instances may be cited. The theoretical | before, it happened that a Prussian chemist prediction made by Dr. Lardner, that ships had demonstrated the presence of sugar in steam propelled would never be able to white Silesian beetroot, but the discovery cross the Atlantic, has been often quoted, had been turned to no practical account. and is popularly known. Not so well The French applied themselves to the comknown is the fact that a lecture was once mercial problem, and ultimately with comdelivered at the Royal Institution to prove plete success as the large importation to that electricity could never be used for tel- this country of beetroot-sugar testifies. At egraphic purposes save for very inconsid- first, however, they were unsuccessful; and erable distances, the maximum specified here again we find an instance of the indistance being, I believe, no more than ventors -men of practice-correcting a eighteen miles. doctrinal error. A commission of French savans came to the conclusion that, although sugar did exist in beetroot, it could not be extracted at a commercial profit. The doctrinaires were wrong. Less connected with the revolutionary pressure, but associated with it to some extent, was the manufacture of soda from sea-salt. Some of us are old enough to remember the time when washing-soda was not so common and so cheap as now when pearl-ash was habitually used for washing and other domestic purposes, for which washing-soda is now universal. Well might washing-soda be dearer than it now is, seeing that the whole of this useful substance was got up by a tedious process out of the ashes either of actual sea-weeds, or from the ashes of certain plants that grow on the sea-coast. length a chemist bethought himself that the sea - the ocean - held illimitable quantities of the material of washing-soda, only it chanced to be in the form of common salt. The proposition, then, was to convert salt into washing-soda. A chemical process suitable to the occasion was soon devised; and now almost all the soda that enters into commerce comes from sea-salt either taken from the ocean or from salt-mines. It is curious to reflect on cases in which science has frequently come to the aid of utilitarian man just when wanted-so soon, indeed, as utilitarian man has deliberately sought her aid. Some remarkable examples of this are afforded by the history of the great French Revolution. Much fighting had then to be done, as readers need not be informed; but fighting needs gunpowder, gunpowder needs saltpetre, and up to the period of the revolution almost all the saltpetre of commerce had been imported from India. True, the Italians were aware that saltpetre occasionally forms in caves and tombs; the fact is stated by the Italian writer Tartalea. This does not invalidate the fact that before the French Revolution nearly all the saltpetre of commerce was brought from India. To have recognized small home specimens as a natural product was one thing; to have mastered the conditions of its formation, and generated it at pleasures in quantities large enough to supply the needs of French revolutionary armies, was another. Very soon after the pressure of the need, the thing was done, and for many years every pound of saltpetre entering into French gunpowder was homemade. The importance of this discovery became apparent to other continental nations. Remembering that they might be subject by fortune of war to conditions of exclusion, just as the French had been, they took measures to insure a home supply. The Government of Sweden to this day imposes a saltpetre tax, payable in kind, on every Swedish farmer. A certain specified amount of this sinew of war must be rendered periodically to the collector. The Swedish Government will accept no money equivalent the saltpetre must be paid in kind. Another chemical manufacture to spring out of the revolution under the pressure of the times was that of sugar from beetroot. The French are, and always have been, a sugareating people; but English command of the ocean was so vigilant, that during a period of the revolutionary war no sugar from the colonies could be obtained. Some years At When Mr. Woods, an assay-master in Jamaica, discovered amongst his gold a metal that gave him much trouble, and to which the name of "platinum" is now given, he little knew that it was destined to work a revolution in the whole range of chemical manufactures. Thus indeed it was to be, and in this way: Few chemical manufactures can be efficiently carried on without the aid of oil of vitriol, directly or indirectly; and before the discovery of platinum, every drop of oil of vitriol had to be distilled from vessels of glass. The danger, the labour, the expense of this may easily be imagined. Platinum retorts have made the case easy. Oil of vitriol can now be bought at considerably less than a penny the pound. To specify a tithe of the manufacturing utilities of oil of vitriol would fill a volume. Amongst other applications, we are not to forget its use in agriculture. Most artificial manures involve the use of oil of vitriol in one way or another. When movement that now pervades the whole of the reader is informed that mummy bones English society. Independently of the diare exported from Egypt to be half dissolved rect pleasures and material advantages of in oil of vitriol, and in this condition applied scientific culture, both very great, it may to English land, he may come to realize the possibly be that its indirect consequences as curious connection between a precious metal, a mental discipline may be very applicable the bones of some two-thousand-year-dead- to English minds. Owing to our free instiand-buried Egyptian Pharaoh, and our daily tutions, our free press, and the license acbread. Who knows but that you and I, ere corded by our Government to full political this, have breakfasted or dined on the ele- debate, it may be fairly questioned whether ments that once made up the Egyptian ruler the science of politics, if one may so dignify who ruled in Egypt when Joseph went into it, has not been carried to a point incomthe pit? patible with a purity of mind or tranquillity of thought which human beings might rise to by following other trains of contemplation to whither they tend. It may be that the proper study of mankind is man; but the time at length arrives for one to grieve over human imperfections to long for some purer field of intellect, within the realms of which the soul might expand, and reach, ideally at least, the sacred throne of truth. Science presents such a field. There we absolve ourselves from human passions; there the elements speak to us in their never-changing, never-erring language. Their teachings are the same for all, though their higher mysteries only a favoured few in each generation can understand. of man. What I set myself to do is done; not to give the full rationale of processes indicated, but to foreshadow some examples of the modern application of science to the wants In view of these cases, and others like them, we need no longer wonder that science has taken such fast hold on the minds of men. The pure life and reverent belief of that great philosopher Faraday, who has just passed from us, is in itself a standing proof and disclaimer to all who profess to fear the influence of science on the holy mysteries of man's life present and to come. One addicted to science, be it in ever so humble a way, must fain derive pleasure from contemplating the scientific THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. Он, memories of green and pleasant places, Where happy birds their wood-notes twittered low! Oh, love that lit the dear familiar faces We buried long ago! From barren heights their sweetness we remember And backward gaze with wistful, yearning As hearts regret, mid snowdrifts of December, O'er moorlands bleak we wander weary-hearted, maze Remembering as in dreams the days departed, A COLLECTION of ladies' decorated fans will be made in the South Kensington Museum, and opened during the spring. Gentlemen's fans will doubtless be represented. The objects of this gathering will be to encourage taste and to the articles in question. Glad hours that seemed their rainbow tints to promote the employment of female decorators on borrow From some illumined page of fairy lore; Bright days that never lacked a bright to-morrow, Days that return no more. Fair gardens with their many-blossomed alleys, Sunsets that lighted up the brown-leaved beeches Moonlight that on the river's fern-fringed reaches Athenæum. and growing civilization are curiously illustrated THE duties of a Government tending a new by a trait of Indian administration. The Government has bought 2,000 copies of a novel, and given 100l. to its author, a Government officer; but this novel in vernacular language is a novel for ladies, written for the purpose of promoting the cause of female education, and so the Government thinks it discharges a duty in encouraging "The Bride's Mirror." From The Cornhill Magazine. Ir any one should ask what is the quality physical inquiries, and some suspicion of his growing practical abilities. An American is, of course, a bad imitation of a Briton, but he certainly inhabits a large country, and though we sneer at his amazing statistics, they do convey some unpleasantly significant facts. The dislike or the admiration comes uppermost at different times. We generally regard the chief nations of the earth as our rivals and dislike them accordingly-especially if we fancy that we are passing them in the race. It is pleasant to be able to point to our next-door neighbours as illustrations of the failings from which we are exempt. Our grandfathers used to contemplate the miserable French slaves to an arbitrary monarchy as living illustrations of the evils produced by the want of a British Constitution. If they had been perfectly certain of their own indisputable superiority, their antipathy would have been swallowed up in their conceit. Nobody dislikes a chimpanzee or a negro in Africa. But once admit the possibility that the chimpanzee may claim the right of suffrage, or the negro propose to stand for a presidency, and we shall come to counting over every shortcoming they may exhibit with a feeling strongly approaching to hatred. We should make pointed remarks as to the shape of the chimpanzee's skull, and challenge him very frequently to stand upright on his hind-legs. Imagine, however, that the chimpanzee makes a further step in advance; that he learns to dress and live cleanly like a gentleman, gets into our pulpits and preaches brilliant sermons, rises at the bar, and is permitted to grace his ugly countenance with a judge's wig, and we should begin to see things in a different light. We should begin to remark his singular activity in spite of some external awkwardness; we should admire the strength Some such conflict of sentiments seems of his jaws and recognize the obvious marks often to govern our feeling towards rival of intelligence in his face; and that, not benations. Every true Englishman at the cause we should expect to get anything by bottom of his soul hates a foreigner, or, flattering him, but simply as a part of the if that expression be a trifle too strong, homage spontaneously paid to success. At has a keen perception of the notorious in- least, it is only in this way that I can account feriority of all other races. The feeling, for the curious changes of opinion which we however, fluctuates strangely in intensity. have lately witnessed. What high moral Probably, if the truth were known, our nor-ground we took in condemning Prussian mal state of feeling is one of contempt towards every one who does not speak English and, moreover, the English of England-tempered by uncomfortable doubts as to the perfect security of our position. We don't think a Frenchman our equal, but we rather shrink from comparing Paris to London. We treat a German with affable contempt, but we have a vague awe for his supposed authority on philological or meta tenement. ambition until the battle of Sadowa! How speedily we changed our view of the American contest after the surrender of Richmond! Neither of those events made any difference to the rights of the cause, but they converted people more rapidly than cartloads of tracts. Providence, we all hold, is on the side of the strongest battalions; I know not if that be an orthodox sentiment, but perhaps it may be explained by the singular uniformity with which the strongest battalions always prove to have been on the right side of the question. Providence may, without profanity, be supposed to help those who had so clearly the best of the argument. I believe, indeed, that most people are a little ashamed of the rapidity with which we have occasionally changed front. I cannot here argue the point more difficult than may appear at first sight whether that change has not some substantial grounds, and whether success in such cases as I have noticed, does not indicate some qualities which may properly challenge our esteem. The prosperity of a nation, unlike that of an individual, is a pretty good test of its morality and intelligence. Such arguments, however, whatever may be their weight, do not tell for much on the publie mind. We admire success on its own account; we like to be on the winning side; and as the people who hold a party to be in the right generally prophesy that it will be victorious, they naturally claim the fulfilments of their predictions as demonstrating the truth of their convictions. I am content to remark that there is something rather absurd and undignified in these spasmodic outbursts of congratulation. It may be sensible, but it does not appear to be high-minded, to abuse people as long as they are rather out of luck, and to break forth in jubilant pæans and songs of triumph the moment they have established, not their right, but their power. There is such a thing as the logic of facts; but a man with any depth of conviction does not yield at once to every syllogism of the strong-battalion kind. He yields the less readily, because he knows that it is not always one victory which decides a war. Our Te Deums are sometimes premature as well as undignified, and it is very awkward when, in the course of a few years, we sing them alternately in honour of the different rent of prejudices and predilections which go to make up what we call public opinion. When we inquire into the real value of the general sentiment, when we try to frame it into definite propositions, and to assign its true grounds, we see how singularly worthless it must be in the eyes of a real philosopher. The good old John Bull prejudice, which expressed itself in the poetical maxim, Down with Jews and wooden shoes," was intelligible enough as a mere inarticulate cry of wrath. It meant to say, not that the French were more wicked and stupid than ourselves (and no reasonable man supposed that they were one or the other), but simply that we had been in the habit of fighting them for several centuries with varying success. It was not a judgment founded on evidence, but merely a roundabout way of asserting the geographical fact that France is divided from England by a narrow arın of the sea, and that many disputes have arisen in consequence. Nelson, who had a fine turn for pithy expressions of sentiment, told his midshipmen that the whole duty of man was for them summed up in the two great commandments to do as they were bid, and to hate the French as they did the devil. Philosophically considered, that merely meant to say that, for the time being, the teaching of the Christian religion was superseded by the Admiralty orders, in pursuance of which it was the main business of an English sailor to burn, sink, and destroy every French ship that he happened to meet. As a rule of practice, there were obvious conveniences in this condensed summary of national sentiment. As an expression of a general truth, it is unnecessary to point out the various qualifications necessary to give it even a temporary validity. The old warlike creed has gone partly out of fashion, and though it survives here and there, it need not be seriously discussed. The hatred of two neighbouring nations proves no more as to their merit What, then is at the bottom of this weak- than the antipathy of a dog and cat proves ness? It is, in two words, that, as a rule, as to their respective values. It indicates we haven't got any convictions worthy the a blind instinct, not a reasonable conviction. name; our likes and dislikes, our sym- But there is a more refined method of pathies and antipathies, as applied to for-reaching certain similar conclusions, which eign nations, are, for the most part, mere deserves a rather fuller consideration. fancies, which do not deserve the compliment of serious discussion. Of course, I except the reader and the writer of this article. They have profoundly considered the complex question involved, and can pronounce with some confidence on the merits of the different races of mankind. But then their opinions are widely different from those of the mob, and are mere insignificant drops compared with the huge cur combatants. The expression of simple hostility is converted by skilful writers into a theory, which is not, on the face of it, absurd. Some of our ablest speculative reasoners profess a dislike to foreigners, not because they are intrinsically inferior to ourselves, but because their laws embody certain political or social principles. The French are assailed because they give the ordinary example of over-centralization; the Americans because they show, on a large scale, the effect of unbridled democracy; and similarly each people is regarded as an experiment in which the working of certain ideas is practically illustrated. It would, however, be apparently unreasonable to dislike people merely because they were the victims of circumstances; and, therefore, each victim is credited further with the possession of a certain national character, which makes them specially susceptible to a given set of theories. The French, for example, are, by the innate turn of their minds, unduly attracted by symmetrical system; Englishmen by practical considerations, without a proper regard for theory; and so on. And I do not doubt for a moment that this view is founded on a most important truth. There are such things as natural character and influence of race. If we could analyze the character of an individual, and say precisely what is owing to the circumstances under which he has been placed, and what is owing to the qualities which he has inherited, I fully believe that the hereditary influences would turn out to be by far the most important. The same principle is, in all probability, exemplified on a large scale in nations. There is a profound difference between the character of the Teuton and the Celt, and a difference which would make itself felt if they were placed in precisely similar situations, if only we could say what it was. For it is here that my difficulty begins. I listen with great pleasure to the plausible gentlemen who tell us so confidently what peculiarities in our national character are owing to the Celtic or the Teutonic infusion in our blood, or who even go into finer distinctions, and trace out provincial shades of character with the utmost precision. But I confess that my pleasure is mixed with utter scepticism. It is all very pretty and exceedingly neat; and when you have got the trick of it, nothing can be easier. I would undertake to show, if anybody would listen, that the national peculiarities could be traced in the different fashions, say, of French and English boots, or in the fact that hansom cabs are popular in London, and never take root on the continent. The ingenuity displayed in such speculations is, to my mind, much clearer than their solid value. Some truths are to some real evils; but it is strange that probably struck out by the discussion; but granting even, which I most vehemently doubt, that some very acute observers may make valuable inferences, it is certain that the popular notions are never correct, and often preposterous in the highest degree. If we could analyze human character as we can analyze a drop of water, and say that it was made up of certain qualities in certain definite proportions: if we could say that the formula for an Englishman was two atoms of courage to two of fine intellect, and one of imagination, whilst for a Frenchman we must substitute other known numbers, just as we can tell how many items of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon go to make water or atmospheric air, the problem would be comparatively easy, But no one, not even the profoundest philosopher, has really discovered the chemical composition of human character; and all that most of us can do is to make very rough guesses at the nature of a few obvious peculiarities. We cannot give a scientific account of the matter; but we can draw a rough caricature; we can stick a bowie-knife into the hand of the American, and provide the German with a glass of Bavarian beer, though we are profoundly ignorant of the occult causes which make beer congenial to Germans or bowieknives to Americans. But when we get beyond the mere external oddity, our judgments are at least as full of palpable error as of truth. Take, for example, that oldfashioned notion that Englishmen were specially "practical." Can any human being say exactly what it means, or what is its value if it means anything? Is it practical to have the streets of London worse swept and cleaned and paved than those of any continental capital? Is it practical to have got all our charitable institutions into such a muddle that nobody knows whether they do more good or harm? Is it practical to retain old-fashioned institutions and theories for a longer time than any people in Europe, merely because they are oldfashioned? There is, I dare say, some answer to those questions, and others which go very deeply into some of our political theories; but it is plain that "practical" must have some interpretation very different from that which it bears in ordinary life. Unluckily, having made the general assertion, we are quite as much given to rely upon it in cases where it is evidently false as in those where it may be approximately true. To take a different case: I have often read lamentations over the prosaic and unimaginative nature of Englishmen, and I believe that those lamentations refer we should be content with such an imputation upon a race, whose most indisputable claim to intellectual merit is precisely the extraordinary value of its poetical literature. We are unimaginative it may be, but that epithet must be interpreted in a sense compatible with the fact that we are exceptionally fertile in Shakspeares, Spencers, Mil |