is our nature; thus we are constituted. It is not surprising, therefore, that we should have a peculiar relish for new discoveries. The interest of discovery, however, is not permanent. For a time we are dazzled by its brilliancy; but gradually the impression fades away, and at last is lost entirely in the splendour of some fresh discovery which carries with it the charm of novelty. When we reflect upon this, we cannot help perceiving in how very different a state the world would be from what it is if mankind in the beginning had been in the possession of all the knowledge we now have, and there had been no progress ever since.”

There is no royal death within memory of the present generation which has caused such grave and regretful reflection as the sudden manner in which the Prince Consort was taken from our beloved Sovereign and her family, at the close of the year 1861. The nearest approach to the public sorrow upon this melancholy occasion was the universal sympathy expressed on the loss of the Princess Charlotte, in 1817, when the mother and offspring were at once swept by the hand of death into the same grave! Put widespread as was the lamentation of the people for their hopes being thus crushed, it differed in this respect from the sorrow for the Prince Consort,—that in the one case expectation was blighted, but in the other realisation was extinguished when the fruits of superior intelligence were fast ripening into the maturity of true greatness.

Since the death of the Prince the country has learned the full extent of its loss by this sad event. Yet it was plainly asserted in the Leader newspaper, ten years ago, that the Prince was “becoming the most popular man in England;” and the reader was assured that the above paper was written to put the Prince’s “position and his services in the point of view in which we may comprehend him, and be grateful to him.” This statement was unheeded at the time it was made; but, in the year following, other journalists had discovered that the Prince had some voice in English foreign policy,—a charge which was admitted to be true by Ministers in Parliament. Public attention was then turned in an entirely different direction, and the Prince resumed his powerful popular position. Yet his weighty influence, as we have said, was not fully made known until recently. We have seen but one acknowledgment of the service of the well-informed and far-seeing writer in the Leader, and to this was not attached his name. We therefore add, in justice to the memory of a man of rare talent, and the right spirit of independence, which is the best characteristic of a public journalist, that the writer in question was the late Mr. E. M. Whitty, who reprinted the above in The Governing Classes of Great Britain.

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SPECIAL PROVIDENCE IN SCIENCE.

The records of science furnish us with examples in which complicated causes have operated through vast periods of duration anterior to man’s existence, or even anterior to that of the existence of any of the more perfect animals, in order to provide for the wants and happiness of those animals, especially of man. Laws, apparently conflicting and irregular in their action, have been so controlled and directed, and made to conspire, as to provide for the wants of civilised life untold ages before man’s existence. In those early times, vast forests, for instance, might have been growing along the shores of estuaries; and these dying, were buried deep in the mud, there to accumulate thick beds of vegetable matter over huge areas; and this, by a long series of changes, was at length converted into coal. This could be of no use whatever till man’s existence, nor even then, till civilisation had taught him to employ the substance for his comfort, and for a great variety of useful arts.

Dr. Hitchcock illustrates this position as follows: Look, for instance, at the small island of Great Britain. At this day 15,000 steam-engines are driven by means of coal, with a power equal to that of 2,000,000 of men; and thus is put into operation machinery equalling the unaided power of 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 of men. The influence thence emanating reaches the remotest portions of the globe, and tends mightily to the civilisation and happiness of the race. And is all this an accidental effect of nature’s laws? Is it not rather a striking example of special protective providence? What else but divine power, intent upon a specific purpose, could have so directed the countless agencies employed through so many ages as to bring about such marvellous results?^[121]

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SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

School-learning is, undoubtedly, the best foundation: “In all industrial pursuits connected with the natural sciences, in fact in all pursuits not simply dependent on manual dexterity, the development of the intellectual faculties, by what may be termed ’school-learning,’ constitutes the basis and chief condition of progress and of every improvement. A young man with a mind well stored with solid scientific acquirements will, without difficulty or effort, master the technical part of an industrial pursuit; whereas, in general, an individual who may be thoroughly master of the technical part is altogether incapable of seizing upon any new fact that has not previously presented itself to him, or of comprehending a scientific principle and its application.”

Lord Stanhope has thus strikingly illustrated the subject:

See how the field of human knowledge is extended. Within the last fifty years there is scarce a branch of knowledge, even in those which have been explored for hundreds of years—classical learning, for example—which has not received some new and important additions. But not only this; it may be said that new sciences have been discovered. Who, seventy or eighty years ago, thought or heard of the name of geology, or of men like Cuvier, who by their genius have brought back to us the forms of long-extinct animals, and the state of the earth as it must have existed thousands of years ago? Who could have imagined that in art such vast resources should have been opened up to us, as, for instance, the now-familiar science of photography supplies? Who would have imagined that railways, which have enabled us at so quick a rate to have communication with all parts of the country, would become a study of well-regulated curiosity; or that the instantaneous power of transmission which we possess in the electric telegraph should be imparted to the whole of the people who now crowd these busy shores?

Some of the noblest triumphs of science, however, do but show the shortsightedness of man, and seem to dictate to him that great results can only be obtained by gradual and patient labour, as if to keep in check his overweening conceit. This is illustrated in the discovery of Voltaism. “When Galvani,” says Lord Brougham, in his powerful manner, “observed the contortions of the muscle in a dead frog, or even when Volta gave an explanation of them, how little could it be foreseen that the discovery would lead not only to the decomposition of bodies which had resisted all attempts to ascertain their constituent parts, and bring us acquainted with substances wholly unlike any before known, as metals that floated in water and took fire on exposure to the air; but, after having thus changed the face of chemical science, should also impress a new character upon the moral, judicial, and political world! Yet this has undeniably been the result of the discovery made by Volta.”

The histories of invention present many instances of “the slip between the cup and the lip.” New modes of lighting have been very productive of such disappointments. About thirty years since was patented a light by the admixture of the vapour of hydrocarbons with atmospheric air, so as to produce an illumination equal in brilliancy to that of the purest gas; the power of light from a ten-hole burner equalling that of 22-1/8th wax-candles. This invention had been a long and costly labour; a single set of experiments having cost 500l. At length the patent was sold to a company for the large sum of 28,000l.; a plant was established, licenses were advertised for sale, and, among the confident promises, it was held out that the gas-pipes and mains of the existing companies might be bought up for the requirements of this new light! But the working of the invention did not succeed in detail (indeed, it had been purchased with the knowledge that it was incomplete); and the entire capital invested, some 40,000l. or 50,000l., was lost!

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TIME AND IMPROVEMENT.

The Rev. Dr. Temple, in his glowing Essay, “Education of the World,” thus maintains that all human improvement is the result of the accumulations of Time:

To the spirit all things that exist must have a purpose, and nothing can pass away till that purpose be fulfilled. The lapse of time is no exception to this demand. Each moment of time, as it passes, is taken up in the shape of permanent results into the time that follows, and only perishes by being converted into something more substantial than itself. Thus, each successive age incorporates into itself the substance of the preceding,—the power whereby the present ever gathers itself into the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. The successive generations of men are days in this man’s life. The discoveries and inventions which characterise the different epochs of the world’s history are his works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The states of society at different times are his manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just as we do. And his education is in the same way, and for the same reason, precisely similar to ours. All this is no figure, but only a compendious statement of a very comprehensive fact.

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EVIL INFLUENCES.

It has been asked by a great author, “What does it signify whether you deny a God or speak ill of Him?”—a question well answered by another sage, when he declares, “I would rather men should say that there never was such a man as Plutarch, than that Plutarch was an ill-natured, mischievous fellow.”

Nearly eighty years ago Mr. Sharp wrote, “There can be no reasonable doubt that it is better to believe too much than too little; since, as Boswell observes (most probably in Johnson’s words), ‘A man may breathe in foul air, but he must die in an exhausted receiver.’”

Much of the scepticism that we meet with is necessarily affectation or conceit; for it is as likely that the ignorant, weak, and indolent should become mathematicians as reasoning unbelievers. Patient study and perfect impartiality must precede rational conviction, whether ending in faith or doubt. Need it be asked, how many are capable of such an examination? But whether they come honestly by their opinions or not, it is much more advisable to refute than to burn, or even to scorch them.

It has been shrewdly remarked by a contemporary:

All the voices which have any real influence with an Englishman in easy circumstances combine to stimulate a low form of energy, which stifles every high one. The newspapers extol his wisdom by assuming that the average intelligence which he represents is, under the name of public opinion, the ultimate and irresponsible ruler of the nation. The novels which he and his family devour with insatiable greediness have no tendency to rouse his imagination, to say nothing of his mind. They are pictures of the every-day life to which he has always been accustomed,—sarcastic, sentimental, or ludicrous, as the case may be,—but never rising to any thing which could ever suggest the existence of tragic dignity or ideal beauty. The human mind has made considerable advances in the last three-and-twenty centuries; but the thousands of Greeks who could enjoy not only Euripides, but Homer and Æschylus, were superior, in some important points, to the millions of Englishmen who in their inmost hearts prefer Pickwick to Shakspeare. Even the religion of the present day is made to suit the level of commonplace Englishmen. There was a time when Christianity meant the embodiment of all truth and holiness in the midst of a world lying in wickedness. It afterwards included law, liberty, and knowledge, as opposed to the energetic ignorance of the northern barbarians. It now too often means philanthropic societies—excellent things as far as they go, but rather small. Any doctrine now is given up if it either seems uncomfortable or likely to make a disturbance. It is almost universally assumed that the truth of an opinion is tested by its consistency with cheerful views of life and nature. Unpleasant doctrines are only preached under incredible forms, and thus serve to spice the enjoyments which they would otherwise destroy.^[122]

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WORLDLY MORALITY.

Professor Blackie, in his eloquent Edinburgh Essay, has these stringent remarks upon the lax morality of the day:

There is in the world always a respectable sort of surface morality,—and nowhere more than in this British world at the present hour,—a morality of convenience and utility, which pays respect to the principles of right and wrong when generally formalised, but which recognises them practically only in so far as local customs and decencies, proprieties, etiquettes, and the round of certain “inevitable charities,” are willing to recognise them. This morality many a consumer of beefsteaks and swiller of porter in this lusty and material land accepts, after eighteen hundred years of Gospel preaching, as quite sufficient for all the purposes of a respectable English life. But the perverse maxims and vicious practices with which our British society is rank, make it evident to the most superficial glance how far the current morality of our trades and parties is from seeking to accommodate itself to the principles of extreme moral purity laid down in every page of the New Testament. A sermon may be a very proper thing as Sunday work, and may help to bridge the way to heaven, when a bridge shall be required; but on Monday a man must attend to his business, and act according to the maxims of his trade, of his party, of his corporation, of his vestry. Then the respectable sporting-man will stake his last thousand on the leg of a race-horse, and think it quite like a Christian gentleman to allow his tailor’s bill to be unpaid for another year; then the respectable Highland proprietor will refuse to renew the lease to the industrious poor cotter on his estate, that the people, for whom he cares nothing, may make way for the red-deer, which it is his only passion to stalk; then the respectable brewer, instead of preparing wholesome drink from wholesome grain, will infect his brewst with deleterious drugs in order to excite a factitious thirst in the stomach of his customers, and increase the amount of drinking; then a respectable corporation, to maintain their own “vested rights,” will move heaven and earth to prevent the national parliament from acting on the plainest rules of justice and common sense in a matter seriously affecting the public well-being; and the respectable members of society shall flutter round the gilded wax-lights of aristocracy, and perform worship at Hudson’s statue, and have respect to men with gold rings and goodly apparel, and do every thing that is expressly forbidden in the second chapter of the Epistle of James, which they profess to receive as a divine rule of conduct. These are only one or two of the more glaring points in which our commonly-received maxims and practice of respectable British life run directly in the face of that highest morality, which the most religious and church-going Englishman professes to acknowledge as his rule of conduct.

Professor Blackie concludes with the gospel text, “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” which the Professor applies in the plain practical question: “What will it profit England to spin more cotton, to pile more money-bags, to set more steam-coaches a-going, if Mammon is to be worshiped every where, rather than virtue and wisdom?” &c.

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SPEAKING THE TRUTH.

One of the sublimest things in the world is plain Truth. Indeed it is so sublime as to be entirely out of the reach of many people.

The ancients said many fine things of Truth; but nothing to exceed in practical worth the love of Truth shown by the great Duke of Wellington in every phase of his wonderful career, of which the majority of us have been, more or less, contemporary witnesses.

“The foundation of all justice,” said this truly great man, “is Truth; and the mode of discovering truth has always been to administer an oath, in order that the witness may give his depositions under a high sanction.”

Elsewhere he said, when advocating the cause of the Church of England, “I am resolved to tell plainly and honestly what I think, quite regardless of the odium I may incur from those whose prejudices my candour and sincerity may offend. I am here to speak the truth, and not to flatter the prejudices of any man. In speaking the truth, I shall utter it in the language that truth itself most naturally suggests. It is upon her native strength—upon her own truth—it is upon her spiritual character, and upon the purity of her doctrines, that the Church of England rests.”

When, upon the death of Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington sought to express what seemed to him most admirable in the character of his friend, he said that he was the truest man he had ever known; adding: “I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw, in the whole course of my life, the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated any thing which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.”

It was the instinct of a man, himself as true as he was great, thus to place the regard for truth in the front rank of human qualities. On that simple and noble basis his own nature rested. Wellington could not vapour, or even utter a lie in a bulletin. Every thing with him was simple, direct, straightforward, and went to the heart of its purpose, if any thing could. In all that has singled out England from the nations, and given her the front place in the history of the world, the Duke of Wellington was emphatically an Englishman. His patience, his probity, his punctuality in the smallest things, in every thing the practical fidelity and reliability of his character, we rejoice to regard as the type of that which has made us the great people that we are. It has indeed been well said that the Duke’s whole existence was a practical refutation of all falsehood.

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RESTLESSNESS AND ENTERPRISE.

An anxious, restless temper, that runs to meet care on its way, that regrets lost opportunities too much, and that is over-painstaking in contrivances for happiness, is foolish, and should not be indulged.^[123] If you cannot be happy in one way, be happy in another; and this facility of disposition wants but little aid from philosophy, for health and good-humour are almost the whole affair. Many run about after felicity, like an absent man hunting for his hat while it is on his head or in his hand. Though sometimes small evils, like invisible insects, inflict great pain, yet the chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas, are let on long leases.

Nothing will justify, or even excuse, dejection. Untoward accidents will sometimes happen; but, after many years’ experience (writes Mr. Sharp), I can truly say, that nearly all those who began life with me have succeeded, or failed, as they deserved:

Though you may look to your understanding for amusement, it is to the affections that we must trust for happiness, These imply a spirit of self-sacrifice; and often our virtues, like our children, are endeared to us by what we suffer for them. Conscience, even when it fails to govern our conduct, can disturb our peace of mind. Yes, it is neither paradoxical nor merely poetical to say:

This solid yet romantic maxim is found in no less a writer than Plato; who, it has been well observed, sometimes in his moral lessons, as well as in his theological, is almost, though not altogether, a Christian.

The passion for enterprise and adventure is the shoal upon which high hopes are constantly being wrecked. We remember, some thirty years since, a merchant of London, who inherited a princely fortune, which he embarked in speculations of almost astounding magnitude. He was a large-minded and generous man; and among other instances of his liberality, was his aid to scientific explorations, in acknowledgment of which he received an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society. He published upon political economy and monetary questions; and with that fatality which often attends those who aspire to public business, our merchant, in some measure, out-ventured his own. Before the problematical economy of vast steam-ships had been settled, he invested large sums in this class of speculation. He was rather athirst for fresh fields than for the gold itself; and with this view he and his family ceded to a chartered company a group of islands discovered some forty years previously through their enterprise, and which the Government had granted them in consideration for their services in more recent discoveries of the southern continent. It was then resolved to colonise the islands as the head-station of the southern whale-fishery; our merchant receiving the appointment of lieutenant-governor. Troops of friends and well-wishers attended the leave-taking; the voyage out was fair and auspicious, and the governor and his little staff planted their bare emblem of authority upon the islands.

The scheme was reasonable; for whale-fishing was rife in the neighbouring seas, and sperm-whales even came into the anchorage. The country is luxuriantly wooded, the flowering plants abound; and the climate is mild, temperate, and salubrious. But the fishery failed, and the horizon soon grew dark with gathering clouds of discontent among the colonists; and there arose cabals, the usual consequence of defeated hopes: as success brightly colours all things in life, so failures darken them. After many months of suffering from indignities heaped upon him by exasperated adventurers, and the confusion which follows such mischances, the governor’s brief authority was respected only by two individuals among the six-score colonists. Such heartless desertion in a land upon whose storm-beaten shores human foot had rarely set, would have made many a stout heart quail: not so our almost friendless representative of authority; and at length the many closed their cruel indignities by determining that he should leave the islands by the first ship which should touch there. This stern resolve was carried into effect; and our merchant-prince, solitary in all respects save hope, returned to the home which he had left amid a choir of aspirations. He memorialised the Government for redress, and besought parliament-men to assert his wrongs; but the only result was the usual official coldness and disinclination to interfere in troublesome matters; although the enterprise was, at the commencement, fully recognised by the colonial authorities at home.

This is a painful story of a few years’ misadventure and wrecked fortune, and ingratitude to a man whose honour and integrity, in the face of misfortune, should at least have shielded him from insult. Yet how forcibly does it illustrate the perils which so often beset the restless spirit!

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THE PRESENT AND THE PAST.

Sharon Turner, a man of sound, practical sense, as well as a reverential and reflective writer of history, has these pertinent remarks upon the tendency of historians to magnify the Present at the expense of the Past:

Nothing is a greater reproach, to the reasoning intellect of any age than a splenetic censoriousness on the manners and characters of our ancestors. It is but common justice for us to bear in mind that in those times we should have been as they were, as they in ours would have resembled ourselves. Both are but the same men, acting under different circumstances, wearing different dresses, and pursuing different objects; but neither inferior to the other in talent, industry, or intellectual worth. The more we study biography, we shall perceive more evidence of this truth.

Disregarding what satire might, without being cynical, lash in our own costumes, we are apt to look proudly back on those who have gone before us, and to regale our self-complacency with comparisons of their deficiencies, and of our greater merit. The retrospect is pleasing, but it offers no ground for exultation. We are superior, and we have in many things better taste and sounder judgment and wiser habits than they possessed. And why? Because we have had means of superiority by which they were not assisted. But a merit which owes its origin merely to our having followed, instead of preceding, in existence, gives us no right to depreciate those over whom our only advantage has been the better fortune of a later chronology. We may therefore allow those who have gone before us to have been amused with what would weary or dissatisfy us, without either sarcasms on their absurdities, or contemptuous wonder at their stately childishness and pompous inanities.

One of our most popular historians indulges to excess in these brilliant antitheses, which in his pages remind one of poppies in corn.

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CIRCUMSTANCES AND GENIUS.

This episode in man’s history,—this stage in the great struggle of life,—has been thus powerfully painted by a contemporary:

We presume there can be little doubt that circumstances have an effect upon the lives and characters of men; to say any thing else would be to contradict flatly the ordinary opinion of the world. Notwithstanding, if one will but look at one’s private experience among the most ordinary and obscure actors in the life-drama, how wonderfully, one must allow, character, temper, heart, and spirit, assert themselves beyond the reach of all external powers! How triumphantly the poor prodigal, to whom Providence has given the fairest prospects, and whose steps are guarded by love and kindness, can vindicate his own instincts against all the virtuous force of circumstance surrounding him, and go to destruction in its very face! Who needs to be taught that ever-recurring lesson? Who can be ignorant that scarcely a great career has ever been made in this world otherwise than in the face of circumstances—in strenuous defiance of all that external elements could do to overcome the unconquerable soul? In the face of such examples, what are we to say to the theory that adverse circumstances can excuse a man born with all the compensations of genius for an unlovely and ignoble life, a bitter and discontented heart, a course of vulgar vice and sordid meanness? Never was genius more wickedly disparaged. That celestial gift to which God has given capacities of enjoyment beyond the reach of the crowd, is of itself an armour against circumstance more proof than steel, and continually holds open to its possessor a refuge against the affronts of the world, a shelter from its contumelies, which is denied to other men. He who reckons of this endowment as of something which gives only a more exquisite egotism, a finer touch of selfishness, a sublimation of envy and self-assertion, and dependence upon the applause of the crowd, forms a mean estimate, against which it is the duty of every man who knows better to protest. Outside circumstances, disappointment, neglect, dark want and misery, have plagued the souls and disturbed the temper of great men before now, but have never, so far as we are aware, polluted a pure heart, or made a noble mind despicable. The bitter soreness of unappreciated genius belongs proverbially to those whose gift is of the smallest; and the man who excuses a bad life by the pretence that this divine lymph contained within it has been soured by popular neglect and turned to gall, speaks sacrilege and profanity.^[124]

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OUR UNIMAGINATIVE AGE.

We have now no great poets; and our poverty in this respect is not compensated by the fact, that we once had them, and that we may, and do, read their works. The movement has gone by; the charm is broken; the bond of union, though not cancelled, is seriously weakened. Hence our age, great as it is, and in nearly all respects greater than any the world has yet seen, has, notwithstanding its large and generous sentiments, its unexampled toleration, its love of liberty, and its profuse and almost reckless charity, a certain material, unimaginative, and unheroic character, which has made several observers tremble for the future.... That something has been lost is unquestionable.

We have lost much of that imagination which, though in practical life it often misleads, is, in speculative life, one of the highest of all qualities, being suggestive as well as creative. Even practically we should cherish it, because the commerce of the affections mainly depends on it. It is, however, declining; while, at the same time, the increasing refinement of society accustoms us more and more to suppress our emotions, lest they be disagreeable to others. And as the play of the emotions is the chief study of the poet, we see in this circumstance another reason which makes it difficult to rival that great body of poetry which our ancestors possessed. We quote the above from the second volume of Mr. Buckle’s History of Civilization. We would add, that the suppression of emotions to which the author refers is one great cause of the difficulty of getting persons to speak the truth in the present day: they are ever disguising their feelings, until hypocritical caution becomes habit, and it requires a stronger light than the old cynic possessed to find honest men. The low standard of commercial morality, and the time-serving expediency which so greatly regulates the actions of our rulers and those who make the laws, is traceable to this over-refinement.

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MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Nothing is more startling, or more likely to be received with incredulity by minds unprepared for their reception, than what are, in common parlance, termed the Marvels of the Universe. The philosophical writers of our day have strikingly illustrated this fact, which should be taken into account in writing of the impedimenta to the progress of science even in our own day. Sir John Herschel has thus forcibly stated the case:

What mere assertion will make any one believe that in one second of time, in one beat of the pendulum of a clock, a ray of light travels over 192,000 miles, and would therefore perform the tour of the world in about the same time that it requires to wink with our eyelids, and in much less than a swift runner occupies in taking a single stride? What mortal can be made to believe, without demonstration, that the sun is almost a million times larger than the earth? and that, although so remote from us that a cannon-ball shot directly towards it, and maintaining its full speed, would be twenty years in reaching it, yet it affects the earth by its attraction in an appreciable instant of time? Who would not ask for demonstration, when told that a gnat’s wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a second; or that there exists animated and regularly-organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point of a medium through which a ray of light passes, is affected with a succession of periodical movements, regularly recurring at equal intervals, no less than five hundred millions of millions of times in a single second! That it is by such movements communicated to the nerves of our eyes that we see; nay, more, that it is the difference in the frequency of their recurrence which affects us with the sense of the diversity of colour. That, for instance, in acquiring the sensation of redness, our eyes are affected four hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of times; of yellowness, five hundred and forty-two millions of millions of times; and of violet, seven hundred and seven millions of millions of times per second. Do not such things sound more like the ravings of madmen than the sober conclusions of people in their waking senses? They are, nevertheless, conclusions to which any one may most certainly arrive who will only be at the trouble of examining the chain of reasoning by which they have been obtained.

Professor Airy, however, considers this difficulty to be over-estimated. He observes, that “persons who take great interest in Astronomy appear to regard the determination of measures, like those of the distance of the sun and moon, as mysteries beyond ordinary comprehension, based perhaps upon principles which it is impossible to present to common minds with the smallest probability that they will be understood; if they accept these measures at all, they adopt them only upon loose personal credit; in any case, the impression which the statement makes on the mind is very different from that created by a record of the distance in miles between two towns, or the number of acres in a field.”

Now, the measure of the moon’s distance involves no principle more abstruse than the measure of the distance of a tree on the opposite bank of a river; and the Professor shows that the methods used for measuring astronomical distances are, in some applications, absolutely the same as the methods of ordinary theodolite surveying, and are in other applications equivalent to them; and that, in fact, there is nothing in their principles which will present the smallest difficulty to a person who has attempted the common practice of plotting from angular measures.^[125]

The habit of beholding the spectacle of the sun gradually sinking, to disappear after a time below the level of the sea,—this habit, we say, and our astronomical knowledge, have long since familiarised us with the phenomenon which, undoubtedly, would appear inexplicable were we to witness it for the first time, and without being prepared. Who has not in childhood felt this wonder? The ancients were far from being able to account for it: some Greek philosophers regarded the sun as an inflamed mass, which plunged itself every night into the waters of the sea; and they pretended to have heard a hissing noise! We have found the same idea lingering among the credulous peasantry of Sussex. We remember our first nurse, a native of Battle, used to relate that, from the cliffs at Eastbourne, she had seen the comet of 1769 dip its tail into the sea, and that she had distinctly heard the “hissing noise.” Such is the persistence of certain impressions, which, monstrous as they are, can only be explained away by reasoning.^[126]

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PHYSIOGNOMY.

Sir David Brewster, in his introductory Address to the University of Edinburgh, 1862-3, remarked that one of the characteristics of the age in which we live was its love of the mysterious and marvellous.

I refer (said Sir David) to the so-called science of physiognomy, but more especially to that morbid expansion of it called the physiognomy of the human form, which has been elaborated in Germany, and is now likely to obtain possession of the English mind. In want of any other arguments, our physiognomists assert that it is simply probable that the outer form would be designed on purpose to represent the mental character, and on this ground they dogmatically declare that the expressions of rage, or grief, or fear have been “divinely designed on purpose that the inner mind may be known to those who watch the outer man.” The persons who use such arguments and have recourse to such assumptions never propose to make any inductive comparison of a certain number of well-measured forms with the well-ascertained mental phases with which they are associated. Were such experiments made, they would yield no result. No two physiognomists, acting separately, would agree in measuring and characterising the forms and indications of the head, the features, the hands, and the feet of the patient; and no two men—neither the sagacious judge on the bench, nor the shrewd counsel at the bar—could determine his real character were they to conjure with all the events of his life. In this new physiognomy, a head large in the mid region indicates a predominance of the feelings over the other faculties; a proneness to superstition and fanaticism is shown by a little increase in the elevation; and a head large behind evinces practical ability; and, as Dr. Carus says, characterises a race which will give birth to great historic names! Small heads, however, are not to be despised. They indicate talent, but not genius; while very small ones belong, he says, to the excitable class, from whom “a great part of the misery of society arises.” In the varying expressions of the human face physiognomists find a better support for their views. That the emotions of the past and the present leave permanent traces on the human countenance is doubtless true, and to this extent we are all physiognomists, often very presumptuous ones, and, excepting accidental coincidences, always in the wrong, when we infer from any external appearance the character and disposition of our neighbour. In every class of society we encounter faces which we instinctively shun, and others to which we as instinctively cling. But how frequently have we found our estimates to be false! The repulsive aspect has proved to be the result of physical suffering, of domestic disquiet, or of ruined fortunes; and under the bland and smiling countenance a heart deceitful and vindictive, and “desperately wicked,” has often been found concealed.

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TRADE AND PHILANTHROPY.

In the Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitlocke, the following anecdote is told as illustrative of the erroneous notions formerly entertained as to the Employment of Machinery for purposes of economy. “The advantage of free competition, and the inexhaustible resources of new inventions, contrivances, and appliances were,” it is observed by the editor at that time (1658), “utterly ignored. The Swedish ambassador” (to the court of Oliver Cromwell) “seems to have had a gleam of the truth, a dawning consciousness of how desirable it was to economise human labour by introducing machinery whenever practicable. He told a pleasant story of the Czar and a Dutchman; and how the latter, observing the boats passing upon the Volga to be manned with three hundred men in each boat, who, in a storm and high wind, held the bottom of the sails down with their hands, offered to the former a mode of manning each boat quite as efficiently with thirty men instead of the three hundred, by which the cost of transport would be lessened. But the Emperor called him a knave; and asked him if a boat that now went with three hundred men should be brought to go as well with thirty only, how were the other two hundred and seventy men to get their living?”

Cromwell, it will be remembered, protected by Act of Parliament a sawmill erected in his time, it is imagined, on the site of the Belvidere-road, Lambeth; in which locality at this day there is probably more sawing by machinery than in any other part of England.