NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CLXX VT. JULY, 1857. ART. I. The Works of JOHN ADAMS, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes, and illustrations, by his Grandson, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1850 56. 10 vols. Svo. THE Scotch have it, that a man canna bear a his am kin on his back; and it must be confessed that there is no little pith in the saying. In the present case, however, the feat has been successfully performed. As Anchises was borne by J~neas from the flames of Troy, so now has the lion-hearted rebel of the North been carried by his grandson, with pious, gl adsome, carefnl steps, through a long, difficult, and varied career. The Lfe of John Adams is emphatically a great book. The biographer gives ample evidence of intense study of the events which he narrates; and, as is the painters wont, he places his principal figures in the foreground. his rectitude of purpose is so manifest, that, though we dissent from some of his conclusions, we do not once distrn~t his fairness of in- tention. His pages show unwearied research, and the use of state papers and documents not easily accessible. His style is pure, smooth, and easy, and, save here and there an involved or obscure sentence, worthy to be imitated in historical writ- ing. In the difficult task of holding an impartial pen as to VOL. LXXXV.NO. 176. 1 2 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, the characters of those whom his ancestor held to be his evil genii, determined to defame him, and to rob him of his well- earned laurels, he is often entitled to commendation. He urges no topic to the weariness of the reader; and we are quite sure that persons who are fond of biographical lore will be interested from first to last, while whole pages, and even chapters, will fix the attention like some thrilling tale of the imagination. And this, not only because of the incidents themselves, but because of the manner in which they are presented to the mind. Such, certainly, are our impressions, after repeated perusal with an eye to a critics duty. As aii editor, Mr. Charles Francis Adams is entitled also to high praise. Possibly he may incur censure in some quarters for the extent of his revision of parts of the Works; though we do not xvell see that, with his frank avowal of his motives, and of the necessities which existed in particular instances, he can be fairly accused of having tampered with truth. The course to be adopted by an editor, with writings before him which were thrown off on the spur of the moment, or to meet a pressing exigency, is embarrassing at best; and, do what he will, he will commonly find persons who object to his decis- ions. But the candid, who judge as they themselves would be judged if placed in the same position, will be slow to blame without proof of wrong intent. The labor bestowed on these ten volumes was immense. The digesting of the materials for the Life, after they had been collected and arranged, the diligent study of conflicting statements, and the comparing of authorities, preparatory to an intelligent conclusion upon controverted topics, with the investigations necessary to illustrate the text of the Works by notes and references, are all matters which the general reader, who has never had a look behind the scenes, and who, in com- fortable gown and slippers, sees first the printed page, can hardly appreciate. But to show John Adams and his achieve- ments was worth the toil of years for a common student of our history; while, for a person of his own lineage, it was an imperative duty. And we have him in these volumes just as he was,in his greatness and in his goodness, in his weak- ness and in his frailty. We see him in public and in private, 18~7.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 3 as he lived, thought, and spoke. There is no disguise, no con- cealment. What he did, whether to his honor or of ques- tionable discretion and propriety, is all exposed. For con- siderable periods, the second President of the United States was so to speak his own Boswell; and we commend the courage and good sense of his descendant, in submitting his most secret emotions and confidential communications to the scrutiny of his countrymen; for many, xve cannot doubt, are weary of those biographers and editors who keep their heroes perpetually in gala-robes, and who never condescend to let them down from their stilts to commune with common men in this every-day sort of a world, in which everybody has aches, and pains, and wearing sorrows, and must needs have concern about food, and raiment, and shelter. We meet Mr. Charles Francis Adams, then, evet with his am kin on his back, on terms of perfect amity. That, in our opinion, he designed to be faithful in all things, and to be just to all men with whom he had to do, we have already said; and if now, according this, we venture to notice what ~e deem to be departures from the rules which, clearly enough to us, he meant never to violate, our previous words of appro- bation are to be kept steadily in mind, since the writer of honest purpose is not to be reproached for occasional short- comings, as seen by the critic, who, though assuming infalli- bility, may himself be really in fault. Thus feeling, we sub- mit, in all courtesy, that our biographer should have forborne to discuss any questions in which Hamilton, Wolcott, Picker- ing, Jefferson, and Franklin were conc.erned, save in such par- ticulars as were necessary to the connection of events and to the thread of his narrative. We agree with him perfectly in the remark, that, if rigid moral analysis be not the purpose of historical xvriting, there is no more value in it than in the fictions of mythological antiquity; but the query here is, By whom shall this analysis~ be made? Since the object of course is to promulgate new truths and to enlighten the pub- lic mind, we venture to say, that he who undertakes the task should be, not only impartial, but above the suspicion of par- tiality. Far better were it to have remembered that the facts on which he founds his conclusions are open to the examina 4 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, tion of persons against whom no charge of consanguinity can be preferred to lessen the \veight of their statements, and by whom, in due time, all that it is profitable to know will be disclosed. We would hold all parties, to whom the contro- versies indicated have come downwith more or less asperity of feeling, to the same rule, as proper in itself; and as expe- dient on every ground, allowing each to refer to personal difficulties as connected with history, but so as to avoid all expressions of reproach and unkind comments.* Again, we are not quite satisfied with the portrait of the Count de Vergennes,~ the French minister; and this, though we are not among those who are disposed to undue praise of the man or his policy. That he was a disciple of a sad code of political morals, need not be disputed; but if, as our biographer admits, the effect upon his character seems to have been not so much to corrupt it, as merely to blunt his sensibilities, and to narrow the scope of his statesmanship within the circle of French casuistry, we suggest that so considerable a display of his faults and errors might have been omitted, without seeming sanction even to equivocation. The passages in which his name appears are extremely well \vritten; but we are not sure that xvhat is said of his moral qualities in one place quite agrees with the shadowing in an- other. So, again, we need some further light as to Hamil- tons ulterior plans, could we have had an army suited to his wishes during the troubles with France; and we specially desire to be informed as to his complicity with the adventurer Miranda; for, as the account stands, the thought may pos- sibly occur to some that the first Secretary of the Treasury was also, in intent and scheme, the first of American Jillibus- lers. j Nor do we altogether like the tone of remark touching the conduct and motives which are ascribed by fair infer- ence certainly to Mr. Adamss cabinet advisers, in the expo ~ Without room for extracts or extended comments, we must refcr our readers to the Life itself. The passages meant in the text may he found as follows: what is said of Hamilton, Vol. I. pp. 523, 524, 525, 531, 532, 577, and 589; of Wolcott, pp. 570, 590, and 591; of Pickering, pp. 529, 539, 568, 569, and 629; of Jefferson, l~P 616, 618, and 619; and of Franklin, pp. 319 and 320. t See Vol. I. pp. 299, 300, 303, and to 308 inclusive. t See Vol. I. pp. 523 to 526 inclusive. 1857.] 5 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. sition of his difficulties with them, which finally terminated in the retirement of Pickering and Mdllenry.* Once more, we apprehend that, in the case of the Gunningham Letters4 which are wisely suppressed, the true question is not whether they were confidential, but whether one gentleman should have thus written to another; for it is the matter and the temper which are objectionable. And, lastly, the calm and reflecting, who are acquainted with the history of our national parties, will hardly be pleased with the account of the reasons which induced Mr. Adams to identify himself with his an- cient enemies, after the fall of the Federal party4 If, in these several strictures, we have spoken frankly, we have meant kindly, simply because we know something of the difficulties which beset the path of the biographer who is on his guard at every step. We add a single word of dissent from Mr. Charles Francis Adamss course as editor, and that is, to express our regret at the republication of any part of the papers which appeared originally, in 1809, in the Boston Patriot, and at the omission of the Letters of John Adams to his Wife. The latter might have been included in the Works, had the former been ex- eluded, and had the number of pages in the several volumes been made more nearly uniform. The elements of social dis- order, and the laxity of morals as regards marriage which pre- vail, ought to be met and rebuked in every form of discourse. We will not aver that the delinquencies of some eminent per- sons have aided to produce this state of things; but we do say that these Letters, as showing the domestic character of a great man, as manifesting his deep, undying love for the partner of his bosom, as overfiowings of a heart constantly yearning for his children and for his home, as a record of the private life of a statesman who kept himself uncontami- nate during years of absence, and xvho, in his relations of hus- band and father, always had reference to the will and ordi- nance of Almighty God, should have found a place in this collection of his writings. i See VoL I. pp. 551 558. ~ See Vol. I. pp. 610, 613. See Vol. I. pp. 628, 62g. 1* 6 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. EJuly, With these general remarks, we proceed to notice the vol- umes before us somewhat in detail. It suits our purpose best to refer to the Life incidentally, and, as occasion may require, in connection with the Works. Of the second and third volumes, which we shall consider together, an analysis here is impractica- ble. In the form chiefly of a Diary and fragmentary Autobiog- raphy, they contain a little of almost everything, thoughts on religion and politics, on self-examination and self-improve- ment; notes of debates in Congress, and of Mr. Adamss own doings there and elsewhere; memoranda of voyages and jour- neys, of the negotiation of treaties, of visits to nobles and statesmen, and to towns and cities; sketches of distinguished persons with whom he associated; at times a pleasant story, and as much gossip even as there is in Walpoles Letters. We have, besides, an outline of the celebrated argument of Otis in the case of the Writs of Assistance; notes of Mr. Adamss own argument in defence of Corbet and others, charged with the murder of Lieutenant Panton on the high seas; the original draught of the Declaration of Rights and and Grievances, made by the Congress of 1774, which is justly considered one of the most important documents of ~he Revolutionary era; notes of the debate in the Senate, in 1789, on the power of the President to remove public officers at pleasure, which power, then affirmed by Mr. Adamss own casting vote as Vice-President, has been exercised ever since; several essays and controversial papers of the Revolution, and among them the earliest of Mr. Adamss known printed pro- ductions, which, as the editor remarks, bear the peculiar mental and moral characteristics of the author~ and lastly, a paper in the handwriting of Jefferson, indorsed by Wash- ington, Construction of the powers of the Senate with re- spect to their agency in appointing an~bassadors, & c., and fixing the grade. Such is a rapid view of more than eleven hundred pages. The Diary, from 1735 to 1761, is printed, we are told, from loose fragments mere scraps of paper hardly legible. It opens, at the age of twenty, with a notice of the earthquake which, memorable here, in Europe destroyed much of the city of Lisbon, a significant entry, we thought, as it first met Qur 1857.] 7 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. eye, for the youth who was to become a principal instru- ment in causing the British ,empire to rock and reel and crack, as if it would fall in ruins about us, as then, lie says, his fathers house at Braintree seemed to do. We soon meet with evidence of his thirst for knowledge, coupled with the sad remark, that, without hooks, time, or friends, be must be contented to live and die an ignorant, obscure fellow; but those around him who, at this early pe- riod, heard his appreciative comments on Miltons great epic, and saw him engaged in the study of Butlers Analogy, enter- tained, very likely, quite a different opinion. Early, too, we see traces of ambition. While wielding the teachers birch and ferule at Worcester,theu a country town of fifteen hundred people, he sometimes thought himself in his great chair a dictator at the head of a commonwealth, and in the urchins before him fancied that he saw renowned generals but three feet high, and deep projecting politicians in petti- coats,,and that his little dominion, like the great world, was made up of kings, politicians, divines, L. ID.s, fops, buffoons, fiddlers, sycophants, fools, coxcomhs, chim ney-sweepers, and every other character drawu in history. So, in 1759, he wrote: I talk to Samuel Quincy about resolution, and being a great man which makes him laugh. And again : Reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and aim of my behavior. And at the age of twenty-three: Let love and vanity be extinguished, and the great passions of ambition, patriotism, break out and burn. Let little objects be neglected and forgot, and great ones engross, arouse, and exalt my soul. Abandoning the plan of entering the ministry, which at one time he seems to have seriously entertained, he became a stu- dent in the law office of James Putnam, of Worcester. This gentleman, as the Revolutionary controversy came to blows, adhered to the royal side, and died in banishment. When we mingled in British colonial circles, we used to hear it said that he was the ablest lawyer in all America. We have often stood at his grave, and thonght of the strange vicissitudes of * In i774, he said that ho had spent an estate in hooks. 8 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, human condition, by which the master, a giant in his profes- sion, yet became an outlaw and an exile, broken in fortune and in spirit, while his struggling and almost friendless pupil, elevated step by step by the very same course of events, was finally known the world over as the chief magistrate of a nation. Of the seventeen years for which Mr. Adams was at the bar, the Diary is rich in incident; but our limits forbid more than a glance at a page or two. It is at once amusing and instructive to mark the agony of the young lawyer about his first writ, which was abated,~ the disposition to accuse Mr. Putnams remissness in duty as the cause of his disgrace, and the query, whether Bob Paine dont pick up this story to laugh at; and his account of the scene of absolute confu- sion in the court in which he was counsel in a case about an old horse,,~ the parties raging and scolding, all the spectators smiling, whispering, & c., his own over- sights, omissions, inexpert management, and the result, had he pursued a course more in conformity with what his client had told him. In like manner, we find again, in 1760, his self-condemnation, that his inattention to law is intol- erable and ruinous; and a year later, Last Monday had a passionate wrangle with Eben Thayer, before a justice. He called me a petty lawyer. This I resented. But there came a change. At the age of thirty-two, such was the position he had attained, that Hancock, prosecuted by the crown for violation of the navigation and trade laws, to re- cover penalties, amounting, in the various suits, to more than four hundred thousand dollars, employed him as counsel and advocate. In 1770, Whig though he was, and in defiance of the popular sentiment, he appeared to defend Preston and the British soldiers for their agency in what is absurdly called the Boston Massacre; and he thus appeared, on the ground that, in a free country, every man whose life is at stake should be allowed legal aid of his own choice, and that, if his ser- vices were necessary to a fair trial of the accused, he could not, as a member of the bar, decline. The part he took in this affair was severely censured; but he himself never ceased to congratulate himself and the country that he possessed the 18~57.3 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 9 courage to do his duty, and to say of the result of the trial, that, as the evidence was, the verdict of acquittal of the jury was exactly right. His professional reputation at this time was all that he could desire, and his own belief was that no man in Mas- sachusetts had a larger business. Chosen a Representative to the General Court from Boston, he went to Faneuil Hall, and accepted the trust, he says, with the feeling that he devoted his family to ruin, and himself to death. At home, in the evening, he gave expression to his apprehensions to his wife, who burst into a flood of tears, and said that, though there was danger in his decision, she thonght he had done right, and that she was very ~Tilling to share in all that was to come, and to place her trust in Providence. ~ The service was only for a year, and at its close he returned to the bar. But the destiny of John and Abigail Adams was fixed in that hour of sad foreboding ~nd weeping. In 1772 we have in the Diary a significant record: This day I heard that Mr. Hancock had purchased twenty writs for this court of Mr. S. Quincy.t Oh, the mutability of the legal, commercial, social, political, as well as material world! For ab6ut three or four years I have done all Mr. Hancocks busi- ness, and have waded through wearisome, anxious days and nights, in his defence; but farewell ! Extensive as was Mr. Adamss practice, it was not lucrative, and he doubted whether any lawyer ever did so much for so little profit. We do not find him embarked in politics a second time, save as a coun- sellor and adviser of the recognized Whig leaders, until after the destruction of the tea and the departure of Hutchinson. That one so earnest, so intrepid, and so well fitted to mingle in the contests of the day, should have come upon the scene of action so late, is a remarkable fact. Nor, at the mature age of thirty-nine, would he probably have been appointed to serve Mr. Adams, in 1809, in a letter to Dr. Rush, states the conduct of his wife in a still more favorable light. This noble woman, he remarked, hurst into tears, hut instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and he ruined with you, if you are ruined. A Loyalist or Tory lawyer, who was afterwards proscrihed and banished. His brother Josiah, father of the present Hon. Josiah Quincy of Boston, was a Whig, and one of the purest men o.~ ~he time. 10 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, in the first Continental Congress, but for the disinterested part of Joseph Hawley, who ever waiving his own claims to distinction countenanced the selection of his friend. The delegates of the Whigs met at Philadelphia, in 1774, for con- sultai~ion only. The middle and southern Colonies had few immediate or apprehended wrongs of their own to be re- dressed, and hence it became a question of vast moment to ascertain how far they would commit themselves; and Mr. Adams was convinced in due time, that, were prudent meas- ures pursued, they would stand by the Massachusetts, or perish with her. And, as we trace his movements subse- quently, we are satisfied that, whatever his censures of some of his associates because of disputes and delays, he planned, spoke, and acted upon the firm belief that Nexv England would in no event be deserted. It is due to the memory of Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, to say, on every oc- casion like the present, that, a decisive genius, he was a man after John Adamss own heart, and with him, with Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams, feared, as early as the first Con- gress, that far graver duties than conferences, or the framing of petitions and rem on strances, would devolve upon them and their successors. There is much in these two volumes not to be found else- xvhere, so far as we are aware, with regard to public affairs an- terior to the Declaration of Independence. We must, however omit everything beyond a meagre outline. His notings from day to day of the transactions in Congress, and of his own par- ticular acts, in session, out of doors, and in committee; his plain-spoken praise of the brave, and rebukes of those whom he deemed wavering, wayward, and timid; and here and there a glimpse behind the curtain, to assure us that what we call wire-pulling, or adroit political management, was not then xvholly unknown, are all full of interest to the painstaking inquirer into the past. So, also, his notes of the debates, mere skeletons as they are, cast some light upon the fears which agitated, the hopes which animated, and the reasons which influenced the memorable Congress that proclaimed the dis- memberrnent of the British empire. These sketches, however unsatisfactory, are among the few that are known to exist. 1857.] 11 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. Could our fathers have anticipated the value to their poster- ity of every written scrap and every stray leaf relating to the Rebellion which they led, and to the Revolution which they consummated, uncertain as they were of their own doom, and slight as were their opportunities of perpetuating their speeches, compared with those of the present day, we are sure they would not have left us to regret, as now, the want of full and accurate reports of their proceedings. Mr. Adams was a keen observer of men, and he was fond of recording his impressions of those with whom he mingled. Of some, his remarks were sufficiently piquant. Thus, of the Massachusetts gentlemen of mark, Robert Treat Paine ~ appears in the record possessed of wit and learning, but an impndent, ill-bred, conceited fellow; Andrew Oliver, a very sagacious trifler; Timothy Ruggles,t a man of quick appre- hension, of strict honor and above meanness, but proud and lordly, and one whom people approached with fear and terror; Jeremiah Gridley, very learned, a sound reasoner, and of majestic manner, yet stiff and affected; Benjamin Kent4 fnll of fun, drollery, humor, flouts, and jeers; Har- rison Gray,~ of delicate sensibilities, and extremely tirnid Thomas Cnshing, steady and constant, and famed for se- crecy and shrewdness in procuring intelligence; Benjamin Gridley,f one of the best story-tellers of the time, a man of fancy, with and observation, but an idler in bed, inatten- tive to business, and a lover of drink and frolic; Judge Oh- ver,f better bred than any of his associates on the bench, for all the others were at times indecent and disagreeable com- panions; Samuel Adams,* zealous and ardent, yet always for gentle measures when others were not uccessary, with a most thorough love of liberty, of unbending integrity and sin ~ A signer of the Declaration of Independence. t The leading Tories or Loyalists of Massachusetts were Ruggles, President of the Stamp-Act Congress in 1765; Gray, Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massa- chusetts; Gridley, barrister-at-law and Attorney.General of Massachusetts; Oliver, Chief Justice of Massachusetts; and Anebmuty, Judge of Admiralty. All were proscrihed and banished. Ru~gles died in Nova Scotia; all the others went to England. ~ He ~vent to Halifax, N. S., in the Revolution, and died there. A Whig, and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts. 12 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, cere piety, of pleasing manners, a correct and skilful writer, and one who, as he himself said, had never looked forward in his life, never planned, laid a scheme, or formed a design of laying up anything for himself or others after him; Rob- ert Auchmuty, always scolding about the lowness of the fees, always heavy, dull, and insipid as a pleader, volu- bility, voluble repetition, and repeated volubility, fluent reit- erations and reiterating fluency. On his way to attend the first Congress, Mr. Adams stopped at New York. lie found, he states, that the Delanceyst and the Livingstons were the great families upon whose move- ments the politics of the Colony turned; and we have what he heard and what he thought of the leading personages there. Thus, William Smith, j the historian, appeared to be a plain, composed man. Morin Scott, the great advocate, kept a chariot, owned an elegant seat was reputed one of the read- iest speakers on the continent, was very sensible, but not remarkably polite, and could sit up all night at his bottle, yet argue to admiration next day. Mr. Adams saw several members of Congress. Of these, Alsop was a soft, sweet man, a merchant of good heart, but supposed to be deficient in talents for the place; Low, a gentleman of fortnne, in trade, whose sincerity was doubted; William Livingston, fl neither elegant nor genteel, plain, tall, black, and no speaker, yet learned, and a ready writer; Duane, artful and insinuating, a plodding body at the bar, with a feeble voice, and unhappily involved in land speculations nearly to the extent of his for- tune; Philip Livingston, a great, rough, rapid mortal, with whom nobody could converse, who blustered away, and * See note t on preceding page. t Tories or Loyalists. t A Tory finally. He removed to Canada, and was Chief Justice of that Colony. This suspicion was ~vell founded. He fell off, joined the royal side, and went to England. If Afterwards Whig Governor of New Jersey. Mr. Jay married his daughter. First Mayor of the city of New York, after the evacuation hy the British army, and first Judge of the United States District Court. ** He signed the Declaration of Independence, notwithstanding the opinion here expressed. 1857.1 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOhN ADAMS. 13 declared, that, if England should turn us adrift, we should instantly go to civil wars among ourselves. As Mr. Adams entered the city, he wrote in his Diary that he designed to make it a subject of much speculation. Hav- ing visited every part of it, worshipped in the churches, rode to the gentlemens seats in the country, breakfasted, dined, and supped with persons of the first consideration, admired the beauties in full dress, and gazed upon the rich plate and gorgeous furniture, he records the result With all the opulence and splendor, there is very little of good breedin~ to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous re- spect; but I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. At their entertainments there is no conversa- tion that is agreeable; there is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again, and talk away. This is sufficiently explicit, certainly; for a man who had been feasted to the point of surfeit, somewhat ungracious, and indicative of strong local prejudice. But the Fifth Avenue had not then been opened. For the curious eye that would see many prominent Revo- lutionists in a group, and at a single view, we collate and condense his notices of several of the persons with whom he was officially associated at Philadelphia. There is in the Congress, he said, in 1774, a collection of the greatest men upon this continent, in point of abilities, virtues, and fortunes. Let us take a glance at these, and at the more celebrated collection, two years later. We select almost at random. John Rutledge ~ is said to have been a good law- yer, not excelling in learning; in speaking, he dodged about his head, and spouted out his words in a rough, rapid torrent; he was of unpromising appearance, without keenness of eye or depth of countenance. Bland ~ is learned and bookish, and * He studied law at the Temple, London; was Governor of South Carolina dur- ing a large part of the Revolution; and was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by Wasbington. A cabinet officer wrote, at the time of this appointment, that Rutledge was a driveller and fool. He was not confirmed by the Senate. t Writer of one of the three political essays published in Virginia, while the Revo- lu~ionary controversy was pending. VOL. Lxxxv. ~o. 176. 2 14 LIFE AND WOIIKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, so zealous as to declare that he would have attended Con- gress had it met at Jericho. Harrison * is indolent, luxurious, and of no service in session or in committee, but a great em- barrassment in both, another Falstaff, excepting in his lar- cenies and robberies: his conversation disgusting to every man of delicacy or decorum. Heyward is an excellent member, generally silent in debate, yet always to be depended on for sound measures. Rush * had been much in London, is ele- gant an(1 ingenious, and a sprightly, pretty fellow. Jay t is a young lawyer of twenty-six, a superior man, a hard stu- dent, and a good speaker. Deane j is possessed of talent, but with more ambition than principle, of plausible readi- ness of tongue and pen, of ostentatious habits in dress and living, without reflection, solid judgment, or real information. Middleton,* the hero of Quaker and proprietary politics in Congress, is poorly informed, and feeble in argument, rude, and sarcastic; still, an honest and generous fellow. Car- roll is very sensible, supposed to possess the first fortune in America, with an annual income of some fifty thousand dol- lars, and great expectations as an heir besides. Johnson is well read in law and trade, a man of clear, cool head, a solid thinker, but not a shining orator. Wythe* is an eminent lawyer, and one of our best men. Hopkins,* a nian of threescore and ten, has great humor and extensive reading, keeps everybody in spirits with his stories and jokes, and at the same time is useful in matters of business, because of good judgment and long experience. Dyer is long-wind- ed, round-about, obscure, and cloudy, yet worthy and well- meaning. Hall and Gwinnett are intelligent and spirited. Rodney the oddest-looking man in the world is tall, thin, pale, and slender as a reed, with a face not bigger than a large apple, still, with sense, fire, and wit. Nelson is fat, yet lively and alert for one so heavy, and a speaker. Qads * A signer of the Declaration of Independence. t Governor of New York, special envoy to England, and Chief Justice of the United States. t He fell off, and his sun went down in sorrow and destitution. He became Governor of Maryland, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 15 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. den is able, patriotic, sensible, and cheerful; Ward, honor- able, conscientious, and benevolent; Randolph,t large and well-looking. Edward Rutledge, ~ good-natured, but con- ceited, and a perfect Bob-o-Lincoln, plumes himself on having studied at the Temple, and travelled; he is yonng and sprightly; speaks through his nose, much as a X ankee sings; is uninteresting in conversation, and unnatural in de- bate. Richard Henry Lee, j tall and spare, is a deep thinker, and a masterly man, able and inflexible, a scholar, a gentle- man, and of uncommon eloquence. Gerry, j ardent in his love of country, never hesitates to promote the boldest meas- ures consistent with prudence. Dickinson appears a mere shadow, and with a visage of the hue of ashes; is modest, and of excellent heart; makes calls in his coach with four horses. Johnny, said his mother, you will be hanged; your es- tate will be forfeited and confiscated: you will leave your ex- cellent wife a widow, and your charming children orphans, beggars, and infamous. Thomson the Secretary, and the Sam. Adams of Philadelphia is a gentleman of family, fortune, and character, and about to marry a lady of wealth. Houston is inexperienced, but of zeal and good sense. Gal- loway jf is learned, but a cold speaker; Zubly,jJ a doctor of divinity, well read, and with pretensions as a linguist; Dnch6,jJ the chaplain, whose form of prayer moved all hearts, and whose eloquence was the praise of every tongue. Sher- man , clear-headed, and sound in judgment, speaks often and long, but heavily and clumsily, standing bolt upright, -, Called by some the John Adams of the South 1 President of the First Congress. ~ A signer of the Declaration of Independence. As regards Edward Rutledge, Patrick Henry called him the most elegant speaker in the First Congress. Mr. Adamss great opponent in the discussions on the question of Inde- pendence. All these fell off and became Loyalists. Galloway and Duch6 went to Eng- land, where the one figured as a political writer, the other as a preacher. Zublys defection might have been anticipated as early as the Congress of 1775, in which he said in debate: A republican government is little better than a government of devils. A signer of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson remarked of Sher- man, that he never said a foolish thing in his life; and Macon, that he had more common sense than any man I ever knew. 16 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, rigid as starched linen, and with his hands clasped before him. Chase is violent and boisterous in debate, and te- dious upon frivolous points. This is all off-hand limning, very certainly, and no doubt Mr. Adams had reason, subsequently, to modify some of his opinions. But the general accuracy of the pictures which he drew of men and manners will not be questioned, we sup- pose, by persons who are well informed as to the leading per- sonages and events of the second half of the last century. These sketches of such characters in Boston, in Nexv York, and in Congress, as well as the mention of the sectional jeal- ousies that prevailed, of the personal quarrels and alienations that existed among Whigs of high position in the civil and military line, at home, and among those who were employed abroad on embassies of the last importance to the Whig cause, show clearly, were there no other sources of information, that the prominent men of the Revolutionary era were great and good, little and bad, mingled, just as elsewhere in the annals of our race. Those of lofty virtue, like William IJI. of England, were compelled by the necessities of their condition to employ as instruments persons whom they knew or believed to be mere mercenaries, who would fall off and join the opposite side the moment that interest should seem to require; and, like William, they appeared oblivious of this fact simply be- cause, under the circumstances, it was sound policy to be blind, forgetful, and ignorant. We do not care, of all things, to be thought to want appre- ciation of our countrymen, and especially of those who broke the yoke of colonial vassalage; nor, on the other hand, do we care to imitate the writers of a late school, and treat the great and the successful actors in the worlds affairs as little short of divinities, and as exempt from criticism. In speaking of men who have left their impress upon their age, something, we own, is due to the dignity of history; but something, too, is due to the dignity of truth. The bandaged eyes and the even scales, we apprehend, are as fit emblems for the student as for * A signer of the Declaration of Independence. He became Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. At the instigation of John Randolph he was impeached, hut was acquitted. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 17 the judge; and so, upon the evidence, and upon the law of progress, we say that we are not to look for as great intellect- ual development, or for as high civilization, among bound or even emancipated British colonists, as, after the lapse of two generations, exists around us, and in Anglo-Saxon countries everywhere.~ We have devoted much space to these volumes, because of their value in throwing light upon the period to which they relate. As we open the fourth volume, we meet the cele- brated papers of Novanglus, in reply to the able Tory writer iiiassachusettensis. Until late in life, Mr. Adams supposed that the latter was Jonathan Sewall, his personal friend, but finally yielded to the evidence in favor of Daniel Leonard, f another Loyalist, for whom he had nearly an equal regard. Novanglus was immediately reprinted in an abridged form in Almorts Remembrancer; was translated in Holland, in 1782, while Mr. Adams was there soliciting an alliance for his coun- try; was reprinted a second time in England, two years later, and finally in Boston, in 1819, with ]Jlassacltusettensis and a Preface. If, among the essays of the Revolutionary era, there be an- other which displays so thorough knowledge of the elementary principles of government and of the true relations between the rulers and the ruled, or so solid legal learning, or so able reasoning upon the issues immediately involved, as this, we confess that it has escaped our research. But yet its style is by no means to be commended; and its principal design was to defend the state of things which existed prior to the at- tempts of the ministry, and of the junto here, to remodel colonial institutions, and those of Massachusetts especially. Mr. Adams argues that the scheme of regulating was in fact an attack, an unjustifiable encroachment, which, if con- summated, would deprive the colonists of their liberties; and, in the course of the discussion, he presses this point to the ex- ~ Nine years ago, the writer of this article sL ted his views somewhat at large on this subject, in these pa~,es. See North Ameriean Review, Vol. LXVI. p. 426. t Of Taunton, Mass. He loved show, and lived in a style which few barristers could support. He was included in the banishment and conspiracy ncts, became Chief Justice of the Bermudas, and died in London in 1829. 2* 18 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, treme doctrine, that the XXfhigs would resist, if the constitu- tion of the Massachusetts had been altered as much fbr the better as it is for the worse, on the ground that l~arliament had no right to make any alteration at all, with the asser- tion, that the patriots of this Province desire nothing new, Wishing only to keep their old privileges, that, attached to their charter and to their constitution, they were laboring to prevent their overthrow, and that they had been allowed for one hundred and fifty years to tax themselves, and govern their internal concerns as they thought best. On the other hand, he admits in the most express terms, and in various places, the power of Parliament to regulate colonial com- merce, and even to impose duties for that purpose,* while once we have these remarkable words: ~The acts of trade and navigation might be confirmed by provincial laws, and carried into execution by our own courts and juries, and in this case illicit trade would be cut up by the roots for ever. These rapid outlines embrace, we think, a fair view of the argumentative parts of Novanglus; and, as the concluding number was sent to press only two days before the shedding of blood at Lexington, we are to consider it as an authorized exposition of the avowed sentiments of the Whig leaders. A single word of comment upon two points. What was a duty to regulate trade, as distinguished from a duty for revenue? This was the very hinge of the dispute. It was a question never solved, because it was unsolvable. The alleged distinc- tion was a fallacy. Another position of Mr. Adams is equally fallacious, namely, that there was a real difference between a duty laid and collected at the port of exportation, and one laid and collected at the port of importation; which he states in reply to JJiliassachusettensis, as regards the duty on tea, which was reduced from a shilling paid in England, to the three-pence the pound, to be collected here. In either case, the duty was a part of the price to consumers, and of consequence, in the reduction of duty, the commodity was to * The Whigs generally conceded this. Franklin, in his examination in the ilonse of Commons, thrice admitted the power of Parliament to impose duties to regulate commerce; and he said that he had never heard any objection to the exercise of such power, that the Americans had never disputed it. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 19 be nine-pence the pound cheaper; while, as to the principle of taxation so earnestly resisted, what possible difference was there between a tax levied in London and one laid in Boston, so long as a tax was laid at one place or the other? In all these matters, the Whigs were in toils from which the sword alone could release them. But as members of the human family, they were right. They contended for free commerce; for liberty to buy where they would, and to sell where they could; and to this they were entitled by the organic law of the social state, whatever the enactments of the statute~book.* Again: we do not very well understand why, when the first charter had been revoked, and that which Mr. Adams so ably and zealously defended had been accepted in its stead, and acted under for more than eighty years, there had not been a fatal admission against his argument in this particular. When we commenced reading the documents of the Revo- lution, our home was on the eastern frontier. Across the bor- der, we saw in wonder, that Tories of Massachusetts, and grad- uates of her University, with others who had been banished from the old thirteen, were chief supporters of the same colo- nial system. We saw first, and for some years, that system as the Whigs broke from it, and well did we mark its workings; for we fancied that we were actually living in ante-Revolution- ary times. Next, we beheld important changes and modifica- tions, and, finally, its essential abandonment by the mother country. It was so abominable, we could but be amazed that our fathers have left on record so few and so feeble complaints against it. As we studied it, we did not hesitate to declare to the colonists of our acquaintance, that it might have an- swered possibly for the nations conquered by heathen Rome; but that, without a single clement of human brotherhood, it ought never to have been revived by the European powers that sought dominion in America, and that, at all events, its * As connecting Novanglus with the scenes in which Mr. Adams was soon the great actor, it is of interest to remember that one fourth of the signers of the Dec- laration of Independence had been bred merchants or shipmasters; that more than one of them bore the stigma of free-trader or smuggler; and that, as late as the battle of Lexington, prosecutions were pending against Hancock, the President of Congress, to the extent of the whole of his large fortune, for daring, in violation of the acts of Parliament, to carry on a free commerce with interdicted I)arts of the world. 20 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOhN ADAMS. [July, imposition by the Anglo-Saxo ns of one hemisphere on their brethren in the other was unconditionally monstrous. No man knew or felt the barbarous exactions, and the unmiti- gated monopolies of this system in favor of his fellow-subjects in England, better than did the author of Novanglus. If his horse flung a shoe, the stinging, insulting declaration of Pitt, that an American could not of right make so much as the nails required to reset it, rang in his ears. If he entered the court of admiralty to defend the illicit traders who were prose- cuted by the crown officers for penalties which would have made beggars of the richest, he was reminded that his coun- trymen were forbidden by statute to make a voyage to Asia or Africa, to South America, to the foreign islands in the Carribbean Sea, to nearly all Continental Europe, and even to Ireland, on pain of confiscation of ship and cargo. If he bought a hat, the legislation against colonial hatters occurred to him. If, in journeying to the courts of Massachusetts and Maine, he passed waterfalls running to waste, he mused upon the acts of Parliament which secured the colonial market in monopoly to the manufacturers of Manchester. If he entered a public office, he met the pampered functionaries who, Eng- lish born, or members of the old families, held their places by life-tenures, and by descent from father to son, and thus excluded the great colonial mind. If he walked the streets, the chariots of the high officers of the customs, sent over to revive obsolete, and to enforce new, laws of trade, rolled in grandeur by him. If he had to traffic with his neighbor, he was compelled to remember that, while the mother country drained all America of coin, the Board of Trade a curse to the New England Colonies from beginning to end had sug- gested, and Parliament had enacted, not amendments in the manner of emitting and redeeming a paper currency, as bound to do, but its suppression. Nor, if he read the speeches of British Whigs,~ did his keen eye see more in behalf of his ~ Franklin, in his celebrated examination at the bar of the house of Commons, said, that in his opinion there was not gold and silver enough in the Colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year. I The opinion that the British Whigs were the friends of America, in any sense which bore upon the amelioration of the condition of our fathers as colonists ought no longer to prevail The sentiments of Pitt and Bnrke, cited in the text, 21 18~7.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. country than an opposition to particular measures, and to the party in power; for there stood out in characters of fire the bald, unqualified statement, that the sole purpose of colonies was to be serviceable to the parent state. In a word, with him, and everywhere around him, were the humiliating evi- dences of colonial disabilities produced by Englands monopo- lists, who, like the daughters of the horse-leech, had been cry- ing, Give, give, for more than a hundred years. The freedom to earn money in all branches of industry is as valuable as the choice of the agents to disburse it, whether in taxes for the support of government, or to promote in- dividual comfort. The absence, then, of topics of this sort, in Novanglus, without explanation, may well excite surprise. Among British colonists of the present day are some care- ful readers of the Revolutionary controversy, and we have been told that, if Mr. Adams is to be considered as an ex- ponent of Whig views, their aims were limited and low; that even the children of the Tories became restless at last, un- der the system of things to which he professed attachment and allegiance; that, by continual agitation, concessions have been obtained from England which abolish such social, politi- cal, commercial, and manufacturing disabilities as were im- posed upon the thirteen Colonies; that now colonists may make what they will, buy where they please, and sell xvhere they can; and that, surpassing the loftiest Whig in his lof- tiest mood, pretensions are made to be employed in foreign embassies, to become cabinet ministers, and to be elevated to the highest rank in the church, the army, and the navy. show that they and the ministerial party were agreed on that point In connection with the eloquent speeches made in our behalf, it is significant to remark, upon con- duct, that, after the peace, when Mr. Adams was in England, Lord Mansfield and other Tories treated him with vastly more consideration than either the Duke of Richmond, Lord Camden, Burke, or Fox; and that Camden, supposed by our countrymen even now to have been extremely kind to us, had the grace to say, on the subject of concluding a commercial treaty, that, since England, by our freedom, had lost the monopoly of our trade, there was little concern about it. Such a conclu- sion was not fitting in a statesman under any circumstances, and, in view of the present statistics of commercial dealing between the two countries, is xvcll worth a record here. * The views of the Liberals in colonial politics arc maintained with much bold- ness and ability in the letters of Hon. Joseph howe, of Nova Scotia, to Lord John 22 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, To all this we have replied, that, to those who have care- fully surveyed the whole ground, the solution is easy ; thus, that on questions of industry, both on the sea and on the soil, the South had no wrongs in common with the North; that, while the Whigs of the latter section were striving to effect union and concerted opposition, the single issue of taxa- tion, as connected with the preservation of prescriptive and chartered rights, was the only one which, of necessity, they needed to discuss, because upon this issue they staked the continuance of their colonial relations; that, if the leaders in the commercial and manufacturing colonies really did have an eye to independence at the outset, and thus held the state- ment of some things in reserve, so also did those of the plant- ing colonies, whose single grievance consisted in the wrong done to the pride and ambition rather than to the purse, in- asmuch as the native intellect, which was equal to their own government, was denied its proper position ~~* that a portion of the disabilities which could not be removed by re- monstrance, which belonged to the colonial system and were inseparable from it, whatever the private communings of the far-sighted, were wisely kept out of sight, while there was hope of reconciliation; that, when petitions and addresses failed, as a few saw they would, from the beginnin g,and the patience of the meekest was exhausted, the manifesto which proclaimed separation embodied, in stirring array, the long list of wrongs and denials which had palsied the arm of New England, and had rankled in the universal American heart for generations. So again, we have said, and rather curtly, we own, that these accusations of limited and low aims fall strangely enough from Loyalist lips, from descendants of nien xvho fled their native country, when the Whigs, without redress for the past or guaranties for the future, resolved to tear up the very frame- Russell, in 1839, on the subject of Responsible Government; and again, in a second series of letters from the same to the same, in 1846, On the Government of British America. ~ These avoxvals are made in the Southern Querterh, Review, Vol. XIV. p. 49. Mr. Keitt, a member of Con~ress from South Carolina, in the speech resi~ning his seat, July 16, 1856, adopts similar sentiments, in his course of remark as to the merits of the South, anti of his own State especially, in the Revolution. 1837.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOhN ADAMS. 23 work of the system defended in Novanglus; and we have re- plied fnrther, that, as certainly a~ John Adams and his corn- peers achieved their own freedom, jnst so surely were they the direct and sole authors of the boasted and invaluable con- cessions which England has recently made to British America. The children of the Tories, forsooth, critics and accusers of their deliverers! We pass to other themes, and to Mr. Adamss writings on the subject of remodelling American institutions, when Whig aims became treasonable. It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of mind, says Burke, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of government, except from a seat of authority. In a revolution there is ordinarily a transition state full of horrors; for in pulling down, there is not always at hand an architect with courage to as- sume the seat of authority, and with skill to replace the old with new and with better. It was not so with us. We passed substantially from one system to another, without con- vulsion or anarchy, and in effecting this Mr. Adams was an efficient instrument. Though England held all her colonies with the unrelenting grasp of monopoly, that all might be serviceable to her, their internal concerns were regulated by administrative forms widely different. Thus, Pennsylvania and Maryland were hardly less than monarchies; New York and Virginia, feudal aristocracies ; Massachusetts, Rhode Isl- and, and Connecticut, very much like repv~blics; and New Hampshire, a royal government, subject in the main to min- isterial instructions and orders in council. The most impor- tant changes were to be made, therefore, especially south of New England. In advising the extension to that section of the essential principles of the Northern charters, Mr. Adams proposed as much as the circumstances of the time made necessary. His first essay was at the instance of Richard Henry Lee, in November, 1775, and is the germ of our present form of State institutions, as well as of his elaborate Defence, to be mentioned as we proceed. Another brief paper soon followed, entitled Thoughts on Government, & c., which, printed in Philadelphia, was circulated by his desire without his name. Early in 1776, his aid was solicited by the Whigs 24 LL E AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, of North Carolina, who, in the event of severing their relations with the mother country, asked for wise counsel. It turned out, hoxvever, that, though other Colonies were the first to move and to inquire, South Carolina, in adopting a constitution, preceded her sisters. But the work once commenced, the Whigs erected independent governments as fast as children build cob-houses. * His next service in this behalf was to his native State. A proposition to throw off the charter defended in Novanglus was made as soon as 1776; but no definite action then fol- lowed. Nor was it until two years later that a constitution was presented to the people for their consideration; nor until 1779 that one was framed which met their approbation. In the successful draft, Mr. Adams had so large a share, that he has been called, in popular phrase, its father. It was adopted in 1780; but its operation was impeded for several years. In 1786, those who opposed it in convention, those who continued to dislike it, and the discontented of all de- scriptions, rallied under Shays, and appeared in open insur- rection. Yet it contained Mr. Adamss matnre Thoughts on Government, and most of the wise men of his time were satisfied with it. In 1820, it was revised by as safe guides as ever assembled in council in Massachusetts. Even if, in the progress of civilization, some changes in the organic law had become imperative, its original framers and its revisers stand seriously rebuked for incompetence or unfaithfulness, on the admission that all the innovations which have been accom- plished within a few years were necessary or proper. The State governments having been established, their form attracted the attention of M. Turgot, who, in a letter to Dr. Richard Price, thus objected I am not satisfied, I own, with any constitutions which have as yet been framed by the different American States I see in the greatest number an unreasonable imitation of the usages of England. Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England h~ts a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. * Letter to Mrs. Adams, July 7,1776. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 25 I beheld, said the noble man who now rests at Ashland, on a memorable occasion, I beheld a torch about being applied to a favorite edifice, and I would save it, if possible, before it was wrapt in flames. * Just so, Mr. Adams, who was in England, came to the rescue of his favorite edifice. He rapidly wrote A Defence, in three volumes, founded mainly on the passage from M. Turgot which we have quoted. He had, indeed, other motives. At this juncture, his native State was agitated by the disorders which, as we have remarked, resulted under Shays in military opposition to the govern- ment; and the project of revising the Confederation, or of ini- tiating a more efficient system, was seriously discussed. Thb first volume of the Defence was published in London, in 1787, at once transmitted to America, reprinted, and circulated, in time to exert an influence in the crisis of affairs; and that it was of essential service cannot be doubted. The work,t as completed, comprehended an analysis of the various free governments of ancient and modern times, with occasional summaries of their history to illustrate the nature of the evils under which they suffered and ultimately perished. The briefest digest would require an entire article. Some good men thought, and the party hounds yelped out, that it favored the restoration of monarchy; but what was mistake or malignity then needs no refutation now. The true and serious objections are, that it is far too elaborate, and yet that it wants method, harmony, proportion, and distinct aim. It was Mr. Adamss nature to write and to speak with so much spirit as to be vehement, and to go as directly to his point as the bullet speeds to its mark; but in this instance, so wide is his departure from his wonted method, that we almost fancy he essayed to show his countrymen how very unlike himself he could be. Yet the evidences of profound learning are abundant; there are many pages of great power; and the discussion of principles is often masterly. Were it divested of the material which, as it seems to us, confuses rather than * Mr. Clays Speech in defence of the American System, and on the Tariff Uom~ promise Bill, February, 1833. t Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America against the At- tack of M. Turgot. vOL. LXXXV. NO. 176. 3 26 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, aids the principal argument, and reduced by skilful abridg~ meat to a single volume, it would be a valuable manual to such of our public men as venture to think that the past has some lessons worthy of remembrance, or that government is still to be treated as a science. Next in order are the Discourses on Davila, ~ originally published in a nexvspaper in Philadelphia, in 1790, when 1\jlr. Adams was Vice-President, as a sequel to the Defence. As before, he was charged with being an advocate for monarchy, and with laboring to make the ofFice of President of the United States hereditary; and he expressed the opinion that these essays did much to destroy his popularity. As his assailants actually caused a suspension of these papers, his design was never fully completed. Davila himself was an Italian writer of European fame, and his work relates to the political con- vulsions in France, in the sixteenth century. Mr. Adams aimed simply to show, more clearly than he had yet done, the dangers from powerful factions in ill-balanced forms of government. To furnish the American mind with a repub- lican or democratic antidote to this work, Paines Rights of lilian was reprinted in Philadelphia, under high sanction. We confess that we like these Discourses much. In our view, they contain a great deal of sound philosophy of human na- ture, and therefore of human history; and they please us none the less, because they courageously resisted the ten- dencies of the French Revolution, which well-nigh perilled our own national existence. The remaining papers on the subject of government we must pass without notice. In closing the topic, it is of inter- est to observe that the letter to Mr. Lee, which filled but a single sheet, was the cause, ultimately, and as occasions arose, of the writing and printing of some fourteen hundred octavo pages, occupying a large part of the fourth, and the whole of the fifth and sixth volumes. And we may add, that, had Mr. Adams stood entirely aloof, he would have been spared many lasting disquietudes and misrepresentations. But a calm looker-on he never was. Personal ease he always sacri- ficed when he felt that he could serve his country. Discourses on IDavila: a Series of Papers on Political History. 18~7.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 27 We come now to a selection from his official papers in the various public stations which he filled in Europe and at home, arranged in chronological order. The seventh volume em- braces the period between his appointment to succeed Silas Deane, as commissioner to France, in November, 1777, and the welcome tidings, in the same mouth, 1782, that the strug- gle was about to end, the mother having consented to treat with her rebellious children on the basis of independence. Jn the eighth volume we have his correspondence and other docu- ments which relate to our affairs abroad generally, to his resi- dence in England as our first minister, to his vice-presidency, and to a large part of his service as successor to Washington. The ninth volume completes the epistolary and document- ary matter for the remainder of his public career, and, of course, includes his inaugural and annual speeches, special messages to Congress, proclamations, and answers to various public bodies, the whole accurately drawn from the copy books, as we are assured by the editor, except such revisions as were necessary to correct obvious errors of haste, or marked imperfections of language. Following this selec- tion are two separate extracts, complete in themselves, but not specially worthy of publication at first, or of per- petuation now; and the general correspondence, which occu- pies a part of the ninth, and the xxThole of the tenth volume, and closes with a letter declining an invitation to celebrate the Fourth of July, 1826, at New York, on which anniversary, it will be remembered, Mr. Adams passed for ever away. No American can read the most considerate of the papers written in Europe without deep emotion, recalling, as they do, the forlorn condition of their author, and what, under every aspect of affairs, he steadily strove to achieve. His lettersto his colleagues in the foreign missions, to the Count de Vergennes, and to M. Dumas; his care to keep Congress advised as to our interests abroad; his well-timed efforts to disabuse the European mind of prejudices, and to refute the slanders which were circulated against us and our cause; his * One from the letters originally pnblished in the Boston Patriot, in 1809, caused by Hamiltons famous pamphlet, The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States. 28 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, endeavors to pacify some restless, jealous spirits, who were in command, or quarrelling for the command, of public ships; his suggestions as to our future relations with the nations of the Old World; his defence of the plan to sink two hundred millions of the continental stuff to five millions in silver, or to redeem it, one dollar in specie for forty dollars in paper (which defence, unsatisfactory in some things, as every such plan must have been, since the loss to holders did not fall equally, like a tax, is yet the best argued paper on the subject we have ever seen); his twenty-six letters to that Dutch giant of the law, Calkoe n, respecting the Revolution, which con- tain more information than can be found elsewhere, in the same compass; his persistence in maintaining his official dig- nity and standing, when official bills of exchange officially drawn were actually dishonored, or likely to be so, and when the means of paying his personal expenses were alarmingly uncertain; the intrepidity of his course in Holland, his loan, and his treaty of alliance with the Dutch government, which he always regarded as the greatest success of his life; the part he took in the negotiations of the treaty of peace, his bold, unflinching demand for liberal boundaries, and for the right of his countrymen to the fisheries in the colonial seas, the value of which, as yet appreciated by few, events will one day make manifest to all; his unwearied exertions, aLnid sneers, insults, and opposition, to extend our commerce, and to insure its stability and growth by treaty stipulations; the suggestions to countervail foreign policy against our navi- gation, by reserving our coasting trade for vessels under our own flag, all these things evince the knowledge and the abil- ity which John Adams could bring to the discussion of great questions of public concern. His papers show what is far better. There is evidence on every page of his thorough, incorruptible integrity of heart. When reminded of the often-quoted sentiment, attributed to Talleyrand, but original, we think, with Goldsmith, that the use of speech is to conceal, rather than to express, ones thoughts, we have felt that its best refutation is found in the Enropean diplomacy of Franklin, Jay, and Adams, in which there was neither guile nor hypocrisy. The latter, indeed, 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 29 was so sincere, as to neglect at times established and harm- less forms, and to speak out the honest truth, bluntly, and even uncourteously. So, too, as we have mused upon Mr. Adamss course individually, we have recalled the pleas- ant story told of a maiden, who, after repeatedly reject- ing a suitor for her hand, finally married him, she said, to get rid of him~ for in Holland the pipe-smoking, money- loving Mynheers, and at Paris the every-thing-by-rule sort of gentlemen sent over from the Circumlocution Office in England, all unused to dealing with a man so pertinacious, so importunate, and so impossible to he put ofi appear to have yielded much in the same mood. Considered as a revo- lutionist, he was in truth a rare man. In Congress, the Co- lossus ,the pillar, the ablest advocate and champion of independence, member of no less than ninety committees, and chairman of twenty-five, xve find him opposed for the boldness of his measures, but triumphant. Among foreign statesmen he was always equal to the maintenance of the interests in- trusted to him, and successfnl in his endeavors. If, as Hutch- inson said of him, his ambition was without bounds, we care little; since, were we to admit the accusation in the sense intended, we do not know that his countrymen, or the Anglo-Saxon race anywhe#e, are serious losers by his personal advancement, and by the expulsion of the old fai~ilies that claimed of right and by inheritance to rule America, to the utter exclusion of such an upstart planter as the owner ~ This is the gentlest word used by the descendants of the Loyalists who lost offi- cial places, and whose estates were confiscated. We have heard those occupying high positions in the British Colonies denounce the prominent Whigs in unmeasured terms. Washington is the special object of vituperation; the epithets of rascal, traitor, with expletives which we shall not repeat, are used not sparingly. The love of political distinction in the old families was a marked trait; and it de- scended to their children, who, until the recent change in the policy of governing British America, monopolized the offices there. A few years ago, the son of a Bos- ton Loyalist complained to us, that he was a neglected man. As every one clse was dissatisfied because he filled all the places in his county, and was one of her Majestys Council hesides, we had the curiosity to ascertain that he held eighteen com- missions, all, as the rule then was, for I~/iB. At the same time, in the Colony in which this gentleman lives, a single village of some two thousand people only, furnished one fourth of the members of the Legislative Council, which body answers to a Sen- ate with us. Imagine a single country town sending one fourth of the Senators of Massachusetts for twenty, thirty, or forty years, without a change in the persons 30 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, of Mount Vernon, and such upstart barristers as John Mar- shall and John Jay. As we pass to the successful rebel, after he had stood as the minister of a free country in the presence of the sovereign to whom he was born in allegiance, and had become Presi- dent of the United States, we read his communications to his Cabinet, and to other personages whom he had occasion to address, with interest and profit. These papers are frank in statement, convey his meaning in the fewest words possible, display accurate information of the condition of public affairs, and are of no small value as materials for history. Again, as we compare the style, topics, and length of his speeches and messages to Congress with similar documents of the present day, we are struck with the change, the whole of his papers of this class during the four years, nearly thirty in number, occupying about the space of one of the annual messages of our late chief magistrate. In the general correspondence our readers xviii find much that is full of instruction, and we would especially invite their attention to the letters to Jefferson, to Mr. Tudor, to Rev. Dr. Morse, and to Mr. Lloyd, which are very numerous. The communication to the latter of April 24, 1813,~ shows a qual- ity of character which we may here pause to notice, once for all. It is devoted principally to an account of the appoint- ment of Washington to the command of the army. Honest, warm-tempered men are somewhat apt to use strong words when speaking of their own deeds, as well as when comment- ing upon the conduct of those with whom they have been in conflict as to act or opinion. Mr. Adams was by no means an exception. No one disputes that it was oxving to his sagacity and exertions that the right selection was made of even, save to fill vacancies caused by death! In the Legislative Council of another Colony, only one less than half of the members were partners in the same private hank, and only one less than half too, were relatives; while another member was alsc Chief Justice, and had a seat in the Executive Council, and thus in these three capacities assisted to make, to administer, and to advise the Governor in executing, the laws. Those who are familiar with colonial politics will remember that the quarrel with these Loyalists, or old families, preceded the demands on the crown for a general relaxation of the rigors and disabilities of the colonial system, and that the construction of the Councils was one of the first things c6mplaincd of. Vol. X. p. 162. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 31 commander-in-chief, or that his service in this behalf was one of the most meritorious, and, in its results, one of the most important, of his whole career. But we cannot conceive, as implied in this letter, that he was so far in advance of his as- sociates in Congress, of officers in the army, and of leading Whigs everywhere, as to have incurred such reproaches as he mentions, and illustrates by reference to the odium which had attached to him for his defence of Preston and his sob diers five years previously. In this instance of self-praise, then, as well as in his cen- sures, or equivocal commendations, of Franklin, Hamilton, and Pinckney, and of several others with whom he dis- agreed more or less seriously, as also in the motives of ac- tion which he sometimes attributes to persons who opposed his advancement, we are to make allowance for the ardor of his temperament, and, it may be, for a disposition to under- value the character of his associates. Cases in which we are called upon to exercise our own judgment are not so rare as we could wish. In fact, the displays of vanity, of egotism, and of apprehension seemingly that some oi~e else would ap- propriate the credit due to his labors, sacrifices, and fidelity in the exigencies which arose in promoting the common cause, are quite too numerous. And yet, grave faults though they are, we are glad the papers in which they appear are not sup- pressed, since we see, and posterity will see, the man just as he was to his contemporaries. Vanity, he wrote at twenty, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly. It was so ever afterwards. In his sensitiveness to praise and to censure, in his continual rehearsals of his own merits and of his countrys obligations to him, in his painful brooding over ungrateful requitals, his resemblance to Cicero is very strongly marked; and he surpassed the IRoman in this, that, while Cicero did but ask another to chronicle his achievements, he was his own Lucius Lucceius. But let none forget, as some are prone to do, when pointing out these weak- nesses in our great countryman, that, though sometimes his feelings were worth a guinea a minute, ~ we enjoy Mr. Adamss own remark of General Wayne, Mad Anthony, the hero of Stony Point. 32 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, blessings procured by this very vanity; that its possessor, when his associates were timid or undecided, equal in his own estimation to every emergency, boldly led off, and that whatever he undertook he accomplished. Let us admit that inordinate self-esteem in a revolutionist is a positive virtue; and say that, as, according to the French aphorist, Unbound- ed modesty is nothing more than unavowed vanity, he dif- fered from the man whom the world calls modest only because he spoke without concealment. There is not much in Mr. Adamss public life, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, which even his enemies fastened upon him to lessen his fame, save the alleged monarchical doctrines of the Defence, and his occasional exhibitions of self-esteem, irritability, and the like. From the commence- ment to the close of his connection with the Federal gov- ernment, however, he was exposed to more or less blame, not only from his opponents, but from persons of decisive influence in his own party. The Federalists, in fact, allege that his measures, as President, first divided, and at last ruined them. We believe that it was not so, that he was not the cause of democratic ascendency. Of this debatable period, justice demands a full ~ind calm survey. When we regard the question as one of history, to be decided upon the evi- dence, we do not wonder at the fall of Federalism, but rather marvel that the Constitution of the United States was ever adopted; or at least that its original friends were allowed to continue in power for a period of twelve years. In the popu- lar mind, the Federalists as a body were held to be aristocrats who had little sympathy with the common people; who were secretly monarchists, or, at best, stern advocates of stern laws; who would pardon nothing to the outbreaks of indebted pov- erty, the direct result of the war for freedom,to the occasional excesses of emancipated colonists, who, in the joy of severed bonds, hardly knew at times how to use, without abusing, their newly acqnired privileges. In our view, there was a per- petual struggle against Federalism, as thus understood, until its overthrow. But had no such impressions existed, we entertain the opinion that the policy of Washington in the French Revolution, and his assent to Jays treaty, rendered the decline of the Federal party certain. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 33 Thus premising, and with a single desire to state the truth, fall where it may, we proceed to a brief survey of Mr. Adamss relations to his countrymen while he was second under the first, and first under the second, administration. That he was no favorite with several prominent statesmen, is well known; and had Samuel Adams, or Hancock, been supposed sound on the Constitution, one of them probably would have been selected as Vice-President. At the outset, then, he was not the first choice of those who assumed to control affairs; and he entered upon his duties with the humiliating recollection that, though Washington had received every electoral suf- frage, it had been so arranged that a minority vote only had been cast for him, ten other candidates receiving a combined majority of one. His course as presiding officer of the Senate, during the first term, was satisfactory to most, and indeed was generally applauded; but at the second election, while the illustrious chief was re-elected with entire unanimity, he was again so opposed in the electoral colleges, that a change of six votes would have defeated him. Nor, as the division of the country into distinct political parties became more manifest, would he have been nominated to succeed Washington, but for the fear that Jays popularity had been seriously impaired by the negotiation of the treaty which bcars his name. As it was, though many Federalists disliked Mr. Adams, they were driven to adopt him by the force of circumstances; but coupled their support of him with the notable device of giving Thomas Piuckney, the can- didate for the Vice-Presidency, an equal support, or of hold- ing the power of excluding Mr. Adams from the first office by some chance vote in the colleges, or, in the last resort, of elect- ing Piuckney in the House of Representatives.~ This plan, if not devised by Hamilton, had his sanction. It well-nigh suc- ceeded, not in elevating Piuckney, but in the discomfiture of the Federalists; for Jefferson, who of all men was regarded as their evil genius, was elected to the second place, and Mr. * It is hardly necessary to say, that, as the Constitution then stood, the highest candidate in the electoral colleges was to he President, and the second, Vice-Presi- dent, and that, when two persons received an equal number, the election dovolved upon the lower house of Congress, as now when there is no choice by the Electors. 34 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, Adams secured the first by a majority of one; or, to state the result differently, two votes added to the Democratic candi- date would have put an end to Federal rule. Thus, though the President was a Federalist, a Democrat was placed in the succession. So near its fall was Federalism at the first elec- tion after the retirement of WashiMgton. For the policy to give it no harsher name adopted as above stated, if we judge by written testimony, there is no sufficient expla- nation. We can well understand that fears might have been entertained that Mr. Adams, as chief magistrate, would want steadiness of purpose, and exhibit his infirmities to the injury of the public interests; but we are amazed that, his nomina- tion once considerately made, no matter on what grounds, any persons who consented to it should have forgotten their obligations to observe good faith towards him, and towards those of the Federal party who, without such apprehensions, preferred him to all others. We pass by the events of Mr. Adamss administration, un- til we come to the mission to France, which produced divis- ions from which the Federalists never recovered. Previously, and down to the inception of that measure, dissatisfaction had been inconsiderable among his political friends, as appears by the letters of distinguished members of his party, whose con- fidence he then lost. It is claimed in his behalf, that Wash- ington did not object to a renewal of negotiations with our old ally, and that his letters on the subject warrant a still stronger statement. Be this as it may, many wise and pure men did express their satisfaction that the indirect over- tures of the French rulers were not rejected. Among these was John Marshall, whose opinions were always entitled to the \veight of judicial decision, and who, in this particular case, was well advised, because, having been member of a pre- vious mission to France, he had become intimately acquaint- ed with the exact relations between the two countries. The military men, as a class, and many civilians of consideration, were, however, sorely displeased. We admit that one party to this issue was as patriotic as the other; still, we cannot but ~ There are two letters addressed to Mr. Adams, February and March, 1799; see Washin tons Writings, Vol. II. pp. 398, 403. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 33 believe that those who favored the postponement of hostili- ties until another attempt had been made in diplomacy, were in the right. And besides, the difficulties with France were of such a nature, that, do as our government would, loud and unjust complaints were sure to follow. Of these, Washing- ton bore his full share ; but he bore them in silence. His suc- cessor, on the other hand, reproached in ways which one of his temperament was poorly fitted to endure, was driven in the intensity of his pain, in the years of his retirement, to com- mit the only really reprehensible acts of his life. That, at the moment, and while the last French mission was the subject of thought and discussion, Mr. Adams is to be held amenable for some ungracious words, and for conceal- ments from official personages who had a right to know his intentions, we admit; but the grave question after all is, whether these intentions, matured into deeds, were such as became a Christian statesman, and whether he preserved the peace of his country without dishonor. As once remarked, his decision to embrace the indirect~ offer to renew nego- tiations caused a lasting schism in the Federal ranks; and the dissensions to which it gave rise have been perpetuated to our own time, in certain circles, with more or less asperity of feel- ing; but we apprehend that the general sentiment now is, that Mr. Adams decided wisely. Yet, if it were not so, pos- terity, we are sure, will have warm praise to bestow on an act which averted the scourge of war. Of the dissatisfied Federalists, Hamilton was the recog- nized head; and it would seem that the earliest determi- nation was to appeal to Washington, to serve a third term. His death occurred while this plan was in agitation. In the subsequent castings about for a candidate, it was urged on the one side, in the letters xvhich have come down to us, that the renomination of Mr. Adams would ruin, and on the other, that it would save, the Federal party. The final resolve was to support him; but, as in the previous election, with an understanding that Charles Cotesworth Piuckney, who was selected in room of his brother Thomas for the second place, should have an equal~ chance for the ex- ecutive chair; Hamilton avowing that he would refuse other 36 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, and direct support to Mr. Adams, even though the consequence should be the election of Jefferson. Under such auspices, Federalism entered upon its last conflict with Democracy. It need hardly be said, that those who preferred Mr. Adams, and espoused his cause with hearty good-will, had reason to complain of a device which at the outset coun- tenanced, and which in the end might effect, his degradation from the Presidency of the United States to the Presidency of the Senate. Whatever the motives of Hamilton and his section of the party, the friends of Jefferson, if left to choose, could not have devised an arrangement more likely to insure the success of the Democratic ticket. To some of the Federalists, indeed, who had assented to Hamiltons views, the measure, on mor- al grounds, gave no little uneasiness. One of distinguished position wrote to him, that he abominated the hypocritical part which we have been necessitated to act; another, that he never liked the half-way plan which has been pursued, and that he was apprehensive Federal men are in danger of losing character in the delicate point of sincerity; a third, that it is, I confess, awkward and embarrassing to act under the constraints that we do; still another, that xve must vote for him [Mr. Adams], I suppose, and therefore cannot safely say to every one what we think of him; and yet a fifth, that it is true there is an apparent absurdity in sup- porting a man whom we know to be unworthy of trust, and, again, that, whatever display is made of Mr. Adams~ s mis- conduct, it must be continually recollected that he may be again chosen by us, and that we are pledged to give him a full chance of the united vote concerted at Philadelphia. These extracts show the misgivings of gentlemen who ad- hered to Hamilton; the feelings of those who adhered to Mr. Adams can be easily imagined. Add to this state of things, the pamphlet, ~ which occasioned new disaffection and confusion, where, already, there was quite enough of dis Letter from Alexander Hamilton, concerning the Public Conduct and Char- acter of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States, now in Hamiltons Works, Vol. VII. p. 687, which gave offence even to so me of the authors warmest admirers. 1857.] LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. 37 cord, and we may form some idea of the hopeless prospect of defeating the opposing candidates. With the accusations and recriminations of that day we have nothing to do. We aim only to show that, as Mr. Adams was brought forward originally without unanimity, so he was kept in the field on compro- mise, and amid dissensions. Possibly the Alien and Sedition Laws, for which he was made no more responsible by his sig- nature than were Federalists in Congress by their votes, and the last and fatal mission to France, which was his individ- ual act, may have accelerated the doom of Federalism, just as a man whose lungs are half consumed may hasten the crisis by suicide; but anterior to, and more potent than these, were the causes which we mentioned as we commenced the discus- sion of the topic. If it be still insisted that the second President occasioned the fall of his party, he will not be held accountable, surely, for the ill-advised measures which were adopted after it was ascertained that he had failed of re-election. The electoral votes, as all know, were equal, not, as Hamilton designed them to be, for Adams and Piuckney, but for Jefferson and Burr. Hence, the choice of President devolved upon the House of Representatives. That Jefferson was intended for the first office by every one who had cast a Democratic vote, no man in all America doubted; and why, then, did the Federal mem- bers of Congress seek to defeat the popular will? Aaron Burr was a person against whom every gentlemans doors should have been doubly barred and bolted; yet, though warned and entreated by Hamilton in trumpet tones, the States repre- sented by Federalists persisted in opposing Jefferson for days, in thirty-five ballotings, and Massachusetts, Rhode Isl- and, Connecticut, and New Hampshire voted for Burr on the last and thirty-sixth balloting, in which Jefferson was elected. In moral intent, as appears by the records of Congress, and beyond all dispute by the correspondence of the period, the Federal party, by their authorized exponents, are answerable for the elevation of a man who had not been thought of until they adopted him as a candidate, and whose character was unconditionally detestable. That the Federalists who voted for Aaron Burr polluted themselves, was the sentiment of Ham- voL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 4 38 LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS. [July, ilton. Later, when the fatal coils were fast closing around him, he uttered, in his painful survey of the past, these despair- ing words: Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrificed or done more for the present Con- stitution than myself I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs of its friends, no less than the curses of its foes, for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more, that this American world xvas not made for me. Would this letter have been written, if the Federal members of Congress, one and all, had pro- nounced, as did John Marshall, that they would take no part in the contest between Jefferson and Burr? Without Federal votes in that contest, would a majority of the Fed- eralists in New York have supported Burr for Governor, in 1804; and without these instances of Federal complicity, would Hamilton have become involved beyond extrication in that final encounter? We lament that Mr. Adams did not bear his personal and his political griefs meekly. Never was it more necessary to observe the proverb of the old Hebrews, that, If a xvord be worth one shekel, sue cc is worth two. His peace and his position in history alike demanded of him seeming oblivious- ness of whatever in the past had been painful. Censure and obloquy are the price which eminent men have been com- pelled to pay to contemporaries in all ages, and they should always leave their vindication to those who come after them. When a Cuesar whimpers, the world holds down its head; and C~sar may himself be sure that, if he cry but once, Help me, Cassius, or I sink, Cassius will find a day to taunt him with his weakness. Our task is finished. We have endeavored to be simply just. As now we are compelled to remember that the good man, whose Life and Works are before us, and who, of all men, should have lived and died a Federalist, threw himself into the arms of his ancient enemies, and became a Demo- crat with Federal principles, let us also remember, that happy are those of our race whose most questionable acts occur under accumulated mental sufferings, and the ailments of an 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 39 aged frame. Let us say, too, that happy is the private citizen, or the time-worn statesman, who passes away to his rest, and to his reward, as did JOHN ADAMS, with the united acclaim of friend and foe, that he was a man of unconquerable intre- pidity, and of incorruptible integrity. As yet, the extent and the value of the services which he rendered to the Anglo- Saxon race are not generally understood or appreciated. The means of better information are afforded by these volumes; and most earnestly do we commend them to the study of the young men of our country, who, soon to come upon the thea- tre of affairs, will seek some guide, and who may safely form their characters, public and private, upon a model which had neither a vice nor a crime to tarnish a long, varied, and unpre- cedentedly arduous career. ART. 11.i. Human PhysiQiogy, Statical and Dynamical; or the Conditions and Course of the Lfe of Man. By JOHN WILLIAM IDRAPER, M. D., LL. ID., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1856. 8vo. pp. 649. 2. The Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces. By WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, M. ID., Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in the University of London. From the Philosophical Transactions, Part II., for 1850. London. 1850. 4to. pp. 37. 3. The 61orrelation of Physical Forces. By W. R. GROVE, M. A., F. IR. S., Barrister-at-Law. Second Edition. London. 1850. Svo. pp. 119. 4. C~aloric; its Mechanical, C4emical, and Vital Agencies in the Phenomena of Nature. By SAMUEL L. METCALFE, M. ID., of Transylvania University. London. 1843. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 1100. THE appearance of Professor Drapers ingenious and origi- nal treatise on Physiology must call the attention of a large class of readers to those higher questions of the science which

1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 39 aged frame. Let us say, too, that happy is the private citizen, or the time-worn statesman, who passes away to his rest, and to his reward, as did JOHN ADAMS, with the united acclaim of friend and foe, that he was a man of unconquerable intre- pidity, and of incorruptible integrity. As yet, the extent and the value of the services which he rendered to the Anglo- Saxon race are not generally understood or appreciated. The means of better information are afforded by these volumes; and most earnestly do we commend them to the study of the young men of our country, who, soon to come upon the thea- tre of affairs, will seek some guide, and who may safely form their characters, public and private, upon a model which had neither a vice nor a crime to tarnish a long, varied, and unpre- cedentedly arduous career. ART. 11.i. Human PhysiQiogy, Statical and Dynamical; or the Conditions and Course of the Lfe of Man. By JOHN WILLIAM IDRAPER, M. D., LL. ID., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1856. 8vo. pp. 649. 2. The Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces. By WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, M. ID., Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in the University of London. From the Philosophical Transactions, Part II., for 1850. London. 1850. 4to. pp. 37. 3. The 61orrelation of Physical Forces. By W. R. GROVE, M. A., F. IR. S., Barrister-at-Law. Second Edition. London. 1850. Svo. pp. 119. 4. C~aloric; its Mechanical, C4emical, and Vital Agencies in the Phenomena of Nature. By SAMUEL L. METCALFE, M. ID., of Transylvania University. London. 1843. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 1100. THE appearance of Professor Drapers ingenious and origi- nal treatise on Physiology must call the attention of a large class of readers to those higher questions of the science which 40 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, are freely discussed in its pages. The scientific and literary character of the work has been made the subject of special notice in various other quarters. It is agreed that Professor Draper has given us a book that is full of interest containing many striking views and novel experimental illustrations. Its faults spring out of its merits, and are such as belong to most works of science written by men of lively imagination. We make our sincere acknowledgments to the author for the fresh contributions he has furnished to our knowledge of the laws of life, and the new impulse he has imparted to the study of its mysteries. We have prefixed to this paper the titles of two essays, published within the last few years, and also of a ponderous volume which saw the light before either of them, and has been, or seems to have been, less read than either. Mr. Groves essay has excited great attention in England, and received the honors of translation into the French language. Dr. Carpenters paper, published in the Philosophical Trans- actions, extended the generalizations of Mr. Grove into the domain of Physiology. Both are brief, and are therefore read. Dr. Metealfe forgot the motto which he must have often seen quoted from DAlembert: The author kills himself in spin- ning out what the reader kills himself in cutting short. Consequently his book has been shelved, in spite of its origi- nality and learning. But we must do our countryman the justice to say, that, if there is anything in the physical theory of vital actions which has found advocates in Mr. Newport and Dr. Carpenter, and which Professor Draper has so forcibly illustrated, Dr. Metealfe has anticipated them all in maintain- ing that caloric is alone, of every form of being, quick or dead, the active principle; the same doctrine, modernized, which, in another form, was taught by Hippocrates. And we must be permitted to express our astonishment that a work of such pretensions, published in London, should be ignored by any English writer of authority, while he is repeating and developing its leading ideas, long since given to the world. We do not propose to make a critical examination of any of these publications. We only avail ourselves of them for the purpose of opening one of the questions which all of them 1857.] 41 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. suggest or discuss. This is the relation existing between the physical agencies of general nature and the peculiar roanifes- tations of living beings. The interest of physiologists was especially called to this subject by the well-known Lectures of Professor Matteucci, delivered in the University of Pisa, by appointment of the Tuscan government, in 1344. A transla- tion of these Lectures was introduced to the English public under the auspices of Dr. Pereira and Professor Faraday. From that time, the questions involved in the comparison of living and lifeless nature have attracted more and more atten- tion, until they have become, in a measure, blended with popular studies. We propose to select one subdivision of this vast subject for such discussion as may not be unfitted for the eye of the unprofessional student of nature. If the reader of this paper live another complete year, his self-conscious principle will have migrated from its present tenement to another, the raw materials, even, of xvhich are not as yet put together. A portion of that body of his which is to be, \Vill ripen in the corn of the next harvest. Another portion of his future person he will purchase, or others will purchase for him, headed up in the form of certain barrels of potatoes. A third fraction is yet to be gathered in a Southern rice-field. The limbs with which he is then to walk will be clad with flesh borrowed from the tenants of many stalls and pastures, now unconscious of their doom. The very organs of speech with which he is to talk so wisely, or plead so elo- quently, or preach so effectively, must first serve his humbler brethren to bleat, to bellow, and for all the varied utterances of bristled or feathered barn-yard life. His bones themselves are, to a great extent, in posse, and not in esse. A bag of phosphate of lime which he has ordered from Professor Mapes, for his grounds, contains a large part of what is to be his next years skeleton. And, more than all this, as by far the greater part of his body is nothing, after all, but water, the main sub- stance of his scattered members is to be looked for in the res- ervoir, in the running streams, at the bottom of the well, in the clouds that float over his head, or diffused among them all. For a certain period, then, the permanent human being is to 4* 42 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, use the temporary fabric made up of these shifting materials. So long as they are held together in human shape, they mani- fest certain properties which fit them for the use of a self-con- scious and self-determining existence. But it is as absurd to suppose any identification of this existence with the materials which it puts on and off, as to suppose the hand identified with the glove it wears, or the sponge with the various fluids which may in succession fill its pores. Our individual being is in no sense approximated to a potato by living on that esculent for a few months; and if we study the potato while it forms a part of our bodies un(ler the name of brain or mus- cle, we shall learn no more of the true nature of our self- determining consciousness than if we studied the same tuber in the hill where it grew. These forms of nutritive matter that pass through our sys- tems in a continual round may be observed, weighed, tested, analyzed, tortured in a thousand ways, without our touching for a moment the higher problem of our human existence. Sooner or later, according to the perfection of our methods and instruments, we bring hard up against a deaf, dumb, blind fact. The microscope reaches a granule, and there it stops. Chemistry finds a few bodies which it cannot decompose, and plays with them as with so many dominos, counting and matching equivalents as our old friends of the Caf6 Procope used to count and match the spots on their humbler play- things. But why C4, O2~ HG, have such a tendency to come together, and why, when they have come together, a fluid ounce of the resulting compound will make the small philoso- pher as great as a king for an hour or two, and give him the usual headache which crowns entail upon their wearers, the next morning, is not written in the pages of Lehmann, nor treasured in the archives of Poggendorf. Experimental phys- iology teaches how to stop the wheels of the living machinery, and sometimes how to start them when their action is checked; but no observation from the outside ever did or ever will approach the mystery of that most intense of all realities, our relations, as responsible agents, to right and wrong. It will never answer, by aid of microscope, or balance, or scalpel, that everrecurring question, MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 43 1857.] Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality l The study of physical and physiological phenomena has been thought to lead to what is called materialism, or some- thing worse. In spite of Galens half-Christian religious elo- quence, in spite of Hailers defence of the faith, and of Boerhaaves apostolic piety, we cannot forget the old saying, that where there are three physicians there are two atheists. It would be almost as fair to say, that where there are three bank-clerks there are two rogues. Unquestionably, the hand- ling of large sums of money betrays into dishonesty some men who would have resisted slighter temptations. So the exclusive study of the bodily functions may, now and then, lead away a weak mind from the contemplation of the spirit- ual side of nature. The mind, like the eye, has its adjust- ment to near and remote objects. A watchmaker can find the broken tooth in a ships chronometer quicker than the captain, and the captain will detect a sail in the distance long before the artisan can see it. Physiologists and metaphysi- cians look at the same objects with different focal adjustments; but if they deny the truths out of their own immediate range, their eyes have got the better of their judgment. If the mar- iner will not trust his chronometer to the expert, he loses his reckoning; if the nice-fingered myope should play sailor, the pirate would be sure to catch him. Our old, foolish proverb is not, therefore, wholly without its meaning. Charlatans in physiology, who are not so likely to be found in any other profession as in the one mentioned, make the mistake of con- founding the results derived from their observation of the working of certain instruments, in health or disease, with those that claim another and a more exalted source. Our convictions, even without special divine illumination, reveal us to ourselves, not as machines, but as sub-creative centres of intelligence and power. The two ranges of mental vision should never be confounded for good or for bad. The laws of the organism cannot be projected, a priori, on the strength of the profoundest intuitions. Hunters maxim, Dont think, but try, comes down like a pile-driver on the audacious head possessed by the delusion that it can find out how things are, 44 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, by abstract speculation upon the question how they ought to be. But, on the other hand, the doctrine of an immortal spirit will never come from the dissecting-room or the labora- tory, unless it is first carried thither from a higher sphere. Yet there is nothing in these workshops that can efface it, any more than their gases and exhalations can blot out the stars of heaven. Thus what we have to say must be considered as applying solely to the living body, and not to the divine emanation which, in the human form, seems, but only seems, to identify itself for a while with the shape it uses. We shall not even think it necessary to consider the living body in all its attri- butes. Animals have a life in common with plants: they grow, they keep their condition, they decay; they reproduce their kind, they perish; and these acts, apart from self-con- sciousness or any voluntary agenc~y, constitute them living creatures. This simplest and broadest aspect of living nature is that which we propose to consider. Life may be contemplated either as a condition, manifested by a group of phenomena, or as the cause of that condition. Looked at as a condition, it is the active state peculiar to an organism, vegetable or animal, which consists in the mainte- nance of structural integrity by a constant interchange of ele- ments with surrounding matter. This interchange is effected under the influence of certain exciting agencies, or stimuli, such as light and heat, which are essential to its due perform- ance. An egg or a seed perishing undeveloped has never been excited into this active state, and therefore cannot be said to have lived. It was only for a time capable of liv- ing, if the proper stimuli and surrounding matters h d been present. But life may be considered, again, as a cause of the phe- nomena jnst referred to, and it is in this aspect that we mean to regard it; and before attempting to examine our special question, we must remember the limits of all our inquiries with reference to causation. We can hope for nothing more, in the way of positive increase of knowledge, than these results, in any such inquiry : to detect the constant ante- cedents of any condition or change; to resolve one or more 1857.] 45 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. antecedents into consequents of some previous fact; to show that one or more of the causative elements are the same that are productive of other effects; and, lastly, to reproduce the effect by supplying the causative conditions, or to prove the nature of the constant antecedent by experiment. As to the essence of causation or of force, in any of its aspects, we are no wiser than Newton, the profoundest student of its laws, and the readiest to confess his ignorance of its intimate nature. Let us look first at the theological relations of an inquiry into the causes and nature of life. These, if nothing else, may, we think, be satisfactorily adjusted. Every action, or series of actions, is referred by the mind to a force, and this again to a power. Thus the action of a clock is referred to the force of the spring, and this force is the manifestation of a power stored in the spring by winding it up, and set free by giving the first swing to the pendulum. We may consider action as the specific application of force; force, as the transfer of power, or power in transitu; power itself, as the original or delegated source of being, or of change in its condition. Thus life, which appears as a series of actions, is referred to a force commonly called vital, and this to a power, having its centre in the Divine Being; for all who recognize a Divinity are agreed that all power comes from him. This is what they mean when they call omnipotence one of his attributes. The first manifestations of force are habitually referred to the same original source. Thus we say that the Creator gave motion to the planets in space, taking it for granted that the Master-hand alone could impart their original impulse. If, however, we are asked why they con- tinue to roll on, we are told that the vis inertiw keeps them from stopping. But this is a mere name, and we might as well say that the vis motus starts a planet, as that the vis inerliw keeps it going. A simpler statement is that the Divine agency, once in operation, iiever changes without cause. We cannot allow force to be self-sustaining any more than self-originating, nor matter itself to be self-subsistent any more than self-creating. Actualia dependent a Deo turn in existendo, tum in agendo. Neque male docetur conserva 46 MEChANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, tionem divinam esse continuatam creationem, ut radius con- tinue a sole prodit. Such are the xvords of Leibnitz. The apparent uniformity of force, and the seeming independent existence of matter, lead us to speak of them as if their laws, as we term them, were absolutely and eternally inherent. But a law which an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being enforces, is plainly nothing more than the Lawgiver himself at work. This is the meaning of that somewhat startling utterance of Oken, The universe is God rotating. Tran- scendental Physiology is beginning to steal from the hymn- books. With glory clad, with strength arrayed, The Lord, that oer all nature reigns, The worlds foundations strongly laid, And the vast fabric still sustains. So sang Tate and Brady, paraphrasing the royal David. And Watts, still more expressly, in the hymn made famous by the harp of thousand strings His Spirit moves our heaving lungs, Or they would breathe no more. Once giving in our complete adhesion to the doctrine of the immanent Deity, we get rid of many difficulties in the way of speculative inquiry into the nature and origin of things. This may be an important preliminary. Mr. New- port, the very distinguished physiological anatomist, commu- nicated a paper to the Linna~an Society, in the year 1845, On the Natnral History of the Oil Beetle, Meloi~. It con- tained the following sentence: The facts I have now de- tailed lead me, in conformity with the discovery by Faraday of the analogy of light with heat, magnetism, and electricity, to regard light as the primary source of all vital and instinc- tive power, the degrees and variations of which may, perhaps, be referred to modifications of this influence on the special organization of each animal body. The Council of the Society objected to the publication of the passage from which this is extracted. The Societys Index Expurgatorius would have been more complete, if it had included the Invocation of the third book of Paradise Lost, which has hitherto escaped the Anglican censorship. 1857.] 47 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. But if the student of nature and the student of divinity can once agree that all the forces of the universe, as well as all its power, are immediately dependent upon its Creator, that He is not only omnipotent, but omnirnovent, we have no longer any fear of nebular theories, or doctrines of equivo- cal generation, or of progressive development. If we saw a new planet actually formed in the field of the telescqpe, or the imaginary Acarus Crossii put together de toutes pi~ces under the microscope, true to its alleged pedigree, out of Silex, by Galvanism, it would no more turn us into atheists, than a sight of the mint would make us doubt the national credit. We are ready, therefore, to examine the mystery of life with the same freedom that we should carry into the examl- nation of any other problem; for it is only a question of what mechanism is employed in its evolution and sustenance. We begin, then, by examining the general rules which the Creator seems to have prescribed to his own operations. We ask, in the first place, whether he is wont, so far as we know, to employ a great multitude of materials, patterns, and forces, or whether he has seen fit to accomplish many different ends by the employment of a few of these only. In all our studies of external nature, the tendency of in- creasing knowledge has uniformly been to show that the rules of creation are simplicity of material, economy of inventive effort, and thrift in the expenditure of force. All the endless forms in which matter presents itself to us are resolved by chemistry into some threescore supposed simple substances, some of these, perhaps, being only modifications of the same element. The shapes of beasts and birds, of reptiles and fishes, vary in every conceivable degree; yet a single vertebra is the pattern and representation of the frame-work of them all, from eels to elephants. The identity reaches still further, across a mighty gulf of being, but bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm in the fable of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the die of the same primitive conception, and 48 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, differ only in their special adaptation to particular ends. Again, the study of the movements of the universe has led us from their complex phenomena to the few simple forces from which they flow. The falling apple and the rolling planet are shown to obey the same tendency. The stick of sealing-wax that draws a feather to it, is animated by the same impulse that convulses the stormy heavens. These generalizations have simplified our view of the grand- est material operations, yet we do not feel that creative power and wisdom have been shorn of any single ray by the demon- strations of Newton or of Franklin. On the contrary, the larger the collection of seemingly heterogeneous facts we can bring under the rule of a single formula, the nearer we feel that we have reached towards the source of knowledge, and the more perfectly we trace that little arc of the immeasurable circle which comes within the range of our hasty observations, at first like the broken fragments of a many-sided polygon, but at last as a simple curve that encloses all we know or can know of Nature. To our own intellectual wealth, the gain is like that of the over-burdened traveller, who should exchange hundred-weights of iron for ounces of gold. Evanescent, formless, unstable, impalpable, a fog of uncondensed expe- riences hovers over our consciousness like an atmosphere of uncombined gases. One spark of genius shoots through it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Sci- ence the art of packing knowledge. We are moving in the right direction, therefore, when we summon all the agencies of nature before the tribunal of Sci- ence, and try the question of their identity under their various aliases, just so often as a new set of masks or disguises is de- tected in their possession. The accumulated discoveries of late years have resulted in such a trial. Following the same course that Newton and Franklin followed in their general- izations, living philosophers have attempted to show relations of mutual convertibility, if not of identity, between the series of forces known as light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity. Some leading facts indicating their inti- mate relationship may be very briefly recalled. 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 49 A body heated to a certain point becomes luminous; its heat seems to pass over partly into the condition of light. Thus iron becomes red-hot at about 1,0000 Fahrenheit. Light may, perhaps, be changed into, or manifest itself as heat. In Franklins famous experiment, the black cloth, which ab- sorbs all the luminous rays, sinks deepest into the snow. Light, again, may act chemically, as heat does, as we see in the results of photography. It may be fixed in a body, like heat, as is shown in the Bologna phosphorus, which shines for some minutes after being exposed to sunlight, or to the com- mon light of day. Heat develops electricity, as in the various therino-electric combinations of different metals. Electricity produces light, and sets fire to combustibles. The highest magnetic powers are developed in iron by the action of gal- vanic electricity. The magnet, again, is made to give galvanic shocks in a common form of battery, with the usual manifes- tations of light and heat. Chemical force develops light, heat, and electricity; and each of these is used constantly in the laboratory as a practical means of inducing chemical action. Heat alone is shown, by an experiment of Mr. Grove, to be capable of decomposing water. Further than this, as all forms of motion are capable of developing heat, or light, or electricity, according to the conditions under which it occurs, and as heat and electricity and chemical changes are habit- ually used to produce motion, it is questioned whether all the apparent varieties of force are not mutually convertible, there being in reality but one kind of force, which manifests itself in each of the different modes just spoken of according to the material substratum through which it is passing, or some other modifying cause. And as there are facts indicating the ex- istence of a system of equivalents as prevailing in these con- versions, or of a fixed ratio between the various convertible forms of force, so that a given electrical force will produce just so much heat or chemical decomposition, and either of these reproduce the original amount of electricity, it has been maintained that the total force of the inorganic universe is undergoing perpetual transfer, but never changes in amount, any more than the matter of the universe is altered in quan- tity by change of form. vOL. Lxxxv.No. 176. 5 50 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, This would be the noblest of generalizations, could we ac- cept it without limit, as an established truth a few sim- ple elements; the material world formed by tbeir innumerable combinations ; one force, an effluence from the central power of creation, animating all; binding atoms, guiding systems, illuminating, warming, renewing, dissolving, as it passes through the various media of which the unbreathing uni- verse is made up. We may carry the generalization a step further. We know nothing of matter itself except as a collection of localized forces, points of attraction and repulsion, as Boscovich ex- pressed his notion of its elements. Take a quartz crystal as an example. It resists the passage of certain other forces through a limited portion of space. It resists the separation of that sphere of resistance into two or more parts, by means of what we call cohesion. If a ray of light attempts to pass the portion of space within which these circumscribed forces have been found to act, it is thrown back or bent from its course. Here, then, are localized forces, or agencies that pro- duce change; the existence of anything behind them sub- stance, or substratum is a mere hypothesis. But while the fluent forces of the universe have been shown to pass more or less completely into one another, these collections of station- ary forces which we call matter have hitherto maintained their ground against every attempt to reduce them to unity, or to render them in any degree mutually convertible. Our threescore groups of fixed forces, known as simple substances, defy all further analysis, so far as our present power and knowledge extend. But we must remember that, even if the hypothesis of the absolute unity of the various imponderable agencies were es- tablished as a fact, we should still have to look somewhere between their sources and our organs for the difference in their manifestations. And this could be only in the media through which they act. If electricity becomes magnetic at- traction in passing through iron, and iron only, we must look to the metal for the cause of its change of form. Thus we only transfer the differentiating agency from one sphere to another, in consequence of the experimental inferences of the 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 51 physicist and the chemist. If chemistry had reduced matter to some one mother-element, we should have been forced to refer all its different manifestations, such as gold, sulphur, oxygen, and the rest, to the influence of external agencies operating through them. The tendency of modern research, without claiming for its inferences the character of demon- stration, is in the other direction ; unity of the fluent forces; diversity of the fixed forces, or matter. Such are the data derived from the inorganic world with which we approach the consideration of the phenomena that belong to organized beings. According to their analogies we should look for the cause of any peculiar manifestation we might meet with, in the fixed forces or material structure of the organism. When we commence the examination of this material struc- ture, we find it so different from everything that we have met with in lifeless matter, that we are tempted to believe it must differ no less in elementary composition. The substance of these five hundred mute slaves that we call muscles, and the currents of this running flesh that we call blood, seem un- like anything in earth, air, or waters. But Chemistry meets us with her all-searching analysis, and tells us that this solid and this fluid, and all the other structures of the body, how- ever varied in aspect, are but combinations of a few elements which we know well in the laboratories of Nature and Art. A few gallons of water, a few pounds of carbon and of lime, some cubic feet of air, an ounce or two of phosphorus, a few drains of iron, a dash of common salt, a pinch of sulphur, a grain or more of each of several hardly essential ingredients, and we have Man, according to Berzelius and Liebig. We have literally weighed Hannibal, or his modern representa- tive, and are ready to answer Juvenals question. The wisest brain, the fairest face, and the strongest arm before or since Ulysses and Helen and Agamemnon, were, or are, made up of these same elements, not twenty in number, and scarcely a third of the simple substances known to the chemist. The test-tube, and the crucible, and the balance that cavils on the ninth part of a hair, have settled that question. Appear- ances, therefore, have proved deceptive with regard to the composition of the organism. 52 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, Again, if we looked for the first time at the mode of action of the living structure, we should probably decide that the forces at work to produce the operations we observe must be of an essentially different nature from those which we see manifested in brute matter. Here are solids sustained and fluids lifted against the force of gravity. Here is heat gener- ated without fire. Here is bread turned into flesh. Here is a glairy and oily fluid shut up in a tight casket, sealed by Na- ture as carefully as the last will and testament of an heir- less monarch; and lo! what the casket holds is juggled into blood, bone, marrow, flesh, feathers, by the aid of a little heat, which, increased a few degrees, might give us au omelet in- stead of a chicken. Surely, we should say, here must be new forces, unknown to the common forms of matter. Yet ap- pearances may deceive us, as they deceived us respecting the substance of the organism until the chemist set us right. We must try the actions just as he has tried the elements. We are not bound to do for them any more than he has done for the materials he has worked upon. If he has stopped at analysis, and confessed that synthesis was beyond his powers, so may we. He has shoxvn us the carbon, the iron, and the other elements of which blood and muscular fibre are made up. But he has never made a drop of blood or a fibre of muscle. We have done as much for physiological analysis, if we can show that such or such a living action is produced by some form of natural force with which we are acquainted as it appears in inorganic matter, although we cannot repro- duce the living actioii by artificial contrivances. It is not to be supposed that the laboratory can present combining ele- ments to one another under all the conditions furnished by the organism, nor that any one living act should be imitated after the mutually interdependent round of movements has been permanently interrupted. Proceeding, then, to our analysis of the living actions, a very superficial examination shows us that many of the phys- ical agencies are manifested in the organism in the same way as in ordinary matter. Thus gravity is always at work to drag us down to the earth. It holds us spread out on the nurses lap in infancy. We stand up against it for some 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 53 three or four score years. Then it pulls us slowly downward again. The biped is forced to become a triped. The jaw falls by its own weight, and must continually be lifted again so that old men, as Haller remarked, seem to be constantly chewing. It stretches us out at last, and flattens the earth over our bones, and so has done with us. Our fluids obey it during our whole lives. The veins of the legs dilate in tall men who stand much; the hands blanch if we hold them up; the face reddens if we stoop. The same cohesion that gives strength to knife-handles and tenacity to bowstrings serves the purposes of life in bones and sinews. The valves of the heart and vessels, which pointed Harvey to the discovery of the circulation, proclaim the obedience of the fluids to the laws of hydraulics. The tear-passages are filled by the force of capillary attraction. The skin soaks up fluids and allows them to escape through it, as membranes and films of paper and sheets of unglazed porcelain do in onr experiments. The chemical reactions between the blood and the atmosphere, and between the gastric juice and the food, may be imitated very successfully out of the body. The eye and the ear recognize the ordinary laws of light and sound in all their arrangements. Levers, pulleys, and even the wheel and axle, play their usual part in the passive transfer of the forces that move the living machinery. These facts, and many others of similar character which might be mentioned, point to the following conclusion. If there is a special force acting in the living organism, it must exist in addition to the general forces of nature, and not as a substitute for them. To know whether such a special force is necessary, or whether the general forces of nature are sufli- cient, we must know what these last are capable of doing, and what they cannot do, and must compare their ascertained power and its limitations with the living task to be performed. This is the next point to be examined. That form of force which we call chemical affinity is capa- ble of giving an indefinite number of aspects and qualities to matter, by varying the proportions and mode of combination of a few simple elements. Oxygen and nitrogen, which are the breath of our nostrils, become a corrosive fluid when 5* ~34 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, united in certain simple proportions differing from those of atmospheric air. The same elements, in varied combinations, serve us as food, or form a fluid, one drop of which kills almost like a stroke of lightning. Thus there is nothing ex- ceptional in the fact, that the compounds of the vegetable or animal structure should present the distinctive characters by which we know them as starch or fat, as fibre or muscle. Neither does there appear to be anything in the mere fact of assimilation, which establishes a distinct line of demarca- tion between the living and the lifeless world. A crystal, from a solution containing several salts, appropriates just the ma- terials adapted to build up its own substance. A lichen does nothing more. The air is a solution of the elements that form it, and it appropriates and fixes them. The penetration of the new materials into the organic structure, and their in- terstitial distribution among its parts, might seem to draw the line of distinction. But this is very limited in many plants, and depends on their mechanical arrangement, one division growing upon the outside and another upon the inside. The porosity of organized beings which favors this mode of nutri- tion is nothing but an increase of internal surface; soluble nu- tritive matters are diffused through their textures just as water and other fluids pass into the pores of the Spanish cmiCarraza; and there is no reason why this internal surface should not appropriate new matter, as well as the external surface of a mineral. The constancy of specific form is not more absolute in organized beings than in crystals. The difference between different crystalline shapes of the same mineral is not greater than that of the grub and the butterfly, or of the floating and the fixed Medusa. Nor is a certain limitation of size a distinguishing mark of vitality. Some crystals are microscopic; some needle-like; some columnar. No diamond was ever found too heavy for a ladys coronet; but there are beryls which it would break a mans back to carry. The plant and the animal have been thought to be pecu- liar in maintaining their integrity by continual waste and renewal. They are a perpetual whirlpool, into which new 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 35 matter is constantly passing, and from which the materials that have been used are always being throxvn out. It might at first seem hard to match this condition by any fact from the inorganic world. But from time immemorial, life has been compared to a flame, a spark, a torch, a candle. Et, quasi cursores, vital lampada tradunt. The inverted flambean of the ancients is still a frequent symbol in our rural cemeteries. Macbeth, Othello, John of Gaunt, have made the image familiar to us in different forms. My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light, Shall be extinct with age and endless night. The simile is in fact a little fatigued with long use, and the Humane Society is hardly true to its name when it tolerates the expression that the vital spark was extinct. But this is the very object of comparison that we here want, not for ornament but use. Professor Draper has beautifully drawn the parallel between the flame and the plant. The flame is not living, yet it grows; it is fed by incessant waste and sup- ply; and it dies at length, exhausted, clogged, or suddenly quenched. The plant must suck up fluid by its wick-like roots, as well as the lamp by its root-like wick. The leaves must let it evaporate, as does the alcohol in an unprotected spirit-lamp. Here, then, is the mechanism of perpetual inter- stitial change, which we have a right to say may be purely physical in the one case, as in the other. We need not wonder, in view of this perpetual change of material, that the living body, as a whole, resists decomposi- tion. The striking picture drawn by Cuvier in his Introduc- ti()n to the Comparative Anatomy, in which the living loveli- ness of youthful beauty is contrasted with the fearful changes which a few hours will make in the lifeless form, loses its apparent significance when we remember the necessary con- sequence of the arrest of its interior movements. The living body is like a city kept sxveet by drains running under ground to every house, into which the water that supplies the wants of each household is constantly sweeping its refuse matters. The dead body is the same city, xvith its drains choked and its aqueducts dry. The individual system, like the mass of 56 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, collective life that constitutes a people, is continually under- going interstitial decomposition. If we take in a ton every twelvemouth, in the shape of food, drink, and air, and get rid of only a quarter of it unchanged into our own substance, we die ten times a year; not all of us at any one time, but a portion of us at every moment. It is a curious consequence of this, we may remark, by the way, that, if the refuse of any of our great cities were properly economized, its population would eat itself over and over again in the course of every generation. We consume nothing. Our food is like those everlasting pills that old pharmacopceias tell of, heirlooms for the dura ilia of successive generations. But we change what we receive, first into our own substance, then into waste matter, and we have no evidence that any single portion of the body resists decomposition longer during life than after death. Only, all that decays is at once removed while the living state continues. As for our inability, already referred to, to imitate most of the organic compounds, it is no more remarkable than our inability to manufacture precious stones. Some combinations take place readily; others require the most delicately adjusted conditions. Potassium and oxygen rush into each others arms, like true lovers. Iron blushes a tardier consent before changing its maiden name for oxide. The noble metals~ are coy to the great elemental wooer; they must be tampered with by go-betweens before they will yield. Chlorine and hydrogen unite with a violent explosion, if exposed to sun- light. Hydrogen and oxygen resist the mediation of the sun- beams, but come together with sudden vehemence if crossed by the electric spark or touched by a flame. Most bodies must be dissolved before they will form alliances; corpora non agunt nisi soluta. Some can combine only in the nascent state; like princes, they must be betrothed in their cradles. There is nothing strange, then, in the fact, that com- binations formed in the vegetable or animal laboratory should be hard to imitate out of the body. Yet the chemist has already succeeded in forming urea; and artificial digestive fluids, borrowing nothing from life but a bit of dried and salted rennet, do their work quite as well as the gastric juice 1857.1 57 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. of many dyspeptic professors. These instances show ns that, if we can only supply the necessary conditions, the chemical forces are always ready. Nature expects every particle of carbon, and the rest, to do its duty under all circumstances. The digestive secretions often devour the stomach after death. A drowned man is restored by artificial respiration; the air forced into the lungs changes the blood in their capillary ves- sels; the blood thus changed is enabled to flow more freely; the heart is unloaded of its stagnant contents, and roused to action; the round of vital acts is once more set in motion; and all this because carbon and oxygen are always true to each other. MTe are obliged to confess, as the result of this examination, that the inherent and inalienable relations of the elements found in the living organism may be sufficient to account for all the acts of composition and decomposition observed dur- ing life, without invoking that special chimie vivante which Broussais and others have supposed to be one of the proper- ties of organization. There is another mode of operation found in animals and vegetables, which has been considered as depending upon special vital, in distinction from physical, causes. This is the process by which certain bodies are selected from others for absorption or secretion; as when the chyle is taken up by the lacteals, and the bile is separated from the blood by the liver. To account for this, the organs have been supposed to possess a certain low intelligence, which directs them in this selec- tion. Yet there is evidence that the ordinary physical laws are not idle in these operations, and it is fair to ask if they may not be the only real agencies. The lacteals will not take up oily matters until they have been turned into an emulsion by the pancreatic fluid; just as a \ViCk wetted with water will not take up oil until this is emulsified, or made a soap of. We may still inquire why each secreting gland forms or transmits its own special product, and no other; why the liver secretes only bile, and the lachrymal gland only tears. We can see nothing in the anatomical formation of these organs to account for their peculiar modes of action. Bnt 58 MECHANISM OF VITAI~ ACTIONS. [July, there are many phenomena of simple physical transudation equally unexplained. When water and alcohol are separated by a membrane, a current is established between the fluids in both directions, that from the water to the alcohol the denser to the lighter . being the most rapid. When a simi- lar experiment is performed with sirup and water, the current is from the water to the sirup, the lighter to the denser. When the same fluids are employed, the nature and position of the membrane used occasion differences which we cannot explain. With the skin of a frog, the current from the water is most rapid when the internal surface is towards the alcohol. But with an eel-skin, the reversed position is most favorable to the flow in the same direction. Again,in the phenomena of precipitation, as seen in the lab- oratory, we have an illustration of the chemical side of secre- tion. Two clear fluids are mixed, and one of them immediate- ly separates or secretes one or more of its elements as a distinct product; or both may be decomposed with entire transforma- tion of aspect and properties. Or a simple solid substance is introduced into a fluid compound, and at once seizes upon some constituent, and appropriates it, as when iron is im- mersed in solutions of salts of copper. Still more striking is the well-known action of spongy platinum in producing the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, without undergoing any chemical change itself. Let us see whether some of these same physical operations may not be manifested in the liver, taking this as the typical secreting organ. Its cell-walls may govern their currents of transudation by laws of their own, as eel-skins and frog-skins govern the currents of alcohol and water. The two kinds of blood that meet in its capillary vessels may react upon each other, and produce mutual decomposition, as well as any other compound fluids. The substance of the liver has as much right to appropriate fat, without a special license from vitality, as the iron, in the experiment referred to above, to appropriate copper. It may have as good a title from the Supreme Au- thority to join the elements that form cholesterine, as spongy platinum to unite hydrogeu and oxygen. This catalytic agency the priestly office of chemical nature that gives to 1837.] MEChANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 39 one body the power of marrying innumerable pairs of loving atoms, itself standing apart in elemental celibacy is not to be denied its possible place in the living mechanism. Its action may, perhaps, be more extended than in inanimate bodies. The instances furnished by the action of the pan- creatic fluid and the gastric juice may belong to a far more numerous series of similar phenomena. We may grant a dif- ference of degree between the separations or secretions effected by the reactions between the complex elements of the organ- ism, and those witnessed in unorganized matter; but the dif- ference of essential nature is less easily demonstrated. But it will be said that the several parts select their special secretions with reference to the general wants of the system. If there is no evidence of adaptation of parts to a whole any- where except in living beings, then we must allow that here is a difference in kind as well as in degree, which it would be bard to reconcile with the supposition that the same forces are the sole agents in both cases. But it is vain to deny that the macrocosm shows the same adaptation of parts as the micro- cosm. When the Resolute was found adrift and boarded by the American sailors, there was no sail on her masts, and no hand at her helm. Yet there was jnst as much evidence in her build and equipments that she was framed and provided for a definite purpose, as if the good ship had been seen with all her men at the ropes and the steersman at the wheel, fol- lowing a lead into the ice-fields of the North. So if the earth had been visited by some wandering spirit before a fern had spread its leaves, or a trilobite had clashed his scales, the evi- dence of adaptation of its several parts to one another, as well as to ulterior ends, would have been clear as the sun that shone upon its primeval strata. Its steady circnit through the heavens, exposing it on all sides to light and shade in suc- cession; the qualities of matter that lead its various forms to arrange themselves as shapeless matrix, or geometrical solid, into ever downward-sinking waters and ever upward-rising atmospheres; the self-preserving and self-classifying~ tenden- cy, constantly at work to educe new harmonies out of the destroying conflict of the active powers of nature, show that the adaptation of parts to the whole is wider than the realm and older than the reign of life. 60 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, All the physical laws, in and out of the organism, are ar- ranged in harmony with one another. Each organ of a plant or an animal is supported by, and accountable to, the general system. But this system holds the same relations to the sur- rounding universe. Every creature that is born has an account opened at once with Nature, debtor by so much of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote; creditor by so much carbonic acid and ammonia, or whatever may be the medium of payment. Life is adapted to maintain a certain normal composition of the atmosphere, as much as the atmosphere to maintain life. And as air existed before plant or animal lived to breathe it, and as air is made up of at least three elements, each of these, considered as a part, was adjusted in quality and quantity to the whole with the same fitness that we see in the relation of the amouut and quality of the bile as compared with the other secretions and the wants of the system. But the living system protects itself by special provisions, it will be said; look at the thickened cuticle upon the work- ingman s hand, and see how admirably it shields the sensitive surface. True; and see also how delightfully the same thickened cuticle acts in the case of a corn. The avidity with which the most deadly substances are sucked in by the skin, the suddenness with which a single drop of poison will work its way through the system from the surface of a mucous membrane, shows us that the same force acts for good or bad indifferently; that is, it is under the general law of harmony, but not modified to meet accidental condi- tions. Just so, in the greater universe, the tide rises by one of its beneficent provisions, wafting a hundred fleets into their harbors, but not less surely drowning the poor wretches who are caught on the sands by its advancing waters. Fangh a ballagh! Clear the coast! is the word when we get across the track of any natural agency. We must not expect it to turn out for any particular end; the Creator has imparted no such wisdom to matter. The course of a single ray of light is the eternal illustra- tion of the Divine mode of action. It is always in straight lines. The difference between our utilitarian methods, always looking to special ends, and the Supreme handling of things 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 61 in their universal aspect, is beautifully shown in the structure of one of our domestic animals. If a watchmaker should insist on putting into a common watch one little wheel, unseen, and unconnected with the rest of the machinery, because he had made repeaters which required such a wheel, we should smile at his lost labor. But there is a little collar- bone, too small to be of any use, floating in the midst of the muscles about a cats shoulder, which is as constant as if the animals welfare depended on it. Why is it there? It is the vanishing point of a series of models formed on one gen- eral plan. The plan, as a whole, is a monument of infinite wisdom, adapted to the various needs of a numerous series of conscious beings. But it is so vast that it includes what we call utility as one of its accidents, and this anatomical fact shows us one of the borders at which the Divine conception overlaps the temporary application. The human artisan is wise in leaving out the wheel when it is no longer wanted. But the seemingly trivial arrangement just mentioned shows that the Deity respects a normal type more than a practical fact. His thoughts and his ways are not as ours. The limited duration of existence might be thought to be characteristic of organic being. But, in the first place, this fact is not so universal and absolute as might be supposed. Dc Candolle long since promulgated the doctrine that trees live indefinitely, and never die but from injury or disease. The death of our great forest-trees is commonly owing to fracture, in consequence of the decay of the inner portion of the stem, which no longer performs any but a mechanical office. On the other hand, many crystals undergo decomposition, of form at least, within a longer or shorter period, by effiorescence or deliquescence. The very conditions of organic life imply a liability to disable its implements. A river chokes up its own bed with detritus; a chimney fills itself up with soot. The organism is a multilocular sac of fluids that are loaded with dissolved and suspended matters. The smoke of life ascends from innumerable pores of animal bodies, from the first gasp to the last breath that is expelled. What marvel that the vessels become thickened, and the working organs clogged, with accumulating deposits? We can only wonder, with the vOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 6 62 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, hymn to which we have referred, that the harmony of so exquisitely adjusted a mechanism should he so long main- tained, and not at all at the brevity of life in any of its forms, or the diversity of its duration. But there is the great mystery of reproduction. Are there any acts of inorganic nature parallel to those that take place in the development of an embryo of one of the higher ani- mals? This development may be decomposed into the fol- lowing separate elements 1. A movement of assimilation imparted by an organism to a separable product of secretion or of growth; 2. A differentiating movement, which divides and arranges the formative materials into the substance of tissues and organs; 3. A modelling force, or shaping agency, which determines the form of the several parts and of the whole; 4. A co-ordinating force, which brings the various sep- arate acts into harmony with one another, the motus regius of Lord Bacon. No ~, the question is, not whether all these actions are com- bined in any other known group of material changes than embryonic development, but whether any one of them is abso- lutely sui generis. And, first, we do not see why molecular movements may not be imparted by one portion of matter to anothe , as well as movements in mass. Fire is so propa- gated, and forms a new centre independent of its orIgin. Magnetism is imparted from one body to another, without diminution of its intensity in the first. Secondly, the rending apart of the most intimately combined elements, and their distribution to the positive and negative poles respectively, may illustrate the separation of the several constituents of the embryonic structure from one another. A very weak current will decompose saline mixtures, and even refractory oxides. Heat alone, as we have seen, will decompose water. Is it not in harmony with these physical facts, that a weak current of heat, long continued, as in incubation, should induce the sep- aration and quasi polar arrangement of the loosely combined atoms that are to form the embryo? Thirdly, is not the shaping power more obvious in the rhornbs of a fragment of Iceland spar than in the disc of a lichen, which falls on a stone, and spreads just as a drop of rain would spread? We may, 1857.] 63 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS~ in fact, see the two forms of the modelling process Natures plane and spherical geometry in operation side by side in the same strncture. The raphides, or included crystals, which we often find in great abundance in vegetable cells, those of the onion, for instance, illustrate the point in question. Lastly, we have already seen cause to deny that the principle of harmony of parts, or multiplicity in unity, can be confined to living bodies, without overlooking the most obvious adjust- ments of the elements of general nature to one another and to one great plan. The wonderful uniformity in the planetary system, says Newton, must be allowed the effect of choice; and so must the uniformity in the bodies of animals. It appears from the survey we have taken, that we might expect, from the general character of the creative plan, that, as pre-existing materials were employed to form organic struc- tures, so pre-existing force or forces would be employed to maintain organic actions, or unconscious life. It is certain that the materials of the organism are, to a great extent, sub- ject to the common laws of mechanical and chemical forces. It is not proved that these same forces are incompetent to produce the whole series of interstitial changes in which the functions of life common to. vegetables and animals consist. On the contrary, the more we vary our experiments and extend our observation, the more difficult we find the task of assign- ing limits to their power. The preservation of specific form and dimensions has not appeared to be confined to living beings. The co-operation of the parts of an organized struc- ture does, indeed, imply a plan, or pre-established harmony, but no more than the arrangement of the spheres, or the rela- tions of the elements to one another. Each little world of life shows only the same solidarity, on a small scale, that prevents the universe from being a chaos. Limits of duration are not peculiar to living beings, nor always evident in them. Repro- duction combines several modes of action, no one of which is without its inorganic parallel. Given, then, a plant or a man, there seems no good reason why either should not begin to live with all its might, so soon as the conditions of light, heat, air, whatever stimuli or food it requires, shall be made to act upon it. Such is the 64 ~MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, case with the drowned man who is brought to life. He was defunct to all intents and purposes, except that the organs and fluids had not had time to become clogged, or decom- posed, when a whiff of air set the whole machinery going again. Two is my number, said Sir Charles Napier. Two wives, two daughters, two sons, and two deaths. I died at Corunna, and now the grim old villain approaches again. Life is not the absolute unit we suppose. If a man is dead who breathes his last, or expires, such dead men have unquestionably been restored to life without a mira- cle. In other words, a man may be dead conditionally, dead, unless there happen to be a double bellows or a gal- vanic battery in the neighborhood, and some one who knows how to use it. But if a man is not dead so long as any so- called living process goes on, then most, men are buried alive; for there is no doubt that certain secretions the mucous se- cretion, among others, as one of our best pathologists thinks take place for a considerable time after a person has expired. Probably a certain number of those who have just died or expired could be resuscitated to movement, if not to con- sciousness, by artificial respiration, if it were a thing to be desired. The reason that they cannot be permanently re- stored, like those rescued from the water, is that some organ or fluid has undergone an important injury, in the vast major- ity of cases, if not in all. Life is a necessary attribute, then, of a perfect organism exposed to the proper external influences, just as much as gravity belongs to a metal, or hardness to a diamond. Just as the Creator, in calling the material elements into existence, contemplated their fitness to form a part of the living creation yet to be, so did he also diffuse such forces, or forms of force, through the world, as should of necessity manifest themselves through any perfect organism as what we call life. Such is the conclusion pointed at by the range of analogies we have adduced. A vast number of facts testify in its favor, and it is hard to find any that oppose it which cannot be explained. Whatever incomprehensible mystery there may have been in the first fabrication of these living time-keepers that measure ages in their conscious or unconscious movements, one com 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 65 mon key seems enough to wind them all up and set them going. We may not accept Mr. Newports generalization as to light, but whatever form of force we may recognize as the primum mobile in the series of organic movements, we are contented to accept as the chosen mode of action of the all- pervading Presence. If the Deity has seen fit to make one agent serve many purposes, the fact will be acquiesced in, in the face of the threatened San Benitos of all the Linna~au Societies. The battle~ground of Atheism is not in the field of natural science; meaning by that the study of material phenomena. The argument from design to an intelligent Contriver does not require the knowledge of Cuvier or Humboldt to make it satisfactory. Every man carries about with him in his own organization a syllogism which all the logic in the world can never mend. If his scepticism will not melt away in such an ocean of evidence, it is because it is insoluble. Whatever contrivances have been employed, the grand result of an im- measurable whole, all the parts of which are fitted together with a foresight and wisdom which it mocks the human intel- lect to attempt to sound, except along its shallower edges, remains to be accounted for, and Paleys argument from the watch to its maker illustrates the simple course of reasoning which the healthy mind is naturally forced to follow. The evidence we have been con~4dering applies to the per- fect and mature organism, and does not reach the question how such organisms first came into being. Who shall tell us whether the first egg was parent or offspring of the first fowl? The poet must answer for the philosopher. Milton has ven- tured to paraphrase the Scriptural account of creation with a freedom not alxvays allowed to modern science. The tepid caves, and fens, and shores hatch their ~feathered broods from eggs. The grassy clods become the mothers of young cattle. The bees appear, not a single pair, but swarmin cr as our own naturalists tell us they must have appeared. But our prosaic evidence as to the introduction of the forms of life upon our planet is limited. And, first, there is no authentic evidence that the develop- ment of any organism has been directly observed without the 6* 66 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, demonstrated or probable presence of a germ derived from a previous structure having similar characters. Even the vexed question of the origin of the entozoa, or internal parasites, has received its approximate solution from modern investiga- tions. The tape-worm, for instance, is found to exist in two different forms, or stages of development. Each perfect tape- worm contains some twelve millions of eggs, capable of be- ing reduced to a floating dust, and thus being deposited on various articles used as food. The mouse, nibbling at every- thing, swallows some of these, and they grow in his body into the state of cystic worms, an intermediate form of devel- opment, only of late recognized as being a stage of the tape- worms growth. By and by the cat eats the mouse, and the cystic worm, finding its proper habitat in this animals alimen- tary canal, assumes the true proportions of the twuja crassicolis. And so another cystic worm, which is common in the flesh of oxen, sheep, and especially pigs, becomes, by a similar metamorphosis, the twnict solium, or long tape-worm of their human consumer. The tribes that live on raw flesh are said to be particularly subject to the tape-worm. The hint derived from their experience may serve as an offset against Dr. Kanes Arctic experience, and the recommendation of a raw diet from nearer sources. So far as our immediate object is concerned, we have got rid of one enigma in finding, not only the cradles, but the nurseries, of these entozoa. We are obliged to consign the supposed instances of equivocal gener- ation derived from their history to the same category with Virgils swarm of bees born from a decaying carcass. But, in the second place, the evidence of Geology has made it plain that new forms of life have been called into being at many different periods of the earths history. The multitude of distinct floras and faunas in different regions and strata of the earth sufficiently proves that the formation of new organisms has been as much a part of the regular order of things in creation as the precession of the equinoxes, or up- heavals and depressions, or any of those changes that work out their great results in the longer cycles of time. No one who observes the manner in which new specific forms are gradually introduced among those already existing, can help 1857.1 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 67 seeing that such new formations may have been quietly inter- calated in the midst of their predecessors by a series of opera- tions in which, as in the mighty processes by which new continents are uplifted, nothing but secondary agencies were apparent. Chemistry teaches us, as we have seen, that no new materials were required to be called into being. It is not to be supposed that certain parcels of carbon or of oxygen were created when the first living forms, containing these elements as a matter of necessity, were fashioned, inasmuch as they already existed in immeasurable abundance. What was wanted was not the materials of the organism, or of its germ, but the force to bring them together without the inter- mediate action of a parent strncture. The creation of matter out of nothing is perfectly credible as a fact, but not definitely conceivable by our imaginations. The combination of pre- existing elements, and the development of new properties in the resulting compound, is what we daily witness. If the most insignificant infusorial plant or animal, having well-defined specific characters, had been evolved under our own eyes, in circumstances precluding the possible existence of a germ derived from a previous similar being, the fact would furnish us with a theory of the organic creation, so far as the purely vital, not the spiritual, side is concerned. Not having any such fact to appeal to, but, on the contrary, find- mg the rule that whatever lives comes from a germ absolutely universal, so far as we are acquainted with actual life, we are reduced to barren speculation as to the special mechanism employed in the many changes of programme which the pakeontologist points out to us in the vegetable and animal world of the past. The world is in its dotage, and yet the cosmogony, ~r creation of the world~ puzzles us, as it did the philosopher from whom these words are cited. By feeling our way up, through what is possible, or at least conceivable, from the laws of the inorganic world to the simplest manifestations of life, we may construct a theory of the evolution of life by means of the existing forces of nature, acting in different degree or intensity from their present ordinary mode of operation. Let us construct such a theory, not to lean upon it, bnt to 6S MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, see what degree of plausibility it may present, or how its weakness may drive us to another hypothesis. We will try to make the most of it, as an advocate pleads his clients cause without compromising his private opinion. Suppose the problem to be the mechanism of the introduction of vegetable life. And, first, let us illustrate our possible rela- tions to this question by an imaginary picture of a body of philosophers of a somewhat ruder stamp than ourselves, and the statement of a question which may have occurred to them, and taxed their highest faculties. A group of savages, living in a remote island, have from time immemorial been in the habit of employing fire for \Varming themselves and in cooking. They never suffer it to be extinguished everywhere at once, for they know that they cannot rekindle it except from another fire. They breed it as we breed trees in our nurseries. The fact of burning is no more a mystery to them than any other natural fact; its phenomena are constant, determinable beforehand, and con- trollable, and although they cannot talk about carbon and oxygen as button-using sages talk, they practically know the laws of combustion. They know that fire is prolific and self-developing; that it has its little red seeds, and in due time its slender buds, and broad waving corolla, like a flower; that it loves air, and hates water; that it gives pleasure or pain, according to the way of using it; that it renders the flesh of the canine race still more acceptable than their living presence, and even adds new tenderness to the paternal rela- tion, in case of premature bereavement. All this they know. But if they are asked where the first fire came from, or how it was born, they have no answer to render, or only an idle story to tell. It was the gift of the Great Spirit, or some tawny Prometheus stole it from heaven. As for any mechanism by which it can be produced, they are entirely unable to suggest or conceive it. The wind, they know, fans a spark into a flame, but they laugh at the idea that the wind should kindle a fire without a single spark to begin with. At length a great hurricane sweeps over their island. It sways the tangled for- est-branches backward and forward; it rends and twists and grinds them, until the earth is strewed with their fragments. 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 69 Two dry boughs are swinging across each other, and chafing in the blast. Presently a smoke rises from their point of crossing, and then a flame, the woods are set on fire; but the great mystery is solved, and from that time forward the natives rub two sticks together when they desire to have the means of warming their fingers, or discussing the merits of such game as they may have bagged iu theirlast skirmish. We stand in the same relation to the origin of vegetable life as that in which the savages stood to the origin of fire, before the tempest revealed it. Give us but one little vegeta- ble spark, and we can in due time kindle it by our appliances into a flame of blossoms wreathed in a cloud of foliage. Thrust into the soil this little brown scale, one of those which the elm has dropped in thousands at our feet, and it will go on towering and spreading until it overshadows the fourth part of an acre. Take this double-winged germ, that looks so like an Egyptian amulet, and bury it. Out of its core will spring a tall shaft that will wear its greenness for a cen- tury, though scarred with many a wound, through which its sweet juices have been stolen. This persistent force, build- ing up the elm and the maple out of such mere specks of matter, holding steadily to the specific characters of each in every diversity of soil and climate, and maintaining them through the vicissitudes of a hundred seasons, is as great a mystery as would be the production of such a seed as either of those mentioned by deposition from the air which contains their elements, or their formation de novo from any collection of their proximate principles. It is only because we are not in the habit of witnessing the formation of germs as a daily occurrence, that we invest it with preternatural conditions. Geologists, who are constantly dealing with successive new creations, learn to accept the primitive evolution of an organ- ism as a regular process, equally with its continuance. The lighting of a friction-match is not more wonderful, than the conflagration of a great city which it kindles. If Schultze and Schwann had succeeded, instead of failed, in their ex- periments on equivocal generation, we should have taken the fact as quietly as the invention of lucifers. Let us proceed with our theoretical construction. We 70 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, have as much right to say that carbon has a tendency to take the form of a plant under certain circumstances, as that it has to become a diamond under other conditions. We do not see it changing directly into a plant; did we ever see it crystalliz- ing into a diamond? Let us now consider the earth just at the period before the first evolution of vegetable life. As un- counted billions of tons of carbon have since been abstracted from the atmosphere to represent what we may call the fixed organic capital of our planet, as well as vast quantities of other elements derived from the earth and the waters, we may suppose the soil and atmosphere to have then represented a saturated solution of the elements of vegetable organisms. Some change of condition, natural, but exceptional, like the hurricane in our imaginary picture, an influx of alien ele- ments from some distant source, or an alteration of tempera- ture, for instance, destroys the equilibrium of the solution. There takes place a vast precipitate of living crystals, needle- like, acuminated, porous, crusted with an inorganic coat of silex, the grass that covers the plains and hill-sides. The organic solution having been thus reduced, the next living pre- cipitate may probably be of a different grade, more slowly formed, more complex, a higher vegetable growth. Would this process be a whit more incomprehensible than the depo- sition of a cube of common salt from a clear fluid? Now, although a nucleus in the shape of a pre-existing cube of salt helps and accelerates this last process, it is not always neces- sary to it. So the living shape, which commonly depends for development on its pre-existing nucleus, or germ, may be con- ceived, under certain conditions, to be formed without it, obey- ing the same general forces,which are confessedly strong enough to shape and build up a mighty tree out of a mere particle of matter, or more properly from the eiements, to which this par- ticle has given their first direction. After a certain number of vital precipitations, we might suppose the solution, atmos- pheric or other, of the organizable substances, to retain just so much of these principles as would be sufficient to keep up the integrity of the organic deposits. The cube of salt will retain its form indefinitely, if kept in the fluid from which it was deposited. And thus \ve see a reason for the fact that 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 71 every organism is immersed in a solution of its own constitu- ents. It does not follow that we must be able to imitate this natural process by our artificial arrangements. To say noth- ing of our very imperfect control of the natural forces, the scale of magnitude of the experiment may entirely determine the results. Spontaneous combustion happens not unfre- quently in heaps of vegetable matter; but no experimenter will expect the same substances to take fire in such quantities as he examines by the microscope. It is only going a step further in our supposition to con- ceive the first stage of vital precipitation as a simpler process. We may suppose the living precipitate to consist of what we may call ind~erent germs, that is, assimilating and self-de- veloping centres, determinable, but not yet determined; bear- ing the same relation to vegetable growths generally, which the seed of an apple or pear bears to the many possible varieties that may spring from it. This hypothesis is by no means identical with that of progressive development. It supposes the existence of permanent types, but conceives each type to represent the plastic diagonal of two forces, a general or- ganizing principle and a local determining one. The line of direction once fixed persists indefinitely, self-perpetuating, in the individual and the species, a vital movement parallel to its own axis. It is not our fault if these indifferent germs are the same things as the semina rerum of the old heathen Lucre- tins and his masters; the question is, whether they do not assist our conception of the mechanism of creation, and re- move a part of its seeming difficulty. We might apply this hypothesis of indifferent germs to that singular parallelism without identity observed in the organ- isms of remote regions. The resemblance between many growths of the Eastern and Western continents, for instance, would follow as the result of the diffusion of identical germs amidst similar, but not identical, general conditions of soil and climate. The same series of resemblances might be ex- pected, which we see in distant, but corresponding, parts of the body, in various affections of the skin. Both arms or both cheeks often present very nearly the same diseased aspect, the blood being the common source of the disturbing element, 72 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, and certain corresponding parts on the two sides of the body furnishing the conditions for its development. So the two planetary limbs thrust through the folds of the ocean, one on either side, may be supposed to throw out their grasses, or oaks, or elms; like each other, but not the same. God has been pleased, says Paley, to prescribe limits to his own power, and to work his ends within these limits. We can conceive of the introduction of vegetable life without any over-stepping of the present self-prescribed limits of Di- vine power, as we understand them. It is not absurd to sup- pose that new vegetable types may be forming from time to time in the existing order of things. The vulgar belief is in favor of such occurrences. The extraordinary fact of the ap- pearance of oaks after a pine-growth has been removed, and other occurrences of similar nature, have never been thor- onghly investigated, so far as we can learn. Scientific men question curiously on the subject; there is a doubt in their minds about the acorns, if they accept the facts about the oaks, as commonly alleged. It is strange that such substan- tial seeds should be scattered so widely. It is stranger that such perishable matter as they hold should retain its vital- ity so long. The experiments on equivocal generation have been made too recently, and by men of too much judgment, to allow us to treat the doctrine with contempt. A thousand negative experiments can never settle the question defini- tively. We do not say that it is probable, but we cannot say it is not true, that new types may be intercalated every cen- tury or every year into the existing flora. If the Dix pear was created for the first time in a garden in Washington Street, who shall say that the same power may not have just given us a new fungus in some corner of its vast nursery? Whatever difficulties we find in attempting to frame a con- ception of the first evolution of animal life, there are certain facts which we are authorized to take as guides in our reason- ings or imaginings upon the matter. Science confirms the statement of Revelation, that animal life must have come into being after vegetable life. The plain reason is, that plants are necessary to prepare the food of animals. And since no existing animal organism is ever built up directly from the 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 7~3 elements, but oniy out of materials derived directly or medi- ately from the vegetable world, we may question whether those first created were put together directly from the elements. The first animals were necessarily placed where their food was abundant. But their food contained the elements of their bodies, and why should not the proximate principles con- tained in the accumulations of vegetable matter about their birthplace have furnished the materials of the first, as well as of all subsequent organisms? The primordial development of the higher animals presents this peculiar difficulty, that their germs depend for their evolution on their continued connection with the parent. We can conceive of an infusorial seed or ovum as being formed by the concourse of atoms, guided by that Infinite Wisdom which we see every day grouping the same atoms about their living nuclei. Reasonable men experiment with the hope of observing such a fact. But no one since Paracelsus un- less it be the mother of Frankenstein has thought of get- ting up an artificial homuncultts, or horno, or even a lower mammal, or a bird. Vaucansons duck was perhaps the near- est approach to such a performance. He could utter the monosyllable abhorred of medical men, and make himself disagreeable in more ways than it is necessary to mention. But he was nothing better than wood, and illustrates the hopeless distance between the best of our paltry toys and the universe of miracles shut up in any one of the more per- fect animal organisms. So difficult has the problem of the evolution of the higher animal forms appeared to speculative philosophers, that they have invented the theory of progres- sive development of the superior from the lower types. The sharp lines which separate species, as shown by observation of every organic form, extinct as well as living, have caused this famous and seductive hypothesis to be very generally re- jected as untenable. With all the difficulties, however, that stand in the way of our conceiving of the evolution of a mammal by the aid of the general forces of nature acting ou the organic elements, we do not see where to draw the line which shall separate the higher from the lower forms of life, and assign a different on- VOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 7 74 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, gin to the two divisions of the series. Reasoning from below upwards, we should come to this frank conclusion, that as definite form, limited duration, growth and decay, harmony of parts, transmissible qualities, all implying a controlling intel- ligence, are manifested in the inorganic world, we cannot as- sume that the same forces which produce its phenomena may not show themselves through all forms of organized matter as vital force. And as the conditions of action of these forces must have varied at different periods of the earths history, we cannot assume that they have always been incompetent to bring together the elements of organized matter. The various organic forms which we observe fossilized in the strata of the earth, without any parent structnres in the subjacent layers, may be considered as marking by their appearance the epoch of successive fits of easy transmission of the plastic ele- mental influence. Sed, quia finem aliquam pariundi debet habere, Destitit; ut mulier, spatio defessa vetusto. And here we leave this aspect of the question, to look at it in another point of view. We recognize two, and only two, great divisions in created things. To the first class of his creatures the Deity sustains only active relations. All their qualities, functions, adjust- ments, harmonies, are immediate expressions of his wisdom and power. Every specific form is a manifestation of the Su- preme thought. Every elemental movement is the Sover- eigns self in action. The only question is whether he has at one time been present in our elements with an organizing force, and afterwards withdrawn this particular manifestation, or whether under the same conditions these elements would always manifest his ideas in the production of the same forms, just as they now maintain the present forms of life by a perpetual miracle, which we fail to recognize as such only because it is familiar to our daily experience. We have stated, as well as our space permitted, the argument for the presence of an organizing force in the elements around us. To the second class of his creatures the Creator stands in passive as well as active relations. They are no longer sim- ple instruments to do his bidding. They may disobey him, 1857.] MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. 75 and violate the harmonies of the universe. They have the great prerogative of self-determination, which, with knowl- edge of the moral relations of their acts, constitutes them re- sponsible beings. Now, if our previous view of matter and of elemental force as continuous Divine manifestations is correct, they could not in the nature of things become self-determining existences. The creation of independent centres of will and action in- volves a change in the character of the formative agencies hitherto at work in the portion of the universe with which we are acquainted. And here we come at once upon that mys- tery of mysteries: How and when are these spiritual natures called into being, and what is their relation to the material frames whose fundamental vital action we have alone consid- ered? Have they existed in some former state, as Plato taught in the Academy, and Dr. Edward Beecher has maintained in the Church? Are the shores of embryonic life crowded with souls waiting for their bodies, as Lucretius tells his readers was the foolish fable, and as Brigham Young reveals to his congregation and announces in his harem? Or can it be that Tennyson has solved the difficulty when he tells us that, star and system rolling past, A soul shall draw from out the vast, And strike his being into bounds, And, moved through life of lower phase, Result in man, be born and think Or does the soul organize its own body, as thoughtful men have held, from Aristotle to Mr. Garth Wilkinson? Into these and similar questions we cannot now enter, if under any circumstances we should be willing to cast a line into such fathomless abysses of speculation. But as we have followed the physical view of life upward until we have reached an impassable limit, it is but fair to indicate briefly the reversed aspect of living nature, when viewed from above downward, by taking, as the point of departure, its spiritual apex, instead of its material base. The introduction of self-determining existence, or sub-cre- ative centres, into the order of things, marks, as we have said, the great change of action by which Omnipotence saw fit to 76 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. [July, assume passive, as well as active, relatioim to its creatures. There is nothing in light or heat, or electricity, or chemical or mechanical force, that can give any account of spiritual ex- istence. When the first human soul was introduced to earthly being, if not before the date of this last birth of creation, there was a new force put forth which was not any of these. And so, whenever a new soul takes mortal shape, we recognize it as an emanation from its Maker by some other channel than throngh the elemental substances or influences that wait upon its secondary and simply organic necessities. We could not think it strange that, at the period of this spiritual evolution, a force running parallel with it in the ma- terial world, a force not identical with any of the ordinary physical agencies, should combine the elements of the bod- ily form, and shape it to the wants of the immaterial prin- ciple. We should not therefore be constrained to throw upon the common forces of Nature that wonderful development from simple to complex, from general to special, which car- ries a translucent vesicle through a series of evolutions and differentiations, until it wears the shape of the august being to whom the Deity has delegated a portion of his omnipotence. But this conclusion would oblige us to argue backward from it to the lower animals, whose material frames and food-need- ing existence are essentially identical in their composition and mode of being with our own. And conceding that a special change of character in the forces of Nature marks the appearance of animal life, there would be strong reason for extending the same supposition to the vegetable kingdom. This is only one instance of the difference between onr conclu- sions when we look from the higher sphere, and those which we naturally accept from the workshops of material philosophy. We must be content to remain in doubt on many details of creation not revealed to us, on which we can only shape a few half-shadowed hypotheses. In conclusion, we recognize our spiritnal natures as having only incidental and temporary relations with the material sub- stance and general forces of the universe. But we may con- cede that, the farther our examination extends, the more com- pletely the organic or simply vital forces appear to resolve 1857.] 77 MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTIONS. themselves into manifestations of those closely related or mutually convertible principles which give activity to the un- conscious portion of the universe. We have no experimental evidence that these physical agencies can form any living germ by their action upon matter; nor can we prove the con- trary. The only directly observed conditions of the evolution of a living structure involve the presence of a germ derived from a being of similar characters. But observation of the earths strata shows that new forms of life have appeared at numerous successive periods by some other creative mechan- ism. We can frame hypotheses not inconsistent with the or- dinary laws of matter to account for such formations, but they can be regarded only as more or less ingenious speculations. We are obliged to recognize a special intervention of creative power in the introduction of spiritual existence in the midst of the pre-existing unconscious creation. If we allow that higher modes of action have once been superinduced upon the ordinary physical forces, we cannot deny the possibility, and even probability, of repeated changes in the working ma- chinery of creation, coinciding with the evolution of each new type of organization. And if new formuke of force in com- bination with matter preceded the creation of each organism, or group of organisms, we can understand that a special vital formula may be involved in the continuance of their existence. Thus accepting the fact of a change of law as a possible part of the constitution of the universe, we arrive, independently of Revelation, at the doctrine of Miracles, as this term is com- monly understood. But in the view we have taken, whatever part may be assigned to the physical forces in the production and phenomena of life, all being is not the less one perpetual miracle, in which the Infinite Creator, acting through what we often call secondary causes, is himself the moving prin- ciple of the universe he first framed and never ceases to sustain. 7 78 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, ART III. 1. Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions. A Journal of Travels by E. Robinson and E. Smith. In three volumes. Vols. I. and II. Journal in 1838. Vol. III. Later Researches in 1852. Drawn up from the Original Diaries, with Historical Illustrations, by EDWARD RoBINsoN, D. ID., LL. D. With new Maps and Plans. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. 1856. 2. Sinai and Palestine in Connection with their History. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M. A., Canon of Canterbury. With Maps and Plans. London: John Murray. New York: J. S. Redfleld. 1856. 3. Phwnicia. By JOHN KENRICK, M. A. London: B. Fel- lowes. 4. Karte von Syrien und Paidstina. Zu RITTERS Erdicande, von CARL ZIMMERMANN. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 5. Reise nach Ostindien ilber Paldstina und Egypten von fuli, 1844, bis April, 1853. Von K. GRAUL. Leipzig. 1854. 6. DR. TITus TOBLERS Zwei BUcher Topographie von Jeru- salem und semen Umgebungen. Berlin: Georg Reimer. 7. Five Years in Damascus. By Rev. J. L. PORTER, A. M., P.R. S. L. In two volumes. London: John Murray. 1855. 8. Palestine. Description G~ographique, Historique, et Arch6- ologique. Par S. MUNK. Paris: Firmin Didot Fr~res. 9. Cartes de la Terre- Sainte: Atlas Universel. Par Houzi~. Paris. 10. The Chronological Scripture Atlas. London: Bagster and Sons. 11. lJliap of Jerusalem and its Environs. By J. T. BARCLAY and SONS. Philadelphia: James Challer. 12. Nene Hand-Atlas iib. alle Theile der Erde. Berlin: H. Kie- pert. 13. Geognostische Karte des petrdischen Arabien. Wien: Joseph Russegger. MAPS are an essential auxiliary to the study of history. The difference between correctly rendering Xenophons narrative of the Expedition of Cyrus and rightly conceiving of that marvel of strategy, the catabasis of the Ten Thousand, is the differ-

78 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, ART III. 1. Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions. A Journal of Travels by E. Robinson and E. Smith. In three volumes. Vols. I. and II. Journal in 1838. Vol. III. Later Researches in 1852. Drawn up from the Original Diaries, with Historical Illustrations, by EDWARD RoBINsoN, D. ID., LL. D. With new Maps and Plans. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. 1856. 2. Sinai and Palestine in Connection with their History. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M. A., Canon of Canterbury. With Maps and Plans. London: John Murray. New York: J. S. Redfleld. 1856. 3. Phwnicia. By JOHN KENRICK, M. A. London: B. Fel- lowes. 4. Karte von Syrien und Paidstina. Zu RITTERS Erdicande, von CARL ZIMMERMANN. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 5. Reise nach Ostindien ilber Paldstina und Egypten von fuli, 1844, bis April, 1853. Von K. GRAUL. Leipzig. 1854. 6. DR. TITus TOBLERS Zwei BUcher Topographie von Jeru- salem und semen Umgebungen. Berlin: Georg Reimer. 7. Five Years in Damascus. By Rev. J. L. PORTER, A. M., P.R. S. L. In two volumes. London: John Murray. 1855. 8. Palestine. Description G~ographique, Historique, et Arch6- ologique. Par S. MUNK. Paris: Firmin Didot Fr~res. 9. Cartes de la Terre- Sainte: Atlas Universel. Par Houzi~. Paris. 10. The Chronological Scripture Atlas. London: Bagster and Sons. 11. lJliap of Jerusalem and its Environs. By J. T. BARCLAY and SONS. Philadelphia: James Challer. 12. Nene Hand-Atlas iib. alle Theile der Erde. Berlin: H. Kie- pert. 13. Geognostische Karte des petrdischen Arabien. Wien: Joseph Russegger. MAPS are an essential auxiliary to the study of history. The difference between correctly rendering Xenophons narrative of the Expedition of Cyrus and rightly conceiving of that marvel of strategy, the catabasis of the Ten Thousand, is the differ- 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 79 ence between measuring off parasangs of unknown wastes and interminable marshes, and making a journey over a diversified and exciting region in the company of an intelli- gent and observing traveller, who remarks all the features and incidents of the way, while he notes carefully its times and distances ; ip other words, the difference between a lesson in grammar and a study in history. Almost every student of the classics will remember with xvhat pleasure he awoke to the idea that the confused mass of names in Xenophons Anabasis and Caesars Commentaries, which so stumbled in his undisciplined larynx, had each a locality upon the map of the world, and represented places as real as the Exeter, the Andover, the Ellington, or the New Haven of his grammar school. Almost every student of the Scriptures will remem- ber a kindred satisfaction at the discovery that the geograph- ical lists of the Book of Joshua had reference to the same Palestine that he now traces upon the map of Syria. The harbor in which a Russian fleet so cruelly massacred a Turk- ish convoy lying at anchor, was the same Sinope where Xenophon and his retreating army first made port in their coasting voyage down the Euxine. The Scutari where the allied armies had their hospital, was the Chrysopolis of that weary army, returning from defeat and disaster in the East. The Mount Tabor that witnessed the bloody triumphs of Napoleon and of Saladin, is the same from which Deborah and Barak descended to fight against Sisera. The St. Jean dAcre which the Crusaders held against the Turk, is the Accho of the Phmnicians whose inhabitants Asher could not drive out; The almost fabulous marches of Xerxes toward the West, and of Alexander toward the East, become definite routes of travel when traced upon a map lettered with both ancient and modern names. The great empires of antiquity, that move like shadows over half the globe, assume shape and substance upon a well-defined chart. The travels of Herodo- tus are less a myth in the imaginary biography of Wheeler,f overlying his accurate geography of the Father of History, * Judges i. 31. t Lffe and Travels of flerodotas, by J. Talboys Wheeler, F. H. G. S. New York: Harper and Brothers. 80 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, than in the Cijo, Euterpe, Melpomene, Urania, of the histo- rian himself. But while geography thus serves to locate and identify history, it also furnishes materials for history by its own pro- gress as a science. A comparison of maps at different eras affords most striking proofs of the advancement of the human race in the knowledge of its own abode. The circular Thra- cia and Libya of Homer, girdled by the ocean, and fringed with Cimmerii, IEthiopes, and Pygrna~i; the more flattened sphere of Herodotus, divided into the two equal segments of Europa and Asia; the egg-shaped world of Strabo, in which Asia preponderates over both Europa and Libya, and upon whose surface appear the Northern and the Indian Oceans with their respective islands of Britannia and Taprobane; the trapezium-world of Ptolemy, with its well-proportioned Europa, Asia, and Africa, its Britain and its India, its seas, bays, mountains, rivers, and that vast inland Indian Ocean encircled by imaginary coasts of Africa and Asia, the map which settled the geography of the world till Vasco de Gama entered the Indian Ocean by circumnavigating Africa, and Columbus pushed forth in quest of India beyond the Atlantic; these mark the gradual construction of a science of the earths surface from an utter blank, as legibly as geological strata mark the structure of the globe itself from chaos. By a series of maps constructed after Homer, Herodotus, Strabo, and Ptolemy, we trace the progress of navigation, of astron- omy, of commerce, of travel, of conquest, of empire; while from the actual map of Ptolemy to Mercators projection, we have the whole progress of the world from the second to the nineteenth century. These general remarks are strikingly illustrated in the ge- ography of Palestine and Arabia Petra~a. Could we transfer to our pages the curious series of maps of the Holy Land collected by Laborde,* and add to them his own and those of Kiepert after Robinson, we should address to the eye a con- ception of the improved geography of Palestine, which we fear no description of ours can convey to the mind of the Gommentaire GVojraphique sur lExode et les Nombres, par L6on de Laborde. Paris et Leipzi~. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 81 reader. Here, for instance, is a map of Arabia Petra~a, with part of Palestine, and of Egypt from Jerusalem to Cairo, drawn after nature, in 1484, by Erhard Rewich, a painter of Utrecht, companion of the traveller Breydenbach. Jerusalem and Cairo appear in the foreground, nearly upon a line; there is hardly any perceptible angle or turn at the junction of the coast of Egypt with that of Syria; the Nile has three mouths, one emptying very near Alexandria; while on the coast of Syria, besides the Rhinocolura, appears the mouth of a large river at Ascalon, and another at Jamnia. The Red Sea has two short square forks, and Mount Sinai, instead of lying be- tween these, appears to the north of them both, and north- east of Cairo. This chart, however, is rather a geographical panorama than a topographical map. Again, we have a map of the same region, with the addition of the route of the Isra- elites, painted at the beginning of the fifteenth century on the walls of the cathedral of Hereford by Richard Haldingham. This is covered with hieroglyphics, and with figures of birds and animals, illustrating the natural history of each district. Lots wife appears in a nude figure of melancholy mien, to mark the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Red Sea is unmistakably red, looking like the scarlet pantaloons of a French recruit, with legs of unequal length. A broad track of white through the hither fork, like a plaid on the pantaloons aforesaid, marks the passage of the Israelites. Altogether this is a curious specimen of the geography and the art of the Middle Age. Besides these quaint specimens of cartography, Labordes work contains maps of Arabia Pe- tra~a by Pococke in 1730, by Niebuhr in 1763, by DAnville in 1764, by the French Commission in 1802, by Bnrckhardt in 1816, by Ehrenberg in 1824, by Riippell in 1826, and by Colonel Lupie in 1828, as well as that of the author in 1841. It is curious to observe how the contour of the coast varies in these several maps, and especially how the southern ex- tremity of the peninsula ranges on the scale of longitude from a mere point to a breadth of one and a half degrees. Now this whole region is accurately defined, and we have not only geographical, but geological, maps of Arabia Petr~ea, that are creditable both to science and to art. 82 PRESENT GEOGRAPIIY OF PALESTINE. [July, For this improved knowledge of the geography of Pales- tine we are mainly indebted to the laborious and accurate research and observation of Dr. Edward Robinson. The re- sults of Dr. Robinsons first visit to Palestine have been before the world for fifteen years, and have received the approbation of the most competent critics in England, Germany, and the United States. It were a very inadequate view of these results to regard them as the notes of a traveller, however acute in observing and patient in recording. They were strictly what the title of the volumes describes them to be, Biblical Researches in Palestine, the laborious and con- tinued searching for places mentioned in the Bible, with the Bible itself as the authoritative guide. Strictly speaking, Dr. Robinson made few discoveries. ,Unlike M. de Saulcy, who was bent upon regarding Palestine as some vast Nim- rood monud, which he should first open to the admiration of mankind, and who succeeded in making capital discoveries under the very eyes of such competent explorers as Rev. Win. M. Thomson of Sidon, and Rev. J. L. Porter of Damascus, in their respective beats of travel, our more impassible countryman addressed himself mainly to the work of investi- gation, leaving nothing to chance, and pursuing nothing from impulse. The visit of Dr. Robinson to Palestine in 1838 had been preceded by nearly twenty years of special preparation for the exploration of that land, with a view to a systematic work on its physical and historical geography. Dr. Robinsons edi- tion of Calmet, familiar to all Biblical students, and the ear- lier volumes of the Biblical Repository edited by him, show for how many years his mind was engrossed with the details of Biblical geography before he had the opportunity of visit- ing the Holy Land. At the same time, his studies in Hebrew lexicography, and in the cognate Arabic, prepared him for those linguistic inquiries and comparisons which proved of so much value in his researches. Thus Dr. Robinson went to Palestine with a thorough and accurate knowledge of the geography of the land as exhibited in the Bible, and also of the observations of all responsible residents and travellers in that land, from Joseph us and Jerome down to Von Schubert 18~74 83 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. and Von Raumer. The twenty pages devoted to a mere list of authors consulted by him authors evidently read, not by their titles merely, but with discriminating criticism show how complete was his preparation. He went to Palestine, therefore, to test upon the spot the accuracy of previous ob- servers, to supply, if possible, their omissions, to correct their errors, and to verify the geographical allusions of the Scrip- tures, so far as this can be done by means of affiliated Arabic names, and from local scenery, monuments, and ruins. Upon his first visit to the Holy Land, Dr. Robinson laid down a canon of criticism respecting traditionary localities, which he re-affirms with emphasis in his new volume. This canon is, that all ecclesiastical tradition respecting the ancient places in and around Jerusalem, and throughout Palestine, is o~ NO VALUE~ except so far as it is supported by circumstances known to us from the Scriptures, or from other cotemporary testimony. As a reason for this canon, Dr. Robinson affirms that the traditions concerning the sacred localities in Palestine were, for the most part, bronght forward by a credulons and unen- lightened zeal, like that of the Empress Helena, who might well be styled the mother of holy places; that the fathers and monks who originated them were, for the most part, strangers in Palestine, ignorant of its topography, and of the language of the common people; that, for many centuries, the only visitors to Palestine were pilgrims, who went thither with an unquestioning belief in the traditions of the Church; and that later travellers in the Holy Land have, for the most part, been under the tutelage and guidance of the monks, whose faith and whose piastres both depend upon maintaining these tra- ditions. In this way, and from all these causes, there has been grafted upon Jerusalem and the Holy Land a vast mass of tradition, foreign in its source and doubtful in its character, which has flourished luxuriantly and spread itself out widely over the western world. Palestine, the Holy City, and its sacred places, have been again and again portrayed according to the topography of the monks, and according to them alone. Whether travellers were Catholics or Protestants, has made little dif- ference. All have drawn their information from the great storehouse 84 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, of the convents; and, with few exceptions, all report it apparently with like faith, though with various fidelity. In looking through the long series of descriptions which have been given of Jerusalem by the many travellers since the fourteenth century, it is curious to observe how very slightly the accounts differ in their topographical and traditional details. There are, indeed, occasional discrepancies in minor points, though very few of the travellers have ventured to depart from the general authority of their monastic guides. Or, even if they sometimes venture to call in question the value of this whole mass of tradition, yet they nevertheless repeat, in like manner, the stories of the convents, or, at least, give nothing better in their place. ]?esearclies, Vol. I. p. 233. As specimens of this implicit faith of travellers in the monks, we give the following from Sir John Maundeville, in the fourteenth century, and Chateaubriand, in the nine- teenth: To the west of Jerusalem is a fair church, where the tree of the cross grew. And two miles from thence is a handsome church, where our Lady met with Elizabeth, when they were both with child, and St. John stirred in his mothers womb, and made reverence to his Creator, whom he saw not. Under the altar of that church is the place where St. John was born. lliliaundeville, Bohns ed., p. 175. Tout au fond de la grotte, da c6t~ de lorient, est la place oh la Vierge enfanta le iR~dempteur des hommes A sept pas de h~, vers le midi, apr~s avoYr pass6 lentm4e dun des escaliers qui montent h l~glise supirieure, vous trouvez la cr~che A deux pas, vis-h-vis la cr~che, est un autel qui occupe Ia place oh Marie 6tait assise lors- quelle pr~senta lenfant des douleurs aux adorations des mages Ces lieux sont pourtant ceux-lk m& nes oh sop~r~rent tant de mer- veilles. Ohateaubriand, Itineraire, Tom. I. p. 399. The credulity of the monks is fully equalled by that of the Jews in their traditions of sacred places. Thus Rabbi Pe- tachia states that in Mount Gaash, in Upper Galilea, a foot- print is perceptible, like that of a human being treading on snow. This is that which the angel imprinted after the death of Joshua, son of Nun, when the land of Israel was shaken. At Jiebron he bribed his way into the cave of the patriarchs. But over the entrance, in the middle, are placed very thick iron bars,the like no man can make, unless through heavenly 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 85 instrumentality, and a storm-wind blows from between the holes between bar and bar. He could not enter there with lights. Whenever he bent towards the mouth of the cave, a storm-wind went forth, and cast him backwards. In the same vein the Rabbi describes the Gate of Mercy at Jeru- salem, probably the so-called Golden Gate, concerning which the tradition is common to Jews, Christians, and Mos- lems, that the Divine glory shall there appear for the recapture of the city. It seems that in Petachias time the Crusaders were as watchful of this gate as the Moslems now are. No Jew, and still less a Gentile, is permitted to go there. One day, the Gentiles wished to remove the rubbish, and open the gate; but the whole land of Israel shook, and there was a tumult in the city until they left off. Having repudiated ecclesiastical tradition as a guide, Drs. Robinson and Smith laid down these two general principles to govern their researches iii the Holy Land first, to avoid, as far as possible, all contact with the convents, and the au- thority of the monks; to examine everywhere for ourselves, with the Scriptures in our hands, and to apply for information solely to the native Arab population; and, secondly, to leave, as much as possible, the beaten track, and direct our journeys and researches to those portions of the country which had been least visited. Tf he determination to avoid contact with the convents and the monks may seem to argue a weakness, or a supercilious- ness, which are alike foreign to the ordinary tone of our authors mind. We confess, indeed, to having formed the same determination after a little experience of Oriental travel, but upon grounds less elaborate and scientific than those which Dr. Robinson sets forth. We avoided the convents because we found their larders scanty, their cooking execrable, their beds untidy, and their vermin abundant and voracious; and, withal, because the holy brethren, while thus superior to the demands of the flesh, made ghostly exactions upon our purses for the love of God, equal to the tariff of first-class t~ Travels of Petachia. Translated from the Hebrew by Dr. A. Beniseb. Lon- don: Triibner & Co. 1856. Petachia visited the Holy Land toward the close of the twelfth century. voL. r~xxxv. NO. 176. 8 86 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, hotels. Sir John Maundeville testifies of the convent at Mount Sinai, that in that abbey no flies, toads, or lizards, or such foul, venomous beasts, nor lice, nor fleas, ever enter, by the miracle of God and of our Lady; for there were wont to be so many such kind of pests, that the monks were resolved to leave the place, and were gone thence to the mountain above, to eschew that place. But Our Lady came to them, and bade them return; and since that time such vermin have never entered in the place amongst them, nor never shall enter hereafter. * But, whatever may have been Maundevilles experience in 1322, we do testify that in 1853 Our Ladys charm had lost its potency; and we do not hesitate upon this point to adopt Dr. Robinsons canon, that ecclesiastical tra- dition is of no value, when not supported by circumstances known to us. Thus much for the convents. As to the monks, they generally appeared amiable, indolent, and ignorant, with here and there an exception of vivacious intelligence or of earnest devotion. Such independent ob- servers as those concerned in the Biblical Researches of 1838 had nothing to apprehend from monkish authority over their private judgments. We never could quite forgive Dr. Robin- son for his cavalier treatment of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during his first visit to Jerusalem. We believe that on that occasion he entered the church but once, when he looked in for a few moments, with a friend, upon the Latin mass at nine oclock on the morning of Easter Sunday. The traditionists have made much of this contemptuous neg- lect of the reputed site of the Sepulchre, as an evidence that Dr. Robinson rejected the traditions concerning that site upon arbitrary and a priori grounds, without a fair investigation. During his second visit, Dr. Robinson retrieved that omis- sion, and made a most careful inspection of the so-called tomb of Joseph and Nicodemus, on the western side of the rotunda. The result of that visit was to turn the strong-hold of the tra- ditionists against themselves, and to demonstrate upon ar- chteological grounds, as the author had before demonstrated upon both topographical and historical grounds, that the gen- uineness of the present site of the Holy Sepulchre is sustained Bohns edition, p. 158. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 87 by no valid argument or authority. We shall speak again of this result, in considering the topography of Jerusalem. Recurring to the canon laid down by Drs. Robinson and Smith to guide their researches, we find that, in determining any locality, it gives to the Scriptures the first place of author- ity; next to these, it places other contemporary testimony and next to this, the evidence from names and associations surviving in the language of the native Arab population. This last may in some sense be styled tradition. But there is an obvious distinction between such native indigenous tra- ditions and associations, and traditions whose origin and in- tent are ecclesiastical. The tenacity of the common speech of the common people in respect to names and local associa- tions is strikingly exemplified in the Saxon element of the English tongue. In speech the Saxon conquered the Nor- man; so that to this day, in the dialect of the English island, as Mr. Emerson phrases it, the male princIple is the Saxon; the female, the Latin. The children and laborers use the Saxon unmixed. The Latin unmixed is abandoned to the colleges and Parliament. Not Stonehenge itself is more fixed and commanding upon the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain, than are the sturdy pillars of Saxon uplifted on the face of English literature. At every summer solstice, the sun still greets them in their ancient place. What is true of the vernacular speech of progressive, changeful England, is even more true of the common lan- guage of the impassive, stereotyped Orient. There every mound and stone and pillar is a Stonehenge, which changes neither form nor place through ages of decay. The names of Ni,nrood and of Neby Y4nas still survive upon the banks of the Tigris. Libndn and Ydfa still designate the Lebanon and Japho of the Hebrew Scriptures. The common Arab popula- tion, aside from ordinary routes of travel, untainted with eccle- siastical traditions and superstitions, unbiassed by any motive to err or to deceive, are unquestionably a better authority for the names of places in Palestine, than are the monks of Naza- reth or Bethlehem. A complete mastery of the Arabic tongue, combined with a thorough knowledge of Arabic character, en- abled Dr. Eli Smith to pursue this linguistic branch of the 88 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, researches with remarkable success. The identification of many localities established by these researches was due in a good degree to that worthy missionary, whom Qesenius once accredited as the first living Arabic scholar. When to this rare qualification of his associate were united the exact, com- plete, and critical learning of Dr. Robinson upon the points of inquiry, and his keen and patient observation of places and of incidents, it was almost impossible that a fact should be overlooked, or an error be recorded, in the Researches. An explorer who went to Palestine knowing exactly what to seek and where to seek it, and who took his own bearings by the compass every half-hour, and registered the thermometer four times a day, could hardly go astray either in his facts or in his judgments. One of the best examples of the application of Dr. Robin- sons canon of investigation, is given in the identifying of Kdna el-felil as the scene of the first miracle of Christ. A small village called Kefr Kenna, an hour and a half northeast from Nazareth, is asserted by the monks of the latter town to be the Cana of the New Testament. Such has been the tra- dition of the past two centuries; and so fixed has the im- pression now become that this was the true Cana, that most travellers probably are not aware of there ever having been a question as to the identity. The allusions of many of the earlier travellers to Cana are too brief and indefinite to shed much light upon its locality. Maundrell did not go to the place, but passed in view of it, on the way from Nazareth to Acre, going at first northward, crossing the hills that en- compass the vale of Nazareth on that side, and then turning to the westward. ~ Maundeville only says that Cana is fonr miles from Nazareth; but gives no hint of the direction. And besides, little confidence could be placed in one who gravely records the following item: Half a mile from Naz- areth is the leap of our Lord; for the Jews led him upon a high rock, to make him leap down, and have slain him; but Jesus passed amongst them, and leaped upon another rock; and the steps of his feet are still to be seen in the rock where Journal of April 20 (A.D. 1697). 18~57.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 89 he alighted. Sa~wulf is a little more precise. He says: Six miles to the northeast of Nazareth, on a hill, is Cana of Galilee, where our Lord converted water into wine at the marriage feast. There nothing is left standing, except the monastery called that of Architriclinus f (the Ruler of the Feast). Dr. Robinson regards this statement of Sa~wulf as applicable not to Kefr Kenna, but to Kana el-Jelil. But since the rebuilding of the church and convent at Nazareth in the early part of the seventeenth century, tradition has uniformly and strongly pointed to Kefr Kenna as the Cana of the New Testament. Kdna el-felil is a ruin on the northern border of the plain el-Biittauf, about three hours distant from Nazareth, in a north- easterly direction. It was first pointed out to Dr. Robinson from the Wely above Nazareth, by an Arab-Greek Christian of that town. The prevalence of the ancient name among the common people, in opposition to the tradition of the monks, is with Dr. Robinson a sufficient reason for reject- ing the present monastic position at Kefr-Kenna, and fixing the site of Cana at Kana el-Jelil. The name is identical, and stands the same in the Arabic version of the New Testa- ment; while the form Kefr-Kenna can only be twisted by force into a like shape. Moreover, Kana el-Jelil is suffi- ciently near to Nazareth to accord with all the circumstances of the history. Thus, two conditions of the canon are ful- filled; the site of Kana el-Jelil answers to the Biblical narra- tive, and it is determined by the permanence of the name in the language of the native Arab population. But Dr. Robinson presents much more than this negative evidence against the claims of Kefr Kenna. He shows that an earlier tradition actually regarded the present Kana as the ancient Cana; that, according to Quaresimus, so lately as at the commencement of the seventeenth century, two Canas were spoken of among the inhabitants of Nazareth and the vicinity, one called simply Cana of Galilee (Kana el-Jelil), and the other Sepher Cana (Kefr Kenna); and further, that many earlier travellers in Palestine place Cana north of Sep - t Travels (A. ID. 1103). Chap. X. (AD. 1322). S 90 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, phoris, and describe it as having a mountain on the north, and a broad, fertile, and beautiful plain towards the south; all which corresponds to the position of Kana, and not to Kefr Kenna. These arguments are conclusive in favor of Kana el-Jelil as the true site of the Cana of the New Testament. The tradition concerning Kefr Kenna obviously originated with the monks of the convent at Nazareth, as best suited to their convenience. Since the first edition of the Biblical Researches was pub- lished, nearly all intelligent travellers, and the best geogra- phers, have adopted Kana el-Jelil as the true site of Cana. Munk, whose admirable work just preceded the Researches, makes Cana the modern Kefer Kanna.* Houz6, whose latest map of Palestine is that of 1848, places Cana in the site of Kana el-Jelil, retaining also the site of Kefr Kenna, but without giv- ing the Arabic names. Kiepert follows iDr. Robinson. Ritter also makes Cana identical with Kana el-Jelil. Bagsters Chronological Atlas identifies Kana el-Jelil with the Cana of the New Testament, as demonstrated by the powerful arguments of Dr. Robinson. Dr. Wilson, who is slow to acknowledge Robinsons authority, speaks of Kana el-Jelil as the Cana of Galilee, which was privileged to witness the be- ginning of our Lords miracles.t Van de Velde, who, how- ever, can hardly be called an original authority, accepts the decision of Dr. Robinson in favor of Kana el-Jelil. We are therefore the more surprised to find Mr. Stanley still in doubt. Without entering upon the question, he only says: The claims of Cana are almost equally balanced between the two modern villages of that name, the one situated at some distance, in the corner of the basin of Sepphorieh, the other nearer, in an upland village, to the east of Nazareth. ~ Home, in the new edition of his Introduction, exhibits a carelessness upon this point that is truly surprising. Although he has corrected much in the geographical portion of his work, upon the authority of the Researches of Dr. Robinson, yet in his article on Gana, in the Geographical Dictionary appended to the third volume, he ignores the disputed question as to the ~ Palestine, p. 35 b. ~ Sinai and Palestine, p. 359. t Lands of the Bible, Vol. II. p. 94. 1857.1 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 91 site of Cana, but so describes the place as to leave no doubt that Kefr Kenna is in his mind, while he gravely remarks that it is a small town of Galilee, situated on a gentle enii- nence to the west of Gapernaum. This mode of designat- ing the locality has at least the merit of being as safe as it is original. We have dwelt thus long upon this example, because it fur- nishes so fine an illustration of Dr. Robinsons method of in- vestigation and its results. It is in fact an experirneutum era- cis of the principles laid down in his canon. But while we xvould congratulate our countryman upon his success in thus arraying Scripture, history, language, and reason against a mere monkish tradition, and upon the tribute which the learned world has accorded to his judgment, we would not have it supposed that he has one whit subdued that monkish tradition in Palestine itself, or broken its charm with travel- lers who are susceptible to superstition. Of this class is the eccentric M. de Saulcy, who, while nervously suspicious of an Arab, always clings tenaciously to a monk. He attempts to refute the seductive arguments of the learned Dr. Robin- son, as to the true site of Cana, and, as he thinks, com~ pletely destroys them all. His arguments are three, which we present in an inverted order. The first is drawn from a criticism of the sacred text (John ii. 1). How could Jesus, he asks, starting from Nazareth for the purpose of proceeding to Capernaum, have thought of going out of his way four or five leagues to the northward, when his easiest, shortest, and most natural course was evi- dently to take the beaten road from Nazareth to Capernaum, which road passed of necessity by Kefr Kenna? But the Evangelist makes the marriage the motive of the journey from Nazareth, and not a mere incident upon the way from Naza- reth to Capernaum, though Jesus afterwards went down to the lake. Beside, Kana el-Jelil is but about fifteen miles from Nazareth, and not much of a detour from the road to Caper- naum. Alford, who is keenly alive to the minutest points of criticism, remarks: Dr. Robinson satisfactorily establishes that Khna el-Jelil, about three hours N.~ E. from Naza- reth, is the site of this miracle. The name is identical, and 92 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, SO stands in the Arabic version of the New Testament. He shows this to have been recognized in early tradition, and only recently usurped by Kefr Kenna, a village one and a half hours northeast from Nazareth, on one of the roads to Tiberias.~ M. de Saulcys second argument is historical. He does not deny that an old tradition pretended to identify the Cana of the Gospel with Kana el-Jelil ; but he insists that Quaresimus had good reason to reject that tradition for the evidence in favor of Kefr Kenna as the true locality. This evidence he makes to consist mainly in the tradition of a church built upon the identical spot of the miracle, whose ruins IDe Saulcy professes to identify with those of an ancient mosque near the modern church in Kefr Kenna, and in the existence there of two water-pots, as old as the time of the miracle. The weighty testimony of most earlier writers in favor of Kana el-Jelil he attempts to offset by the ambiguous evidence of Phocas in the twelfth century, of Willibald in the eighth, and of Antoninus the Martyr in the sixth, who certi- fies that he not only saw two of the original water-pots of Christs miracle, but that he filled one with water, and drew forth wine1 His third argument is linguistic. The words Cana of Galilee could never have been expressed by Kana el-Jell. This last word is positively an adjective, meaning great, or illustrious. I then most conscientiously declare, that, accord- ing to my interpretation, and I dare say according to the in- terpretation of any native scholar, the words Kana el-Jelil cannot have any other meaning than Kana the Great, or Kana the illustrious. To this Dr. Robinson quietly but effectually replies: Had M. de Saulcy turned to his Arabic New Tes- tament, he would have found, not only that Galilee (FaXtXaia) is always rendered by el-JeUl, but also that Gana of Galilee (Kava rI~ faXtXaias} wherever it occurs, is uniformly given by Kdna el-Jeld (John ii. 1, 11; iv. 46; xxi. 2). Dr. Robinson having expressed the wish, in his first edition, that future travellers would bear in mind the true Cana, and would verify his conclusions, we made a memorandum of the * Commentary on John ii. 1. 18~7.] 93 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. bearings of Kana el-Jelfi from Nazareth, and resolved to sat- isfy ourselves of its identity with the Cana of John. The success of this endeavor may be learned from the following extract from our unpublished journal, which, in imitation of Mr. Stanley, we here introduce, to relieve the tedium of dis- sertation. We take the liberty of retaining the first person singular: Nazareth, MIty 28th, 1853. In planning a tour of Palestine, it was a first consideration to include in it as many places of interest as could be brought within the time allotted, and especially such places of sacred association as had been identified by reliable authorities. But Dr. Robinson has so completely upset both the topography of Palestine and the traditions of the elders, that one might as well attempt to explore Japan before the friendly expedition of the United States has opened its gates, as to go out of the beaten track to verify any of his discov- eries in this stereotyped land. Once or twice I succeeded in getting upon his route, and found it marked at every step by the most learned and cautious accuracy. But there seems to be a universal conspiracy among dragomans, guides, sheiks, guards, monks, moukris, horses, and mules, to ignore every place that Dr. Robinson has identified, and to follow still the beaten way. My own dragoman, who has long resided in Syria, and is well acquainted with the country, and by far the most intelligent and obliging of his class that I have seen, though he has travelled with Rev. Dr. Keith, and with Mr. Bartlett the artist, often tells me that nobody ever before asked him about such and such places, or expressed any desire to visit them! There was one place that I was determined, if possible, to see, namely, the true Cana of Galilee. I had read with interest Dr. Rob- insons opinion as to the location of this village, and had seen Lord Nugents ill-natured criticism upon it; I had also just read, at Jerusa- lem, Dr. Robinsons re-affirmation of his view in a late number of the Bgbliotheca Sacra. With the aid of Kieperts map, and of Dr. Robin- sons description, there was no difficulty in fixing the spot; and I was rejoiced to find that my dragoman knew the place, though he had never been led to attach any importance to it as the real Cana. Accordingly, I stipulated that this place should be comprised within our northward route. Before leaving Tiberias, I took special pains to have it under- stood by the dragoman, and the mounted guard that accompanied us, that we did not wish to go to Nazareth by the beaten track of Lahieh and Kefr Kenna (the traditional Cana), but by a more northern path around the base of Jebel Hattin, and by Rummflneh across el-Bfittauf 94 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, to K~f~na el-.Jelil, and thence due south to Nazareth. All this was agreed upon before starting. But we had not been an hour on our way before I suspected that we were on the wrong path, a suspicion that was soon confirmed by seeing Lfibieh in the distance. The drago- man assured me, however, that the guard had undertaken to lead us to K~na el-felil by a more direct route; but, on inquiry, I was satisfied that the guard had quite mistaken my instructions. At about eleven oclock we reached the traditional Cana, where I saw the little Greek chapel in which are deposited two huge stone jars said to have been used at the marriage feast. The chapel was deli- ciously cool, while, without, the thermometer ranged above 1000; and if the water-pots had only been filled with iced Croton, I should, with- out further inquiry, have indorsed this as the place of the beginning of miracles. Determined to see the other Cana also, I made an arrange- ment to go there with a guidc from this place, and one of our mounted guard. One of my comrades concluded to join the expedition, while the rest of the party proceeded directly to Nazareth. The illness of the cook made it desirable that both dragomans should go on to Nazareth to make ready the tents and the evening meal; so, with a guide fully instructed as to the object of our search, which he professed to know perfectly, we set out, without an interpreter, for a detour of some three or four hours. At a distance of some twenty minutes from Kefr Kenna, the guide turned aside to a little mound partly covered with wheat, and, showing us the scanty remains of a wall and a small tank, insisted that this was Klnrbet Kana. At the same time our cavalier proposed that we should now go to Nazareth! Their eyes seemed to betray a trick, and a collusion between them to get the bulcslieesli without performing the stipulated service; so, remounting my horse, and indicating the positions of Kefr iJfenda and of ]?umm4nek respectively, I pointed to a spot between the two, as the true site of Cana, and rode off quietly in that direction. But this sort of demonstration, which had hitherto proved effectual with refractory Arabs in the desert, had no effect upon our redoubtable cav- alier. He rode after me a few paces, shouting Hawagee! then handed me the water-skin, and headed his horse for Nazareth, the guide accom- panying him. This was cool, as much as to say, You may be thirsty before you get back; so you may as well take water with you on your lonely expedition. We now came to a parley. I offered more 6ukslieeslt if they would take us to K~na el-Jelil, and refused any for this sham service. At first, both guard and guide denied that there was any such place; then, pointing to the sun, they represented it as too far, and 1857.1 PRESENT GEOGRAPhY OF PALESTINE. 95 refused to go. I felt sure that it was but about an hours ride around the base of tbe mountain a little in advance of me; but, in the con- fusion of the moment, instead of calling upon the Arabs to name the neighboring mountains, I called from the map the names of the Tells near Cana, and the fellows put every one of these as far off as I could see. Again I set out to go forward, hoping that they would follow; but the guide would not stir, and the guard rode off toward Nazareth, looking buck upon us with a most provoking leer. Here was a pre- dicament, two strangers in a turbhlent region, having no Arabic at hand, but obliged to converse through monosyllables and signs, deserted by their hired protectors at the outset of an afternoon journey of some five hours. We could do nothing but turn back toward Nazareth, leaving it to Dr. Robinson to find K~ina el-Jelil, if he could. If he had never disturbed its locality, instead of being left in doubt of its very existence, I might have spent the sultry noon in that cool little church, and, bating a phrenological want of veneration, might have imagined myself in the very house of the bridegroom, with the identi- cal water-jars before me; or I might have reposed upon the neighbor- ing stone from which the multitudes were fed with five loaves and two fishes. Fresh from the scene of the latest miracle of Christ, the miraculous draught of fishes at the Sea of Tiberias, after his resurrec- tion, I longed to enjoy the associations of the first miracle at Cana, associations quite apart from the intrusions of monkish superstition. But in this I was doomed to disappointment. When we reached Nazareth and told the story, the dragoman was ready to flog the cavalier on the spot. He had taken the utmost pains with the guide, who had agreed to go to Kijirbet Kana, about two hours distant from Kefr Kenna, and to show us there the remains of a fosse, & c. belonging to the ancient town; so the real difficulty seemed to have been with the guard, who wished to save himself and his horse an extra ride. But though I lost the personal association of the miracle with its true site, I have no doubt of the correctness of Dr. Robinsons opinion as to that site; while I am equally clear that it is not my prov- ince to identify localities, or to verify his conclusions. The tour of Drs. Robinson and Smith in Palestine in 1852 was far from being a repetition of the tour of 1838. With the exception of a single excursion into the vicinity of Hebron, the map exhibits no trace of the second tour south of Jeru- salem. The scenes of the second exploration were mainly Galilee and the regions east and west of the great northern road leading from Jerusalem by Nabulus. The heart of 96 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, Galilee was thoroughly explored; occasional excursions were made to the east of the Jordan; the district of Lebanon was crossed in all directions; the most northern bounds of ancient Plicenicia were visited, and the great plain of Ccele Syria was traversed in its entire length. The most northerly point at- tained was el-Husn, and the most easterly, Riblah. Dr. Rob- insons plan of visiting the Hauran was frustrated; but this is the less to be regretted, since Mr. Porter has furnished us with so admirable a map of that district, drawn from his own aocnrate observations. Some idea of the results of Dr. Robinsons second tour to geographical science may be formed from the fact, that nearly fifty ancient places were then visited or identified for the first time by a Frank traveller. The number of such places visited or identified for the first time in the tour of 1838 was about one hundred and twenty. The determination of all these places may be fairly credited to Dr. Robinson. One of the most interesting results of these researches is the identifying of three of the Ramahs of Scripture; that of Benjamin at er-Rdm, near the road from Jerusalem to Bethel ; * that of Naphtali, and that of Asher. Another point of interest is the probable identity of the Emmaus of the New Testament with the ancient Nicopolis, which is unquestionably repre- sented by the modern Amwds, about twenty minutes east of el-Latr~n, the well-known fortress of the Romans and the Crusaders on the road from Joppa to Jerusalem. We saw Amwas from the road, but had not time to visit it. We were satisfied, however, from a thorough cross-examination of our native Arab attendants, that Kieperts map of 1840, which locates Emmaus to the southwest of el-Latr~n, was in error4 The correction appears in the recent maps of Kiepert. litter, however, locates Amwas or Nicopolis northwest of el-Latron, for which there is no authority. The excursion of Dr. Robinson to Pella beyond Jordan and his return by way of Beth-shean was full of interest and ex- citement. Notwithstanding the ignorance of his guides, and the extreme haste with which the examination was conducted, Er-Ram is certainly Ramah of Benjamin. Stanley, p. 210. t We made this correction of Kiepert in The independent of July 14, 1853. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 97 we feel sure that he has identified the spot where the Chris- tians of the first century found a refuge during the siege of Jerusalem. Both the historical and topographical arguments are conclusive; though the actual inspection of the ruins of Fahil was made between 1.55 and 2.10 P. M., i. e. in fifteen minutes! We trust that some future explorer will devote at least a day to that vicinity, if this can be done with safety. We are not so well satisfied with Dr. Robinsons argument for the identity of Sd/aU on the west side of the Jordan in the GhOr, with the Succoth to which Jacob journeyed after his reconciliation with Esan. Notwithstanding the strong argu- ments of our author in favor of this view, we must ~till think that, to meet the conditions of the narrative, Succoth should be sought upon the eastern side of the Jordan. It is at least an open question. Schwarz marks Sukkoth with a note of interrogation, upon the western side of the Jordan, near the southeastern extremity of Gilboa, but not within the Gh~r. His map, hoxvever, does not accurately represent the moun- tainous borders of that region. The date of Schwarzs map is 5607, i. e. A. D. 1847, and he must have heen acquainted with Dr. Robinsons Researches, though we do not find that he mentions them. His map corresponds with Robinsons also in the discrimination between Kdna and Kefr Kenna, which indeed is now followed by all respectable authorities. To sum up in one glance the results embodied in these three volumes: draw a line from Bethel, a few miles north of Jerusalem, to Lydda, near Joppa, and another from Engedi, down the western shore of the Dead Sea, to Gaza in the southwestern corner of Palestine, and the country included within these lines is crossed and recrossed by Dr. Robin- sons routes of travel so thoroughly, that hardly an impor- tant point within the limits of the tribes of Judah, Benja- min, Simeon, and Dan remains unvisited. The author, however, did not explore the coast of the Mediterranean from Gaza to Carmel. It shows how little he was influenced by mere sentiment, that he should have gone within sight of Joppa and Carmel without visiting either; but the fact was, that both were so well ascertained that he could have no oc- casion to visit them as an explorer, and mere curiosity, or VOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 9 98 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, even historical and religious association, was not with him a prominent motive. From Bethel his first route was north- ward, by Sychar, across the plain of Esdraelon to Nazareth, then eastward by Tabor to Tiberias, thence along the coast northward to Safed, and then in a northwesterly direction to Tyre. The second route, within these bounds, consists of two zigzag tracks, with frequent detours, the one lying to the ~vest of the first, the other to the east, and sometimes crossing the Jordan. Thus the country between a line from Bethel to Joppa, and another from the head of the Sea of Tiberias to Acre, the region of Samaria and Galilee, or the inheritance of Ephraim, Gad, Manasseb, Issachar, and Zebulon, was pretty well explored longitudinally. After this the route, as has already been indicated, traversed the valley of the Hiileh, and the great vale of Ccele Syria. This northern section of the tour is the most novel and inter- esting. Upon every point which he visits, Dr. Robinson sheds the light of history and of scholarly investigation. Even where other men of learning and ability have preceded him, he brings forth from his treasure things new and old. His description of Baalbek is an example of this, making that wondrous ruin real to those who have not seen it, and intelli- gible to those who have. At Damascus, of course, Mr. Por- ter is much more at home than any transient visitor could be; yet even~ there Dr. Robinsons notes are valuable. In the neighborhood of the great convent of Mar Jirjis el- Humeira, at the northernmost extremity of his tour, Dr. Rob- inson visited the intermitting fountain (Fauwar ed-Deir), the identity of which with the Sabbatical River of Josephus* was first suggested by Rev. Mr. Thomson of the Syrian Mission, in 1840. This fountain issues from a small cavern in the limestone rock, and flows at very irregular intervals, some- times two or three times a week, and sometimes not for twenty or thirty days. The same popular belief which obtained among the Jews as to its flowing only upon the Sabbath, now exists among the Mohammedans of that region, who say that the fountain flows only on Friday, the Moslem Sabbath. A 1857.] 99 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. similar instance of credulity is found in the account given by Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, of intermittent fountains visited by him in the twelfth century. At Yabneh [famnia on the Mediterranean] there is a spring which flows all six days, but on Sabbath not a single drop is found in it. In lower Galilea there is a cave which inside is spacious and high. On one side of the cave are buried Shammai and his disciples, and on the other Hillel and his disciples. In the middle of the cave there is a large stone, hollow like a cup, which is capable of containing more than forty seah. When men of worth enter, the stone appears full of sweet water. One may then wash his hands and feet, and pray, imploring God for what one desires. The stone, however, is not hollow from below, for the water does not come from the bottom, as it only oc- curs in honor of a man of worth, since to an unworthy man the water does not appear. Though one should draw from the stone a thousand jugs of water, it would not be dimin. ished, but would remain full as before. But the most interesting topic in the new volume and, with the exception of the discussion of the position of Israel at Sinai, the most valuable result of the original researches is the topography of Jerusalem, especially with reference to the site of the Holy Sepulchre. Here Dr. Robinsons assaults upon ecclesiastical tradition were most vigorous and effective, and it is therefore at this point that the first edition of the Researches has provoked the most earnest opposition. Fore. most among the champions of the traditional site of the sepulchre is Mr. Williams,t fortified by the topographical and architectural arguments of Professor Willis. In the arch~eological argument, Mr. Williams had a seeming advan- tage in the fact that Dr. Robinson did not, at his first visit, personally inspect the so.called sepulchre of Joseph and Nico- demus. This error, as we have before stated, Dr. Robinson has abundantly retrieved in his third volume; and his mas- terly argument against the identity of the alleged with the aetnal site of the Holy Sepulchre is now complete at every point. But the controversy is not yet at rest. We do not Travels, Triibners edition, p. 57. I The Holy City, Vol. II. 100 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, propose to enter upon it here, but only to give a r~sum6 of the arguments upon both sides. Mr. Stanley modestly declines any attempt to unravel the tangled controversy of the identity of the Holy Sepulchre. But he presents the question at issue with admirable clear- ness. It is enough to state that the argument mainly turns on the solu- tion of two questions, one historical, the other topographical. The historical question rests on the value of the tradition that the spot was marked before the time of Constantine by a temple or statue of Venus, which the Emperor Hadrian had erected in order to pollute a spot already in his time regarded as sacred by the Christians. The topo- graphical question is, whether the present site can be proved to have stood without the walls of Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion. p. 432. The most careful and candid summary of the argument for the identity of the alleged site of the Holy Sepulchre is given by Thrupp. He endeavors to identify the rock now included within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as Golgotha, and he traces in it a fancied resemblance to a human skull. He assumes that this name, applied to a bold, rocky knoll, was perpetuated among the natives of Jerusalem until the date of the erection, by the Emperor Constantine, of the present church, or rather of the original edifice upon its site. This supposed identification of the rock Golgotha, establishes the approximate locality of the sepulchre. The identity of the site now pointed out as the place of burial, he argues from the statement of Eusebius concerning its discovery by Constantine. The place was surmounted and polluted by a temple of Venus. In removing this temple to the founda- tions, the workmen unexpectedly came upon a rock-hewn sepulchre. But the narrative of this affair in Eusebius is so tinged with the marvellous, that Mr. Thrupp is forced to admit that the chain of traditionary evidence for the authen- ticity of the present sepulchre is by no means so perfect as has been sometimes represented. The topographical argument Mr.Thrupp presents in a some- Ancient Jerusalem, p. 273. 1857.] 101 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. what novel form. He maintains that the second wall of Josephus is identical with the wall of Hezekiali and Manas- seh, which was without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entering in at the fish- gate. This fish-gate he assumes to be the same with the gate Gennath, or the garden-gate of Josephus. But of this he offers no proof. He places the fish-gate at the northeastern corner of the Upper City, and argues that the second wall did not cross the northwestern ridge, or Christian quarter, of the northern city, but ran along the valley encircling the north- ern part of the Lower City, or Hill of Zion. f This would give the second wall a total length of but 2250 feet; which very circumstance, however, Mr. Thrupp regards as confirming his theory of the course of the wall, since Josephus states that the third wall, that of Agrippa, had ninety towers, the ancient xvall sixty, and the middle or second wall but forty ; ~ and assuming that these towers were regularly disposed at equal intervals in the three walls, he infers that the second wall was but one sixth the length of the wall of Agrippa. Accord- ingly, on Mr. Thrupps plan, the second wall begins a little to the west of Millo, and runs northward to a line with the so- called Pool of Bethesda, where it turns to the east. This excludes almost the whole of the northwestern portion of the modern city, and of course excludes the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Mr. Thrupp finds the pool of Hezekiah in the well of the Hammam esh-Shefa, a little to the north of the causeway Millo, which has been explored by Mr. Wolcott, Dr. Tobler, and Dr. Barclay, without, however, any visible trace of its supposed connection with the Gihon. This view of Mr. Thrupp differs essentially from that of Mr. Williams, who places the gate Gennath about midway be- tween Hippicus and the temple area, i. e. in the middle of the northern wall of the Upper City, and carries the second wall across the slope of Akra, below the site of the Church of the Sepulchre. Against the theory of Mr.Williams, Thrupp urges with much force the objection which strikes the eye of the observer upon the ground, that according to his view the ~ 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14. ~ Bell. Jud. V. 4. 3. t Ancient Jerusalem, p. 104. 102 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, second wall must have stood on the slope of a hill, the ground ascending from it on the outside. No position could have been worse adapted for defence; and yet the second wall was evidently regarded by the Romans as no contemptible fortifi- cation. This objection to the line proposed by Williams, Thrupp attempts to obviate by greatly reducing the area within the second wall, and confining that wall to the defence of the Lower City, along the valley, the Upper City being defended by the old wall. But we find nothing either in history, mon- uments, or the science of fortification that goes to establish this view. Schwarz maintains quite the opposite extreme, and his view is worth mentioning for its singularity. On the author- ity of the Targumist Jonathan Ben Uzziel, who lived in Jeru- salem at the time of King Herod, he identifies the tower of Hippicus with the tower of Chananel of Jeremiah xxxi. 38; and this he places to the northeast of Jeremiahs grotto. He argues from Josephus that Hippicus was on the northern side of the city, not far from the Antonia; and further, in the high rocky hill to the north of the grotto of Jeremiah, he professes to have found some vestiges which betoken that at some time a strong building or fort must have stood there. * He describes the course of the first wall of Josephus on this wise: From the northwest corner of the temple wall in a northern direction to the tower of Chananel or Hippicus, not far from Jeremiahs grotto; then, on the other side, that is, in a western direction, the wall extended from Hippicus towards the Upper Gihon, then ran southwardly around Mount Zion, then north- erly, and again southerly, and formed the double wall; ran next around the fountain of Siloah, thence past the lower pool, till it reached the Ophel, and terminated finally at the eastern gallery of the temple. This he regards as the wall of Nehemiah. The second wall of Josephus, Schwarz regards as the same which Jonathau the Maccabee caused to be built within the city, in order to separate Akra, where his enemies, the Grecians, were posted, from other parts of Jerusalem. Descriptive Geography of Palestine, p. 251. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 103 This theory brings the Church of the Holy Sepulchre within the first wall. The Rabbi adds: It is clearly proved, from what has been said, that the alleged grave of Christ is quite wrong; as it must have been indisputably without the city, at a distance at least of 100 paces, or 50 cubits, according to Bava Bathra, 2. 9. These speculations are interesting as coming from purely Jewish sources. Rabbi Joseph Schwarz resided for sixteen years in Palestine, and devoted much attention to the geog- raphy and the natural history of the country. His chapters on the products of Palestine in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, are particularly valuable. He describes the plague of locusts, which he witnessed in 1837, and again in 1845. His notes upon the synagogues of Jerusalem, and the Jews of Palestine, are also of special interest to the Christian reader. Had he been more familiar with thelabors of Gentile scholars, the geographical section of his volume would have been more thorough and accurate. The work of Schwarz was printed in Hebrew at Jerusalem; but a good English translation by Isaac Leeser has been published in Philadelphia. Dr. Robinson, in his third volume, sums up with his usual ability the controverted points of the argument brought for- ward in his first edition for the course of the second wall from the vicinity of Hippicus northward to the Damascus gate. He justly remarks, that it is only by a careful consideration of all the particulars specified by Josephus, and by a cautious comparison of each with the features of the surface as still seen, or as known from history, that we can hope to arrive at legitimate and trustworthy conclusions. Regarding the an- cient tower just south of the Yafa Gate as the Hippicus of Josephus, he argues, as we think conclusively, that the Gate Gennath, or the Garden Gate, which led out of Zion to the country, was near to Hippicus. The Tyropcnon he regards as beginning, not near the Damascus Gate, and running south- wards to Siloam, but near the YalTa Gate, and running down along the northern side of Zion. This identifies Akra as the gibbous~ ridge on which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands. The Pool of Hezekiah is probably the reservoir 104 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, that still bears his name. The ancient remains connected with the present Damascus Gate, Dr. IRobinson regards as those of an ancient gate belonging to the second wall of Jo- sephus. That author thus briefly describes the course of the second wall: The second wall had its beginning from the gate called Gennath belonging to the first wall; and encir- cling only the tract on the north, it extended quite to Anto- nia. The problem then is simply to describe a wall from Hippicus to the Damascus Gate across the ridge of Akra, in such a manner as to embrace the Pool of Hezekiah, and both to enlarge the area of the city and to defend it upon its north- western side. A careful inspection of the map will show that, to fulfil these conditions, the wall must have run to the west of the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and therefore that site, having been within the walls, cannot be accepted as genuine. What may be thus clearly traced upon the map, is most palpable to the eye from any point that com- mands the whole western and northern range of the modern city. Yet Tischendorf follows almost implicitly the tradi- tions of the monks, and argues against Dr. Robinson for the genuineness of the alleged site of the sepulchre. j- To sum up the topographical argument, the line of the second wall adopted by Thrupp, after Krafft4 must be rejected as narrowing the city too much, as ill planned for defence, and as faulty in the position of Gennath. The course advo- cated by Williams must be decidedly rejected for the last two reasons. That suggested by Schwarz is opposed to a mass of evidence which identifies the tower near the Jaffa Gate with the Hippicus of Josephus. The line proposed by Di. Robinson comes nearer than any other to the vague and general statement of Josephus concerning the course of the second wall, taken in connection with other points of refer- ence given by the Jewish historian. Upon the whole, while we strongly incline to Dr. Robinsons view, we would unite with Isaac Taylor in the belief so well expressed in his edi- tion of Traills Josephus, that, Bell. Jud. V. 4. 2. $ Die To~nograp1zie fernscdenz. t Re?sc in den Orient, von Constantin Tischcndorf. 1857.] 105 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. in the almost inevitable progress of European affairs, Palestine must come under the wing of one of the great European States; that this land will receive, erelong, a Christian and civilized government, will have a police, will afford a secure and tranquil liberty of travel and of residence, a liberty of wandering and of strolling about, even as one does in the Highlands of Scotland or in the valleys of Switzer- land; that it will give leisurely opportunity to dig and to trench, to nptnrn and to excavate. When such a time comes, or within a period of five years after it has come, Palestine a region not more exten- sive than any three adjoining English counties will have opened its long-hidden secrets to antiquarian eyes; its few square miles of soil, teeming with historic materials, will have been, if not sifted, yet turned over, or pierced here and there; and, especially, the lowest basements of the Holy City will have been moved from their places, or sutliciently exposed to view. Such a time will not pass without yielding evidence enough for constructin~ an authentic plan of Ancient Jerusalem; and may it not be well, until then, to hold in suspense our opinion, whatever it may be, on matters which, at present, cannot be conclusively determined? Let the Turk retire, and the topographer may step forward. Vol. II. p. cxxi. The historical argument for the alleged site of the Holy Sepulchre Dr. Robinson does not handle quite so successfully as the topographical. Still, he grapples vigorously with the tradition, and labors with much earnestness and force to show that, in the time of Constantine, there was no such histori- cal evidence or tradition respecting the place of our Lords sepulchre, as to lead to the selection of the present site as the true one~~ ; but that, according to Eusebius, the discovery of the sepulchre was the result, not of a previous knowledge derived from tradition, but of a supernatural intimation. It seems to us that Dr. Robinson here strains a little the lan- guage of Eusebius to make his point, and that there is more validity in the objection, that, even had there existed a tradi- tion of the site of the Sepulchre before the time of Constan- tine~ it could have had no authority in opposition to the clear and definite topographical evidence. Such a tradition is fairly matched by those concerning the place of the Ascension, and that of the martyrdom of Stephen, both which are known to be erroneous. 106 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTJNE. [July, The objection is of no force against Dr. Robinsons view, that he suggests no site of the Sepulchre as a substitute for the present. This he was not bound to do; nor do we find any data from which such a conjecture could be framed. In- deed, with respect to the sepulchre of Christ, we prefer to rest in that sublime indefiniteness of place which Keble so finely expresses as to Gethsemane, in answer to the wish to trace each sacred spot It may not be: Th unearthly thoughts have passed from earth away, And, fast as evening sunbeams from the sea, Thy footsteps all, in Sions deep decay, Were blotted from the holy ground: yet dear Is every stone of hers; for Thou wast surely here. There is a spot within this sacred dale That felt Thee kneeling, touched Thy prostrate brow One Angel knows it. Mr. Stanleys Sinai and Palestine differs widely, both in scope and in style, from the Biblical Researches. It does not search out minutely the localities of Biblical history with a view to identify these with modern sites or existing ruins; it is hardly, in any sense, a contribution to the cartography of Palestine; but it seeks so to connect sacred History and sacred Geography as to clothe the former with the reality of place as well as of time, and to give to the records of the Past the actual life of the Present. To this task Mr. Stanley brings the furniture of an extensive, if not always accurate, scholarship, the faculty of quick and pertinent observation, a fine talent for description, and a polished rhetoric. His de- scriptions of physical scenery are graphic and beautiful; his collocation of historical events is frequently striking and impressive, always apt and graceful; his moral reflections are just in conception, and chaste in expression. In colloquial phrase, it is a readable and companionable volume. Occasionally, indeed, we notice a carelessness of style, especially in the fragments of the authors journal which are interspersed among graver disquisitions. Such is the anti- climax of the word mentioned, in an otherwise fine period touching the obelisk at Heliopolis 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 107 It is the oldest known in Egypt, and therefore in the world, the father of all thnt have arisen since. It was raised about a century before the coming of Joseph; it has looked down upon his marriage with Asenath; it has seen the growth of Moses; it is mentioned by Herodotus; Plato sate under its shadow; of all the obelisks which sprang up around it, it alone has kept its first position. One by one, it has seen its sons and brothers depart to great destinies elsewhere. From these gardens came the obeiisks of the Lateran, of the Vatican, and of the Porta del Popolo; and this venerable pillar (for so it looks from a distance) is now almost the only landmark of the great seat of the wisdom of Egypt. p. xxxi. The parenthetic clause tames down this last sentence almost as much as the matter-of-fact mentioned mars the poetic climax of the preceding. The opening sentence of the Intro- duction is a solecism. Egypt, amongst its many other as- pects of interest, has this special claim. That which is sin- gled out from other aspects, for special notice, cannot still be enumerated amongst those other aspects. We make these trifling criticisms because the learned Canon of Canterbury should be superior to such small defects of style. In an Introduction of some twenty pages Mr. Stanley gives a birds-eye view of Egypt in relation to Israel. This con- tains some pleasant sketches of Nile scenery and of ancient monuments. But the real interest of the volume begins with the chapter on the Peninsula of Sinai. The general geo- graphical and geological features of the peninsula are admi- rably described, and its historical and traditionary events are introduced often with high scenic effect. It is this grouping together of the physical features and the historical incidents of the region, that is the main excellence of Mr. Stanleys book. He paints the landscape well, and then animates it with the associations of human life. The geological maps interspersed through the volume greatly assist the reader in forming a just conception of Arabia Petra~a. In this respect, the large geological map of that region by Russegger has much value. The maps of Mr. Stanleys book strike us as generally faithful in the coloring, as well as in the outline and classification of the rocks. But while the author is so ample in all physical and histori 108 PRESENT GEOGRAPhy OF PALESTINE. [July, cal details, and so vivid and picturesque in his descriptions, he disappoints our expectation from him as a scholar in the settlement of disputed questions. Whenever he approaches such a question, he seems to lose confidence either in his own learning upon the subject, or in the results of his own logic; and, after arraying history and logic upon both sides, but usually with a preponderance toward one conclusion, he evades the conclusion toward which he points by some doubt- ful generalization. Thus he narrows down the controversy of the passage of the Red Sea to two points, the Wady Tuarick, opposite the Wells of Moses, or the immediate neigh- borhood of Suez; and after a candid statement of the argu- ments in favor of each, he comes to the conclusion, that, if the passage of 600,000 armed men was effected in the limits of a single night, we are compelled to look for it in the nar- rower end of the gulf, and not in the wide interval of eight or ten miles between the Wady Tuarick and theWells of Moses. But Mr. Stanley does not adhere to this conclusion. A few pages later, he introduces extracts from his letters written at the Wells of Moses, bearing upon the same question. In these, after stating the two principal theories of the passage, he adds: It is remarkable that this event almost the first in our religious history should admit, on the spot itself of both these constructions. But the mountain itself remains unchanged and certain, and so does the fact itself which it witnessed. Whether the Israelites passed over the shallow waters of Suez by the means, and within the time, which the narrative seems to imply, or whether they passed through a chan- nel ten miles broad, with the waves on each side piled up to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, there can he no doubt that they did pass over withia sight of this mountain and this desert, by a marvel. bus deliverance. p. 67. This answers the purposes of religious feeling with one whose faith in the miracle is established. But the scholar who would test, illustrate, and confirm the miracle by topo- graphical considerations, should aim at something higher than poetic sentiment. Dr. Robinson, in his first volume, clearly defines the limits 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 109 of the land of Goshen. Lepsius * has identified the ruins of Abu-Kesh~b with the ancient Rameses almost beyond a doubt. Osburn, in his Monumental History of Egypt, finds Rameses on the western border of the Delta, about midway between the Canopic branch of the Nile and the Canal of Alexandria; and hence argues that the Wady et-Tih must have been the scene of the journey from Egypt to the Red Sea.f This theory comports neither with the recorded itiner- ary of Exodns, nor with the surface of the country. But if the land of Goshen lay along the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, on the east of the Delta, and if Rameses is represented by Abu-Kesh~b, a little to the west of Lake Temsah, where, according to Lepsius, has been found a monument of King Rameses H. as the divinity of the place, then the tradition- ary route from Rameses to the Red Sea by the far southern pass of the Wady Tuarik is clearly out of the question. But there is a decisive argument against this lower passage, which both Dr. Robinson and Mr. Stanley seem to have overlooked. It occurred to us with great force upon the ground. The route to the sea by Wady Tuarik would have been the worst possible in a strategic point of view, and therefore Moses, with his knowledge of the desert, would not have chosen it. There is no evidence that Moses was advised by Jehovah of an intended miracle, and so drew the people into a strait from which only a miracle could deliver them. He was command- ed to lead the people out from Egypt, the ulterior design being to enter Palestine. The direct route to Palestine by the way of Gaza was impracticable, because of the hostile temper of the Philistiues4 Therefore Moses was instructed to lead the people by the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. Of course he would aim for the head of the sea, above Suez, intending to pass round the neck into the desert. It is incredible that, aiming for the wilderness on the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez, he should have led the multitude through a narrow mountain defile that would bring them out upon the rocky western shore, ten miles from the head of the sea, and * Letters from Egypt, & c., p. 438; see also Robinsons map. t Vol. II. pp. 575, 597. Exodus xiii. 17. VOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 10 110 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, where the channel is at least ten miles broad. The move- ment of the camp toward the sea-shore was a detour south- ward by express command of God ; * and at Pihahiroth they were shut in by the xvilderness and the sea, with the army of Pharaoh in the rear. This strategic consideration should set- tle the question in favor of a passage near the neck of the gulf. Upon the ground, the argument to the eye is conclu- sive. Tile several conjectural points of the passage are finely presented in Labordes Carte du Golfe de Sttez.t Laborde rejects the traditionary views of the lower passage, and also the view of Niebuhr, that the passage was made at the ford above Suez, and suggests nearly the course that lOr. ilobinson has since indicated, from Suez diagonally toward the Wells of Moses. It was with no ordinary emotion that we made this passage. in a small open boat, with a strong east wind. ~ * Exodus xiv. 2. t Commentaire Gdbgraphique sur lExode. $ Since the preceding paragraph was written, we have received the Notes of Horatius Bonar, D. D., of Kelso, upon The Desert of Sinai, and find the strategic disadvantages of the movement of Israel toward Jehel Atitkah urged as an argu- ment against Dr. Robinsons theory that the passagc was made near the neck of the Gulf of Suez. Dr. Bonar assumes that Moses had some premonition of the mira- cle, and on that ground defends this perilous movement of the camp. In coming up to the sea at all, they were taking a circuit, a circuit which, without any com- pensating advantage, threw them upoa their enemies, and made their position most perilous. But in going south along the western margin of the sea for miles, as they did, they were doing more than taking a circuit. They were deliberately interposing the sea between them and Sinai, and voluntarily imposing upon themselves the necessity for crossing a gulf which they could easily have avoided, thereby making their extrication almost impossible. Had any general done so with his army, he would have been declared either mad or utterly ignorant of the country. But Moses knew the region well. He had more than once gone to Sinai, and was fully ac- quainted with the way. He could not hut know that he was misleading Israel, unless he was conscious of Divine guidance all the way, guidance which superseded and overruled his own judgment His object was to reach the Sinaitic des- ert, yet he turns away from it, and throws a broad sea hetween himself and that desert I Only one thing can account for this, and acquit him of the greatest folly ever manifested by the leader of a people. That one thing is, that it was at the direct command of God that all this was done. Gods purpose was to show his power both to Israel and to their enemies. For this end, he led them by a way which required the special and supernatural forthputting of that power Either there was in this case a most enormous blunder, or a most signal miracle, a miracle deliherately fore-intended, a miracle which owes its magnitude to the I8~7.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 111 Mr. Stanley does better service to Biblical topography in his description of Mount Sinai and its surroundings. To Dr. Robinson belongs the credit of having brought to the knowl- edge of the Christian world a plain at the base of the Horeb cluster, the Wady er-Rahab, lying north-northwest from es- SUfshfeh, which meets all the requisitions of the narrative - of the giving of the Law; a plain two miles long, and nearly half a mile in breadth, from the lower extremity of which the northern front of Sinai-Horeb, visible from all parts of the plain, rises almost perpendicularly to the height of about two thou- sand feet. A fine view of this plain and peak is given in Bart- letts Forty Days in the Desert. Laborde has a good topo- graphical plan of the Sinai group in his Gommentaire sur peculiarly circuitous march which Israel was commanded to make. Deny the mira- cle, and you make this circuitous route a piece of reckless folly, or pure igno- rance, on the part of Moses. Notes of a Spring Journey from Cairo to Beersheba, pp. 8284. Dr. Bonar seems to have taken a just view of the location of Rameses, and of the general route of the Israelites from that point to the Red Sea, except that he hends their course too far to the south. We have shown that the direct route would have led them around the neck of the Gulf of Suez; and it is evident that Moses, as a good strategist, was conducting them. thither when he was commanded to turn southward toward the sea. This fact is conclusive against any of the lower routes conjectured for the passage. No douht the miracle was deliberately fore-intended hy God, who does not act at haphazard, or by sudden expedients to meet emergen- cies. But was Moses advised of the intended miracle hefore he came to Etham That he was, Dr. Bonar assumes without evidence, or rather in face of evidence. It seems clear, from the narrative, that Moses was making for the head of the gulf, intending to go around it, when he was commanded to turn aside from his course, and to encamp hy the sea (Exodus xiv. 1 12). Then it was revealed to him, on the day hefore the miracle, that Pharaoh was already in pursuit, and should be over- thrown in the sea. This view of the case is rational, and corresponds alike with the narrative in Exodus, and with the natural features of the country; and this points to Suez as the place where the passage was made. Dr. Bonar is severe upon Dr. Hohinson for paring down the miracle hy taking into account the ebb-tide. But the narrative in Exodus expressly recognizes natu- ral agents, such as the east wind, in producing the phenomenon of the divided waters; and as the use of natural agents does not set aside the supernatural direc-- tion and control of the same, neither does Dr. Rohinsons recognition of those agents argue against his own helief in the supernatural. The foresight of the effect of wind and tide at that critical juncture, and a grand military movement founded upon it, point to a supernatural gift in the leader of that fugitive host. We helieve that there was more than this in the case; hut, in his zeal for the miracle, Dr. Bon ar verges upon credulity; and we are not surprised to find him afterwards giving full credence to the legendary Sinai, in face of all the evidence for Sttfsdfeh as the peak, and er- IRhhah as the plain. 112 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, lExode; a better one is given in Wilsons Lands of the Bible,* drawn after Russegger, by Johnston of Edinburgh; but better still is the colored map in Stanleys Sinai and Palestine. We are surprised not to find in the maps accompanying the Bib- lical Researches a separate plan of this mountain cluster, such as is given in Kieperts map of 1842. It will surprise no one that the plain er-RThah, now so con- spicuous in the topography of Sinai, should have been over- looked by travellers previously to Dr. Robinsons visit in 1838, when it is remembered that tradition, which seeks the highest peaks and the deepest caverns, had fixed upon Jebel Musa as the Sinai of the Law, and that, till quite recently, the visitors to Sinai have been either pilgrims of devotion, or travellers who placed themselves implicitly under the guidance of the monks as to sacred localities. Since Dr. Robinsons visit in 1838, there has been a general acquiescence in his view by intelligent travellers. Dr. Wilson, who follows the tradition of the Wady Tu~irik as the point of the Red Sea crossing, and controverts Dr. Robinsons theory of the upper passage, most cordially concurs in his conclusion that er-Rahah was the place of encampment at Sinai. Lepsins, however, boldly transfers the whole scene to Mount Serbal, which has in its favor neither name, tradition, nor topography. His argu- ments are, mainly, the prominent and striking character of the mountain, and the vicinity of Wady Feirhn, which, he alleges, in consequence of its incomparable fertility, and its inex- haustible rapid stream, must have been the most important and the most desirable central spot of the whole peninsula. t But Lepsius overlooks the fact, that Serbal has no plain at or near its base adequate to the accommodation of such a mul- titude, and that the supply of the camp at Sinai is expressly stated to have been miraculous. He also exaggerates the fer- tility of Wady Feiran. A very good reply to the arguments of Lepsius for Serbal is given seriatim by Graul, in the Appendix to his second vol- ume. Graul is Director of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission * Vol. I. p. 160. I Letters from Egypt, & c., p. 304, Bohns edition. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 113 at Leipzig. He seems to be a devout, earnest, and intelligent man; but his volumes add little to our previous knowledge of Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia Petra~a. He holds that the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea must have taken place somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Suez. In discussing the comparative claims of Jebel JJIusa and es- Sitf. sdfelz, he characterizes the latter as the Robinsomschen Ras es- Sufsafeh in opposition to the kl& sterlichen Jebel Musa, a designation which indicates the exact controversy everywhere in Palestine, Robinson vs. the Convent. Grauls work con- tains a neat but not very accurate map of the region from Wady Ghi~iriindel to Sinai. Between the Wady er-Rdhah and the Wady Sebdyeh at the foot of Jebel Musa, there is hardly room for a question. The latter is broken in every direction by ravines and spurs of the mountain; it is not large enough for such an encamp- ment; and it does not command from every point a view of the summit of the mountain. But er-Rahah comes up flush to the base of the mountain, and in every other particular answers the conditions of the narrative. We have always regretted that Pr. Robinson, after his minute measurement of er-Rahab, did not go around to the southern base of the moun- tain Jebel Musa, and there inspect as thoroughly the Wady Sebaych. His omission to do this, like his failure to examine the tombs in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, has given occasion to some to cavil at his conclusions. Ill health pre- vented us from making a personal exploration of the Wady Sebaych; we only looked down upon it from the summit of Jebel Musa. But the contrast in the appearance of this and of er-Rahah, as seen from the top of es-Stifsafeh, is conclusive in favor of the latter as the place of the encampment. The jagged surface and narrow area of Sebaych forbade us to be- lieve that three millions of people could have there encamped in sight of the mount that might be touched. But from es-S~ifsafeh, the plain of er-Rahah lay in all its amplitude directly at our feet, sweeping up to the very base of the ruoun- tam, so that one could drop a plummet upon it, and stretch- ing out its smooth triangular surface broad enough for five millions to stand upon it, all in sight of the summit where we 10* 114 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, stood. A few days before, we had crossed this plain in ap- proaching Sinai by the awful defile of NUkb Hawy, had then measured the fitness of the plain for the encampment of Is- rael, and had felt the grandeur of the mountain that towers at its extremity. Now, on the summit of that mountain, we could not have a doubt. With uncovered head we read aloud all the words of the law that once were uttered there by the voice that shook the earth. By a thorough examination of Wady Sebaych, Mr. Stanley has supplemented the labors of Dr. iRobinson, and strength- ened his conclusion. We quote his graphic account of the two summits and their adjacent plains. And now for the question which every one asks on that consecrated spot. Is this the top of the mount described in Exodus, or must we seek it elsewhere? The whole question turns on another question, whether there is a plain below it agreeing with the words of the nar- rative. Dr. Robinson, who has the merit of discovering first that magnificent approach which I have before described, on the other side of the mountain, declares not; but Laborde and others have so confi- dently maintained that there was a large and appropriate place for the encampment below this peak, that I was fully prepared to find it, and to believe in the old tradition. This impression is so instantly over- thrown by the view of the W~dy Sebayeh, as one looks down upon it from the precipice of Gebel Mousa, that it must be at once abandoned in favor of the view of the great approach before described, unless either the view of the plain of Er-R3heh was less imposing from above than it was from below, or the plain of Sebayeh more imposing from below than it was from above. The first thing to be done was, there- fore, to gain the summit of the other end of the range called the IRKs Sas~tfeh (Willow Head), overlooking the Er-IRTheh from above. The whole party descended, and, after winding through the various basins and cliffs which make up the range, we reached the rocky point over- looking the approach we had come the preceding day. The effect on us, as on every one who has seen and described it, was instantaneous. It was like the seat on the top of Serb~i, but with the difference, that here was the deep, wide yellow plain swelling down to the very base of the cliffs; exactly answering to the plain on which the people removed and stood afar off. There is yet a higher mass of granite imme- diately above this point, which should be ascended, for the greater completeness of view which it affords. The plain below is then seen, extending not only between the ranges of Tlaha and Fureia, but also 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPhY OF PALESTINE. 115 into the lateral valleys, which, on ihe northeast, unite it with the wide Wady of the Sheykh. This is important as showing how far the en- carapment may have been spread below, still within sight of the same summit. Behind extends the granite mass of the range of Gebel Mousa, cloven into deep gullies and basins, and ending in the tradi- tional peak, crowned hy the memorials of its double sanctity. The only point which now remained was to explore the W~dy Seb~yeh on the other side, and ascertain whether its appearance and its relation to Gebel Mousa from below was more suitable than it had seemed from above. This I did on the afternoon of the third day, and I came to the conclusion, that it could only be taken for the place if none other existed. It is rough, uneven, narrow. The only advantnge which it has is, that the peak from a few points of view rises in a more com- manding form than the lids Sas2~feh. But the mountain never de- scends upon the plain. No! If we are to have a mountain without a wide amphitheatre at its base, let us have Serbdl; but if other- wise, I am sure that if the monks of Justinian had fixed the tradi- tional scene on the R~s Sas~feh, no one would for an instant have doubted that this only could be the spot Considering the almost total absence of such conjunctions of plain and mountain in this region, it is a really important evidence to the truth of the narrative, that one such conjunction can be found, and that within the neigh- borhood of the traditional Sinai. Nor can I say that the degree of uncertainty, which must hang over it, materially diminished my en- joyment of it. In fact, it is a great safeguard for the real reverence due to the place, as the scene of the first great revelation of God to man. As it is, you may rest on your general convictions, and be thankful. pp. 7~5, 76. This near approach to a positive opinion from the pen of Mr. Stanley upon a disputed point, is truly grateful. We had the pleasure of observing the effect of an actual survey of the Sinai district upon a company of Oxford graduates, two of whom could boast Mr. Stanley as their tutor. One day at dinner at the English hotel in Cairo, a very intelligent party seated opposite to us began to discuss the probable route of the Israelites to the Red Sea and Mount Sinai. Presently a speaker, turning suddenly to ourselves, inquired, Who is this Dr. Robinson, a countryman of yours, who has made such an assault on our most sacred traditions? In reply we gave an account of Dr. Robinsons labors in Hebrew and Greek lexicography, and in connection with the theological semina 116 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, ries at Andover and New York. This led to an exposition of the American mode of theological education, which was re- ceived with marked courtesy and attention. But the conclu- sion with our English friends was still, that, however learned Dr. Robinson might be, and however respected at home, he had forfeited the respect of every true Churchman by his wanton irreverence toward tradition, and especially the tradi- tions of Suez, Sinai, and the Holy Sepulchre. This party left Cairo for Sinai a little in advance of us, and on reaching the convent, we met them coming down from the summit of es-S~ifsafeh. Oh, cried they, with one voice, what a man your Dr. Robinson is! He is quite right. We have visited every summit, and surveyed the whole ground, and every one must agree with him. We had the satisfac- tion of hearing them at Jerusalem renew this testimony to the accuracy of our countryman. Indeed, this iconoclast of tradition seemed to be their chief authority and guide, a result honorable alike to him and to them. Mr. Stanley entered Palestine from Petra~a by way of He- bron. He followed, with little deviation, the usual route of intelligent travellers; his object being, not to search out and identify localities, but to enjoy sacred agd historical asso- ciations, and to reproduce through the permanent physical features of the country the faded scenes of the past. His work, therefore, does not take the form of an itinerary, but is based upon natural and geographical divisions, such as the Maritime Plain, the Plain of Esdraelon, Ephraim, Galilee, and Lebanon. Mr. Stanley rejects Tabor as the Mount of Transfiguration, and the summit of Olivet as the scene of the Ascension, upon grounds familiar to every scholar. He is evidently not a tradi- tionist. With regard to the Ascension, we may here add, that Dr. Barclay claims to have identified the site of Bethphage, overhanging the Wady Geddoom on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, and by means of this to have approxi- mated the place of the Ascension. We rode over the ground with him, and were much impressed by his ingenious and See Map of Jerusalem and Environs, by J. T. Barclay, M. D. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 117 enthusiastic reasoning, but not wholly satisfied with his con- elusion. The most interesting, and perhaps the most valuable, por- tions of Mr. Stanleys book, are the chapter on Palestine, which treats in general of the territory, its position, climate, cities, scenery, and geological features, and the chapter on the Gospel History and Teaching, viewed in connection with the localities of Palestine. This strikingly exhibits the reality of Christs teaching, its homeliness and universality, and its union of human and divine. No better idea of the book can be given than is conveyed in these words of the Preface So to delineate the outward events of the Old and New Testament, as that they should come home with a new power to those who by long familiarity have almost ceased to regard them as historical truth at all, so to bring out their inward spirit that the more complete realiza- tion of their outward form should not degrade, but exalt, the faith of which they are the vehicle, this would indeed be an object worthy of all the labor which travellers and theologians have ever bestowed on the East. The present work is but a bumble contribution towards this great end. . . . . Its object will be accomplished if it brings any one with fresh interest to the threshold of the Divine story, which has many approaches, as it has many mansions; which the more it is explored, the more it gives out; which, even when seen in close connection with the local associations from which its spirit holds most aloof is still capa- ble of imparting to them, and of receiving from them, a poetry, a life, an instruction, such as has fallen to the lot of no other history in the world. p. xxv. Sinai and Palestine and the Biblical Researches supplement each the other. The former is a book that will be read, the latter a work that should be studied. Mr. Red- field of New York has published Mr. Stanleys book in a very attractive style, a fac-simile of Mr. Murrays edition. We are sorry that we cannot speak in praise of the mechan- ical appearance of the Researches. The paper is poor; the typography inferior; and the whole aspect of the work heavy and uninviting. When shall we see such a work pub- lished in the style of Milmans Latin Christianity? But we suppose that would not pay. 118 PRESENT GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. [July, The extent of this article forbids a notice of the topograph- ical and arch~ological researches, measurements, and plans of Dr. Tobler, which will hereafter be a leading authority in this department. The principal value of the works above noticed lies in the materials they furnish for an authentic geography of Palestine. Dr. Robinsons Researches, it is well understood, are but preliminary to the preparation of a Biblical Geography. We presume that these three volumes will be used as books of reference, to substantiate what the Geography will assume with regard to disputed localities. It is devoutly to be wished that the life and health of Dr. Rob- inson may be spared to complete this cherished object of years of toil.* Meantime it is encouraging to notice that even maps for popular use exhibit traces of the recent investigations of scholars in Palestine. Coltons New Atlas, Chamberss Parlor Atlas, and Bagsters Chronological Atlas, all follow Robinson in the site of Cana, though they retain the old errors with re- spect to Emmaus and other places. Kieperts new maps of course exhibit the latest and most accurate results of geo- graphical science. His Neuer Handatlas, however, contains no separate map of Palestine. This country appears on a reduced scale in the map of Klein-Asien, Syrien, und Arme- nien. This Atlas, which is a beautiful specimen of improved cartography, will consist of ten Lieferungen, each containing four Bldttern. Only three numbers, with twelve maps, have yet been published. Dr. Barclays map of Jerusalem, made from personal surveys during a long residence in that city, is reliable and complete, and is worthy of a far better dress than that in which it appears. Palestine is no longer a terra incognita; yet there remains much land to be possessed. The names of Robinson, Smith, Thomson, Calhoun, Lynch, are an assurance that American scholarship and enterprise will not be wanting in the further exploration of the land. What is now most needed is a * Keil, in his recent Gommentary on tke Book of Joskua, makes free nse of the geo~ graphical data furnished by Hitter and Robinson. This Commentary is itself a contribntion to Biblical geography in its relations to history. 1857.] PRESENT GEOGRAPhY OF PALESTINE. 119 thorough scientific survey of the whole country, with special reference to its agricultural capabilities, and an exploration of the trans-Jordanic regions for localities and remains, with a view also to commercial openings toward the East. While we write, there lie upon our table the Charter of the Euphrates Valley Railway, and the project of the Euro- pean and Indian Junction Telegraph Company. The rail- way is to run via Seleucia and Aleppo; but a Syrian Desert Road has been projected, with branches from Damas- cus, via Sidon to Beirut, and via Jerusalem to Joppa! Pos- sibly our learned friend Rabbi Raphall is right in his read- ing of Isaiah xliii. 19, as applicable to the proposed Syrian Desert Railroad ~ Behold I bring you something new, and even now shall it spring forth. Will you not recognize it? I will cause a road to be made through the wilderness, and rivers to flow through the desert. Possibly there is to be a restoration of the Jews to the soil of their fathers, a point upon which we have been sceptical; and now that all nations are turning their eyes to Suez and Syria as the future routes of the China and India trade, and are there concentrating the resources of science and commerce for the worlds highway, it may be that with this fulness of the Gentiles Israel shall be gathered to the land of their fathers. Essay read before the Americ~u Geographical Society, in New York. 120 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, ART. IV. 1. Thesaurus Ilymnologicus, sive Hymnorum, Ganti- corum, Sequentiaruns circa Annunl hID. usitatarum Collectio amplissirna. Carmina collegit, Apparatu critico ornavil, 17k- terum Interpreturn Notas selectas suasque adjecit HERM. ADAL- BERT. DANIEL, Ph. Dr. Tomus Primus: Hymnos continens. Tornus Secundus: Sequentiw; Cantica; Antiphouw. To- mus Tertius: Delectus Carminum Ecciesiw Grwcw, curante REINHOLDO VORMBAUM; Carmina Syriacce Ecciesiw, curante Lunovico SPLIETH, Ph. Dr., etc. Tomus Quartus: Supple- menta ad Tomurn Prirnum continens. Halis et Lipske. 1841 18~5. 2. Lateinische Ilymnen des ]Vlittelalters, aus Handschr~ften herausgegeben und erlcldrt von F. G. MONE, Director des Archivs zu Karisruhe. Erster Band: Lieder an Colt und die Engel. Zweiter Band: Miarienlieder. Dritter Band: Heiligenlieder. Freiburg im Breisgau, Herdersche Ver- lagshandlung. 1854 55. 3. Gesange Ghristlicher Vorzeit. Auswahl des Vorziiglichsten, aus dem Griechisehen und Lateinischen iibersetzt von C. FORTLAGE, Doctor der Philosophie. Berlin: G. Reimer. 1844. 4. Carmina e Poetis christianis Excerpla ad Usum Scholarum edidit, et permultas interpretationes, cum Notis Galticis quw ad diversa Garminum Genera, vitamque Poetaruin pertinent adlecit FELIX CLEMENT. Parisiis, apud Gaume Fratres, Bibliopolas in via dicta Cassette. 1854. 5. Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly Lyrical, selected and arranged for Use; with Notes and introduction. By RICHARD CHE- NEVIX TRENCH, M. A. London: John W. Parker. 1849. 6. Dc Poesis Latiuw Rhythmis et Rimis prwcipue hlilionachorurn. Libellus conscriptus per CHRIST. THEOPHIL. SCHUCH. Do- nauesching~. 1851. 7. An Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Decline of Rhyming Latin Verse; with many Specimens. By SIR ALEXANDER CROKE, D. C. L. and F. A. S. Oxford: D. A. Talboys. 1828. CHRISTIAN psalmody takes its origin and finds its mdi- ments in the worship of the Hebrews, and may be said to

120 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, ART. IV. 1. Thesaurus Ilymnologicus, sive Hymnorum, Ganti- corum, Sequentiaruns circa Annunl hID. usitatarum Collectio amplissirna. Carmina collegit, Apparatu critico ornavil, 17k- terum Interpreturn Notas selectas suasque adjecit HERM. ADAL- BERT. DANIEL, Ph. Dr. Tomus Primus: Hymnos continens. Tornus Secundus: Sequentiw; Cantica; Antiphouw. To- mus Tertius: Delectus Carminum Ecciesiw Grwcw, curante REINHOLDO VORMBAUM; Carmina Syriacce Ecciesiw, curante Lunovico SPLIETH, Ph. Dr., etc. Tomus Quartus: Supple- menta ad Tomurn Prirnum continens. Halis et Lipske. 1841 18~5. 2. Lateinische Ilymnen des ]Vlittelalters, aus Handschr~ften herausgegeben und erlcldrt von F. G. MONE, Director des Archivs zu Karisruhe. Erster Band: Lieder an Colt und die Engel. Zweiter Band: Miarienlieder. Dritter Band: Heiligenlieder. Freiburg im Breisgau, Herdersche Ver- lagshandlung. 1854 55. 3. Gesange Ghristlicher Vorzeit. Auswahl des Vorziiglichsten, aus dem Griechisehen und Lateinischen iibersetzt von C. FORTLAGE, Doctor der Philosophie. Berlin: G. Reimer. 1844. 4. Carmina e Poetis christianis Excerpla ad Usum Scholarum edidit, et permultas interpretationes, cum Notis Galticis quw ad diversa Garminum Genera, vitamque Poetaruin pertinent adlecit FELIX CLEMENT. Parisiis, apud Gaume Fratres, Bibliopolas in via dicta Cassette. 1854. 5. Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly Lyrical, selected and arranged for Use; with Notes and introduction. By RICHARD CHE- NEVIX TRENCH, M. A. London: John W. Parker. 1849. 6. Dc Poesis Latiuw Rhythmis et Rimis prwcipue hlilionachorurn. Libellus conscriptus per CHRIST. THEOPHIL. SCHUCH. Do- nauesching~. 1851. 7. An Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Decline of Rhyming Latin Verse; with many Specimens. By SIR ALEXANDER CROKE, D. C. L. and F. A. S. Oxford: D. A. Talboys. 1828. CHRISTIAN psalmody takes its origin and finds its mdi- ments in the worship of the Hebrews, and may be said to 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 121 have passed over from the ritual of the Synagogue to the offices of the Church on the night when the Teacher of Gali- lee ate the Passover with his disciples, and instituted the Sac- rament of the Lords Supper. Whether the hymn which was sung at the conclusion of that solemn feast was one adapted to the new significance of the Passover as a Chris- tian rite, or whether it was the usual paschal hymn, called the Ilallel, and composed from the 113th and the five following Psalms; whether it was chanted, or sung, as the translators of our Received Version have rendered the term in the origi- nal, are questions which, since they depend partly on spec- ulation and partly on historical research, have given rise to much learned and not always profitable controversy. We are informed by St. Luke, that the disciples, after the ascension of Christ, returned to Jerusalem, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. That the usual Jewish liturgy was used in these services would seem highly proba- ble; but that the new spirit of Christianity soon released itself from the appointed forms of the temple worship is a fact cer- tified by the earliest annals of the Church. Indeed, in the very opening of the book which records the Acts of the Apos- tles, we have bequeathed to us the most ancient relic of the Christian liturgical worship, when, in celebration of Peter and Johns deliverance from prison, the whole company of the dis- ciples are represented to have lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and recited that sublime hymn which, taking its key-note from the second in the Book of Psalms, begins and ends its strains of supplication and praise in the name of the holy Child Jesus. As scholars have seen or imagined themselves to see in the purer Greek of St. Peter, as preserved in his Epistles, the traces of that miraculous inspiration which, on the day of Pentecost, imparted to the Apostles the gift of tongues, so with greater reason may this fragment of pious recitative be regarded as the immediate offspring of that divine influence which was then shed upon the Church, quick- ening and purifying, as with a baptism of fire, the whole multitude of them that believed, who were of one heart and of one soul. In undoubted allusion to this gift of poetical improvisation, as one of the manifestations of the vOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 1:1 122 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, Spirit, St. Paul is found addressing the Corinthian Christians in words like these: When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a reve- lation, hath an interpretation; and in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs are enumerated as among the services of the Church. There are not wanting those who profess to find snatches of the early sacred verse deposited in the prose of the New Tes- tament writers. Among such fragments of song supposed to be current in the Apostolic age, and therefore quoted by the writers from psalms and hymns which have perished in the lapse of time, may be cited the following from the Epistle to the Ephesians : EyE~tpE 0 KaOev& ,,v Kai dvchn-a EK TCOZJ Z,EKpaW~ Ew~/at%-EL TOL 6 XpLoTosx And the well-known hexameter line in the Epistle of St. James: flacra & GcTLS~ aya9i) Kat 7raV r~ Sp17,ua TEXELOV. To this same most ancient Christian poetry is also referred that often-repeated chorus of the Apocalypse : Eyc~ ELIIL r~ ilXSba K~t TO co~ 0 irpwros~ ~ 6 EoXaTo~. And the song of Moses : MEydXa Ka~ Oav/~ao-Ta Ta ~pya oov, Ki~p~e 6 Oe~ 6 7raVTOKpaTo)p AiKasat Kai c~X~~Otva~ a~ 6& 1 oov, 0 /3acTtXEt~ TOW EOVOW, K. T X. Though it is quite true, as Quintilian remarks, that metrical feet are often found in prose, and that too without any design on the part of the writer, yet it will be admitted that the excerpts we have quoted (and their number might be greatly multiplied) have in themselves a poetical coloring which favors the hypothesis of their origin in the early Chris- tian verse. But whatever may be the readers judgment upon 1857.1 $ACRED LATIN POETRY. 123 a matter so purely speculative and conjectural, we have the authority of Eusebius and Tertullian for the assertion, that the ancient Christians not only employt~d in their religious services the psalms and canticles of the Old Testament, but also added to their number original hymns and songs, the natural outgushings of that pious emotion which was then most vehement when the new leaven of the Gospel was warmed by the fires of a holy enthusiasm, like that which glowed in the bosoms of confessors and martyrs. In his de~ scription of the ancient agapw, Tertullian states that, at the conclusion of the meal, each participant was invited to sing, as he might be able, either from the Holy Scriptures or from the prompting of his own spirit, a song of praise to God; While Pliny the younger, in his well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan, reports, as a trait of the Christians in Bi- thynia and Pontus, that they sang hymns to Christ, as to a god, in choral responses.~~ That trite aphorism which ascrihes to the ballads of a peo- ple a greater influence than to their laws, would seem to find an illustration in the religious no less than in the political world. As early as during the second century after Christ, the songs of the Church had become a popular vehicle for the transmission and diffusion of the faith. Bardesanes of Edessa, who was contemporary with the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Paul, Bishop of Samosata, who found a patroness in Queen Zenobia, did but avail themselves of what was seen to he a powerful lever in the Church, when they thus early pressed sacred music into the service of their peculiar opinions, just as, in the era of the Reformation, the six thousand hymns of Hans Sachs exerted an influence which was co-operative, if not commensurate, with the sermons of Luther and the epis- tles of Melanethon. Church psalmody received, however, in the East, its highest culture and its greatest impulse from the poetical labors of St. Ephrem Syrus, whose voluminous writings in prose and verse the Vatican press has published in such a splendid edi- tion. For his skill in versification, and for the melody of his * Carmen Christo, quasi deo, dicere, secum invicem. Pun. Epist. X. 97. 124 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, sacred songs, St. Ephrem has been called the sweet singer of Syria, and the lyre of the Holy Ghost; as for the inge- nuity and acuteness of his polemical disquisitions, he is styled by Chrysostom the Churchs javelin against the heretics. In the third volume of Dr. iDaniels Thesaurus JIynnologicus, the reader will find a selection from the hymns of St. Ephrem in the original Syriac, accompanied by a German translation, the work of Lewis Splieth, a distinguished Oriental scholar of Germany. If the translator has faithfully represented the manner, and reproduced the spirit, of these ancient relics of Christian song, the German reader will not find it difficult to acquiesce in all that has been said in praise of St. Ephrems in- spiration. His hymns were spread throughout the East during the third century, and are said to have first incited the Grecian Christians to the invocation of the sacred Muse. Joseph Melodes, Andreas Cretensis, Joannes Damascenus, and their imitators, are thought by some critics to have caught their poetic fire from the kindling influence of St. Ephrem, the Syrian. As early, however, as the third century, the Christian lyre was struck among the Greeks by Clemens Alexandrinus, who was followed by Gregory Nazinuzen, Theodosius the Martyr, Enthymius, Sophronius, and others, whose songs, if not always their names, have descended even to the present day. The earliest sacred poem in the Greek language, from a known writer whose works have been preserved to us, is a hymn addressed to Christ the IRedeemer, by Clement of Alexandria, found at the close of his Hat )ryc~, and occu- pying the first place in Dr. Daniels anthology of Grecian hymns. The sacred poetry of the Greeks, copious and beautiful as it is, forms no part of our subject-matter in the present paper, and xvill therefore receive no notice at our hands, save that which may seem essential by way of introduction to the Latin verse whose strains it preluded, and, in so many cases, inspired and prompted. A study and appreciation of the spirit which animated and informed the sacred poetic art of the Greeks will serve, from its contrasted beauties and excellences, only the more fully to reveal what is most characteristic and dis- tinctive in that of the Western Church. 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 125 We shall find, on examination, that the hymns of the Greek and Latin Churches reflect in the clearest outlines the national features of their respective members, as well as the peculiar theological tendencies so early developed in these two great branches of ancient Christendom. As the poetical temperament more than any other is characterized by sensi- bility, we might naturally expect the cadences of popular verse to mark, as with a nilometer, the ebb and flow of those great tidal waves which have stirred from age to age the bosom of humanity. And if it be true, as we think, that the consciousness of a nation or an age mirrors itself most clearly in the waters of its Helicon, it is no less true that the inner life of a church pours forth its strongest pulsations from the well-heads of its poetical inspiration, issuing, as it were, from the Geyser fountains of the soul. The diversities of gifts~~ in the Greek and Latin Churches are thus exhibited in their poetry, as well as in their dogmatic theology; the angles of thought marked by the rigid lines of a speculative and disputatious Christianity are subtended also by a lyrical de- velopment, which enables us to measure equally the diver- gent creeds and the inner consciousness of the Eastern and Western branches of the Church. The civilization of a people being, as Bunsen expresses it, the natnral result of an outwardly growing union of the individual spirit with the national and social life, we are not surprised to find that Christian doctrine, as apprehended by its confessors among the Greeks and Romans, soon came to represent, in its developments and modifications, the distinc- tive characteristics of the civilization with which it came in contact. Hence Neander, in reviewing the doctrinal contro- versies of the early Christian ages, does but generalize an historical truth universally admitted, when he states that the Greek mobility of intellect and speculative direction of thought predominated in the Eastern Church, while in the Western the more rigid and calm, the less excitable but more practical tendency of the Roman mind prevailed. If Origen, in his fondness for speculative subtilties and his imaginative exegesis of the Scriptures, may in some sense be regarded as a type of the former, St. Augustine, by his profound and 11* 126 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, sometimes sombre anatomy of the human heart and con- sciousness, with their relations to the doctrines of grace and redemption, may be considered as the most illustrious embodi- ment of that dogmatic theology which predominated in the latter or Western Church. And so, too, in the domain of poetry, if Clement of Alexandria, Methodius the Martyr, and, above all, Synesius of Cyrene, psalmists of the Greek Church, delight to indulge in the imagery of that Christian Neo-Pla- tonism which flourished in the schools of Alexandria, and in whose principles Synesius, we may add, was instructed by the fair Hypatia, we find, on the other hand, that St. Am- brose, ililary of Poictiers, Prudentius, and others, poets of the Latin Church, are chiefly remarkable for a certain pith and sen- tentiousness of expression, as well as for a subdued contrition of heart germane to that severer theology and monastic piety which, if Augustine was its founder and most illustrious exemplar, attained its full and rotund development in the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Age. The sacred Grecian poetry possesses also, in its general spirit, a greater lyrical elevation than the Latin, a superiority which it shares equally with the songs of the classic age in Greece as compared with those of the corresponding age in ancient Rome, and which, with regard to the latter, extorted from Quintilian the confession, that, of the lyrical poets in the Latin tongue, Horace alone was worth reading. The sacred poetry of the Western Church, oftener than that of the East- ern, has for its burden the sighs and confessions of penitence, as though the psalm of its spiritual life were set by the still sad music of humanity. If the notes of jubilant praise and the shouts of rejoicing which still soar to heaven in the sub- lime canticles of the Gloria in excelsis, and the Te Deum laudamus, may seem an exception to this remark, it will perhaps be sufficient to refer the reader to the annotations of Dr. Daniel, in which the Eastern origin of these heirlooms of Christian antiquity is placed, as it seems to us, beyond suc- cessful controversy. Exceptions, however, there are to this general observation, as indeed there must be in all generali- zations based on national character. Thus Gregory Nazian- zen, writing a O~YVfl7~LKO1) on his own soul, utters the low, 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 127 moaning cry of a heart withered and smitten like grass; and if the general tenor of the sacred Latin poetry is attuned to a plaintive strain, we yet behold the fire of a more than Spanish enthusiasm often shooting into a leaping flame in the verse of Prudentius. Augustine informs us in his Confessions, that psalmody, as an institute of Christian worship, was not of ancient origin in the Western Church, dating no farther back than a year before his baptism by Ambrose in the church at Milan. The occasion of its introduction in the West is stated by Augus- tine to have been as follows. The Empress Justina, mother of the young Emperor Valentinian, having espoused the cause of the Arians, signalized her zeal by the persecution of Am- brose, who, as the leader of the opposite party in the Church, was most obnoxious to her hatred. The flock of the good bishop, however, did not desert him in his adversity, but took refuge ~Tith him in the basilica, all animated, says Augustine, with a holy zeal, and ready to die by his side. Then it was, he adds, that hymns and psalms first began to be sung, (after the manner of the East,) lest through the tedium and weariness of their confinement the spirit of the people might droop. It would seem difficult to accept this statement in the gen- erality which its terms naturally import; for that the Western churches, until the day of Ambrose, should have excluded all psalmody from their public worship must be deemed improba- ble in itself considered, and is moreover in contradiction with the well-authenticated facts of contemporaneous Church his- tory. Perhaps the subsequent history of hymnology may throw some light upon this topic, and afford us a hint by which to limit the application and extent of Augustine~ s as- sertion. The annals of the Church disclose to us the fact, that what were called original hymns encountered for a time the most determined opposition on the part of many among the faithful. It was contended that such poetical productions, partaking as they necessarily must of the individual senti- ments of their writers, might degenerate into a source of mischief to the purity of the Apostolic faith. The exr mples 128 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, of Bardesanes and Paul of Samosata, who, it was alleged, had by their spiritual songs undermined sound doctrine as contained in the Sacred Scriptures, were frequently cited in illustration of the dangers attendant on the toleration in the Church of any other sacred poetry than that of the Book of Psalms, or the short doxologies composed of verses from the in- spired volume. These had been used, it would seem, from the earliest times; for they are adduced as in contrast with the new hymns of Ambrose and Hilary, whose introduction into the offices of the Church was in certain quarters strenuously resisted as an unauthorized and perilous innovation. When, therefore, Augustine speaks of the psalms and hymns which, according to the usage of the East, were introduced into the church at Milan, and thence spread throughout nearly all the congregations of the Western world, he may be un- derstood to allude only to such original psalms and hymns as had been made popular in the East by the sacred poets of Syria and Greece. The Psalms of the Old Testament were the common heritage of the Church, and it seems difficult to believe that none of them had been translated into Latin or adopted in the offices of the Church before the day of Am- brose. Still, the testimony of Augustine is explicit to this effect, unless we resort to what must be admitted an interpre- tation not the most apparent from the text itself, though not without plausibility if the facts of the later Church history he taken into consideration. For we scarcely need add, that this dispute respecting the admissibility of original hymns and songs into the liturgy of the Church extended into the sixth and seventh centuries, and has been revived again and again at later periods.* The first council of Braga, held in the year Not to recur to the controversies on this subject in the Scottish Kirk, we may recall the fact, that Christians in our own country have not been exempt from con- tention on this topic. In the recently published life of that distinguished divine, the late Dr. John M. Mason, we find one of his correspondents groaning over three hones of contention which had been often picked before, but were not yet laid aside. These were 1. Is it lawful to omit the observance of a fast prepara- tory to the Lords Supper 1 2. is it Scriptural to extend Christian fellowship beyond the limits of our own Church l 3. is it right to use any other than a literal version of Davids psalms in public praise to God? In the conscientious scruples which demanded a most literal version of the Psalms will be found perhaps a char- 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 129 561 A. ID., directed that, besides the Psalms or other portions of the canonical Scriptures, no poetical composition should be sung in the Church, a decision afterward rescinded by the fourth council of Toledo, in the year 633, by which the hymns of Ambrose and Hilary were placed on the same footing in the divine service with such prayers and other liturgical for- mularies of human composition as had been already admitted into the ritual of the Western Church. As a branch of this same controversy, the dispute concern- ing the introduction of heathen tunes and measures in the music of the Church prevailed through several centuries. Already had Jerome sought to rebuke a growing tendency in his day to what we now call secular effects, which, we may infer from his instructions to those whose office it was to sing in church, had thus early foisted themselves into the choral services of the Church. We are not, he says, like comedians, to soothe the throat with sweet drinks, in order that we may hear theatrical songs and melodies in the Church; but the fear of God, piety, and the knowledge of the Scrip- tures should inspire our songs so that the evil spirit which entered into the heart of Saul may be expelled from those who are in like manner possessed by him, rather than invited by those who would turn the house of God into a heathen theatre. Thus early, it would seem, were there those who sought to introduce into the psalmody of Chris- tianity the popular melodies of heathendom, if not those ac- tually allied to the old ethnic worship with its gay religions full of pomp and gold; and that such secular effects have not even yet been expelled from the choir will be credited by many who have attended \vorship in our modern fashion- able churches, where, through long-drawn aisle and fretted itable explanation of the fact that Sternhold and Hopkins are oftcntimcs more literal than poetical in their translation of the Hebrew melodies. Indeed, we learn from a letter of Dr. Masons, found in the same volume, that the sensitiveness of certain minds on this point extended not only to literal versions of Davids psalms, but also to other minuter questions of Hebrew liturgical worship; for he writes of a good old Kentucky lady who, when two lines of a hymn were given out at once hy the clergyman to be sung by the congregation, incontinently arose and declared that she would have no such doings there, and would tolerate none hut Da- vids psalms, Davids tunes, and Davids way of lining. 130 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, vault, a pealing symphony has been known to resound, which to the practised ear of the dilettante has seemed more like echoes from the opera-house than native melodies of the Christian temple. From the tunes of the Church to its poetical measures the transition is natural and easy. If the intrusion in the former of airs that were redolent only of heathenism formed a sub- ject of regret to pious minds in both the Eastern and West- ern Churches, we might without examination be led to infer, as many students of hymnology seem to have done, that a pious aversion for the metres of the heathen poetry was the principal, if not the sole, motive of those changes which the classical scansion of the Latin language underwent in the hands of the sacred Latin poets. An exhaustive treatment of this subject would greatly transcend the limits within which we must confine its proportionate space in the present paper, involving, as the question does, a partly historical and partly philosophical appreciation of those causes from without and within, which during the Middle Age wrought, along with the corruption of the Latin tongue, the gradual disintegration of the classical prosody, and laid the foundations of that ac- centual and rhyming Latin verse which reached its highest development and proved its fullest capabilities in the hands of the monastic poets of France and Italy during the twelfth century. In the works of Croke and Schuch, whose titles we have placed at the head of this article, the reader will find but an inadequate treatment of this interesting subject, the informa- tion they afford serving rather to pique than to gratify the cu- riosity of the inquisitive student. Sir Alexander does not seem to have brought to his scholarly diversions for as such his treatise must be classed any very considerable measure of that critical acumen for which he was distinguished in the study and administration of the law. He is often inaccurate in his dates, mistaken in his quotations, and uncritical in his literary judgments. The monograph of Schuch illustrates all the merits and all the defects of a German Gelehrte. Copious in the details of the subject, it is jejune in its com- ments, and is marked by the almost total absence of any me- SACRED LATIN POETRY. 131 1857.] thodical or systematic treatment of the general theme which gives title to the essay. The reader will find, we think, in the observations and critical comments of Dr. Mone, as scat- tered throughout his volume, nearly all that is of scholarly value in the works of Croke or Schuch on this specialty of literary and historical inquiry. We have much reason for believing that the true theory of the classical prosody is only partially comprehended, and the secret of its harmony but inadequately appreciated, at the present day. As pedagogy can by no dint of laborious drill- ing in longs and shorts succeed in reproducing hexameters as classical in their structure and Latinity as those of Virgil or Ovid, so no perspicacity of modern pedants, though Scaligers or Bentleys in their classic lore, can fnlly enter into or explain the nature and essence of a versification, which is known to have charmed the ears, and stirred like a trumpet the hearts, of the ancient Greeks and Romans. With the lost art has vanished, if not the sense of its loss, at least the knowledge of its rational significance and value as an attribute of poetry. If any one has doubts on this point, let him gather and col- late the opinions which have been propounded on the subject by all the critics and all the commentators, and he will find that such opinions are little better than a confused mass of Adversaria, even when they are not expressly uttered (as is sometimes the case) under this name and title.* The prosodical system of the earlier Greeks and Romans, founded as it was on a full-orbed pronunciation of each word in accordance with certain harmonic relations of the various syllables as determined by their several quantities, appears to have been the product of that wonderful Sprachsinn [faculty for speech], as Wilhelm von Humboldt calls it, which, especially as it existed among the former, (for among the Ro- mans the temporal prosody was a superfcetation rather than a natural outgrowth of the Latin tongue,) may be deemed to have sprung in a measure from the play of delicate and culti- vated organs of speech in a genial climate, and an atmos * The reader is referred for abundant confirmation of this remark to Hawkinss Inquiry, Lindemann De Prosodic Plauti, Bentleys Emendationes, and similar labors of the grammatici. 132 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, phere still remarkable for its acoustic properties, though breathed by living Greece no more. But as in all mental phenomena the outward development implies the inward nisus naturae, and as all true living art is but the concrete form of some spiritual faculty of which no ultimate analysis can discover the secret of its spontaneous activity, so the poetic art of the ancients plants its roots deep from our sight in the spiritual life and sensibility of a people feelingly alive to each fine impulse. Hence Wilhelm von Humboldt has not hesitated to say,* that mere syllabic measures, like those of the hexameter, af- ford to him, in their linked sweetness long drawn out, a clearer evidence of the subtile and profound sense for speech (Sprachsinn) possessed by the ancients, than he finds in the poetry itself (abstracted from the metres) which they have left as the monuments of their genius; a sentiment which can hardly fail to recall to the poetical reader the line of Schiller, In der Dichtkunst allein maeht das Gefass den Gehalt. But, whatever may be our theory respecting the genesis and harmonic principles of the metrical versification, it can- not be disputed that its measures xvere not native and indi- genous products of the old Ausonian soil. They were first planted in ancient Italy when captive Greece led her rude victor captive and introduced the arts into rustic Latium. Sic horridus ille Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus Munditiae pepulere; sed in longum tamen aevurn Manserunt hodieque manent vestigia runs. And that the rongh saturnian numbers, among their other vestigia runs, possessed both accentual rhythm and some- times rhyme, is sufficiently indicated in the few fragments of this ancient verse which have descended to us in the writings of Cicero. The following examples are familiar to every reader: Caelum nitescere, arbores floreseere, Vites laetifieae pampinis pubescere, Rami baccarum ubertate in curveseere, & c. Tusc. Disp. I. 28. See his treatise Ueber die Buclistczbensclirift und i/lren Zusammenhang mit dem Spraclie. Gesammelte Werke. Berlin. 1848. 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 133 And again Haec omnia vidi nflammari, Priamo vi vitam evitari, Jovis aram sanguine turpari. Tusc. Disp. I. 35. In such Saturnian numbers, in the convivial songs which formed those lays of ancient Rome whose loss Cicero regretted, in the hymns of the Salli (axamenta), in the Atellan farces, in the Fescennine verses of the peasantry, and in the refrains of the Roman mob shouting around the victors car as it moved along the Via Sacra, we must look for the traces of that popular poetry which the Fauns and bards sang of yore in Latium, before as yet any one had been found to scale those rocks of the Muses, the peaks of Parnassus.~ The Camenai~ took their flight at the death of Ntevius, and in the prosody of Plautus and Terence we witness the gradual superposition of the Grecian poetical metres upon the Latin language, yet so that many vestiges of the old rusticity still remain to puzzle the critic who will see in it naught but the rules of classical scansion. In the poets of the Augustine age the transition was complete, yet, as Macaulay has said, while Virgil, in hexameters of exquisite modulation, was describing the sports of rustics, those rustics were still singing their wild Saturnian ballads in the harvest-field and the vineyard, and at the uncouth merry-makings of the country wedding.~ Accent and rhyme were displaced by the metrical scansion in the language of literature and polite culture, yet, either through accident or the old instinct bringing back old forms, the poetical purists of the Augustine age sometimes. lapsed into a rhyming versification. Take, for instance, the following lines from Horace, which are positively in the monk- ish Leonine style of the Middle Age: Nox erat, et coelo falgebat luna sereno Inter minora sidera. Cum tu, magnorum numen Iaesura deorum In verbajurabas mea. Quid Kostri veteres versus ubi sunt Quos ohm Fauni, vatesque canebant, Cum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat, Nec dicti studiosus erat. Cic. in Brute, XVIII. t Cf. Lucretius, V. 1391 Ct seq. voL. LXxxv.No. 176. 12 134 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, Or the following verse from Virgils eighth Eclogue Limus ut hi~ durescit et haec ut cera liquescit. Or this from Ovid: Quot coelum stellastot habet tim Roma puellas. Of rhyming hexameters these poets, we need not add, pre- sent numerous examples, which will recur to every classical reader who is curious in detecting such accidental or designed coincidences. We are warranted, therefore, in saying, that the presence of rhyme in the sacred Latin poetry is to be regarded rather in the light of a renaissance than of a new creation. It out- cropped once more so soon as the extrinsic causes which had displaced it were removed. Accent and rhyme, as they had been banished from the language of literature by the Grecian versification, were reintroduced pan passu with that disinte- gration of the metrical prosody which was gradually effected in the tongue of Cicero and Virgil. Foremost among the causes which brought about, or at least accelerated, this dis- integration, must be placed the barbarian irruptions and popular migrations, which in the early centuries of the Chris- tian era began to subvert the peace and disturb the social life of the Roman empire. The mixture of alien dialects with the Latin broke up its homogeneous structure, and jangled the syllabic measures which, as they had been moulded, so could be preserved, only by the rigid and artificial standard of a polite pronunciation founded on the metrical prosody. This polite pronunciation was soon merged in a chaos of barbarian sounds, and under these conditions it was that the Latin lan- guage passed into that lingua rusliect which prevailed through- out Europe before the modern Rornanian tongues had crys- tallized around their several national centres. So true is this, that Mone fancies himself to see an allusion to these chaotic convulsions in the following stanza of a Latin vesper hymn, which is assigned to the fifth century: Mane junctum vesperi Diem vocari praccipis; Tetrurn chaos inlabilur, Audi preces cum fletibus. Mone, Vol. I. p. 83. Cf. Dan., Vol. IV. p. 49. 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 135 We can trace from step to step, in the medi~val hymns, the gradual elimination of metre and the introduction of accent, the transition to which latter seems, with slight exceptions, to have been synchronous and parallel with the development of rhyme. Guest, in his valuable work pn English Rhythms, has truly remarked, as indeed the elder grammarians had re- marked before him, that rhyme is the time-beater of accentual verse. It marks and defines the accent, and thereby strength- ens and supports the rhythm. Its advantages have been felt so strongly, that no people have ever adopted an accentual rhythm without also adopting rhyme. The rhymes of the sacred Latin poetry were at first mere vowel assonances, in which the terminal consonant was often disregarded, a license growing, we may suppose, out of the corrupt pronunciation of the li~mgua rustica,in which the ter- minal consonants were sometimes indistinctly slurred or wholly silent. Commodianus, who is assigned by Dodwell to the third century after Christ, and who certainly did not live later than the fourth, closes his Instructiones with an acrostic of twenty-six lines, each of which terminates in the same vowel assonance. In the hymn Aeternus orbis con- ditor, which belongs to the fifth century, and observes quite strictly the classical prosody, we have such rhymes as this: Sedes Canopi proximas Fuga salubri visitans, in which the vowel-sounds are alone regarded, the consonants being absorbed or suppressed by them. Any attempt, such as is made by Ch~ment in the work whose title we have cited at the head of this article, to reduce the hymns of the Middle Age to the metres of the classical period, mnst prove illusory and abortive; and we concur with Mone in the opinion, that the sacred Latin poetry from the fifth to the ninth or tenth century is to be judged neither by the rigorous application nor by the total renunciation of the metrical prosody. Noth- ing but the most Procrustean criticism can torture it into a rigid and unvarying conformity with the classical gradus. After the seventh century the tendency to accentual rhythm and rhyme became more and more decided. The argument 136 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, of Trench, that the transition was hastened by a Christian antipathy to the classical metres, which, having been married in immortal verse to the heathen mythology, could not, he thinks, but have been regarded by the early disciples with pious aversion and disgust, however plausible in theory, does not seem to be sustained by the facts of history; for if any such feeling had been operative, we should naturally expect it to have most visibly declared itself when the abominations of heathenism were freshest in the memory of the Church, and the earliest hymns of the sacred Muse would have been the first to emancipate themselves from such alleged profane asso- ciations of idolatrous worship. Such, however, is not the case. Hilary of Poictiers and St. Ambrose, the morning stars of Christian song, both observe quite strictly the regular clas- sical iambic dimeter, without any scruples because of its heathen surroundings; and the pious Prudentius, in the very opening of his Hymni Peristephanon, declares, quite in the face of this theory, Nos citos jambicos Sacramus Ct rotatiles trocliaeos. In still further confirmation of this view may be adduced the ~3lentones Virgiliani, which, as is known, were popular among the ea~rly Christians, who seem to have had no prejudice against the hexameter, but rather forced its disjecta membra to do involuntary service to Christianity. From one of these Centos, attributed to Proba Falconia, a Roman lady of the fourth century, Cl6ment gives the following specimen of scraps from Virgil on the Birth of Christ. We quote only the opening lines. Attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas Auxilium adventumque Dei: quum fernina prirnurn Virginis os habitumque gerens, (mirabile dicto!) Nec generis nostri puerum nec sanguiiiis edit. Seraque terrifici eccinerunt omina Yates, Adventare virum populis terrisque superbum, Semine ab aethereo, qui viribus occupet orbem, Imperium oceano, famam qui terminet astris. But, to r~turn from this digression, besides the social con- 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 137 vulsions and the confusion of tongues consequent on the irruption of the barbarian hordes into Southern Europe, the mental habitudes of. the early Christian writers afford us still other explanations of that tendency to accent and rhyme which so early betrayed itself in the sacred Latin poetry. St. Augustine, in his Retractiones, informs us that he com- posed his Latin psalm against the Donatists to be sung by the people, and that, with the view of accommodating it to the common mind, he discarded the classical prosody, because he did not desire that any metrical necessity should constrain the use of words which, having been set apart from the rest of the language, and consecrated to classical poetry, would be unfamiliar to the general ear. How greatly this metrical necessity restricted the classical Latin poet, may be inferred from a statement made by Mr. Trench, that one word out of every eight in the Latin language which it might otherwise be desirable to use, is, by the rules of prosody, excluded from the chief metres. In order still further to fix this Psalmus contra partem Donati in the minds of the people, Augustine constructed it so that each additional stanza should open with a successive letter of the alphabet ( tales hymnos abc-darios appellant), and, as a device to aid the memory, the same vowel assonance is found at the close of every line. When we remember, moreover, that such psalms and hymns were composed to be sung in the great congregation, it is easy to perceive how naturally rhyme would have been seized upon as the handmaid of memory when hymn-books, though not unknown, as Dr. Mone has shown, were yet a rare possession, found only in the hands of the clergy and choristers. And when we consider that the early Christians were gathered chiefly from among the common people, to whom the classical prosody had always remained a something unknown, we can readily accord with Mr. Trench in ascribing to this fact a prominent part in breaking down, among Christian worship- pers, the arbitrary exactions of classical versification. Another mental trait of the early Christian writers their fondness for antithesis, epigrammatic point, and jingling com- binations even in prose doubtless contributed to strengthen the growing tendency to rhyme, which was, in truth, nothing 12 * 138 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, more than this same trait methodized and intensified. Every reader of patristic theology is familiar with this idiosyncrasy, which often exists in writers the most, remarkable for their diffuseness. Hence such sentences as this in the writings of Augustiirn, concerning the two Testaments: In Novo patet quod in Vetere latet. Indeed, the abundance of such antith- eses in the writings of the great Bishop of Hippo, made it a comparatively easy task for Prosper of Aquitaine, the Quarles of his day, to compose the one hundred and twelve epigrams which he versified from the prose of that Father; and it was, perhaps, a reminisoence of the very passage from Augustine to which we have alluded, that inspired Adam of St. Victor when he wrote, In Scripturis sub figuris, Ista latent sed jam patent Crucis beneficia: Reges credunt, hostes cedunt, Sola cruce, Christo duce, Unus fugat millia. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the tendency to rhyme becomes more and more strongly marked in the Latin verse, until in France and Italy, during the twelfth century, it reached its culmination in couplets terminating in uniform rhymes of one, two, and often three syllables. Then, too, it was that the strenuous idleness~ of the cloister began to expend itself in feats of rhyming skill, in which the inge- nuity, if not the genius, of the verse-maker seems to have been exhausted : Quos anguis dirus tristi mulcedine pavit, Hos sanguis mirus Christi dulcedine lavit. Leonine couplets, also, now began to abound in every variety of rhyming cmesura; nor were they restricted to sacred poetry. The following examples will, perhaps, suffice to illustrate the most common forms of this popular verse : Linquens terrenas migravit dux ad amoenas Rogerius sedes, nam coeli detinet aedes. 0 Yalachi, vestri stomachi sunt amphora Bacehi, Vos estis Deus est testis teterrima pestis. 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 139 0 miseratrix, 0 dominatrix, praecipe dietu Ne devastemur ne lapidernur grandinis ictu. Cellula meWs fundis ardorem virgo serena, Nescia fellis eni dat honorem nostra Camena Poetical puzzle-readings, like the following, were also con- ceived and planned by the studious monks . Arbore sub qua- 1 Quod primus A- - Sed postremus A ~ dam Damna prioris A- Si non primus A- Non postremus A-J Fdietavit clericus A- 1 I peecavit in arbore qua- I natus de virgine qua- I ~dam. reparavit in arbore qua- peccasset in arbore qua- L moreretur in arbore qua-J But without bestowing upon such monastic tours de force in poetical art an attention to which they are hardly entitled, we proceed to quote at length, as an illustration of the won- derful perfection to which the rhyming Latin was brought, one of the hymns left us by that most copious and consum- mate master in versification, Adam of St. Victor. France xvas the great seat of sacred Latin poetry in the twelfth cen- tury, Huldebert, the two Bernards, Marbod of Angers, Peter the Venerable, and last, but greatest, Adam of St. Victor, being its principal votaries. The last named not only sur- passed all his contemporaries, but may be said to have illus- trated the highest rhyming capability of the Latin tongue. In place, moreover, of the often dry, if sometimes terse, sim- plicity which had previously characterized the Christian verse of the Western Church, Adam of St. Victor introduced into sacred Latin poetry a more ornate and richer style, though not infrequently, as his admirers will admit, his verse, like the cloak of Helen, signis auroque rigentem, is stiff from the very superabundance of its imagery and ornamentation. The hymn we quote, however, deserves to be quoted for other and higher reasons than its exquisite versification. Qui procedis ab utroque, Genitore genitoque Pariter, Paraclite, Redde linguas eloquentes, Fac ferventes in te mentes Flamma tua divite. BE FESTIVITATE PENTECOSTES. Amor patris fihiique, Par amborum et utrique Compar et consirnilis; Cuncta reples, cuncta foves, Astra re~,is, coelum moves, Permanens immobilis. SACRED LATIN POETRY. Lumen clarum, lumen carum, Internarum tenebrarum Effugas caliginem. Per te mundi sunt mundati; Tu peecatum et peccati IDestruis rubiginem. Veritatem notam faeis, Et ostendis viam pacis Et iter justitiae. Perversorurn corda vitas, Et bonorum corda ditas Munere seientiae. Te docente nil obscurum, Te praesente nil impururn; Sub tua pra~sentia Gloriatur mens jucunda, Per te laeta, per te munda Gaudet conscientia. Tu commutas elementa, Per te suam sacramenta Habent efficaciam: Tu nocivam vim repellis, Tu confutas et refellis Hostium nequitiam. Quando venis, corda lenis, Quando subis, atrae nubis Effugit obscuritas. Sacer ignis, pectus ignis Non comburis, sed a curis Purgas, quando visitas. Foves linguas, formas sonum, Cor ad bonum facit pronum A te data caritas. 0 juvamen oppressorum, 0 solamen miserorum, Pauperum refugium, Da contemptum terrenorurn, Ad amorem supernorum Trahe desiderium. Pelle mala, terge sordes, Et discordes fac concordes, Et affer pra~sidium. Tu qui quondam visitasti, Docuisti, confortasti Timentes discipulos, l,Tisitare nos digneris, Nos, si placet, consoleris Et credentes populos. Par majestas personarum, Par potestas est earum, Et communis deitas: Tu procedens a duobus, Coaequalis es duobus, In nullo disparitas. Quia tantus es et talis, Quantus pater est et qualis, Servorum humilitas Deo patri filioque Redemptori, tibi quoque Laudes reddat debitas. Mentes prius imperitas Et sopitas et oblitas Erudis et excitas. To pass from this branch of our general subject to a con- sideration of its other phases, as presented in the works which we have chosen as the basis of our remarks, we may premise, in the first place, that it will form no part of our purpose to enter into any critical examination of either the merits or defects of the particular volumes we have cited. For the reader who would desire to trace the Christian hymnology of 140 [July, 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 141 the Middle Age in its widest domains, extending from Arme- nia to Portugal, and covering a tract of time embraced be- tween the third and the sixteenth centuries, the Thesaurus of Dr. Daniel possesses advantages over any other \vork in its department with which we are acquainted. Nor can the im- mense services which he has rendered to this once neglected branch of literature be overlooked by any lover of the old Christian poesy. As he truly recites, in the Prolegomena to his fourth volume, recently issued in Germany, when he first commenced the publication of his collections, at a period no earlier than fifteen years ago, the taste for this species of sacred poetry was circumscribed within narrow boundaries and confessed by few, whereas now its diffusion is as wide as the love of letters, and its culture and gratification have en- gaged the attention of scholars among the most enlightened aud accomplished of the present day. The collection of Dr. Mone is more copious than that of Daniel, and possesses also the additional advantage of be- ing carefully edited from manuscript copies of the hymns, as still preserved in the libraries and monasteries of Europe. The three volumes of Dr. Mone comprise 1,215 hymns, of which 320 are devoted to God and angels, 301 to the Virgin Mary, and 594 to all the saints in the calendar. Already known and most favorably known by his previous labors in kindred studies of literary and ecclesiastical history, Dr. Mone has undoubtedly added to his well-earned reputation by the scholarly work before us, notwithstanding a certain harsh- ness in his censorial judgments on the labors of others, and a spirit of over-refinement in some of his own criticisms on the hymns themselves; to both of which blemishes Dr. Daniel, in his fourth volume, has frequent occasion to make allusion, partly in self-defence and partly by way of just retaliation. The rule which Mone has prescribed to himself in the execu- tion of his task, to admit no hymn into his collections for which he could not find a reliable manuscript copy, has, we need scarcely say, necessitated the exclusion from his work of some among the choicest of the sacred Latin hymns, as well as of some, it xvould seem, among the most popular and com- mon, which it is difficult to conceive how he could have failed 142 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, to find in manuscript if he had searched in the proper quar- ters. We need only designate such well-known hymns as the following, to indicate the omissions which, it is to be re- gretted, detract from the completeness of Dr. Mones compi- lations: Aeterne rerum conditor; S omno refectis artu- bus ; 0 mx beata Trinitas; Te lucis ante ternlinum; Aurora jam spargit polum; A solis ortus cardine; Rex Christe, factor omniurn; Ave mans stella; Salvete fibres martyrum; Ut queant laxis resonare fibris ; * etc. The work of Dr. Mone, we need not add for the information of those acquainted with his earlier productions, is a labor of love on his part, no less as a polite scholar than as a zealous votary and defender of the Roman Catholic faith. We have cited the works of Fortlage and Trench as repre- sentatives of their class in the department to which they both belong, the former being useful for its historico-literary memo- randa, and the latter for its appreciative criticisms and scholarly annotations; while the volume of M. Cl6ment, an officer in the JJlinistire de linstruction publique et des Cultes in France under the present Emperor, if not possessing in itself any great value for its contributions either to the literary history of hymnology or to its products, is at least interesting for the evidence it affords that, in the reviving taste for these relics of ancient song, they are designed to form hereafter in France a part of the curriculum of the classical grammar schools, as, many years ago, a similar anthology from the sacred Latin poets was published by Kehrein for use in the gymnasia of Germany. The works we have named, either at the head of our paper or in connection with its theme, will suffice, perhaps, to illus- trate the present status of hymnological study and research in England and on the Continent, though we are very far from having exhausted the bibliography of our subject even for the * With this last-named hymn, the production of Paulus Diaconus, who flourished in the eighth century, is connected the interesting fact, that Guido of Arezzo, an Ital- ian music-teacher of the eleventh century, derived from the initial syllahle of each half- verse in its first stanza the names of the musical notes in his diatonic scale UT queant laxis Rasonare flhris Mera gestoram FAmuli tuorum; SoLve polluti LAhii reatum. 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 143 period, little longer than a decade, within which we have re- stricted our citation of authorities. Where the field is so wide in point of space and time, and the contributors so various in point of character, the difficulty of forming any sound generalizations to embrace and co- ordinate the multiplied and multiform facts of the Latin hym- nology can be readily appreciated by every mind. When it is remembered that every nation of Western Europe contributes to its treasures, and that the authorship of comparatively few among the Latin hymns can now be ascertained, leaving us to depend upon nothing better than tradition with regard even to many which are popularly ascribed to particular writers, but which perhaps, if more strictly considered, would deserve to be entitled anonymous, every reader is at once prepared to admit that any treatment of the medkeval hym- nology in connection with its authors must be founded rather on conjecture than on historical certitude. St. Ambrose is among the most illustrious as well as earliest of the sacred Latin poets, yet we need scarcely intimate to the critical and intell gent reader, that not all the hymns called Ambrosian are entitled to the honor of the name they bear. The best analysis of the sacred Latin poetry is, perhaps, that of Dr. Neale, who, in his work on the Medireval Hymns, considers them as the productions of three distinct periods in European history. In the first of these periods, the Church was unshackling herself from the fetters of the classical metre; in the second, she was bringing out all the capabilities of rhyme; and in the third, after the revival of letters, she sought to subject her poetry anew to the slavish bondage of a revived paganism. By a still wider generaliza- tion, they might, perhaps, be reduced under two several heads, as determined by the character of their poetical treatment, the earlier hymns being uniformly objective in their composi- tion and texture, while those of a later date breathe a con- stantly increasing subjective spirit. How wide is the interval, for instance, which, in this respect, marks the difference be- tween the poetical genius of Ambrose in the fourth century, and of St. Bernard, the mellifluous doctor, of the twelfth! A single example, in illustration, selected from the versifica 144 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, tion of each. ~vi1l suffice not only to disclose the distinctive traits of their respective authors, but to present for the readers admiration two hymns of remarkable interest and beauty in the regard of every student of hyrunology: IIYMNUS DE ADYENTU DOMINI. BY ST. AMBROSE. Veni Redemptor gentium, Ostende partum virginis, Miretur omne saeculum: Tails decet partus Deum. Non ex virili semine, Sed mystico spiramine Verbum Dei factum est earo, Fructusque ventris lioruit. Alvus tumescit virginis, Claustra pudoris permanent, \Texilla virtutum micant, Versatur in templo iDeus. Procedit e thalamo suo, Pudoris aula regia, Geminac gigas substantiae Alacris Ut eurrat viarn. Egressus ejus a Patre, Regressus ejus ad Patrem, Excursus usque ad inferos, Recursus ad sedem Del. Aequalis aeterno Patri Carnis tropaeo aecingere, Infirma nostri corporis - Virtute firmana perpetim. Praesepe jam fulget tuum, Lumenque nox spirat novurn Quod nulla nox interpolet Fideque jugi luecat. CURSUS DE AETERNA SAPIENTIA. BY ST. BERNARD. (AD MATUTINoS.) Jesu, duleis memoria, Dans vera eordis gaudia, Sed super mel et omnia Ejus duleis praesentia. Nil canitur SURViUS, Auditur nil jueundius, Nil cogitatur dulelus, Quarn Jesus, Dei Iilius. Jesu, spes poenitentibus, Quam Pius es petentibus! Quam bonus es qunerentibus! Sed quid invenientibus l Aeterna sapientia Tibi patrique gloria Cum spiritu paraclito Per inijuita saeeula. (IN LAUBIUIJs.) Jesu, rex admirabilis Et triumphator nobilis, Duleedo inefilibilis, Totus desiderabilis. Nec lingua potest dieere Nec litera exprimere, Experto potest eredere Quid sit Jesum diligere. Amor Jesu eotinuus Mihi languor assiduus, Mihi Jesus mellifluns Fruetus vitae perpetuus. Aeterna, etc. SACRED LATIN POETRY. (AD PRIMAM.) Amor Jesu dulcissimus Et vere suavissimus, Plus miflies gratissimus, Quam dicere sufficimus. Jesu decus angelicum, In aure dulce canticum, In ore mel mirificum, In corde nectar coelicum. Jesu, mi hone, sentiam Amoris tui copiam, Da mihi per poenitentiam Team videre gloriam. Aeterna, etc. (AD TERTIAM.) Tua, Jesu, dilectio Grata menUs, affectio Replens sine fastidin, Dans famem desiderio. Quite gustant, esuriunt, Qui hibunt, adhuc sitiunt, Desiderare nesciunt Nisi Jesum, quem diligunt. Desidero te millies, Mi Jese, quando venies, Quando rue laetum facies, Me de te quando saties ~ Aeterna, etc. Or compare the passion hymn of Fortunatus with that of an unknown writer of uncertain date, but who certainly flourished after the fifteenth century: IN PASSIONE DOMINI. )3Y FORTUNATUS. Pange lingua gloriosi praelium certaminis Et super crucis tropaeo dic triumphum nobilem Qualiter redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit. De parentis protoplasti fraude facta condolens Quando pomi noxialis morsu morte corruit, Ipse lignum tune notavit, darona ligni Ut solveret. lie opus nostrac salutis ordo depoposcerat, Muhiformis perditoris ars ut artem falleret Et medelam ferret in, hostis unde laeserat. Quando venit ergo sacri plenitudo temporis, Missus est ab arce patris natus orbis conditor, Atque ventre virginali came factus prodiit. Vagit infans, inter arcta ponitur praesepia, Membra pannis involuta virgo mater alligat Et pedes manusque crura stricta cingit fascia. Lustra sex qui jam peracta tempus implens corporis, Se volente natus ad hoc, passioni deditus Agnus in crucis levatur imrnolandus stipite. VOL. LXXXV. NO. 176. 13 1857.1 145 146 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, Hue acetum, fel, arondo, sputa, clavi, lancea, Mite corpus perforator, sanguis unde profluit, Terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine. Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis, Nulla talem silva profert fronde, flore, germine, Dulce lignom dolces clavos dulce pondus sostinens. Flecte ramos arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera Ft rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas Ut superni merubra regis mlii tendas stipite. Sola digna tu fuisti ferre saceli pretium Atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago, Quam sacer cruor perunxit fusus agni corpore. IN PASSIONE DOMINI. FROM DAN. THES. HYMN., vol. II. p. 359. Salve mundi salutare, Salve, salve, Jesu care! Croci tuae me aptari Vellem, tibi me aequari, Ba mihi tui copiam. Salve Jesu, Rex sanctorum, Spes votiva peccatorum, Crucis ligno, tanquam reus, Pendens homo, veins Deus; Caducis notans genibus. Quid sum tibi responsorus, Actu vilis, corde durus~ Quid reperidam amatori, Qui elegit pro me mon, Ne dupla morte morerer Salve Jesu, pastor bone, Fatigatus in agone, Quiper lignum es distractos, Et ad lignurn es compactus, Expansis sanctis mauibus. Clavos, pedum plagas duras, lEt tam graves impressoras Circumplector cum affectu Too pavens in aspecto, Tuorum memor vulnerum. Dulcis Jeso, pie Dens! Ad te clamo, licet reos, Praebe mihi te benignum, Ne repellas me indignom Be tuis sanctis pedibus. Bum me mon est necesse, Noli mihi tune deesse, In tremenda mortis hora Veni Jesu absqoe mora, Toere me, et libera. Coin me jobes emigrare, Jeso care, tone appare, 0 amator amplectende, Temet ipsum tune ostende, In cruce salutifera. In the later of these hymns, as compared with the earlier, the reader cannot fail to remark the advancing traces of that intensely subjective spirit which informs the poetry of the moderns, in contrast with that objective representation which 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 147 distinguishes the poetic art of the ancients. If the poetry of the earlier Christian age still partook of the spirit of the de- clining classicism, it is equally apparent that that of the suc- ceeding period was more and more assimilating itself to the forthcoming romanticism. That this process was checked for a time by a servile imitation of the classical models, as practised during the revival of learning in Europe, has been already intimated. In those days of Ciceronian idolatry when Bembo, the secretary of Leo X., was a greater purist than Pollio had been in the days of Augustus; when the Holy Ghost was Latinized into aura Zephyri ecelestis Affla- tus; when the Virgin Mary smiled to hear herself called Deam ipsam; and when, because Cicero was a polytheist, the papal secretary held it polite to speak of his master only as one who trusted in the immortal gods, diis immortalibus fidit, quorum vicem gent in terris, it is not surprising to find that the Latin hymnology shared in the general infection, and that, in the place of the grand old barbarian doxology, it was sought to substitute a classical refrain in alcaics and sap- phics of more irreproachable modulation. As a specimen of such doxological verses, the following will suffice Unum est divum sneer Imperator, Triplicis form~u, facie sub una, Q ui polurn, terms tumidosque Iluctus Temperet alti. During the pontificate of Clement VII., one Zachary Fer- reri was commissioned by his Holiness to remodel the hymns of the Church, and to reduce them to the metrical forms of the classical prosody.* His work, when completed, according to order, in 1523, received the sanction of Clement, but, for- tunately, failed to find favor with either priests or people. Even Pr. Mone, who is so zealous a defender of everything that has the odor of Catholicity about it, is constrained to His motive for undertaking the task is thus stated in the Preface of his volume: Ad oheundum quoque id lahoris me summopere animavit et impulit, quod qui hona latinitate pr~diti sunt sacerdotes, dum harharis vocihus Deum laudare cogun- tur, in risum provocati, sacra snpeuumero contemnunt. Quoted hy Daniel, Thes. Hymn., Vol. IV. p. 293. 148 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, condemn this unwarrantable tampering with the genuine forms of the old barbaric hymns. Alluding to this subject, he says It was a want in historical judgment to overleap the Christian medhnval time and its development, or to attempt a reconstruction of its hymns according to heathen modcls which no longer could serve as standards in the Middle Ages. Such attempts, however, were made in the sixteenth century by Fabricius, and still more by Ellinger; in the seventeenth and eighteenth, by Guyet upon the French, and Areval upon the Spanish hymns, the latter being urged thereto by Strada, Galluci, and Petrucci, who regulated according to classical metre all the ecclesiastical hymns of the Romish Breviary, a task to which they had been appointed by Pope Urban VIII. Their labor had a liturgical object, and is therefore to be regarded as an independent work; but collectors merely, like Fabricius, Ellinger, Gnyet, and Are- val, went too far, because they forsook the historical stand-point, and gave their own reconstructions instead of the ancient texts, for which they had no commission. Had they remained true to the principles of the Church Fathers with respect to the relations between the heathen literature and the Christian, they would have avoided any such aberra- tion, and have better preserved the Christian propriety. This latter must be honored as well by the critic as by the poet, on account of its historical bearings. The classical scholars of the sixteenth century who were composers of hymns, such as Erasmus, Muretus, and others, fell into the mistake of mingling in their expressions the representa- tions of heathenism with those of Christianity, although they gave to the former a Christian signification; and this evil influence of an ex- aggerated classicism manifests itself even in the French sacred poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as in the brothers Santeul, Le Tourneux, Habert, Dii Plessis de Geste, Le Brun Desmarettes, Coffin, and others. Such sacred songs, like the classically amended hymns of older date, present a variegated medley, which is inconsistent with the Christian economy because an interpolation upon it. As intimately connected with this branch of our subject, the musical word-building of the medimval Latin, as exem- plified in the hymns of the Western Church, might very properly engage our attention; but, lest such a critical review should be found to involve discussions too scholastic, we pass at once from a single specimen of such poetical Latinity to a consideration of the more msthetical phases of the Roman hymnology 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 149 Ave Virgo generosa, Glossa legis pretiosa, Stirps venusta, regiosa, Toti mundo nominosa. Miseratrix uberosa, Ave rosa vigilosa, Consolatrix gloriosa, Mitis, pia et formosa, indagatrix siderosa, Caritate viscerosa, Sufiragatrix non morosa, Claritate radiosa, Et beatrix jubilosa, Sanctitate vaporosa, etc. The sacred Latin hymns present themselves to our consid- eration in two distinct aspects, according to the stand-points from which they are viewed. The author of the Gesange Christliclier Vorzeit sees in them the outbursts of a holy enthu- siasm, the effervescence of that new leaven which, permeating the masses of heathendom, found its natural outlet in these bursts of lyrical emotion. To Fortlage these spiritual songs are more significant of what was vitally operative in the primitive ages of Christianity than are all the tomes of all the Fathers. He marks in them the mighty heart-throbs of that new prin- ciple of life which the Messiah had breathed into humanity, and by which the fountains of the great deep in the worlds of thought and feeling were broken up. But we will translate from his own glowing pages the following observations, in which he intimates his appreciation of the genius and quality of the early sacred Latin verse The fire of Revelation, in its strong and simple energy, by which, as it were, it rends the rock and bursts the icy harriers of the human heart, predominates in those oldest pieces of the sacred Latin poesy which are comprised in the Ambrosian hymnology, a species of song which moves in the simplest tones, and seldom uses rhyme. Its chief characteristic is the absence of ornament. Even through thorns and brambles it oftentimes takes its way; but beneath the rugged covering of the words there often glows a fiery energy, the power of that Word which interpenetrates the universe. This can well be called the primal song of Christendom, the song of its moral force; for by it Christianity begot in the soul of her confessors a stoicism that overcame the world, and which, by its untiring persistence, at last won victory for the cross. The fire of enthusiasm and sentiment, which in the old Roman son never came to an immediate outburst, gleamed brightly up, however, in Spain, especially in the poesy of Prudentius. If the severe sim- plicity of the Ambrosian hymns reminds us of the Mosaic mandate to sacrifice to God on altars of unhewn stone, we observe, on the con- .13* 1 50 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, trary, in Prudentius, a bursting forth anew of the old flaming psalmody, blazing in many-colored lights, like the variegated hues transmitted through some stained-glass window. As we listen, the soul welters in deep and strong emotion. From this has arisen whatever of most sub- lime, magnificent, and fair the sacred poetry of Christendom has brought to light. In it the organ-pipes which thunder through heaven and earth seem in full play, as, with shudders of inner unworthiness, with cries and melting tears, with jubilant shouts over the goodness of God, and plaints and sighs over Adams fall, and with triumphant strains that praise the great redemption, they thrill through the universe. It is thus that the heights of a freer and more ecstatic melody were reached, in opposition to the more measured and subdued notes of elder Rome, just as in the profane poetry of the South the many-colored lights of Calderon differ from the more sombre severity of Dante and the exquisitely compounded hues of Tasso. Under Fortunatus, this fuller strain of song proceeds to Italy, in the shuddering notes of his Vexilla Regis and Pange Lingua, and there unites, as at a later day in France, with the rich veins of song opened by Peter Damiani, Thomas Aquinas, Adam of St. Victor, Bernard, and Bonaventura, until at last it reached its highest summits in the terrors of the flaming Dies Irac, and the pathos of the fearful Stabat Mater. But that which spans the distance between them both, and in which consists the depth of the Christian poetry, is the element of a deep remorse, in which the wood of the cross appears, like to a wonder-working tree, as the central mystery of Christianity. Dr. Mone, on the other hand, is chiefly pleased to contem- plate in these sacred songs their historical and doctrinal sig- nificance as poetical fragments of the early Church literature, and, by collating them with the prose productions of the Fathers, seeks to show that they had their origin in, and stand in unbroken connection with, the patristic theology. He protests against the disposition of some to regard them mainly as the outgushings of pious emotion, which, he fears, is to discrown them of their highest glory, and to con- vert them into mere poetical mor9eaux, reflecting the individ- ual feeling of their writers rather than the universal conscious- ness of the Church. To this effect he says Since Herder and Rambach, it has been the custom to regard these hymns not in this connection [i. e. with the prose Church literature], but to appreciate them chiefly as the outgushings of pious emotion, 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 151 which cannot fail of their impression on the tender heart. From this merely authetical point of observation, it is impossible to apprehend many of the allusions in these songs, and, like IRambach, we must reject, as the wild outgrowth of the fancy, much that, if more thoroughly com- prehended, would present itself to us in a different guise. That to which these songs were meant to appeal was and is devotion, not poeti- cal feeling and authetical sympathies; if we appreciate them accord- in~, to the latter, we may easily overlook the very foundations of their thought, which surely is the main consideration. The doctrines of faith and the Biblical history were not meant to be perverted by arbitrary poetical experiments; substance is not to be sacrificed to form. It is only when we stand upon th doctrinal foundation of the Church, that we can see how all religious feelings plant in it their root, and are to be tried and explained by the standards erected upon it; apart from this, all such religious feelings are mere individual utterances, whose pious significance is fixed and regulated by no unchanging criterion. Such a sensibility leads to evil consequences, for it degenerates into personal views and reveries which are at the farthest remove from the genuine feeling of Christian devotion. The appreciation of each party, of Fortlage on the one hand and of Mone on the other, seems to us equally just and proper, but neither should be pushed to the exclusion of the other. The msthetical genius of these ancient hymns forms as legitimate a subject of inquiry and observation, as their doctrinal relations to the dogmatic history and prose litera- ture of the Church. If it cannot be denied that the sacred Latin poetry is eminently ecclesiastical, ascetic, and monastic in its subject-matter, or if it swarms, as Mr. Trench truly says, with allusions to the mediawal tropology of the Scrip- tures and the writings of the Fathers, just as little can it be denied that these spiritual songs receive color and complexion from the individual mind of the writer, and partake of that popular inspiration which caused Bossuet to remark that poetry came by enthusiasm only among the Hebrews and Christians. If, as is sometimes the case, St. Ambrose versi- fies a fragment of one of his sermons, or if Gregory the Great. as in his Clarum decus jejunii, reproduces in verse a part of his homily on fasting, it is neces 152 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, sary to admit that such hymns stand in close connection with the Christian dogma of the day in which they appeared; but is it the less true that the verse of Ambrose, in its pith and sententiousness, partakes of his mental habitudes? Or more than in all his prose, do we not discern in it a fire burning inwardly, the glow of an austere enthusiasm? Dr. Mone, in the Preface to his first volume, objects also to Dr. Daniel, that he has inverted the order of nature and rea- son in his comments on the sacred Latin poetry of the Middle Ages. We translate a few paragraphs in which he explains and enforces his views on this subject: Daniel has preferred to avail himself of the modern literature in his explanation and appreciation of these hymns, and this he has done for the special purpose of showing that, at the present day, they are honored and deserve to he honored, even by those of another faith. The object is an honorable one, and we could wish that its laudable end might be attained, but such a labor must leave great chasms in the scientific treatment of the subject; for it ~s manifestly more necessary to indicate the relations of the hymns to the old Church literature, since this latter stands in the closest conjunction with the Scriptures and their ecclesiastical apprehension, and hence affords a much more reliable standard by which to judge these hymns than is found in the modern literature, whose subjective ideas and conceptions so frequently lie without the circle of the old Christian modes of expression, and are, indeed, in opposition to them. By pursuing such a course, it is hardly possible to avoid mistaken explanations and crooked judgments; hence it is preferable, we may say indispensable, for the proper understand- ing of these hymns, to have chief recourse to the old ecclesiastical writers. This can be done in two ways: (1.) by collecting, for the illustra- tion of each hymn, the parallel passages and references culled from the Greek and Latin Fathers and other Christian writers; and (2.) by a comparison of the Latin Church hymns with the Grecian. As the Fathers and other eminent writers had a great influence on the litera- ture of the Church, so it cannot fail that hymnology also should have its points of contact with them, a reference to which must largely con- tribute to a right understanding of the hymns themselves. The com- parison of the Greek Church hymns with the Latin shows not only the close affinity of their respective psalmodies, whether by interchange or appropriation, but also the harmony of their substance down to the schism of the Greek Church, and even later than that period. For 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 153 purposes of illustration, I have therefore collated many passages from the old ecclesiastical literature and the Greek hymnology, because this has heretofore been almost wholly neglected, Daniel, for example, hav- ing only once adduced the JJJ~nden,* without making any use of these copious sources A comparison of the Latia hymns with the old Church literature guards gainst many mistakes in criticism, explanation, and translation, especially such as are found ia certaia late writers, who have made it apparent that a knowledge of the Latin language, as taught in the schools, does not suffice for the comprehension of these hymns, but that the significance of their words depends at once upon the doctrines of the faith and upon the traditionary usus loquertdi of the times. This dog- matical and historical foundation of the ecclesiastical speech must be taken into account, for it had its origin in the necessity of things, since the heathen tongues did not possess all needful expressions for the rev- elation of Christianity, but had first to form them out of Christianity according to the linguistic laws which characterize those tongues. The number and appositeness of the parallel passages cited by Dr. Mone from the Fathers of the Church to illustrate the text of the Latin hymns, compose the most valuable feature of his volumes. Besides giving us an unrivalled collection of sacred Latin verse, he has presented us with an anthology from the patristic prose. Yet without seeking to detract aught from his merits as the most learned of modern hymnol- ogists, we may venture to affirm that, if a comparison of these hymns with those of the Greeks, and with the prose literature of the ancient Church, is indispensable to the illustration. and comprehension of the former, it is no less true that the aspect in which they are more particularly regarded by Dr. Daniel has points of view equally important, and to us quite as in- teresting as those opened from the stand-point taken by Dr. It may not be superfluous to state, for the information of general readers, that the Menhen (npaia, scil. ~3tf3X~a) are, in respect of their names, month-books, in their contents, bymn-boolcs for the daily divine service of every month in the Greek Church. The songs and the readings are arranged according to the days of the month, the text being purely in Greek, always from the press of Venice, where the printing of the Greek church-books has long been, and still is, executed, and from which city the trade in them is carried on with the Orient. Each month-book bears a distinct title, and is printed separately, as, for instance, 13t/3Xtov roii Ievvovep~ov ,npnk, or sometimes simply Ms)v cI~Evpovaptos-. See Mone, Vol. II. p. x. of Preface. 154 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, Mone. Cicero was accustomed, with the fervor of an Athe- nian academic, to point to Athens, the eye of Greece, as to the integrifontes of all that was fairest and best in Roman culture and literature. And Dr. Daniel, in his comments on the hymns of the old Latin Church, has sought to shoxv that in them we must look for the originals of many a strain and stave still sounding in the churches of modern Christendom, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic. Especially does he show how greatly the German hymn-book has been enriched by importations from the sacred Latin verse. Reference is also frequently made to versions in the French, Danish, and other languages of Southern and Northern Europe. Stephenson, in his Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, has preserved for us some of the canticles which were sung and chanted by our English forefathers; and though the hym- nology of the English language is very far from containing so many additions to its contents from the Latin as are found in the tongues of the Continent, yet is the sacred poetry of the Middle Ages an appreciable element even in the liturgy and worship of English Protestantism. Ja the churches of our own country and time may be heard snatches and echoes of that antique poesy which was first intoned in the New World by the Jesuit missionaries and Romish ecciesiastics who planted the cedar column and the cedar cross along the shores of the Great Lakes and the waters of the West, chanting the while, amidst the painted savages who stood around in their robes of beaver and buffalo, the sonorous pas- sion-hymn of Fortunatus, Vexilla regis prodeunt. Al7nong the retenta of the sacred Latin verse may be in- stanced that most familiar passage from the burial service of the Episcopal Church, In the midst of life we are in death. Robert Hall once searched for this in the Bible, as a text from which he purposed to preach a sermon. had he been versed in the medin~val hymnology, he would have been able to find it in an old Antiphonariunm of the ninth or tenth cen- tury, composed by St. Notker, the stammering monk of St. Gall. The entire antiphone runs as follows: 1837.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 133 Media vita Sanete Deus, In morte sumus; Sancte fortis, Quem quaerimus adjutorem Sancte et misericors Nisi Te, Salvator, Domine, Amnarae Qui pro peccatis Morti ne trades abs. Nostris juste iraseeris ~ This Latin chant inspired the German hymn, Mittem wir im Leben sind von dem Tod umfangen, which, as is known, Luther enlarged by the addition of two stanzas. From Germany it passed into England, and has found a permanent lodgement in the Liturgy of the English Established Church and of its daughter in America. The hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, attributed by tradition to Charlemagne, but with greater probability, both from ex- ternal and internal evidence, ascribed by Dr. Mone to Gregory the Great, with whose style and versification it certainly ac- cords, is still retained among the hymns in the Book of Com- mon Prayer, where it has a place in the offices for the ordering of priests and the consecration of bishops, being in truth the only one thus transferred from the ]Ilomish Breviary by the compilers of the Prayer-Book. That favorite hymn, Jerusalem, my happy home, derived its first inspiration from the Urbs beata Hierusalem, but has, in the lapse of time and its passage through different hands, undergone so many variations, (which, we may add, have been made the subject of a monograph by a Scottish student of Christian poetry,) that scarcely a vestige remains of its original form. But the German is without doubt the richest of modern tongnes in the treasures of sacred verse, and how largely it is indebted to the poetry of the Latin Church we need not pause to demonstrate, since the evidences of the fact meet us on every hand as we open the German hymn-book.~ Luther himself enriched with many such importations the psalmody of the noble language, which, by his translation of the Scrip- See especially Wackernagel, Pas Deutsche Kirehenlied von Martin Luther bis auf Kicolaus Herman und Ambrosins Blaurer. 156 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, tures, he may be said to have at once fixed and refined. The hymn of St. Gregory the Great on onr Lords passion, com- mencing Rex Christe, factor omnium, is pronounced by Luther, in his Table-Talk, the very best of the Latin Church, a praise, however, which, as a German hymnolo- gist remarks, must be attributed rather to the theological merits than the poetical excellences of that sacred lyric. Among the many examples of German hymns translated by Luther from the Latin, the best known are, perhaps, Nun komin der Heiden Heiland, from the Veni Redemptor gentium of Ambrose, and the Christ der du bist Tag und Liclit, from. the Christe, qui lux es et dies. To these we may add such reproductions by other hands as those in which the Urbs beata repeats its vision of peace Jerusalem, du hochgebaute Stadt; or, still otherwise, Stadt Gottes, deren diamanten Ring; or as when the Ecce homo of sacred Latin verse, the passion hymn of St. Bernard, Salve caput cruentatum, haunts us again in Paul Gerhards touching version 0 Haupt you Blut und Wunden, Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn. Traces like these, which mark the veins of sacred Latin song that run through the poetry of modern Christendom, are quite sufficient, we think, to justify the place which Dr. Daniel gives to them in his Thesaurus. The field which he chose to occupy certainly adjoins upon the wide domain of the mediawal hynmology, and if he preferred to be an ad- mirer rather than an interpreter of the sacred Latin poetry, 1857.1 SACRED LATIN POETRY. 157 he is not for this reason amenable to the carping censure by which Dr. Mone so frequently disparages his labors. Nor is it true, that, while giving attention to the relations of the sacred Latin hymns to the modern poetry of the Church, he has wholly neglected the literary history of their genesis and authorship. But it is true that, in this latter branch of in- quiry, he is not always able to see so clearly as Dr. Mone, that the mediawal hynrnology plants its roots in the apostolic faith, or even in the patristic theology of the early Christian ages; and we are not without our suspicions that the relig- ious, rather than literary, heresies of which Dr. Mone must think him guilty because of the judgments he sometimes pro- nounces on the poet-monks of the Middle Age, afford the most natural explanation of that odium theologicum \Vith which the Catholic hymnologist pursues his Protestant prede- cessor in this field of labor. Dr. Daniel sometimes ventures to intimate that the sacred Latin poetry often runs parallel with something other than the Bible and its apprehension by the early Church Fathers, to wit, with the legendary lore and Christian mythology which fill so large a space in the civilization of the Mid- dle Age. And he would be an adventurous tamperer with the truth of history, as well as a purblind critic in medireval literature, who should deny the fact that the sacred Latin hymns do often hold as in crystal the concretions which from age to age were gradually obscuring the purity and cor- rupting the simplicity of the primitive faith. As much that passed for metaphor or rhetoric with the Christians of the early ages came to be transmuted into dogmatic theology among their successors, so also many a Christiau myth, which at first began in monastic legend and floated in pious song, was gradually interpolated into the body of Christian doc- trine, and became a part of that ever-increasing heritage transmitted from generation to generation by the monastic orders (or religions as they were called) of the Dark Ages in European history. Each religion had its peculiar circle of traditions and its favorite hymns. The Jesuits were not the first and only order in the Catholic Church who, as the French wit charged, were men that lengthened the creed and von. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 14 158 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, abridged the commandments. The process of agglutination commenced centuries before the day of Loyola, and found, perhaps, its most remarkable illustration in that growing ven- eration for the person of the Virgin Mary, which, after having been fostered and nonrished throughout successive centuries by tradition and song, has but recently received the dogmatic sanction of Pope and Cardinals in grand ecclesiastical con- clave. The number of the Latin hymns addressed to Mary, filling as they do in the collection of Mone a volume equal in bulk and contents to that which contains those addressed to God and Angels together, would seem to demand a special consideration, as being the most fruitful branch of the sacred Latin poetry; for if it be uncharitable to assert that the Blessed Virgin occupies the first and highest place in the Romish religion, it would seem to be no sin against candor to declare, if we may judge from the labors of Dr. Mone, that she occupies that pre-eminence in the Romish hymnology. Protestant scholars and theologians have adduced many theories in explanation of the rise and prevalence of that Mariolatry which finds its poetical expression in the Songs to Mary, and of which Dr. Mone presents us more than three hundred examples. The veneration of the Virgin, if we may not say her worship as divine, commenced at an early age in the Church, and seems to have found its incen- tives in that ascetic spirit which became so predominant in the third and fourth centuries, the history of which, in a popu- lar form, has been presented in a well-known work by Isaac Taylor. The recluse religions of the Eastern Church ven- erated in Mary the ideal of virginity, which, at that period in the development of Christianity, was exalted into the coronal of all the Christian graces. Others, again, adored in Mary Ocov~Ko9 the mystery of a holy maternity, and wor- shipped her as the truly and purely human inediatrix, (we do but assign to her one of the titles she receives in the Latin and Grecian hymns,) who had brought Deity into fellowship and reconciliation with Humanity. This latter feeling was doubtless intensified in the fleshly minds of the Orient by the dogma tic controversies of the time, and especially by the decision of the Council of Nice, declaring the coessentiality 1857.1 159 SACRED LATIN POETRY. of Christ with the Father, a decision which, (as Bishop Bull himself might admit without any disloyalty to the Nicene faith which he defended,) by concentrating the Christian consciousness on the abstract question of the Messiahs divin- ity, tended by the brightness of its glory to throw into shade the correlative doctrine of his perfect humanity. lo the sensuous fancy Mary thus became, as it were, the substi- tuted type of the great mystery of godliness, the incarna- tion, and the immaculate Mother of God was installed in the mediatorial throne of her Divine Son. The poets feigii that Isis, when she recovered the dissevered members of Osiris, Crected in his honor as many imitative statues of wax as there were mangled pieces of his body; and so it would seem that even the worshippers of the incarnate Truth, when no longer holding him as their Head, have ever been prone to erect a false image in his stead, and to mar the beauty and symmetry of Christian doctrine by substituting the dis- tortions of sect and party for the unity of the faith as held in the bonds of peace. From the time when the Collyridians, or priestesses of Mary, in Arabia, as early as the fourth and fifth centuries, held high carnival in honor of the Virgin, to the day when medheval chivalry boasted its noblest champions in the Knights of St. Mary, we can trace a sensuous instinct min- gling with all the honors paid to the Holy Mother, and hence we need not be surprised to find that Cyprus, under the rule of Templar and Hospitaller, each swearing by the Virgin, was hardly less faithful to the \vorship of Venus than in the day when that goddess Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, Naked, a double light in air and wave, To meet her Graces when they decked her out For worship without end. If it be admitted that such in any degree was the corrupted sentiment which may have originally prepared the way for the worship of Mary, we might expect to find the traces of its presence in the hymns which bear her name and celebrate her praises. Accordingly, it is not too much to say, that many of the hyams addressed to the Blessed Virgin would seem to find their more appropriate place in an appendix to the 160 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, heathen erotic poets of the Latin language, than in a The- saurns Hymnologicus of the Church. Dr. Mone, we are aware, takes exception to the criticisms of Dr. Daniel on this delicate subject, and adduces, in reversal of the sentence pro- nounced on this point by the latter, the apostolical precept, that to the pnre all things are pure; but after all due allow- ances are made by that charity which thinketh no evil, it still remains an incontestable fact, that certain of the songs in honor of Mary must in all candor be pronounced rather anac- reontic than devotional. There is in not a few of them an evident toying with conceits which betray a prurient imagi- nation instead of a pious sensibility. The mystical imagery of the Song of Songs being regarded by the tropologists of the Middle Age as especially applicable to Mary, it is easy to conceive the use which might be made of it by a monkish poet, who brings to its poetical interpretation a spirit like that of a Beroaldus in his commentaries on the classics. In a hymn cited by Sir Alexander Croke, the Virgin is actually represented as an object of carnal affection to the Holy Ghost. Our readers, we are sure, will excuse us if we dismiss this branch of our subject without adducing any examples in illustration of a poetical sacrilege which approaches the altar of the heavenly Muse with strange and unhallowed fire. Dr. Mone, we scarcely need say, discards the ascriptiou of any other origin to the veneration of Mary than that which plants its roots in the old Church literature and its exegesis of the Scriptures. On this point his argument is as follows The Old Testament is the necessary foundation of Christianity, for it contains the historical evidence that God even at the creation of man had foreordained his redemption. Accordingly, mans redemption was no accidental event, but the consequence of an eternal counsel. Of this connection of the two Testaments, the Old and the New, not only are the Jews shown to have been convinced by their expectation of the Messiah, but Christ and the Apostles have expressly declared it, and hence Christianity recognized the Old Testament as the prophecy, the New as the fulfilment of human redemption, and erected on this ground the Biblical Tropology or Typology, that is, the science which com- pares the prophetical passages and historical types of the Old Testa- ment with the life of Christ and his Church, and thus opposes to the shadow of the olden time the substance of the new. Opinions may be 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 161 various respecting the correctness or admissibility of particular refer- ences and comparisons, but this will not justify us in contesting or dis- carding the whole Tropology, since it cannot be denied that it has a foundation in Christianity, and least of all can it be overlooked by the historical inquirer, who without it will find himself unable to compre- hend the theological writings of the earlier times. As the incarnation of Christ was foretold by the prophets, so must also his mother have been included in their thought, and hence the Bibli- cal Tropology extends to ary, and consists of allusions to her both direct and indirect; namely, such as are derived from passages in the Old Testament expressly referring to Mary,~ and such applications and figures as can be brought into relation or comparison with her. From this Tropology have arisen the manifold epithets of Mary which are met with in songs, prayers, and other compositions, and which rest altogether upon a Biblical foundation, apart from which they can neither be properly explained nor understood. Within this distinctly marked circle of thought the veneration of Mary has a self-subsistence and a peculiarity which cannot be derived from extrinsic influences, but which must be referred for their sources to this discovered interdependence of the two Testaments. The reasoning of Dr. Mone xvill be seen at once by the critical reader to be based on an inversion or confusion of ideas. For the fact of Marys prefiguration in the ancient prophets surely confers upon her no peculiar sanctity, since this is a distinction which she shares in common with the betrayer and the murderers of the Messiah. And how the Biblical Tropology, whether real or fanciful, founded on her motherhood, should be held to invest her with a right to veneration, must pass the comprehension of ordinary minds. Indeed, this tropology may more truly be regarded as the effect than as the cause or justification of such a homage, and therefore finds its proper position when used historically and resthetically to explain the origin and subject-matter of the hymns which give expression to the worship of the Virgin, but must for ever be regarded as wholly out of place in any attempted vindication of the grounds on which that worship may be logically defended from the Scriptures. How large a part the Biblical Typology plays in the composition and 14 As Gen. iii. 15 ; Isa. vii. 14; xi. 1; xxxv. 1, 2; lxvi. 7; Jcr. xxxi. 22, & c. 162 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, texture of the hymns to Mary, we need not pause to demon- strate. A single specimen will suffice for this purpose better than any critical statement. Ave decus virgineum, Ave jubar aethereurn, Nobis praesens sollemnitas Assit perpes jucunditas, Tua namque conceptio Suinmis est gratulatio. Gaude, fldelis concio, Adest ejus conceptio, Quae delet Evae maculam, Vitae redonat infulam. Cui Eva obedivit Haee serpentis eaput trivit, Jugum spernens nuptiarum Deo vovit coelibatum. A prophetis praecinitur Et figuris ostenditur Quod mulier proeederet Q uae Deum virgo pareret. AD MARIAM. Namque rubus incombustus Moysen qui terruit Haee est virgo, quae pudore Salvo Deum genuit. Virga Aaron fructifera Mariae typum gesserat, Quae nobis fructum attulit, Famem qui nostrarn depulit. Esalas ille divus, Secretorum Dei rivus, Virgae movens mentionem Pangit hanee conceptionern. Voce prophetiae Signatur origo Mariae. Gloria patri, etc. hymns like these, we repeat, may be fairly held to illus- trate the Biblical Tropology, and are themselves illustrated by it; but the simple fact of her typical adumbration in the prophetical Scriptures can be scarcely deemed a sufficient warrant for the divine honors rendered to the Virgin Mary. All the hymns relating to Marys miraculous conception must be referred to a later origin than the middle of the twelfth century, and thus attest by their very date the com- parative novelty of the veneration paid to her in commemora- tion of that event. And the reader of Dr. Mones collection can hardly fail to remark the significant fact, that the cita- tions from the Fathers contained in the volume devoted to hymns in honor of the Virgin are almost wholly derived from writers of the twelfth century and later, St. Bernard, we believe, furnishing the great bulk of the pieces ]ust~/icatives culled from ecclesiastical prose to show that the poetry of 1837.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. 163 the Western Church is in harmony with the Catholic faith; whereas in the volume of Hymns to God and Angels the chief authorities to which he resorts are such \vorthies as Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and others, their coevals if not their compeers. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, canonized by the festival created in its honor during the twelfth century, began about this time to find a poetical expression in snatches of song like these Salve Deo consecrata, Si quidquid de crirnine Ante huic mundo nata, Arguatur in virgine, Intra matris uterurn; Caro Christi esset rea Dono fixa speciali, Quain assumpserat ex ea. Ut nec lapsu veniali Peccares in posterurn. * How completely the legendary and the mythical elements mingled at this period with the Scriptural Tropologyto lengthen the creed of the Church, as before remarked, and to enlarge the cycle of hymns to Mary, may be inferred from the poetical deposits retained in the following Ad Gompletoriuin Hymnus, in which the fiction of Marys assumption and of the supernatural trausmigration of her grave-clothes is celebrated as a verity equally authentic with the second corning of Christ on the morning of the resurrection DE CONCEPTIONE B. MAIIIAE VIRGINIS. Reginae coeli e domo delaturn Credimus pie sanctorurn corn choris Josaphat corpus, nihil reperitur Jesum venisse Deo jubilantes, In loco, in quo mannaque de coelo Animam corpus simul sociantes Ibidem esse4 In summo coelo. The prose citation corroborative of this oetical effusion is derived by Dr. Mone from that Corypha2us of the Marian theology, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and is as follows Fuit procul dubio mater Domini ante sancta quam nata. Ego puto quod et copiosior sanctificationis bencdictio in eam dcscendcrit, quac ipsius non solum sanctificaret ortum, sed et vitam ab omni deinceps peccato custodiret immunem; quod nemini alteri in natis quidem mulierum creditur esse. S. Bern. Epp. 184. 5. This, like all the other passages quoted from St. Bernard, is intended to ascribe to Mary a sanctification like that of Jeremiah and of John the Baptist, and gives no countenance to the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception. t As the text of tbi~ stanza is corrupt, and at best resents a difficult reading, we append the comment made upon it by Dr. Mone Verses 1 4 relate to the legend of Marys burial, namely, that nothing more of her was found in the grave 164 SACRED LATIN POETRY. [July, Trinitas saneta suscipiens matrem Sertis coronat ter denis centenis; Gaudium semper, jubilus in aevum Sit tibi mater. Gloria patri, etc. Candor, however, requires the admission, that many among the tenderest and most precious of the Latin hymns are those addressed to Mary, of which we may say that they seem to derive their inspiration from the very well-head of Chris- tian feeling. To this class belongs that wide circle of hymns which find their central attraction in the Stabat Mater. In these the person and the heart of the Holy Mother are taken, if we may so express ourselves, as the stand-points of the Christian poet, who seeks to interpenetrate his soul with a profonnder sense of the Saviours humiliation and agony on the cross, by appropriating subjectively the speechless grief of the Virgin doomed to behold the spectacle of his sufferings. And regarded in the light of provocatives to pious emotion and holy ecstasy, such hymns explain to us the secret of their wonderful popularity in the later xnedkeval period, a period when, as Sir James Stephen truly remarks, the ideal of human existence, the very poetry of life, con- sisted in meek suffering, in patient endurance, in pouring oil into the bleeding wounds of a groaning world, and in escap- ing from its prevalent bondage and oppression, its cruelty and lust, into communion with more than female tenderness and more than angelic purity. Traces of the subjective spirit we have thus designated pervade the whole of the Stabat Mater, and give to it that pathos and depth of feel- ing which render it difficult to be read without opening the sacred, sympathetic source of tears. And in an earlier hymn, which may be regarded, in truth, as a foreshadoxving of that touching prosa, we find stanzas like these addressed to the Virgin than her shroud and pall, which at a later day transported themselves to Constanti- nople. The burial of Mary has a similarity with that of Moses: no man knows her sepulchre or has seen her remains. ~ In such hymns, as Dr. Fortlage tersely expresses it, the person of Mary is made to serve als llesonanzboden des Gefiihls hei der Betraehtnng des Leidens Christi. 165 1857.] SACRED LATIN POETRY. Corporis nati videns plagas, latus, Me tecom here plagasque sentire, Sanguinis fluxum, derisorum verba, Genetrix, dona tua prece nati, Lacrimas fundens to subjaces humo, Laneca, davis, cruce, spinis pungi, Tu pia mater. Fac, dulcis mater. Sacred poetry of this impassioned kind was particularly cultivated by the Franciscans, whose order was founded by St. Francis d Assisi in the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury. If before his day the cross and passion of the Saviour had formed the theme of devotional meditation and of pious song, this elevated and fervid spirit derived from him and the followers xvhom he gathered into his cloister a new and a mighty impulse. St. Francis himself was repnted to have received, in token of the IDivine complacency in his ineffable meditations on the cross and passion, the miraculous impres- sion, on his own body, of the five wounds inflicted in the cru- cifixion on the hands, feet, and side of the Saviour.~ To become a partaker in these stignrnta of their sainted superior, was the highest aspiration of his followers; and in such a spirit it was that Bonaventura exclaimed, in the closing stanza of his Laudismus de S. Gruce Crucifixe! fac me fortem, Ut libenter tuam mortem Plangam, donee vixero. Tecum volo vulnerari, Te libenter amplexari In cruce desidero. The Latin hymns in honor of Mary, by reason of their wide diffusion and popularity throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, were the first to he translated into the nascent modern languages of the Continent. Of such translations we can afford to give, for want of space, but a few examples, among the many at our hands, which we place by the side of Adam de St. Victors Prosa de Beata Virgine, and with which we must conclude our present paper, reserving for a future occa ~ Dante alludes in the Divine Comedy to the place where this miracle was said to havc occurred Nd crudo sasso tin Tevero et Arno Da Cristo prese 1 ultimo sigillo Che ic sue membra do anni portarno. Pared. XL 106. 166 SACRED. LATIN POETRY. [July, sion, if it should be deemed expedient, the fulfilment of our purpose to enter still other walks of this rich old poesy of the Latin Church, and especially to trace the interesting literary history of the txvo most precious and widely honored of its products. We allude, of course, to the Dies Ir~ie and the Stabat Mater, each of which, as our readers are aware, has been made the subject of an elaborate and scholarly mono- graph by a living German divine, F. G. Lisco, of Berlin. DE BEATA VIRGINE. Salve mater Salvatoris, Vas electum, vas honoris, Yas coelestis gratiae; Ab aeterno vas provisum, Vas insigne, vas excisum Manu sapientiae. Salve verbi sacra parens, Fios de spina spina carens, Pbs spineti gloria; Nos spinetum, aos peecati Spina sumus eruentati, Sed tu spinae nescia. Porta clausa, fons hortorum, Celia custos unguentorum, Celia pigmentaria; Cinnamomi calamum, Myrrham, thus et balsamum, Superans fragrantia. Salve decus virginum, Mediatrix hominum, Salutis puerpera; Myrtus temperantiae, Rosa patientiae, Nardus odorifera. Tu convallis humilis, Terra non arabilis, Quae Deum parturiit. Pbs campi, convalliurn Singulare lilium, Christus ex te prodiit. Tu coelestis paradisus, Libanusque non incisus Vaporans dulcedinern. Tu candoris et decoris, Tu dulcoris et odoris Habens plenitudinem. Tn es thronus Salomonis, Cui nullus par in thronis Arte vel materia; Ebur candens castitatis, Aurum fulvum caritatis Praesignans mysteria. Palmam praefers singularem, Nec in terris habes parern, Nec in coeli curia. Lans humani generis, Virtutum prae ceteris Tenes privilegia. Sol luna lucidior Et luna sideribus, Sic Maria dignior Creaturis omnibus. Sob eclipsim nesciens Virginis est castitas Ardor indeficiens Immortalis caritas. Salve mater pietatis, Et totius Trinitatis Nobile triclinium, SACRED LATIN POETRY. Verbi tamen incarnati Speciale majestati Praeparans hospitium. 0 Maria, stella mans, iDignitate singularis Super omnes ordinaris Ordines coelestium. In superno sita poli Nos commenda tuae proli, Ne terrores sive doli Nos supplantent hostium. In procinctu constituti Te tuente simus tuti, Pervicacis et versuti Tuae cedat vis virtuti, Dolus providentiae. Jesu, verbum summi Patris, Serva servos tuae matris, Solve reos, salva gratis Et nos tuae claritatis Configura gratiae. OLD ITALIAN HYMN. LA SALVE REGINA. Dio te salvi, regina, E madre universale, Per eni favor si sale Al paradiso. Voi siete gioja e riso Di tutti i consolati, Di tutti i tribolati Uniea sperne. A voi sospira e geme Ii nostro afflitto core In un mar di dolore Ed amarezza. Maria, mar di dolcezza, I vostr ocehi pietosi, Materni ed amarosi A noi volgete. Noi miseri accogliete Nel vostro santo velo, E 1 vostro figlio in cielo A noi mostrate. Gradite ed ascoltate, Overgine Maria, Dolce, clernenti e pia, Gli affetti nostni. Voi de nemici nostri A noi date vittoria, Di poi 1 eterna gloria, In paradiso. OLD FRENCH HYMN. ChANT A MARIE. Marie, dame toute belle, En qui toute grace abonde, Filic de Dieu, mere et ance!le, Royne du Ciel, dame du monde, Tu es le ruisseau dou partit bode Qui le peche de Adam lava: Je te salue pure et monde En disant ave Maria. Dame, donne moy grace lavoir IDe Dieu tresjuste congnoissance, Et me garde de mal avoir, Car ii est bien en ta puissance; Jamais tu ne feis deffaillance A celny qui mercy te crya: Je te salue mon esperance, En disant ave 1\laria. 1857.] 167 168 GREEK PROVERBS. [July, Folie, Jeunesse et Enfanee Mont faict pecher tresgrandement, Je te supplye mon ignorance Uneilles excuser maintenant; Quand viendra mon definement Secours moy, o virgo pia: Je te same devotement En disant ave Maria. OLD GERMAN HYMN. ANTIPIION: SALVE REGINA. 0 Maria, wir dich gruessen, Kiinigin der parmhertzichait, Unser leben, iinser hofnung, Du seist gruesset iinser suessichait. An dir wir schreien ellende Kinder Evae in dem iamertal, Zu dir wir seiften chiagunde Und bainund in diesem zhhertal. Eya darnmb seid du pist nun Dye iinser versprecherin, Deine parmhertzige angen Zu iins wende. Und den hailer Jesum Crist, Deines leibs gesegente frncht, Uns erczaig Zn trost Nach dysem ellende. 0 dn senfte, o do guetige, 0 do snesse iunckfraw, Muter Maria, Alleinja. ART. V. O~r the Lessons in Pro~erbs. By RICHARD CHENE vix TRENCH, B. ID. New York: Redfield. 1S~i3. WHEN Chesterfield wrote, in his heartless code of courtesy, that a gentleman never uses a proverb, he contributed an emphatic hint towards settling the question, Wherein con- sists the essence of a proverb? According to his fastidious view of them, proverbs are worn vulgar by being so often in mouths that sip soup from pewter spoons. A proverb is a curt and pithy expression which embodies an admitted truth, and is current among the million. As the pronoun, to use a schoolmasters definition, is used in place of a noun, to avoid its too frequent repetition, so the proverb is a representative phrase resorted to for the purpose of shunning tedious ex- planation or argument. It offers an apology for jumping at conclusions by a single stride, without the fatigue of picking ones steps over the difficult highways of logic. Its strength is based on the principle that, as good wine needs no bush,

168 GREEK PROVERBS. [July, Folie, Jeunesse et Enfanee Mont faict pecher tresgrandement, Je te supplye mon ignorance Uneilles excuser maintenant; Quand viendra mon definement Secours moy, o virgo pia: Je te same devotement En disant ave Maria. OLD GERMAN HYMN. ANTIPIION: SALVE REGINA. 0 Maria, wir dich gruessen, Kiinigin der parmhertzichait, Unser leben, iinser hofnung, Du seist gruesset iinser suessichait. An dir wir schreien ellende Kinder Evae in dem iamertal, Zu dir wir seiften chiagunde Und bainund in diesem zhhertal. Eya darnmb seid du pist nun Dye iinser versprecherin, Deine parmhertzige angen Zu iins wende. Und den hailer Jesum Crist, Deines leibs gesegente frncht, Uns erczaig Zn trost Nach dysem ellende. 0 dn senfte, o do guetige, 0 do snesse iunckfraw, Muter Maria, Alleinja. ART. V. O~r the Lessons in Pro~erbs. By RICHARD CHENE vix TRENCH, B. ID. New York: Redfield. 1S~i3. WHEN Chesterfield wrote, in his heartless code of courtesy, that a gentleman never uses a proverb, he contributed an emphatic hint towards settling the question, Wherein con- sists the essence of a proverb? According to his fastidious view of them, proverbs are worn vulgar by being so often in mouths that sip soup from pewter spoons. A proverb is a curt and pithy expression which embodies an admitted truth, and is current among the million. As the pronoun, to use a schoolmasters definition, is used in place of a noun, to avoid its too frequent repetition, so the proverb is a representative phrase resorted to for the purpose of shunning tedious ex- planation or argument. It offers an apology for jumping at conclusions by a single stride, without the fatigue of picking ones steps over the difficult highways of logic. Its strength is based on the principle that, as good wine needs no bush, 18~7.j GREEK PROVERBS. 169 so sound sense can command assent without the flourishes of fine rhetoric. Among the Greeks, proverbs were called wctpoylat, way- side idioms, to describe their adaptedness for meeting every- day wants, and to distinguish them from the more logical and discriminating language of scholars and philosophers. In Rome, they were termed adagia; so called, according to Festus, bee ause they were ad agendurn apta, practical max- ims fitted for solving the problems of daily life. These synonymes clearly determine one of the prime ele- ments of a proverb, its concrete, practical force and cur- rency among the masses. It is a pair of seven-league boots for a mans thought to jump into, when it would take long strides and hurry to a safe conclusion. Let some crude, dull thinker, with a slender vocabulary, undertake to argue a ques- tion in polities or morals, and he will flounder about in mire and thick fog, vainly cudgelling his brains to strike a light, until his memory hits upon an apt proverb, and theneeforward his course is jubilant. To clinch the argument with an old saw, is to come off with flying colors, in his own undisguised estimation. Nor is he entirely in the wrong. The cause that has a sturdy, resolute proverb on its side, is a cause not to be altogether despaired of. A syllogism would have had no force \vith the ignorant teamster, who doubted if he could draw an inference, but was sure his horses could, if the traces were only strong enough. But ask this rude, yet conscientious teamster, if it is right to do evil that good may come; with a lighting up of the eye, like a mathematicians over his quod erat dernonstrandum, and with a click of his lips like the pre- monition of a rides discharge, he will tell you that A wild goose never lays a tame egg. That settles the question for him. The mystery that hangs over the origin of our raciest prov- erbs adds to their charm and authority with the uneducated many. Having existed during a period whereof the memory of man run neth not to the contrary, they form a code of ethics almost as binding on the popular conscience as is the com- mon law in English courts. An aged woman who had known heavy sorrows, and had often consoled herself with the senti- voL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 15 170 GREEK PROVERBS. [July, inent that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, was seized with excessive grief when told she was indebted for her comfort to a mind so filthy and blasphemous as that of Lau- rence Sterne. Not knowing the authorship of this saying, her fancy had clothed it with a sacred character. A genuine proverb is always concise, and either figurative, or alliterative, or antithetic, or rhymed, or in some way pecu- liar, so as to make a notch in the memory, and thus to be easily recalled. It may be alliterative: He who sends mouths, sends meat. It may be antithetic: If the doctor cures, the sun sees it; if he kills, the earth hides it. It may be rhymed : The devil fell sick, the devil a monk would he; The devil got well, the devil a monk was he. A proverb expresses a truth in the fewest words possible, without any impertinent and offensive surplusage of epithets and adverbs, which, even outside of the domain of moral and social axioms, are quite as apt to cumber as to comfort with the help they bestow. There is scarcely a more verbose, thought-diluting book in our language than the one absurdly mistitled Proverbial Philosophy. A more seemly christen- ing would have been, Tricks of Speech, or Every-day Thoughts ambitiously paraphrased. The old saying, A short horse is soon curried, if Tupperized, would read, The abbreviated pony, diminutive offspring of cold Canada, re- joices in a right speedy discharge from the brisk manipula- tions of the hired hostler. The proverbs of a nation are its autographs of character. In them, as in a sanctuary of intuitions, may be found its confession of religious faith, its maxims of social and politi- cal philosophy, and an epitome of its genius, wit, and senti- ment. They form a treasury of choicest wisdom, to which poets ~sort for the burden-words of their songs. Historians follow them as dews in the investigation of popular usages and manners. Orators catch from them their key-notes, when they would pipe tunes to which the people will consent to dance. ~s an illustration of their connectiou with national charaier, we might cite the Spanish proverb, The nearer 1857.] GREEK PROVERBS. 171 the church, the farther from God, which gives a complete exegesis of the religious position of Spain. No other than a priest-ridden, hypocritical nation would suffer itself to he tra- duced by the permitted currency of such a sentiment. Richard Chenevix Trench, in his scholarly and ingenious work on The Lessons in Proverbs, has little to say in detail about those current among the ancient Greeks. Their gen- eral character is thus given That which strikes one most in the study of the Greek proverbs, and which the more they are studied, the more fills one with wonder, is the evidence they yield of a leavening through and through of the entire natioa with the most intimate knowledge of its own mythology, history, and poetry. The infinite multitude of slight and fine allusions to the legends of their gods and heroes, to the earlier incidents of their own history, to the Homeric narrative, the delicate side-glances at these which the Greek proverbs constantly embody, assume an acquaintance, indeed a familiarity, with all this on their part with whom they passed current, which almost exceeds belief As bearing testimony to the high intellectual training of the people who employed them, to a culture not restricted to certain classes, but which must have been diffused through the whole nation, no other col- lection can bear the remotest comparison with this. So far, Trench is right; but in his asserting that, in many and most important respects, the Greek proverbs, as a \vhole, are inferior to those of many nations of the modern world, there is not a little of rashness and inconsistency. The work of Trench is a choice contribution to the scholars library; yet he depreciates unfairly the Greek proverbs, which are not only numerous, but, as we hope to be able to prove, no less attractive in dress and rich in practical instruction than those of most modern nations. They are not often met with in Plato and Thucydides, for the obvious reason that such writers occupy an elevation quite above the culture of the million. They are abstract in their habits of thinking, logical in style, opulent in verbal resources. Having little care for the general sympathy, and content with a few fit readers, they chose to originate modes of expression that should avail to make clear and nice distinctions of meaning, and might be of use in building up religious and philosophical systems. But when 172 GREEK PROVERBS. [July, we turn to the Greek writers who aimed to copy the living manners of their times, to the comic, tragic, and pastoral poets, proverbs abound. The fact that they are more abundant arid striking in the later than in the earlier writers, helps to prove that they are a gradual growth, that they accumulate and gain in piquancy as a nation advances from infancy to old age. In entering upon this field of research, from which Trench has brought out only a few sheaves, we shall not attempt to gather all that remains of the harvest, but to thrust in the sickle here and there, as memory or chance may guide. Proverbs are not easily classified, or kept iii obedience to logical arrangement. Yet a little care in their grouping will make it clear, that among all nations, and in all ages, cer- tain truths have come to be acknowledged as safe rules of action, and certain qualities have been discovered as almost invariably attached to human nature. As we pass from one country to another, or from one century to another, the ex- pression of these truths varies, while their essence remains the same. There was always a full stock of selfishness on hand among the prot6g~s of Minerva, yet they confessed it with a shyness that well-nigh amounted to obscurity, by saying that The shin-bone is farther down than the knee- pan, Airwr~po 7~O 2] KVfl/Lfl. In fuller phrase: The heart is the seat of life. V/hat is nearest to the heart is dearest. The knee, being nearer than the shin, is to be cared for sooner. The same eruption of human nature broke out among the Romans. They were equally selfish, and equally shy in their way of confessing it: Tunica palijo proprior, The shirt is nearer than the waistcoat. We moderns put a bold face upon it, and plumply declare that Charity begins at home. Every thorough search into Greek life and literature must extend to the Homeric poems. The proverbs they contain are remarkable for two things: their deep moral significance, and the simplicity of their phrasing. Some of them read like maxims from Holy Writ. Says Homer, Who obeys the gods, him they promptly listen to. Says the Bible, The prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Says Homer, All 1857.] GREEK PROVERBS. 173 beggars and strangers are from Jupiter. Says the Bible, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Says Homer, The slow overtakes the swift. Says the Bible, The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. According to Homer, As is the race of leaves, even such is the race of men. According to Isaiah, All flesh is grass, and all the goodli- ness thereof is as the flower of the field. Homers politics, however, are not altogether Scriptural. He declares that The government of many is not a good thing, contrary to the opinion of Solomon, that In the multitude of coun- sellors there is safety. The Homeric proverbs are not rich in their outward phras- ing. Concisely, yet not curiously expressed, their beauty lies in their truth and religiousness. In Homers time, xvords were rarely used in secondary or derivative senses. Where a later poet would have resorted to a brief metaphor, Homer went through with all the ceremonies of an elaborate com- parison. There is just this difference between a Homeric and an ~schylean proverb the one is a metaphor, the other is not. This will not justify us in saying that Ho- mers genius was wanting in fertility, or that his pictures of society in the heroic age are defective and unfaithful. It is because Homer is an exact delineator of heroic manners, that his proverbs are what they are, simple apothegrus, un- adorned, bald statements of admitted truth. In a new or barbarous society, proverbs are few and meagre As society refines itself, and accumulates practical knowledge and experience, they come to be more numerous and more quaintly worded. In Homers day it was a proverb that No one ever yet knew his own father, Ov wco T18 ~oV ry~vov aiW~ dvEryvo,. The idea itself may be a little startling, but not the phraseology. In its long pilgrimage from Agamem- non to Buchanan, the expression has plucked up a saucy spirit, and now flings it at us, that It takes a smart boy to know his own father. In Homers day it was a proverb that The bold man is more successful in all his ways, & apoctXco9 airqp El 7rcu7Lv a/~LEuJcOV. With us the premium on brass is equally high. Yet we give the tone of the market 15 * 174 GREEK PROVERBS. [July, with a single specific quotation: Faint heart never won fair lady. In this way proverbs grow emphatic and concrete with the growth of society and the strengthening of public opinion. Of Greek historians, the one most intimate with life among the unlettered was Herodotus. In the course of his travels he had collected a large fund of traditional and guomic say- ings, which he interwove with his history when they would throw light upon individual or national character. One of these appears in a Greek rhyme, FIaOIj~iaTa, ~aOI~tara. Translating so as to preserve the homophony, it becomes, Bad disasters, good schoolmasters. Or, as Byron has it in Manfred, Grief should he the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge. iLschylus has expanded the same thought into a memorable strophe in the Agamemnon: Tis Zeus who forces mortals to he wise, And makes the love of truth to rise From pains soul-searching trial; For edn in slumher on the guilty heart Conscience will drip, and wisdom start In spite of the souls denial. Another proverb from Herodotas declares that Mens ears are less believing than their eyes, d2Ta ~ a7rto-7-o- 7-Epa ~bOaX~t5v. This no one will question, unless he chance to have a ne.wspaper before him. In that case, his eyes need not be ashamed of an occasional scepticism. Herodotus and his countrymen had not seen the newspaper. They were fond of communing with the visible forms of nature, which spoke to them a language various, yet truthful and trust- worthy. Rumor, with her hundred lying tongues, laid siege to their ears. Frequent deception taught them caution. They were like Thomas called Didymus. Until they could see the print of the nails, and thrust a finger into the print of the nails, they were slow to believe. They trusted their eyes rather than their ears. It will be seen, as our search progresses, that many of the Greek proverbs find their exegesis in popular myths, in local customs and amusements, or in favorite authors. One of the 1857.] GREEK PROVERB$. 175 commonest and oldest of the Greek amusements was the game of dice. In this game three cubes were used, and the highest thrown was three sixes. Hence the proverb, II rpcts e~ ~j TpE& s~ KV/30t, Either three sixes or three aces. The habit of repeating such words is an index to that in- domitable, all-risking, neck-or-nothing courage which made itself immortal at Thermopylax Their spirit breaks out in the Latin alternative, Aut Cwsar ant nullus, and in the open- ing of the well-known speech which Webster puts into the lips of the elder Adams, Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. The comic poet, Epicharmus, with a mischievous wittiness, says of the marriage institution, It is like throwing three C ~-~/ sixes or three aces, T~ cS~ 7~/~CtV OFtQLOV EJT& T~ TflL~C~T) rpcts~ ,613ov9 /3aXcw. Now-a-days it might not be allowed that the stake was quite so desperate, yet we have idioms which give an underhanded currency to the suspicion that Marriage is a lottery, a lottery of the most respectable character, however, and sanctioned by the highest author- ity, inasmnch as Matches are made in heaven. Shake- speare roundly proclaims that Hanging and wiving go by destiny. Jeremy Taylor, too, seems to borrow from Epichar- inns, in saying that Those who enter the state of matrimony cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest next to the last throw for eternity. For every sneering or facetious adage, the Greeks had one of deep ethical import. Over against the shaft aimed at mat- rimony may be placed another aimed at infidelity, O~ Kt/30t Z1LO~ aeL EV7TL7TTQVOL, Gods dice are always loaded. They fall as he wills. Precisely the same thought, under a similar trope, is found in the Proverbs of Solomon: The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Every Greek household that made pretensions to complete- ness in its arrangements was furnished with hand-mills for grinding corn. In large families a number of them were used. Ulysses had twelve; Alcinous, fifty. They were generally worked by female slaves. Pass by a Greek mansion at al- most any hour of the day, and two or more women might be seen grinding at the mill. This frequent sight suggested and 176 GREEK PR0VERB~. [July, put in circulation several proverbs. The empty mill grinds itself, was one of them. It taught that an active mind should be kept supplied with wholesome food for reflection. It taught that one of the woes of thwarted ambition is to wear itself out in self-tortu ~e. Alexander, fretted to tears that there was no second world for him to conquer, Napoleons spirit, chafed to frenzy by confinement at St. Helena, were empty mills grinding themselves. There was another Attic proverb, owing its origin to the same simple machine, which embraced a volume of ethics in its terrible significance: OectW aXEOVOt p~vXot, aXEOVO& ~c XE7TTU, The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind to powder. Every violation of the higher law written on mens hearts is sure to bring suffer- ing. Every great wrong will be one day avenged, in spite of cloud-compelling lawyers, bribed judges, and disagreeing ju- ries. Crimes, as well as curses, are like chickens, and will come home to roost. If one generation escape the penalty due to its sins, they will be visited upon its successor, so as to verify the Jewish proverb, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge. In their zeal to give some faint conception of the power lodged in wealth, the Anglo-Saxons have commissioned a proverb to announce that Money makes the mare ~ The Greeks had their Roland for this Oliver, and were equally ingenious in their way of confessing faith in the potency of riches. Taking it for granted that the tongue is the most obstinate and untamable of all moving things, they engaged a proverb to proclaim that money can stop the tongue. The Anglo-Saxon must surrender to the Greek. Is it not a harder achievement to arrest the unruly member, than to accelerate the spavined Rosinante? One of the idioms used by the Attics to represent their sense of the might of money, was derived from the image of an ox stamped on their early coinage, The golden ox crushes the tongue. The laws delay was a marketable commodity. The states attor- ney softened his invective, or forgot it entirely, when the wealthy criminal had distributed his persuasives to silence. This item of the popular faith sometimes appeared with a change of raiment, A gold en quinsy stifles the orator. 177 1857.] GREEK PROVERBS. An attack of this golden quinsy was said to have impeded the utterance of Demosthenes, when he was suspected of hav- ing taken a bribe from Harpalus. If a Greek were waylaid by a brigand, and told to surrender his purse or his life, he might reply, with an Attic proverb, My purse is my life, XpYj~aTa #vxl /3p~rotxw& ; or, more briefly, Xp~tcLT ctvijp, The purse makes the man. Were we to blame the Greeks for permitting such merce- nary maxims to have currency in their midst, for not nailing them to the counter as bogus coin, half a dozen modern proverbs of like purport would be shaking their fingers at us, and saying, First cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother~ s eye. So long as we allow it to be said that Gold enters every gate but heavens, some charity is due to the Greeks. Experience taught the Greeks that this world is a scene of violent changes and contrasts; that life and death walk side by side; that love and jealousy nestle in the same bosom; that to-days friendship may be to-morrows hatred. Wishing to put into an emphatic phrase the truth that in the physical, social, and moral world extremes meet, they did it with saying, Kc~ats~ w~t7XOu ~jSvovpo~ & 4da x~Vt9~ Dry dust is muds own brother. What could be more expressive, unless it were its counterpart, suggested to the Romans by their large experi- ence with the juices of the vineyard, The sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar? These illustrations, which might have been largely in- creased, will help one to decide how far the Vicar of Itchen- stoke was right in saying that, in many and most important respects, the Greek proverbs are inferior to those of many nations of the modern world. Perhaps they will also help to decide how much of conformity and acquiescence is due to the dictum of Chesterfield already quoted. The true gen- tleman, so far from spurning the homely dialect of the many, will seek to identify his sympathies with theirs, by gathering up whatever is quaintly expressive in their proverbial wisdom, and storing it away among the treasures of his intellect. 178 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, ART. VJ. The Trees of America. By R. U. PIPER, M. D. Boston. 18~37. Nos. 1, 2. THERE are some topics which claim periodical notice in the pages of an American quarterly. Not the least important of these is the subject of American Forest-Trees. In dealing with this subject, our IReview has already proved itself faith- ful, and within a quarter of a century has furnished at ]east four elaborate essays on this fertile theme. The time is fully accomplished for a return to it. Nine interstitial years have brought it to our perihelion, and the attraction to it is made stronger by the welcome intrusion of the new work which Dr. Piper announces. We are glad of the occasion to say a few words which ought, in due course, to be said at this time. The subject, indeed, does not lack discussion. Agricultural newspapers and reports, the circulars of nursery owners, and frequent articles in the daily journals, all keep the matter suf- ficiently before the public; yet the few solid treatises that have been published have already become scarce. The trans- lation of Michauxs great work, indifferent and imperfect as it was, has quite disappeared. Brown es Sylva Americana has passed out of circulation; and his larger work, on the Trees of America, which never reached, we believe, its second volume, is hardly known by name to learned librarians. Nuttalls valuable supplement to Michaux, a most curious monument of persevering zeal and enterprise, is now exceed- ingly rare. Even the comparatively recent Report of Mr. Emerson on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts is not to be had at the bookstores. The text-books of medical and scientific botany deal only incidentally with the subject. A new general work on the Trees of America, therefore, comes to us fresh, and as a sort of surprise. The plan of Dr. Pipers publication, as stated in his prospectus, if less exact than that of previous works, is more comprehensive and at- tractive. His book is intended to be popular and entertain- ing, rather than scientific, a book of engravings, with a running practical commentary. The text will be a frame for the pictures, and a pleasant filling up of the intervening

178 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, ART. VJ. The Trees of America. By R. U. PIPER, M. D. Boston. 18~37. Nos. 1, 2. THERE are some topics which claim periodical notice in the pages of an American quarterly. Not the least important of these is the subject of American Forest-Trees. In dealing with this subject, our IReview has already proved itself faith- ful, and within a quarter of a century has furnished at ]east four elaborate essays on this fertile theme. The time is fully accomplished for a return to it. Nine interstitial years have brought it to our perihelion, and the attraction to it is made stronger by the welcome intrusion of the new work which Dr. Piper announces. We are glad of the occasion to say a few words which ought, in due course, to be said at this time. The subject, indeed, does not lack discussion. Agricultural newspapers and reports, the circulars of nursery owners, and frequent articles in the daily journals, all keep the matter suf- ficiently before the public; yet the few solid treatises that have been published have already become scarce. The trans- lation of Michauxs great work, indifferent and imperfect as it was, has quite disappeared. Brown es Sylva Americana has passed out of circulation; and his larger work, on the Trees of America, which never reached, we believe, its second volume, is hardly known by name to learned librarians. Nuttalls valuable supplement to Michaux, a most curious monument of persevering zeal and enterprise, is now exceed- ingly rare. Even the comparatively recent Report of Mr. Emerson on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts is not to be had at the bookstores. The text-books of medical and scientific botany deal only incidentally with the subject. A new general work on the Trees of America, therefore, comes to us fresh, and as a sort of surprise. The plan of Dr. Pipers publication, as stated in his prospectus, if less exact than that of previous works, is more comprehensive and at- tractive. His book is intended to be popular and entertain- ing, rather than scientific, a book of engravings, with a running practical commentary. The text will be a frame for the pictures, and a pleasant filling up of the intervening 3837.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 179 spaces, partly description, partly suggestion, partly histori- cal and critical observation; not by any means, however, for this reason inferior in value to the pictures. Dr. Piper~ s pic- torial illustrations (lifer from those of other writers of his class in being copies of individual trees, rather than of genera or species. He gives, not merely the likeness of an oak, but of the Assabet Oak and the Charter Oak; not merely the likeness of an elm, but of the Avery Elm in Stratham, and the Elm on Boston Common; likenesses not merely of such trees as grow in America, but of famous trees which actually exist in America, and may so be taken as types of their species. These are the several heads of a discourse on the general subject of trees, which is addressed alike to the farmer, the landscape-gardener, and the gentleman owner, to boards of health, railway corporations, and all friends of improvement. Of Dr. Pipers qualifications for the bold and large task which he has undertaken, we can only say that he has the eye of an artist, the hand of a draughtsman, and the spirit of an enthusiast. His knowledge of trees and their habits is ample, his experience in their management has been equally long and successful, and his love for them amounts to a passion. The labor of preparing such a work is far too slow for his swift desire, yet he will do his task no faster than he can do it well. At the date of our writing, two numbers of the work have been issued, which, as specimen numbers, give a most favora- ble prophecy of what is to come. Each number contains four engravings and sixteen pages of letter-press, in quarto form, electrotyped on paper as thick as parchment, with wide spaces and ample margin. A more beautiful and fitting dress has been given to no American book. The nicer mechanical labor has been performed by the author, who can etch as skil- fully as he sketches, and will intrust his more delicate work to no unpractised hand. The book is not sufficiently advanced to enable us to judge fairly of its literary merits. We can say with safety, nevertheless, that it will be always earnest, always clear, and never dry. The fault which we have most to fear is a redundancy of quotation, by which Dr. Pipers modesty seeks needlessly to justify and fortify his own opin 180 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, ions. His own authority is competent, without such help. The work is to be published in quarterly parts, at a subscrip- tion price of two dollars a year. We are glad to learn that already a considerable number of subscribers have recorded their names; and we are permitted to add that, by the liber- ality of a distinguished cultivator and gentleman, Mr. Frederic Tudor, the continuance of the enterprise is guaranteed. Itis a labor of love on the part of the author, who asks no profit for himself; but we venture to bespeak for him the assistance of all whose tastes and whose means allow them to become subscribers. We commend especially to close inspection the admirable drawing of the ash forest in Maine, which makes the frontispiece to the second number, in which im- mense difficulties of detail and of light and shade are so beautifully mastered, and which, to our eyes, no photograph could surpass. We have seen other delineations of Dr. Piper, both in surgical anatomy and in natural scenery, which were remarkable, but nothing quite equal to this view. The draw- ing of the great Winchester Pine-tree is also wonderfully per- fect. In the progress of the work, it is intended to include all those trees in this country which have, by their size, their age, their peculiarities, or their associations, any especial claim to notice. In most instances, the engravings will be from sketches taken directly from the tree by Dr. Piper. Occasionally, as in the case of the giant Redwood-tree in California, the sketch must be copied from the work of another hand. The number of parts to which the work will extend, will depend on the health of the author. If his design is carried out, not less than twenty will appear. This Review,* we think, was one of the first to utter a warning against the wanton waste of our beautiful forests. Already, in a single generation, the good fruits of the reac- tionary movement are visible, and some of the cleared tracts are clothed anew with woods which the hand of man has planted. The desolation which threatened whole sections of our country has been partially arrested; the Ohio farmer has restored what his father destroyed; and in the new lands of the West there are estates which resemble the parks and October, 1S32. 1857.] TREES AND ThEIR USES. 181 groves of England. In this Eastern region, where the waste was less notable, the decrease has, unfortunately, gone on more rapidly. To the consumption of timber in house-build- ing and ship-building have been added the insatiable demands of railroads, the voracity of the iron horse, whose throat is for the forests an open sepulchre. Thirty years ago, the State of Maine was described as a dense wilderness. Now, it is possible to ride for miles in its interior without the protection of any grateful shade. The coast line of Massachusetts is not now marked, as the Pilgrims beheld it, by the sombre edging of uniform woods; but the rim of the horizon is divided by numerous clefts and vistas, through which the voyager sees the setting sun. The hills around Salem are almost as bare as the hills around Jerusalem; and there is more than one interval, blank as the Roman Campagna, where the names of the early settlers were once perpetuated in the forests which they owned. Browns Woods is most likely nothing but a pasture, diversified by a few straggling apple-trees; and half a dozen oaks perpetuate the memory of Clarks Grove. Thousands of acres of woodland have been burned over within the last dozen years, kindled by sparks from the loco- motive; and the spectacle which was presented in 1830 on the banks of the Miami, is repeated in 1850 along the Merri- mac. Accident and avarice are doing for the old lands of the East what the settlers necessities seemed to compel in the new lands of the West. It is curious, too, to note the changes in taste and senti- ment, as marked in the disappearance of various sorts of trees. Gone are those stately lines of Lombardy poplars which once stiffly fringed our roadways, or stood sentinels before our aris- tocratic mansions; and the satirist of bachelors must seek some other type for his caustic comparison. Gone are those Balms of Gilead which softened the light by their polished leaves, and loaded the air with their spicy perfume, above many a New England farm-house. The gudewife no longer points to her shoemake (as the sumach-tree was formerly called), with its crimson clusters, the pride of her trim front garden. The great sycamores have fallen before the eco- nomical wrath of a people who cannot pardon such obsti nate VOL. LXXXV. NO. 176. 16 182 TREES AND ThEIR USES. [July, reluctance to throw off an unexplained disease. Sentimental willows now weep mostly in ancient prints, where forlorn youths with pink faces bend above leaning gravestones: they are rejected from parks and door-yards. It is as difficult now to get in Boston a handful of locust-blossoms as a handful of orange-blossoms, and the flowers of the lilac are as rare in our cities as flowers of the pomegranate. Where in New Eng- land are the blushing peach-orchards which once encircled beds of peas and parsley? Where are the wild vines, once trained to festoon the walls and to garland the oak? The fashion has changed. New claimants have supplanted the former favorites; and rustic Tityrus now, instead of prac- tising his woodland lay under a spreading beech-tree, reads the last French novel under the shade of his veranda, and in the odor of an ailanthus. If anything could provoke a saint to wrath, it is the fre- quent destruction of fine trees on the most frivolous pretences. Here a majestic elm is sacrificed because the dripping from its boughs moistens cheap shingles on some adjoining house, and compels a more speedy repair. There a barn is to be removed, and all the trees which stand in the line of its direct course must give way. A couple of rowdies, returning on a dark night from a winter revel, are upset against an oak which projects into the road a foot or two; straightway the sapient selectmen of the town debate the case, and solemnly order that the tree which has stood there since the memory of man shall be brought low, rather than a dollar shall be spent to widen the road at that point. Here, again, unfortunately, a new street must be laid out in a straight line, to satisfy the precise genius of modern engineering; and the great tree that stops the way must disappear, root and branch, rather than a hairs-breadth be changed in the beautiful lithograph of at- tractive house-lots. The first care of a lucky broker, who has bought at a bargain some fine old estate, is to thin out and trim the trees and shrubbery on the model of his own ledger, saving only the specimens which he can coax into regular rows, or inspect with half-shut eye. We know more than one instance where a quarrel between neighbors has led to the destruction of noble trees, simply because one thought 18~57.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 183 that he might annoy the other by depriving him of his shade. And there are not a few occasions to admire that thrift which cuts doxvn an orchard because birds get all the cherries, or boys and Irishmen steal all the apples. Provocation of this sort, which constantly vexes one in a large country town, suggests the question, whether he who removes a public ornament and good, even from his own land, is not as much a subject for the law as he who creates a pub- lic nuisance. The destruction of half a dozen fine shade- trees may be as great an injury to a neighborhood as the erection of an oil-boiler or a fish-house. Yet the one has an impunity not alloxved to the other. Many statutes are passed with much less moral justification than a statute to prevent the arbitrary cutting down of valuable trees. When estates are sold, there ought to be in the deeds a restraining clause, an entail for the trees which border the road, if not for those which surround the house. The tastes of the city exchange ought not to have unchecked license in the groves of the sub- urbs. At any rate, a legislative resolution on this subject would be quite as timely and sensible as most of the resolu- tions which are passed by legislative bodies. But there is also reason for fault-finding in the style and taste which prevail in planting trees, as well as in the vandal- ism which destroys them. Almost every one who owns a house must garnish it with a larger or a smaller number of trees, and the paint is scarcely dry upon the clapboards before ominous earth-works in the garden prophesy of future shade. Bnt the chances are that all these cavities will be occupied by trees of a single kind, elm, maple, or possibly linden, or that the utmost variety will be of two species. Our amateur planters are as reluctant to mingle sorts of trees as a toper is to mix his liquors. Straight lines, too, are the ruling law of average landscape planting; the passion for curves is excep- tional; the genuine Yankee wants the shortest passage from his door to the roadway, and tolerates no angles in his well- adjusted boundary. In four gardens out of five the rows of trees are perfectly straight, and in the fifth the curves are such as Nature would never have made, and in which the trees will get no healthy growth. Comparatively few, we imagine, in 184 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, setting out trees, order their position with reference to winds, to mutual protection, or to harmony with surrounding objects. And the man who has txvice and thrice seen the elms which he placed unguarded along his northern fence wilt and die, will continue to insert others in their places, marvelling at his strange ill-luck, when he has taken such pains with them. There is something to be blamed, then, in the constructive method, as well as in the destructive method, of dealing with trees. We chronicle gratefully the annual multiplication of tree-planting societies, whose works are made manifest along our city streets, and the bolder advocacy, year by year, of alloxving our pasture and ploughed land to return to its origi- nal forest state. But the tree reform is yet in its earlier stage, and is hindered by very numerous and obstinate prejudices. It is still hard to convince a farmer that he would do well to let his corn-field become a wood, or to bring the shade of an elm above his young orchards, or to surround his house with dampness and darkness in the form of a grove. To the force of many reasons for planting trees he is quite insensible. He does not, for instance, at all understand why trees should be planted for the sake of their associations, or how he can do as much for his children by rearing oaks on his land as by hoarding his money in the bank. He may melt a little at his daughters touching performance of Mr. Mor- riss elegiac entreaty to the woodman; but it is a passing weakness, and will not affect his general purpose to plant, if he plants at all, for profit and not for posterity. Your Yankee would hand down his name in connection with some enter- prise or invention, some patent plough or patent churn or patent apple-parer, not in connection with laurels and oaks, like Daphne and the Druids. Yet there are some who will appreciate even this sentimental reason for planting trees. Any father will recognize it as a beautiful and easy way of commemorating the birth of children in his household. The members of a college class, revisiting the place of their early instruction, will see in the tree which they left there on their parting-day a permanent memorial of their former union. Travel strengthens the force of this reason. When we dis- cover how wide and high and sacred are the memories which 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 185 are kept on earth by means of these signs, when we have visited the churchyard at Stoke, with its rugged yew-trees, where Gray lies buried, or the Buruham beeches, where he used to ramble; when we have looked upon the oak at Pens- hurst, which marks the birth-time of Philip Sidney, or that huge tree at Grafton, where, nearly four centuries ago, Edward Plantagenet first met the Lady Elizabeth Woodville; when we have rested under Miltons mulberry in Christ Church Garden, and remembered Warton under the Avon willows; when we have walked in that square of the silent Certosa, where the spray of the fountain still moistens the great cy- press which Michael Angelo planted, or have lingered by that blasted trunk beneath whose shelter, when its boughs were green, poor Tasso was wont to look down over the Eternal City, and to dream and sigh his life away, when we have found everywhere the most famous sites and events, in the history of war and genius and religion, from the mas- sacre at Clisson to the victory at Marathon, from the spot in Cambridge where Washington met the American army to the spot in Bristol where Augustine held conference with the English bishops, or that most ancient place of meeting on the plains of Mamre, which holds the tradition of Abraham and the angels, scenes of faith and valor and romance, fixed and perpetuated by these lords of the forest,we come to understand better this sentimental reason, which some esteem so lightly. This sort of association, indeed, cannot generally be planned and provided for. The best associations come by chance, and no man can say when he plants a tree that it is destined hereafter to be joined in memory with any great thing. Yet many a man in his old age feels a deeper attach- ment to the home where he has always dwelt, because it is overhung by the boughs of the tree which, as a sapling, he put there in his boyhood. The house has gone to decay, it may be, and he must build a better. But the trees make the place so dear, that he cannot let it pass from his possession, and his children will keep it because their fathers trees are there. In these days of change and uneasiness, such bonds to ones native soil are most important and effective. Old 16* 186 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, furniture, family portraits, even the buried bones of ancestors, may go with the children in their restless migrations; but the venerable trees cannot be carried off. To part with these often costs the hardest struggle, when, to repair his broken fortunes, one must sell his paternal acres and remove to a new home far away. All feel that it is a sort of sacrilege to destroy a tree which has been consecrated by any noble asso- ciation. Every patriot felt the insult, when the British troops in Boston cut down and burned for fuel the Liberty tree; and all Connecticut lamented as a public calamity the fall of the Charter Oak. The ~sthetic reason for tree-planting is certainly more gen- erally acknowledged than the sentimental reason. The most unsophisticated eye, and the most cultivated, alike recognize the beauty of this kind of ornament. A Western pioneer and an 1tabitu~ of the Bois de Boulogne hold the same opinion in regard to the general grace of great trees, differing only in regard to details. Every farmer in Lancaster, Massachusetts, rejoices in the majestic elms which make the glory of his vil- lage, as much as that refined foreigner who could not resist their fascination, and who fixed his home, as he has found his grave, beneath their spreading branches. A Brookline schoolboy feels the grace of an avenue of lime-trees as truly as an artist who luxuriates in the magnificence of the Mall of Utrecht, or forgets the wife of Napoleon in the enchant- ment of the entrance to her chateau at Meudon. This sense of the beauty of trees is anterior to teaching, and resists quite vigorously the forces which would extirpate it. A Maine lumberman, no doubt, looks with more satisfaction upon his felled log than upon the trunk which he must spare; the crash of its fall is more delightful than the rustling of its leaves in the upper air; yet no man is a better demonstrator of beauty in the outline and the growth of trees than this same lumber- man. John IRuskin could not discourse more eloquently about an Alpine precipice, than this dweller in the forest about the tall pine, which whistles and whispers above his winter home. This sense of the beauty of trees is often, indeed, very crude, and modified by very fantastic notions. We know a man, for instance, \Vho can see no beauty in a tree which 1857.] TREES AND THEIR IJSES. 1S7 is not symmetrical, and xvho is accustomed to cut off from his trees any limb, however large, when an accident has de- stroyed the corresponding limb. In this way he has gradually trimmed a spreading horsechestnut, wounded by the missiles of boys, till it now resembles an Egyptian palm, only a long stem xvith a feathery tuft at the top. We know another man who abhors trees with pinnate leaves, and so rejects from his estate every hind of locust and evergreen. We have already alluded to that perverted fancy which sees in the ragged pop- lars only types of extreme ugliness. Not a few are amazed that any man of taste can admire the white birch, that mean straggler along the roadside. One whose idea of beauty is squareness and uprightness, will be offended by any tree which leans out of its perpendicular. The Connecticut ped- 1cr was true to the characteristic neatness of his native State \vhen he wondered, looking upon the live-oaks of Georgia, garnished with their long pendants of gray moss, why the people did ut scrape their trees. Parasites and fungous growths are often enough to destroy all the beauty of trees to the eye of a gardener; a hornets or caterpillars nest changes grace to deformity; and the elm-branches become horrid when they drop by invisible threads the disgusting canker-worms. On the other hand, to some eyes the beauty of trees is improved by artificial appendages. Some white- wash the trunks for the sake of ornament; and the bill-sticker in a New England village finds the monarch of the public square completely noble, only when it bears upon every front the charming announcement of a sheriffs sale, a caucus, and a monster caravan. This consideration of ornament is, fortunately, closely joined to the broader consideration of profit, to which, of course, all will listen. Here art and interest are nearly identical, and taste will prove, in the language of the shrewd Jew planter of Bethlehem, remunerative. It can be demonstrated that the best use for the larger part of the cleared land of New Eng- land would be to plant forests upon it. There is, except in the rich gardens close around the cities, no land so profitable, no land which pays so good an interest on its cost, as wood- land. In some parts of Massachusetts a man who owns a 188 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, hundred acres of pasture is little better than a bankrupt, while he who owns a hundred acres of forest is independently rich. The first must pay taxes on what does not pay for its culture, while the second can cut off enough to meet the annual in- terest, yet have more at the end than at the beginning. We once heard an eccentric genius maintain that his wood-land, about fifty in all, though he had boucrht it and acres ~, , paid for it a good round sum, some thirty years before, had in reality never cost him a cent; for, said he, I have cut off wood enough to pay not only the original outlay, but to meet all the worth of the money at compound interest, and to cover all charges, and now I have more wood than I found there at the beginning. It was a rational logic enough. We are confident, that, at the present prices of timber and fuel, the profits of wood-land to our New England farmers are at least three times as great as the profits of the land which they cultivate with so much labor. The experiment of planting locusts on Long Island has proved that lands, before considered valueless, may become the most precious possession of their owners. Thousands of acres now lying waste might, with a very small outlay, be made to yield very great returns. The length of time that must pass before the profit of these artificial forests can be tested, undoubtedly deters many from planting them. Very few men like to make an investment of which the returns begin to come only after twenty or thirty years. But every man knows that whatever raises the value of his land is as sure profit as that Thich actually puts cash into his pocket. There seems to be less promise in an acre of young locusts than in an acre of thriv- ing turnips; but in twenty years the value of all the annual turnips will not begin to reach the value of the trees. The longer the planter is willing to wait, the greater will be his ratio of gain. The early age at which trees are felled pre- cludes a fair test of the superior profit of this kind of planting over corn-planting. Patience is a cardinal virtue, when we are dealing with forests. There should be on every farm of reasonable size an annual planting, as well as annual cutting, of trees. Most farmers consider it a duty to spend a portion of the year in this latter 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 189 exercise, and if they do not begin quite so early as Hesiod advises, Ti4u~ a& 7KTOTaTy 7rEXETaL T/~u7OELo-a ot~iijpp ~YXij, qJVXXa 0 ~ XE~, 7TT0pOOLO TE X?7yEL T~os~ i~ip l~XoTo!LEiv IIEbLV?)IIEVO~ GpLa Epya, at least with the first days of winter they shoulder their axes, and make the woods ring with their brisk strokes. The ambition of a good wood-chopper is equal to that of a good rifle-shooter, and he who can cut and pile his eight cords between daylight and dark has a fame like the marksman who can split his ball at a hundred yards. Without the stim- ulus of an Agricultural Societys prize, it ought to be consid- ered a point of honor to plant at least as many trees as are cut down, to keep the number at least full. As your shrewd fisherman takes care to put a second net across the river before the first is drawn out, so that no fish shall escape, so your shrewd farmer, while he draws his piles from one side of his wood off to the brick-yard, ought to know that a new forest is growing up on the other side, to be ready for him when he penetrates so far. We shall not undertake to say what kinds of wood will yield the speediest and the largest profit, whether the oak, the pine, the cedar, or the locust. Any of these will richly repay the labor and the cost required for their growing. According to the quality of the soil will be the fitness of the trce. The profit of tree-planting, however, cannot be measured by direct pecuniary returns. It affects economy in many ways, aside from the mere growth of the wood. The willow, for instance, a tree of comparatively little commercial value, is of inestima- ble worth in preserving the land along the banks of streams from the encroachment of the current. Few persons, who have not watched the changes of the banks at the bends of rivers, can have an idea of the damage which is done yearly to our land from this single cause. The land-slides which seem so curious along the Nile, at Manfaloot and Osloot, may be observed on a smaller scale on the Connecticut and the Charles. A double row of osiers is almost a sure protec- tion against this damage. Colonel Colt has planted, it is said, no less than fourteen acres of these trees along the banks 190 TREES AND THEIR USES. LAY, of the Connecticut, and has proved himself in that labor a benefactor alike to the farmers and the basket-makers. The willow in such a situation has a rapid growth, and iii a few years a tame and dull stream may be made romantic by the shade which these hedges throw. We know of one river, at least, in New England, which flows through a flat and unin- terestin g country, yet preserves the fame of beauty, mainly from the foliage along its margin. Most of our annual crops impoverish the soil. After two or three years of harvest, the grain-field must be left fallow for a season, or be turned to other uses. But trees constantly improve the soil, giving to it more than they draw from it. And they improve not only the soil on which they stand, but the soil all around them. We need not insist upon the annual deposit of decaying leaves or broken boughs, which rot upon the ground, and so infuse into it the elements of new life, but may rather dwell upon one or two of the incidental results which are less considered,the connection of trees with the proper distribution of snow, and their influence in prevent- ing too rapid evaporation. These topics are of the highest importance. Snow is proverbially called the poor mans manure. But to justify this proverb, it must be properly laid and distrib- uted. The Tuscan conceit, la neve, per otto di, ~ madre alla terra, da mdi in la ~ matrigna, hardly fits the latitude of New England, and, to be a good mother here, the snow must lend more than a single week of nursing. Two things are necessary to make of the snow an effectual protection to the soil, that it fall as evenly, and stay as long, as possible. Now both of these requisites are met by the help of trees as they can be met in no other way. By breaking the force of the wind, they prevent not only the drifting of the snow, but its melting also, a fact not so generally remembered. We have seen this remarkably exemplified in the severe storms of the last two winters. Fields that were exposed to the \vind were left nearly bare, all the snow being piled up on their farther side against the wall of the roadway in deep drifts, while fields only a few rods off, sheltered from the wind by a wood, were covered by a uniform depth of a foot or more. Yet 187 I TREES AND THEIR USES. 191 the deep drifts disappeared earlier than the level snow, though the latter was quite as much exposed to the sun. It is not necessary to go into the woods in winter to find the number of inches of snow which have fallen; that can be ascertained as well by gauging the fields which these woods have sheltered. Nor is it necessary, in order to break the force of the wind, that the trees should be in a forest, or even should be ever- greens. Leafless trunks and branches will check the blast as surely as the dark, thick boughs of the pine. Two or three rows of trees, which hardly intercept light at all, will work marvels in intercepting wind. Any one may observe this in his garden, by noticing the effect which even a row of currant- bushes has in keeping quiet the leaves on the ground under their lee. This consideration emphatically appeals to the surveyors of roads and the managers of railways. The immense sums which have been spent in the past winters for opening the avenues of travel might in great part have been saved, if these avenues had been furnished with the easy pro- tection of a couple of rows of trees on either side. It is not in city streets that such a protection is most needed, but in those open and exposed highways which are most neglected. Our tree-planting societies ought not to limit their efforts to the decoration of brick pavements, or the furnishing of shade to traffickers and promenaders. They ought rather to care for those avenues beyond the village, which give growth to the village according to their convenience, as well as beauty according to their ornament. Trees are good and useful within a city; but they are far more useful by the highways which lead to the city. Munich could spare its trees from the streets, content with galleries and churches, but could not spare those majestic ornaments which for miles relieve and glorify the monotonous landscape around it. On most of our old roads Time has reared, without help from societies or selectmen, a tolerable natural hedge. But that perverse utilitarian fancy which defines a good road as the shortest way from the mill to the market, is annihilating this beneficial work of nature by its sagacious improve- ments. To save ten rods of distance in a mile, the old, un 192 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, dulating road, meandering along from house to house, and charming away by its change of lights and vistas the weari- ness of travel, is converted into a turnpike, hot, dusty, and monotonous as a march across the desert. The bad economy of this change has been severely punished by the round bills for snow-clearing which have recently swelled the taxes of so many of our towns, and the only thing which can make this improvement tolerable is a liberal appropriation for the shelter and protection of these straightened roads. No county ought to be allowed to change the course of its public highways without putting the line of the new way in as good a condition as that of the old. And when commissioners decree that the ancient landmarks shall be removed, and the paths of the Pilgrims shall be transposed, so as to radiate from the effulgent circuit of some smart provincial city, they ought to take thought of the expense and the discomfort, not to speak of the deformity, which their decree involves. One of the first evils which our tree societies are called to remedy is this road-straightening mania. We read constantly of new inventions and new experi- ments xvhich seek to diminish the cost of railway working, changes in valves, boilers, material for fuel, and the like. But we are not aware that any railway in this country has given a first, or even a second, place in its counsels to the planting of trees along its sides as a matter of economy. When such a course has been suggested, it has been supposed that it was only decoration that was thought of. Decoration, though by no means a slight reason for planting trees along railways, is, nevertheless, the least of reasons, if we consider dividends as the foremost need of these useful works. We advise trees along these roads as a remedy, first, for snow-drifts, secondly, for rapid consumption of fuel, and thirdly, for absolute deficiency in fuel. Every locomotive engineer knows where he finds the worst snow-drifts, where the road is most open and exposed; and it is almost never in the woods. A draught of air, no doubt, is an aid to speed by making steam faster; but where the hours of arrival and departure are regulated, no additional speed is required, and anything which breaks the force of the wind saves the fuel. Every engineer knows how much more 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 193 fuel it requires on the open plain than in the woods, to main- tain on a windy day the same rate of speed. The most expensive railways in England are not those which run through wooded regions, but those which cross the unshel- tered plains; and the heavier grades of shady Derbyshire are more than balanced by the bleak winds on Brighton Downs, where despair, according to Johnson, reaches its climax, and a man cannot even hang himself for want of a tree to hold the rope. No territory can be more exposed to the wind than Belgium and Holland. Yet the railways there, some will plead, are cheaply managed. The seeming objection is a proof of our position, since every one who has travelled in the Low Countries knows how all kinds of avenues, railways, roads, and canals, are adorned and protected. The whole region looks like a great nursery, and the most boisterous winds, sweeping over those infinite lines of trees, are cut and hacked into impalpable fragments. We are confident that, in this matter of the rapid consumption of fuel, the saving from protection against winds on our railways would amount at the end of the year to a considerable item. It may seem ludicrous to suggest that the few trees which can be grown along the line of a railway will perceptibly sup- ply the deficiency of fuel. Yet a simple mathematical reck- oning will show that the suggestion is not a jest, and tfiat the mere thinning out of the growth of twenty years, besides meeting the first cost of the trees, will afford not a small per- centage of additional fuel; making a provision, moreover, for accidents and emergencies. More than once during the last winter, locomotives were stopped all night in the snow, where a couple of trees within easy reach would have promptly extri- cated them. We hold it to be as good policy to have provis- ion for an emergency of this kind, as to establish a special railway telegraph, the expense of which is far greater, yet the economy of which has been decisively tested. Returning from this digression about railways, we have next to observe that trees perform their chief economical ser- vice by preventing too rapid evaporation. It is a common error, that the suns rays are the first source of evaporation; and many persons ignorantly imagine that, because a locality voL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 17 194 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, is sunny, it is sure to be dry. Now the wind has vastly more to do with drying and evaporation than the sun, as might be shown by an endless variety of facts and illustrations. In the formation of ice on ponds, for instance, as we learn from unquestionable authority, on a windy night, however cold, nothing is actually gained, since the ice wastes by evapora- tion from the surface as fast as it forms beneath. Every housewife knows that wet linen dries more rapidly when fly- ing in the cold wind, than when hanging quietly in the warm sun. The driving blast which accompanies those sudden showers that vex and drench travellers in mountain regions, brings an almost instant remedy when the shower has passed. Air at rest will take up only a limited quantity of moisture, and is speedily saturated. But air in motion is never satis- fied, and is constantly abstracting moisture from the soil. It is not the character of the soil, but the constant and unob- structed motion of the air, which reduces open land to bar- renness. Almost anywhere on the desert between Cairo and Gaza, the sterile waste might be turned to greenness simply by being enclosed. It is not wholly true that the palm-trees are in the oases, simply because the springs of water are there. The springs are there because the palm-trees are there beside them. Cut away the palm-trees, and the springs will soon become dry. It is matter of surprise to every one who journeys in Syria or Greece, that the sacred and classic streams should be of such mean dimensions, that Kishon, that ancient river, should be crossed at a leap, and Ilyssus be spanned by a yardstick. The cause is explained when one considers the hills of these lands, how void they are now of their ancient honors. Why should not Kidron be dry, when the groves have disappeared from the high places of Benjamin? Abana and Pharphar still keep their bounteous flow, for there are forests to stay and hold the snows of Her- mon and Libanus; but Cephissus is a brook, since the heights of Phyle are naked. These ancientlands have lost their streams, because they have lost their groves and gardens. And the like cause will everywhere produce the like effect. In an open country, the absolute quantity of water which the rivers discharge is not only less than in a wooded country, but the 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 195 flow is incomparably more irregular and unequal. This week the stream may be a foaming torrent, forbidding all passage; next week it will be only a sluggish pooi, which scarcely wets your horses fetlocks. Since our Western lands have been cleared, the alternations in the stage of water in the rivers have been much more marked and violent. The fact has been vexatiously brought home to our practi- cal men by the constant hinderance of the mill-streams from freshets and droughts. Many water-privileges which, half a century ago, were valuable and steady, have now become nearly worthless. The dam which was conveniently put up to saw an adjoining forest into profitable plank, now that its excellent work is done, will drive the saw in the summer no longer. The good riparian mill-owners of one of the ponds in the vicinity of Boston remarked with amazement, some ten years ago, that the supply of water seemed to be failing them, and that the feeding stream had utterly dried up, a thing never known by the oldest inhabitant. Within a few years the stream has regained its volume, and now flows full, even in the heats of summer. The secret of these changes was, that the water first disappeared on account of the cut- ting away of the forests about its source, a few miles distant, and returned when the young wood had grown there. Not a few of our larger factories have been compelled to introduce steam-power to supply a deficiency in the volume of water which a few years ago was not troublesome. Indeed, the word inexhaustible can now hardly be used of any water- privilege in New England. We do not believe, though some high authorities maintain this view, that the cutting away of forests diminishes the quantity of rain or snow, but we only contend that it deprives the moisture of its beneficent effect upon the earth, by causing it to be too rapidly abstracted, and producing the pernicious alternations of freshet and drought, which are as fatal to the health of the soil as to the health of the men who oxvn the soil. The last sentence suggests to us a subject of great impor- tance, which we shall not pretend to discuss, but only to open, namely, the sanitary influence of trees and forests. There is a prevalent notion, that too many trees around a house make 196 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, it unhealthy, that pestilence lurks where the forest is densest, and that it is hazardous to dwell in the neighborhood of a swamp. Facts, however, do not justify this prejudice. Med- ical statistics give a verdict in favor of wood-land as against cleared land. The wood-choppers of Maine are far more free from disease than the farmers of Illinois, and scarcely know, in all their exposure, what it is to be cramped by rheumatism or parched by fever. Dismal Swamp is as healthy as Sulli- vans Island, and the malaria which hangs along all the Southern seaboard finds no place in that dreadful thicket. Pestilence does not choose those sections of country or those quarters of cities which are greenest, but those which are most bare and open. Dampness is not the source of malaria, but decomposition caused by too rapid drying, whether of vegetable matter or of animal infusoria. Ditches and stag- nant pools are, to be sure, not very desirable purifiers of the surrounding air, and generate more serious plagues than their legions of frogs. But a ditch which alternates from wet to dry, or a pool that is weekly emptied and replenished, as wind and shower follow each other, gives forth a much more deadly poison than any ground which is steadily and uniformly sat- urated with water. Over these waters to-day the poison hangs and lingers, and gives itself to load the breeze to-morrow. In woods, on the contrary, while the decomposition of vege- table and animal matter goes on far more slowly, the poison which is evolved is taken up by the trees themselves, to which it is food and nourishment. Mr. Timothy Flint, in his account of the Mississippi Val-~ icy, mentions the fact, that the wood-cutters on the banks of the streams where the trees had been cut away were con- stantly attacked by malarious fevers, while such diseases among workmen in the forest were comparatively rare, al- though the ground on which they worked was quite as moist. Every tree which they left to decay on the ground helped to create the poison, while every tree left standing helped to absorb it. Many cases might be cited where the cutting dowii of woods has had a most unfavorable effect upon the health of the surrounding region. The Roman Campagna is only a celebrated instance of what is a very common experi 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 197 ence. Every schoolboy is taught how plants purify the at- mosphere by removing its excess of carL on, and supplying its defect and waste of oxygen; though this teaching is usually coupled with the cautious proviso, that plants absorb oxygen by night and are therefore unhealthy companions of the chamber. But we have tested it abundantly in travelling, that, when one is properly protected from mosquitos, the night air is most pleasant in the immediate vicinity of woods, more easy to breathe and more softly soporific than even the salt atmosphere of the famed watering-places. A nights sleep is quite as refreshing in the inn at Keswick as in the inn at Brighton, in a North Conway cottage as in a Newport hotel. There are several reasons why forests affect favorably the health of a locality or neighborhood. Two of these we have already mentioned, that they check the formation of poison- ous miasma, and that they absorb it when it is formed, and so prevent its pernicious influence. But their effect upon climate is even more noticeable and unquestionable. They equalize the heat of the atmosphere, and so prevent those extremes which have come in these latter years to be the bane of New England. There can be little doubt that the cutting away of such large tracts of forest in Canada and Maine has had a great share in causing the intense cold of our recent winters, if not in increasing the number of burning days in summer, and that the rapid changes which transpose at the caprice of the winds the place of the months and seasons are due largely to this cause. In a warm day, certainly, one feels the heat more in the woods than on the open prairie, when the wind is blowing. But a thermometer will give a lower temperature in the former than in the latter position. A fair way to test the difference is to sit for a while in a boat upon a pond surrounded by woods, and then to go into the woods. The sensation will instantly be one of refreshing coolness. In winter, on the contrary, the thermometer shows a much higher temperature in the woods than in the open field, with a wider variation in proportion as the external cold is greater. Teamsters know this, and even on a still day in January feel a relief from the cold, the moment they reach the protecting woods. 17* 198 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, We are not able to give the results of any large observa- tion of the comparative temperature in wooded and in open countries. Unfortunately, the foresters omit to provide them- selves with the means of measnring heat, and are content with the sensation of comfort and the satisfaction of profit. Experiments enough have been made on a small scale to prove that, if the mean temperature is about the same in cleared land as in forest, the extremes in the latter are much less severe and the variations much less rapid. That the wood of living trees gives off heat directly in winter there can be no doubt, and there can be as little doubt that the atmospheric heat in summer is taken up by branches and foliage. Of course the influence of trees in deflecting and softening the rays of the sun has much to do with this equal- izing process; and the first reason which a child would give why the woods should be more comfortable than the open field, is one which needs not be weakened by any refinements of science. Shade is a hygienic agent not less genuine than light; and Nature approves that song of the comforts of behemoth, chief of the ways of God, who lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, as heartily as she sym- pathizes with the desperate prayer of Ajax. The effect of forests in establishing an electrical equilibrium, and in conducting the electric fluid or force, has also a bear- ing upon their sanitary value. Many persons object to the neighborhood of a grove, for fear of the lightning, and tall trees, when a charged cloud envelops them in its blackness, are terrible to those who else would love them. Yet we main- tam that there is more real security in a house provided with a surrounding of these natural conductors, than in the best fitting of any patent metallic points. A grove of trees does on a grand scale what Orcutts rods do on a very small scale. However this may be, the electric condition of the atmos- phere is more healthy, when there are these efficient means of adjusting it; there is a freer play of the lungs, an easier move- ment in the limbs, and the air is less oppressive on a sultry day. These general views, however, will not apply to all kinds and varieties of trees. There are special influences which 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 199 modify the general verdict of salubrity. Some kinds of trees are certainly as pernicious in their exhalations as others in their substance and qualities. One may be poisoned by odors as surely as by touch and taste. Even the most delicious perfumes become nauseous and sickening when they overload the air, and the ammonia of the shambles is more tolerable often than the aroma of an orange-grove. After riding for an hour through the gardens around Damascus, and breathing that hyper-intoxicating compound of all that is delicious in the scent of leaf and blossom, it is an unspeakable relief to snuff in the bazaars of the city the fragrance of new mo- rocco, steaming kibabs, and Persian tumbac. South American travellers tell of trees whose breath upon the air is deadly after nightfall, and a notion of this sort has banished from some of our city streets a tree which a few years ago was a favorite. The Indian superstition of a tree possessed by the Devil has its illustration in the antipathy of almost every community to some noxious plant or flower. The exhalations of trees are, however, much oftener salu- tary than noxious. There is real refreshment in the scent of the pine ; its rich resinous flavor gives to the lungs a stimulus as real as Dr. Hunters medicated vapors. What there is in the sunflower to purify the air, we believe that science has not yet explained. Yet this curious \vhim of the negroes in the South concerning it is not to be treated with disdain. The ornament of the slaves cabin door is his guardian of health, his good genius to forbid pestilence. An experiment recently tried by Lieutenant Maury seems to confirm this notion. The spot in Washington where the National Observatory stands is very subject to fever and ague. Last year Lieuten- ant Maury planted a bed of sunflowers forty-five feet broad, at a distance of two hundred yards from the buildings; and the result was, that, though in the neighborhood the fever was unusually prevalent, no one in the Observatory was attacked by it, an exemption which had not been recorded before since the Observatory was built. Tllhis experiment does not, indeed, conclusively prove that the sunflower has an especial virtue. Perhaps any other plant of as rapid growth and a vegetation as luxuriant would have done the same good work 200 TREES AND THEIR TJSES. [July, in devouring the malarious poisons given forth by the drying of the soil. Yet we may be sure, when the experiment is known, that the sunflower will be restored to favor, and through its prophylactic virtues perhaps regain its fame as the queen of the garden. We have not space to discuss the agency of trees in sweet- ening and purifying the springs of water which run where their roots penetrate. The miracle of Moses at the bitter fountain of Marah is typical of the course which will restore, not merely the flow to wells which have become dry, but the sweetness to wells which have become hard and brackish. A city supplied with trees and parks, however flat and low its site, will not need expensive aqueducts to furnish it with water. It will be a long time before level Savannah will find it necessary to copy the water-works of Boston, that town of twice triple hills. We have more faith in the sanative effects of Natures decoctions beneath the surface, than in those healing beverages which rende: the name of tea so indefinite. Good water into which the virtue of plants hath passed is a more sovereign remedy for an inward bruise than any weak dilution of leaves and powders. We pass abruptly from this engaging topic, to say a fexv words about birds in connection with trees. Where the for- ests are, there will the birds be found, certainly in this land. Insects everywhere abound, and no desert is so waste and sandy that it does not generate and nourish insect life. But birds congregate where they find shelter, food, and an appro- priate home. When the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell, then the time of the singing of birds is come. We need not insist upon the essential service which small birds render in destroying insects, and so in saving vegetation, or upon their agency in directly enriching the soil. All the harm that they may do in depredations upon fruit is more than bal- anced by their music and by the animation which they im- part to scenery. He is a public benefactor who can entice birds to the habitations of man; and it is good taste, if not good economy, that will plant fruit-trees for this purpose. Let the cherries go, if we can have the songs, and be rid of bugs into the bargain. 1857.] TREES AND THEIR USES. 201 The actual damage which insects do to our orchards and grain-fields, even where birds are incessantly devouring them, is very considerable, as every farmer and every gardener knows to his sorrow. What it would be without this miti- gation, no reckoning can tell. As the shoal which comes back where a single herring has spawned, so is the devouring host of worms which a single winged moth will leave as its progeny. The birds which devour the worms are by no means so useful, as Dr. Piper shows, as those which devour insects on the wing. And it is therefore no objection to swallows that they daintily prefer butterflies to caterpillars, and are more given to the noble chase of a flying prey than to the wearisome delving of slow clodhoppers. We do not urge the practical con sideration of easy and handy shooting, which led once a lazy sporting friend of ours to choose the neighborhood of a wood for his summer resi- dence, so that he might, like a Pacha of the Lebanon, fire from his chamber window without removing his pipe or doffing his slippers, since we hold this whole passion for small-bird shooting in utter abomination, as the basest form which sport can take. But for any passion to which birds must minister, it is needful to provide for them shelter and a home, a place to hide and a place to build. Farmers and lovers alike must have their forest aviary, to exterminate borers or to indite sonnets of harmonious numbers, to rid the air of its plague of flies or to pen the sweet invocation, Come, all ye feathery people of mid air Beneath the chamber where my lady lies, And, in yonr several mosies, whisper love! A question of much interest, which we trust Dr. Piper will treat fully in some of his future numbers, is of the fitness of mingling fruit and forest trees. There are horticulturists who hold that the close-communion doctrine is the only one to be applied to orchards; that elms must be kept separate from plums as much as sinners from saints, and that an oak among apple-trees is as much an intruder as the serpent in Paradise. We are inclined to a different view, believing that the shade which large forest-trees give to an orchard and the moisture which they retain are very important to the healthy growth 202 TREES AND TIIEfR USES. [July, of the fruit-bearing kinds. Some of the finest peach-trees we have ever known were nurtured beneath the shadow of a tall sycamore; and in walking along the edge of woods, we have often stopped to admire the sturdy limbs and luscious crop of some ancient apple-tree. Grapes ripen readily in the thick shade. On the continent of Europe it is quite common to find the orchards belted with rows of forest-trees, set there to break the force of the winds. And it may be safely pre- dicted, that he who has his orchard protected by this means will gather a third more fruit than he who leaves the slender trees exposed. At present, in most of our orchards, the crop consists very largely of windfalls, which become food for swine, but not for men. It may answer for one who can afford it to use his peaches for the creation of pork, but that luxurious diet will prove in the end, we think, rather expen- sive. Connected with this is another question, as to the advan- tage of mingling varieties of trees in forest planting. That picturesque effect is gained by this method there can be no doubt, as any one may see on the grounds of Mr. Tudor at Nahant. The more shades and shapes and contrasts it shows, the greater is the charm of a park, as well as of a garden. The inferior species of tree are dignified when set in the society of the monarchs of the grove, and draw honor from their privilege. The larch and the birch command more deference as courtiers of the majestic pine, than in any equal democracy of their own kind, however populous. The most ungainly trunk will have beauty in the forest, and he who will renew credit to those stunted cedars, which recall only by utter contrast the precious growth of ancient Lebanon, has but to plant them under the broad-leaved sycamore, or by the side of the symmetrical chestnut. Whether economy is well served by this mingling of many varieties, we are not so ready to say. Nature, indeed, mingles trees in the forests. Yet most forests have some prevailing species, which gives them their character. Oaks among the pines seem as alien as Greeks among the Jews, and a silver-leaved aspen, slcnder and tremulous, among the lithe and sinewy ash-trees, reminds us of a pale missionary preaching with fear and to 1857.j TREES AND THEIR USES. 203 a tribe of dusky Indians. The prevalent idea of planters is, we imagine, that the most profitable forests are homogeneous; that the growth is more rapid, and the influence upon the soil more wholesome. The French government, which has done more than any other in the culture of forests, rather favors this theory, and encourages the separation of kinds, where large returns are expected. In the Department of Landes it has chiefly replanted pines; on the slopes of the Pyrenees the box is the favorite variety; while in Brittany and Normandy the linden abounds. In Scotland the larch has been most extensively cultivated, and more than ten thousand acres with more than fourteen million of trees were planted in less than a century by the single family of Athol. This example has been copied in other parts of Europe, and one is often surprised to find in secluded places, like the region of the Tegernsee in Southern Bavaria, beautiful artifi- cial forests of larches. In Greece, the prepossession seems to have been for plane-trees, and on the hills of Laconia a recent traveller, lvii. About, has remarked the wanton and wasteful destruction of these noble monuments of the Turk- ish dominion. The best method of planting, transplanting, pruning, thin- ning, and felling trees, is a subject which warns us back by its extent, and by the confusion of opinions which surrounds its discussion. We see no occasion to change the opinion expressed twenty-five years ago in this Review, that in most, if not in all cases, it is better to raise trees from the seed, elm-trees and ash-trees no less than oak and hickory. We renew the protest, too, against the Procrustean truncation of saplings, which, to make the labor of removal a little easier, decorates for a lustrum our door-yards with a line of tufted poles. We would repeal, also, that tradition of arboricultural common law, which enjoins an annual use of the knife, so much wood to be exscinded every year, so many feet of trunk to be gained; and particularly do we object to that law of selection, which destroys the vigor of the forest in decimat- ing it. It is as bad for a forest to lose its great trees as for a nation to lose its great men, the small trees and the small men alike assume meaner habits when they strive for the vacant places which the great have left. 204 TREES AND THEIR USES. [July, For the successful culture of young trees, the first and almost the only necessity is that they be protected from the winds. The character of the soil is of less importance. The wind distorts and destroys them. They need most in the beginning that protection which they afterward effectually give. A close fence for a few years will secure the most tender fruit-trees on the very edge of an ocean cliff. Next to this, it is of importance that the soil about the roots be kept loose and porous, X\Thich a surface-covering of stones best ac- complishes. Nine tenths of the trees which die after their transplanting, die because these essentials are neglected, not for any fault in the trees or in the soil. We should remark upon this point more at length, were we not advised that it will form a prominent topic in some future number of Dr. Pipers work. All the topics which have been touched in this article will doubtless be fully discussed in the progress of the work we have noticed, and any novel opinions will be vouched for by abundant facts. One great fact is patent, and should of itself be enough to arouse the concern of all who are anxious about the future, that trees in this section of the country are disap- pearing far more rapidly than they are growing. The present annual demand for locomotive fuel alone in the United States is one hundred thousand acres, allowing (which is a large allowance) fifty cords to the acre; and yet this, large as it is, is but one among many items. Along the line of our older railways there are scarcely any woods remaining. If the rate of disappearance goes on for the next half-century as it has for the last, the child is now living who will see the soil of New England everywhere as bare as the soil of Attica, and its noble rivers shrunken in summer, like Acheloiis and Ce- phissus, to shallow brooks. It is fashionable in many quar- ters to treat alarms of this kind as fantastic, and our tourists come back from a journey to Mount Katahdin or the Sague- nay with the comforting conviction, that there is wood enough left in these Northern regions to supply the wants of America for a thousand years. We would rather trust to facts and figures than to these hopeful impressions. Cassandra here is a better guide than those who prophesy smooth things. The 1857.] hAVENS ARCILEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 205 increasing price of fuel is a premonition which we shall do well to heed. The probability of any important decrease in the consumption of wood no man can foresee. If the coal locomotives should prove economical, no doubt much less wood will be used for railway purposes, and iron may to some extent be substituted for wood in the construction of ships and houses. But on this we cannot build any calculation. The safer and more rational course is to meet the danger by the direct means of forest-planting. If half the money that is annually wasted in foolish speculations, or lost in the fluctua- tions of commerce, were turned to this work of renewing our forests, all the loss would be met by an equal gain. The pleadings of alarmists may seem extravagant, but in the end, we are confident, it will be proved that they were not too earnest or too early. ART. VII. Archceology of the United States; or, Sketches, Historical and Bibliographical, of the Progress of Liform t- tion and Opinion respecting Vestiges of Antiquity in the United States. By SAMUEL F. hAVEN. Washington: Published by the Smithsonian Institution. New York: G. P. Putnam & Co. 1856. Large 4to. pp. 168. MR. HAVEN condenses into the narrow compass of his essay the history of more than three centuries of learning and folly, speculation and reasoning, fancy and fact, as to the antiqui- ties of this country. The condensation is severe, the result of years of study in this precise field. It is, of course, impos- sible for us to attempt a further compression, which should exhibit to the reader even what the unhappy newspaper re- porters call a sketch of the discourse of the man, even more unhappy, whose words they distort and caricature. The book is itself an ultimate analysis; it is not to be analyzed further. It is a bibliographical study of the books on Ameri- can antiquities, and a philosophical history of the results of various investigators. The author is almost too careful not VOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 18

1857.] hAVENS ARCILEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 205 increasing price of fuel is a premonition which we shall do well to heed. The probability of any important decrease in the consumption of wood no man can foresee. If the coal locomotives should prove economical, no doubt much less wood will be used for railway purposes, and iron may to some extent be substituted for wood in the construction of ships and houses. But on this we cannot build any calculation. The safer and more rational course is to meet the danger by the direct means of forest-planting. If half the money that is annually wasted in foolish speculations, or lost in the fluctua- tions of commerce, were turned to this work of renewing our forests, all the loss would be met by an equal gain. The pleadings of alarmists may seem extravagant, but in the end, we are confident, it will be proved that they were not too earnest or too early. ART. VII. Archceology of the United States; or, Sketches, Historical and Bibliographical, of the Progress of Liform t- tion and Opinion respecting Vestiges of Antiquity in the United States. By SAMUEL F. hAVEN. Washington: Published by the Smithsonian Institution. New York: G. P. Putnam & Co. 1856. Large 4to. pp. 168. MR. HAVEN condenses into the narrow compass of his essay the history of more than three centuries of learning and folly, speculation and reasoning, fancy and fact, as to the antiqui- ties of this country. The condensation is severe, the result of years of study in this precise field. It is, of course, impos- sible for us to attempt a further compression, which should exhibit to the reader even what the unhappy newspaper re- porters call a sketch of the discourse of the man, even more unhappy, whose words they distort and caricature. The book is itself an ultimate analysis; it is not to be analyzed further. It is a bibliographical study of the books on Ameri- can antiquities, and a philosophical history of the results of various investigators. The author is almost too careful not VOL. Lxxxv. NO. 176. 18 206 HAVENS AHOILEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. [July, to deduce or state any theory of his own. He presents, with great clearness and fairness, the results and opinions of others, from the works of the heavy-moulded German and Dutch geographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, down to the boldest and the most cautious ethnological suggestions of our time. This book shows very clearly how it is that the passion for antiquarian speculation lingers as it does. It exists every- where. Two or three flint arrow-heads on the mantel-piece of a farm-house will attract the attention of every visitor. Again and again they will start the inexhaustible topic, for guess, for wonder, and for assumption, in conversation. The boy saves the old corn-pestle which he has found in the meadow, labels it war-club, and proposes to himself the formation of a museum. Men not given to sentiment will carry home, with care, the bit of rock marked with crystals of graphite which the plough has turned up, will wash it out, and then take it to the minister, to ask if it be not Hebrew, as if the poor man could read it, if it were! And Joseph Smith, the most ingenious of prophets, baits his hook for the gudgeons of the li ud with a distinct statement of the discovery of golden plates, which make a certainty of that dream, so dear to every true American heart, that the original inhabitants of this country once dwelt in the valleys of Canaan. We may say, in passing, that we believe this hypothesis of Joseph Smith to be the only suggestion regarding our predecessors in the settlement of this country which Mr. Haven has thought unworthy of notice in his careful survey. This passion is so natural, that all the fun which can be made from the Oldbucks or the Dryasdusts of the world, all the dashing blunders of bold men, all the stupid blunders of dull men, and all the foolery of ignorant men, cannot in the least check it. rJ7here is no reason that they should. There is ample food for it to thrive upon. Men may write as many stupid aute-Columbian poems as they choose, and as many hopele:s Indian novels. The Danish antiquaries may make us laugh by telling of the laborious travels of their correspond- ents through Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the limits of those labors in the pursuit of knowledge being IJighton on 18~7.] HAVENS AHCH~EOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 207 the one hand and Newport on the other. Yet, for all this, no one gives up his curiosity, and no one ought to. Here is, it seems, the oldest continent of them all. Of this New World the fields grew green while oceans gathered above those young upstarts, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the baby Australia. In this old continent there lived and live a race of men, whose distinction from every other race is so strong, that, whatever be the other differences of ethuolo- gists, this race makes always a subdivision by itself. And this race of men most of them mere children in the arts, the best of them withering like cut grass hefore the hot on- slaught of European races speak twelve hundred different languages, all based upon one general principle of construc- tion, though with amazing radical differences in their vocabu- lary, and showing a complexity of arrangement, and delicate powers of expression, entirely beyond the most elaborate lan- guages of the civilized world. We ought not to be laughed out of curiosity as to such a race, and the history of such a world. Curiosity as to the discovery of the continent is equally legitimate. Our government has just now sent an exploring expedition inside Bebrings Strait, on the Asiatic side. Of- ficers and men made a long visit with the Tschuktschis, and have returned, doubtless, with curious information, if it would but suit the convenience of the government printing-offices to publish it. These Tschuktschi Indians are the only people on the Asiatic side who speak an American language, a language based on the peculiarities of American grammar. They have an Esquimaux dialect. How are we to connect them and Asia with those Esquimaux whom McClure found isolated on Prince Alberts Land, who had never seen whites, nor heard of them, among whose kindred Lieutenant Pim hopes to find some of Franklins crexv? How xvith that xallant little knot of men with whom, high up in the Arctic zone, Dr. Kane entered into such touchingly intimate relations? Did the Tschuktschis come to us, or did they go from us? Or, again, beyond doubt, Snorre and Thorfinn, and their crews, came down our coast somewhere, ate sour grapes in Vinland, and had their teeth set on edge by them. Thorvaldsen, the de 208 HAVENS ARChhEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. [July, scendant of Thorvald, belongs to the growing family of our American sculptors; for his blood runs back to the child who was born of Norse parents somewhere on onr shore. We shall not be laughed out of looking for traces of these people, thongh the stone tower of the Danish antiquaries be doubtless a wind-mill of Governor Arnolds, the skeleton in armor as surely an Indian in the guise of two hundred and fifty years ago, and the characters on Dighton Rock but one among a thousand Indian inscriptions. Dr. Southey basely deserted us in the last editions of Madoc. In 1815, in a note to that poem which had been published ten years before, he says: That country has now been fully explored, and, wherever Madoc may have settled, it is now certain that no Welsh Indians are to be found upon any branches of the Missouri. By fully explored, he meant that Lewis and Clark had passed up the Missouri and back again. To this day, the country is not fully explored. We will attempt, before we have done with Mr. Haven, to arouse the enthusiasm of some young adventurer in arch~ol- ogy, by bringing together, from his digest, what grounds there are for the hypothesis that the unknown country of Madawk ap Owen Gwynedhis this North America of ours. Such illustrations will give some idea how wide is the range of the research into which Mr. Havens treatise leads us. He takes us to Tartary, to Asia Minor, to Phoenicia, all around Africa, to the Cimbri, the Tschuktschi, the Japanese, and the Hindoos, and introduces us to persons as dissimilar as John Ledyard and the Empress Catharine,General Cass and the Emperor Theodosius, Seneca in the Mcdea and David Cusic, the native historian of Hiawatha at home. In tracing gallantly up the different dews of this study, he shrinks at none of them, and gives us something tangible and intelli- gible as the result of every one. The investigation is first historical, as to the distinct written records which show any connection of the men of the other continent with this. Then it becomes the study of monuments, and the author follows along the various American students of the mounds and other earth-works, and of the relics of the manufacture of the Ameri- can tribes, ancient and recent. The legends of the tribes them- 1857.] HAVENS ARCILEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 209 selves furnish very little ground for philosophical inquiry. True children as the Indians are, they seem, like other chil- dren, to forget there was any yesterday, while, like them too, they act as if there were to be no to-morrow. Such shreds of legend as there are, however, are arranged here in their order. Results more satisfactory are gained from the study of the languages. Mr. Haven thus states Frederic Schlegels great rule: that names of things are transitory, but the system of grammatical construction is permanent, assimilating to itself, and distributing, according to its own laws, whatever new material is acquired, and, unless overwhelmed by the irruption of a new system, sustained by the dominating force of numbers and conquest, maintains its vitality through all changes. He gives the following as the result of the appli- cation of this rule in our arclmeology : As applied to American languages, the results of this rule of ex- egesis have been most remarkable. No theories of derivation from the Old World have stood the test of its alchemy. All traces of the fugitive tribes of Israel, supposed to be found here, are again lost. Neither Phenicians, nor Hindoos, nor Chinese, nor Scandinavians, nor Welsh, have left an impress of their national syntax behind them. But the dialects of the Western Continent, radically united among themselves, and radically distinguished from all others, stand in hoary brotherhood by the side of the most ancient vocal systems of the hu- man race. It deserves notice, says Mr. Gallatin, that Yater could point out but two languages that, on account of the multiplicity of their forms, had a character, if not similar, at least analogous to those of America. These were the Congo and the Basque. The first spoken by a barbarous nation of Africa, the other now universally admitted to be a remarkable relic of a most ancient and primitive language found in the most early ages of the world. p. ~i4. After following down the study of the American languages by different inquirers in our own country through the first two centuries of history, Mr. Haven explains, with the zeal and skill of a connoisseur, the remarkable results attained in our own generation by the labors of Dnponceau, Pickering, and Gallatin. We should follow him into this very attrac- tive survey, but that in our own pages the second writer of this distinguished trio himself called attention to the subject, 18 * 210 HAVENS ARCH~OLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. [July, with his own peculiar precision and power *; and that we have had other occasions to discuss it in several points of view.t The physical attributes of the aboriginal Americans have furnished materials for investigations of a wholly different char- acter. As in. the other lines of research, Mr. Haven confines himself here chiefly, after the very outset of the inquiry, to displaying the views proposed by American students. There are few of these students who will not be surprised to see how wide the range which is taken in, even after this limita- tion has been made. Curiously enough, our old Governor Pownal, in whom an enthusiastic Canadian savant has lately found Junius, in whom his own contemporaries found nothing remarkable a sort of silver-tongued man, who tried to glide between both sides, and so escape the jam, and who did not succeed in that, this accomplished, unsuccess- ful, underrated man turns up among the most judicious of the earlier explorers. We call him underrated, because not only were the cranial characteristics of the aborigines suggested by him as the key to American arch~eological study, but, in physical geography, the philosophy of the Gulf Stream seems to date from him; and though he is not Junius, (as he cer- tainly is not, if anything is certain in that matter,) none the less was he the author of a great deal of Cassandra-like proph- ecy in politics, which the government did not believe, and of sound political advice too wise for them to appreciate. His hint as to the necessity of comparing crania was repeated by Camper and Blumenbach, as essential to the study of the American system. Pownal not only started the suggestion, but, like a bold theorizer, stated what the ultimate verdict would be, namely, that the American people are of the same family from one end of the continent to the other. It was not until 1839, however, that any results of such a collection of crania as he suggested appeared. In that year, Dr. Mor- ton of Philadelphia, whose name is now identified with this branch of study, published his Crania Americana. This work, on its side, substantiated the same conclusion which * N. A. Review, Vol. IX. p. 179. t Ibid., Vol. XXVI. p. 377; Vol. XLV. p. 34. 1857.] HAVEN S ARCH OLOGY OF THE IJNITED STATES. 211 was demonstrated by wholly different processes, at nearly the same time, by IDuponceau and Gallatin, namely, that xvher- ever the American race comes from, or however it is to be classed ethnologically, it is one, from end to end of the conti- nent. Mortons investigations go further than Gallatins,in showing that the extinct tribes of Peruvians and Mexicans belong to the same great subdivision of the human family. Beyond this point of the unity of the American races, it is impossible to claim that the study of the