through which stereotyped forms of thought | latter, and relieved the intensity of his bent enter the mind were with him closed; he of mind with a play of gracious pleasantry dwelt in the region where conventional impossible to recall without a smile. It did notions shrivel away from the realities be- not need wit to kindle that susceptible and neath them. The whole vicissitude of his delicate power of amusement, a very bad life was spiritual; he passed through scenery joke was quite as much enjoyed as a very that no eye but his could discern, and the good one, and perhaps the action which joys and sorrows of his soul alike took their now recalls the most individual aspect of his rise in heights inaccessible to those around character is the little push with which he him. This outward universe was to him no would claim response to some exquisite more than a parable of the true Cosmos drollery which ir his opinion, his hearer ever before his eye, where all things great was not sufficiently enjoying. His memory and small were held in their places by the will always remain with his friends as a spiritual gravitation of love, and he was for proof that it is possible to believe in the ever struggling to utter his impressions of invisible universe in exactly the same sense spiritual laws to him far more unquestiona- as we believe in the visible. To remember ble than those by which the outer world is his sense of God in contrast with what ordered. They were to him truly, to use makes up the faith of other men is like an expression common of late years on his turning from sunlight to moonlight, and lips, the dynamics of salvation," the fixed, the contrast is a sort of demonstration of ascertainable principles of harmony with that in which he believed. When we are which man was to be set right; and laws of tempted to think of the things that can be nature had little interest for him, except so weighed and measured as including the far as he could trace in them illustrations boundaries of certainty, the recollection of of the other laws. It was not everyone that struggle to pour out the results of inwho was ready for this sublimation of all communicable experience, will recall us to earthly interests, but that remarkable sense the conviction that beyond these limits is a of humour, which was a feature of his char-region where a man may lay hold of realities, acter equally distinctive with his thirst after that one man among those we have known the unseen, formed common ground with knew hardly any realities elsewhere. many who might have been repelled by the 66 those past times, had it been ordained that a Christian convert should continue to cohabit, against her will, with a follower of the Prophet! These indications tend to prove that native ideas are becoming slightly Europeanized; but what shall we say to the following? The Gaekwar of Barodo, on his visit to meet the Duke of Edin equipped in the Highland kilt! Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery; but, on the other hand, the sublime borders on the ridiculous, and we rather fancy that the latter will predominate in the appearance of these petticoated Aryans, with their very attenuated legs. FROM time to time India gives forth slight indications of the gradual introduction of European thought into her intellectual circles, and by the presrnt mail we perceive several noteworthy instances of this progress towards civilization. A native lady of Calcutta, one Ranee Surnomoyee, has given £500 to the London Missionary Society for the building of an Anglo-Vernacular School.burgh, will be escorted by a regiment of natives, Now, as this lady is a Hindoo of the Hindoos, her gift denotes a freedom from bigotry that might be taken as an example for imitation by many ardent Christians. That is, provided she did not make this donation in the spirit of the late Begum Sumroo, who built and endowed places of worship for Hindoos, Mahommedans, Roman Catholics, and Protestants alike, in order that her soul might be saved, whichever faith proved to be the true one. Again, we see that a Mussulman gentleman has sued for the restoration of his wife, who had left him on becoming a Christian, and the court ordered the lady to return to her disconsolate husband. A great advance surely on the times when a Mussulman, similarly situated, would have got rid of his offending spouse by poison, or by other forcible means, instead of desiring to get her back to live with him. But, on the other hand, how the missionary element would have fermented in Pall Mall Gazette. THE Secretary of State for India announces, at the request of the Governor-General of India, that the Government of India offers a prize of 5,000l. for machinery or a method suitable for the separation of the fibre and bark of the Rheea or China-grass from the stem, and for separating the fibre from the bark. Dried stems and specimens of the fibre will be supplied on application to the Secretary to the Government of India in the Home Department. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. The Complete Work, Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers (840.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUction to the Bible, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. CORRESPONDENCE- -SAINT DOMINGO. PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1870. With re MY DEAR MR. LITTELL, I should be glad to assist your friend, Commodore Green, to some knowledge of the changes in the government of St. Domingo; but if he means secret changes, I can do little for him, as no connected history of either part of the island has been published, bringing down affairs later than the departure of Boyer in 1844. The books relating to the history previous to that time, are, first, Histoire de St. Domingue, by Pere Charlevoix, published in 1730; second, L'Histoire de la Revolution de St. Domingue, par Pamphile de Lacroix, which is the best account extant of the revolution commencing with the insurrection of the blacks in 1791 and ending with the final expulsion of the French by Dessalines in 1804; third, Histoire D'Haiti, par Thomas Madison, fils, who brings down events to the acecssion of Boyer; fourth, Etudes sur L'Histoire D'Haiti, par B. Ardouin in nine volumes, which closes with the expulsion of Boyer in 1844. gard to changes since that date the history has not been written, nor, as was said by Milton about the wars of the early Britons, is it better worth writing, than the history of the " quarrels between kites and crows.' All, since that date, has been, as Wordsworth untruly said of the French revolution, "perpetual emptiness, unceasing change." There has been no purpose in these changes, except the unconscious, underlying one of bringing the people down to that state of disorganization which makes it perfectly clear that it is time they were taken care of by somebody else. Guerrier succeeded to Riviere, Pierrot to Guerrier, Riche to Pierrot, Soulouque to Riche, Geffrard to Soulouque, Salnave to Geffrard, and Saget to Salnave, and all, with two exceptions, from the same cause. ruler, for the time being in power, was unable to supply all his ambitious followers with place and money; the outs became discontented, conspired against those in power, took their place, and were themselves put out by other needy successors. The exceptions to this process were Guerrier and Riche who died in office of drunkenness and debauchery shortly after their accession. In the Dominican part, the course has been very similar in cause and effect. The changes, I think, have been quite as numerous as in the Haytien part. The only printed books within my knowledge which throw any light on these changes on either side of the island are first, L'Empereur Soulouque et son Empire, par Gustave D'Alaux, whose real name was Max Raybaud, French Consul-general at Hayti, published originally in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1851 and collected into a volume in 1856; second, The Dominican Republic and the Emperor Soulouque, by Brittannicus, alias, Theodore Henniken, (a Scotch mahogany cutter of Santiago, who furnished Washington Irving with some valuable notes for his life of Columbus), published in 1852; third, "Sous Les Tropiques," par Paul Dhormoys, published in 1864; fourth, The The Black Man, or Haytien Independence, by M. B. Bird, for nearly thirty years a Wesleyan missionary in Hayti, published in 1869. The latter gives the only connected account I have seen of the expulsion of Geffrard, the book being otherwise a compilation of not much value; nor have any of the others much value. I knew all of these authors with the exception of Dhormoys. The only ruler that Hayti has ever had, with any real progress in him, was Boyer. Toussaint was a little black Bonaparte of wonderful talents, it is true, and desirous of advancing Hayti, but always with the condition that he should be absolute master of it. He knew no other method than that of the old French planters, which he essentially kept up, hence his deportation caused little regret. Christophe was a small Peter the Great, who imported a sort of civilization which died out as soon as the foreigners, who came with his paper and powder mills and Lancasterian schools, died or went away. Boyer was a man of large powers of organization, finished education, minute knowledge of the Haytien and Dominican character, and ruled the whole island for twenty-one years, during which time it made sensible progress in agriculture and commerce and the people made substantial, though not rapid, progress in civilization. No war, nor important insurrection, took place during his time, except the revolution gotten up by dissatisfied partizans in his old age, which drove him out of the country. The island has been retrograde ever since and will so continue until taken in hand by us. books I have mentioned can probably be found in the Boston library, but those relating to affairs since 1844 will give little satisfactory information. The Trill its low calls from out a bower of blossom; And, at the sound, a trill of joy arose And trembled through my bosom. Could I translate that thrill of joy to men - SIGNOR G. BIRON has edited, at Bologna, a treatise on popular rhymes composed in 1882, by Antonio da Tempo, a Paduan judge. From The British Quarterly Review. But surely, it might be said, the horse THE PLACE WHere light dweLLETH. which drags yonder heavy load, and the THE central idea of modern science is locomotive which transports yonder heavier force. Of this force it is supposed there is train, accomplish their tasks, the one by a certain quantity in the universe which can virtue of its muscles, the other by virtue of neither be physically lessened nor increased. its steam, and this without the slightest It may be passive, like the slumbering elec- help from your puissant sun? Do they? tricity in an unexcited body, in which case Not a morsel of duty could they perform it is called potential energy; or it may had he not given them the means! For wake up into resistless activity, like the without him there could have been no vegsame element in an exploding thunder-bolt, etable life to supply the animal with food, and then it is known (perhaps felt) as act- or to replenish its iron substitute with fuel. ual or dynamic energy. All the forms of It is to the sun, too, that we ourselves owe force are said to be related, and all admit the power of performing the simplest physiof mutual conversion; but whatever charac- cal acts, for it is he who is our helper if we ter they assume, and whether kept in daily shake a friend by the hand, and our accomcirculation or buried in some subterranean plice if we knock an adversary down. In storehouse for ages, the sum-total of power fact, trace matters back sufficiently far-a and is alleged to remain precisely and unchange-few steps will generally be enough ably the same. It is a something which He we shall discover that all mechanical activonly who created can diminish or destroy. ity must, in some way or other, be ascribed For us, in this planet, the sun is the chief to the influence or intervention of this mifountain of force. The mechanical labour nistro maggior della natura, as Dante calls alone which our luminary performs in the the sun. The very tides which appear to world is prodigious, and his agency in some be so emphatically under the sway of the of the commonest transactions is popularly moon are no exceptions to this law; for unsuspected. Ask a rustic miller what how could the seas respond to the lunar turns his watermill, and he would regard it solicitations if they were converted into as a pure mockery were he told that it was solid masses of ice, as they would infallibly It is certainly the stream which be by the extinction of his rays ?* Considdrives the wheel, and as certainly it is theering, indeed, how all animal and vegetable earth's gravity which draws the fluid down existence is dependent upon the solar emanto the lowest level it can find. But what ations, Professor Tyndall is abundantly lifted that fluid to the heights from which it justified in his assertion that "we are not has so noisily descended? Clearly the only in a poetical sense, but in a mechanical bright but distant orb, without which there sense, the children of the sun." would be no rain to fill the channel and no moisture to feed the springs. the sun. From this orb there stream down upon us three distinct forms of influence - the luminous, the calorific, the chemical. How light developes force, how it sets bodies to work at its bidding, may be seen in its action on plants. A laurel leaf introduced And what works that windmill whose sails are circling so merrily on the neighbouring hill? There again we have the same great agent employed-stronger than the strongest giant, meeker than the humblest turn-into a receiver of carbonic acid and hydrospit; for it is he who sets the air in motion, and refreshes the earth with zephyrs, or purifies it with the storm and tempest. Le Soleil. Par AMEDEE GUILLEMIN. Paris: Hachette et Cie. 1869. Researches on Solar Physics. By WARREN DE LA RUE, Esq., Ph.D., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., BALFOUR STEWART, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., Superintendent of the Kew Observatory, and BENJAMIN LOEWY, Esq., Observer. First, Second, and Third Series. London: Taylor and Francis. 1865-9. (Printed for private circulation.) gen, as Boussingault shows, produces no effect whilst kept in perfect darkness; take it into sunshine, and that leaf becomes inspired with energy; it tears the elements of the acid asunder, appropriates the carbon * Perhaps volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the energies derived from the internal heat of the globe, may seem to be purely domestic transactions; but it is impossible to say how far that very heat may not have been a legacy from the sun, or our share of the great solar inheritance when the earth entered upon its planetary career. to its use, and is prepared to deliver up la sphere entiere, c'est-a-dire pour la radiation the oxygen for the general purposes of crea-solaire en 1 minute, un nombre de calories egal tion. So long as a vegetable is retained a 4,847 suivi de 25 zeros."'* in profound obscurity its leaves appear to be asleep; they can only exhale - we had almost said dream out- - carbonic acid; and it is not until placed under the stimulus of light that they become sensitive, and wake up to do their appointed work. How the chemical rays excite molecular action may be briefly indicated by referring to their effect upon a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen. Kept for a time in darkness, these two gases, though eager to combine and form hydrochloric acid, remain silent and insulated; but turn on a current of sunshine, and in a moment or two an explosion ensues, and the union is effected with such violence that the vessel may be shattered to fragments. By way of estimating the sun's chemical power, Bunsen and Roscoe calculated that if our earth were surrounded by an atmosphere of these two gases, to the depth of about thirty-eight yards, the letting in of his light fully for a single minute would convert the whole into an ocean of hydrochloric acid. But it is the sun's heat which will afford us the readiest and most familiar illustrations of his force. His issue of caloric has been variously represented. According to Sir J. Herschel, it would melt a pillar of ice 1590 square miles at its base and 194,626 miles in height in one second of time. According to Pouillet, it would liquefy a shell of ice ten and a half miles thick in a single day, though it encompassed the entire orb. According to Professor Tyndall, it is equal to the heat which would be yielded by a seam of coal sixteen and a half miles in depth were it fired and reduced to ashes. Large figures are generally very bewildering, and when M. Guillemin expresses the sun's deliveries of caloric by a row of twenty-five ciphers preceded by 4,847, the effect upon the imagination is benumbing rather than exciting: "A la distance moyenne du soleil a la terre, la quantite de chaleur que l'astre envoie par minute sur 1 metre carre est 17,633 calories. Il est clair que la meme quantite est recue par chacun des metres carres composant la surface d'une sphere ayant le soleil pour centre et pour rayon la terre au soleil. On trouve ainsi pour But the matter may be put in a more simple and accessible form. Calculating the caloric yielded by each square foot of the sun's surface every hour, as equivalent to that which would be given out by the combustion of 1,500 lbs. of coal, this would accomplish the work of upwards of 7,000 horses. There is something overpowering in this conception when we consider that it applies to the entire superficies of an enormous globe of more than 880,000 miles in diameter, and not to a few selected spots. We may have here and there on our own planet steam engines doing the work of innumerable quadrupeds, but the idea of several thousands clustered - concentrated, we may say on each square foot of the sun's area, and exerting their energies incessantly, is one which we cannot compass with much sense of success. Let us, however, transfer the question of solar power to the surface of the earth. Our globe, of course, intercepts but a fractional part of these burning emanations only about one-two hundred and fifteen millionth of the whole, according to Herschel. But, relatively small, they are intrinsically enormous, for M. Guillemin observes that the quantity poured upon a single hectare of ground (2.47 acres) developes, under a thousand various forms, as much force as is equivalent to the continued labour of 4,163 horses. The vast amount of work our luminary could, therefore, execute mechanical agent by means of his rays, even in the diffuse condition in which they reach this planet, has not failed to attract the attention of curious inquirers. Indeed, we might say that the waste of valuable sunshine which might do the duty of all the steam engines in the world, has excited the displeasure (wrath might be a better word) of more than one scientific economist. There are people who will always be indig as a * M. Guillemin's work on the sun is one of those agreeable productions which take off all stiffness from scientific topics, and put matters in so popular a form that no reader need wrinkle his brows in the vain effort to understand what the writer means, or what the facts imply. It is copiously illustrated, and is inspired with French vivacity from first to last. |