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Quixote, and Monkbarns, and Becky Sharp, are as abstinence from any of those details of individual real, as living, as individual, as if they had ever experience, which tend more than anything else trod the earth, flesh and blood like ourselves. The to invest scientific researches with a real human

chemist who draws forth aniline or benzole from the matter in a retort, is as true a poet (finder, the middle ages beautifully called it trouvère, troubadour,) whether on a lower or higher scale we will not pretend to decide, as the writer who draws a true ideal character from the feelings and experiences distilled, as it were, by his own brain. Each of them finds-or, as God has allowed us to say, makes a new creature; only the one in God's material, the other in His intellectual world. And that new creature once made has its own laws of action and development, its own attractions and repulsions, which you cannot violate; else were it a mere sham and lie, the man's head upon the horse's neck. Your benzole never could quench fire like cumole, or assume the garlic smell of picoline. Could you transform your Don Quixote into that "mailed Bacchus" of a Mark Antony? or make your Hamlet dream of betraying a sister's honor to his own cowardly lust of life, like that vilest of all Shakspeare's characters, Claudio ?

But, indeed, the little essay on benzole before us has peculiar claims to general attention. It appears to us the first attempt, not yet wholly successful, to humanize chemistry, to bring a study which seems to many one of the most arid and abstruse, the most foreign to the common sympathies of man's nature, into harmony with those sympathies, and, as it were, into the same plane with them. And this, not so much by the use of so-called " popular" language, as by bringing out the deep-set meanings with which we believe God to have planted the whole universe, the spiritual bonds and analogies by which its various realms are interwoven together, and inwoven into one sphere of everlasting truth, order, and beauty. Thus the entirely novel distinction between chemical "attachment" and "affinity," although seemingly involving a mere change in nomenclature, appears to us to cast a vivid light through the very depths of the science. And yet the attempt, we said, is not yet wholly successful; the work is very likely to be called too popular by the men of science, too learned by the many, whilst but very few will be able to enter into that peculiar | point of view which we just now adverted to, and which, once seized, shows each part of the work in its true meaning and proportion. The work is, indeed, too full of matter, and likely to repel the careless reader by the extreme philosophic precision at which it aims, and which it seeks to attain by the use of Latin vocables; an error, as we conceive, which our greatest scientific writers, such as Professor Owen, are too apt to fall into.

Another (as it seems to us) asthetical defect in the work is, as it were, a certain want of personality, in the almost morbid and yet most lovable

interest. Pierre Leroux somewhere beautifully says, (we have not the passage at command,) that with the advance of science every plant, every mineral, every chemical product, becomes, as it were, the revelation, the spiritual image of the botanist, the traveller, the experimentalist who first discovered or applied it, and unfolds a living volume of human joy and woe. Now, from the oral delivery of Mr. Mansfield's lecture on benzole, at the Royal Institution, we imagine all who were not previously aware of the lecturer's position must have gone away impressed with the absolute want of something to connect the speaker with the subject. There needed some one to say, This is the man who first disentangled the hydrocarbons of coal-tar from one another, first investigated the properties of most of them, first evolved their various uses; so long he worked, such and so many were his failures; every product that you see on the table is the result of his own labor; every still almost and apparatus by which those products were extracted or made available, even to yonder shifting pasteboard diagram of atomic changes, was first applied or invented by him. And we are not afraid to tell one so thoroughly convinced as Mr. Mansfield, that all truth is of God, that when He chooses to make us His instruments for unveiling any portion of that truth, we have no right to conceal, and, as it were, be ashamed of the part He bids us play; certain as we must be that whatever light may thus be cast upon us is His, and not our own, desirous as we should be to lie hidden and drowned in the full splendor of His glory.

And yet all should be grateful to the young chemical democrat, if we may venture the term, who, by taking up a product in daily and vulgar use, such as coal-tar, was able to evolve from it so many wonders. This is the true glory of science-to teach us the meaning, the beauty, the richness of commonest things; and if we might suggest to him a field for his future labors, we would recommend one which he has himself suggested-the chemical etymology (let the expression be forgiven us) of coal. We will lay the passage before our readers, as a sample of Mr. Mansfield's style:

It is very remarkable that, though chemists have assiduously analyzed and defined the various compounds which make up the great bulk of nearly all the material bodies within their reach, animal, vegetal, and mineral, we have been left quite in the dark as to what coal is. We know what it has been an accumulation of vegetal organisms. We know that limestone is carbonate of lime, that

woody fibre is a definite chemical compound, that

muscle and sinew are made up chiefly of fibrine and gelatine, whose composition we know exactly; but the circumstances under which vegetal fibre has out abatement, experience tells us it could hardly

* Or, rather, by the talkers about science. "The chemistry of it is really very good!" was the remark of a worthy and eminent London professor, much astonished with the

remainder.

we have no information as to what substances constitute the vast coal-beds with which our country has been blessed. We are aware that their mass is composed of ths elements oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; but of the compounds into

which these elements are grouped in coal we have not even an hypothesis.

Now, although it is the ultimate analyses which are of practical utility in assigning their value as fuel to different sorts of coal, it is a knowledge of the proximate constitution of these materials which would be of interest to the chemist, which would enable him to assist the geologist in speculating on

A termination almost so unhoped for, has filled men's hearts with gratitude. They recognize, in the mercy that has arrested the hand of the destroy

ing angel, the salvation of this country from all the moral and material ills, which have ever followed in the train of great pestilences. Had the disease remained among us for any time with

been stratified into mineral masses, and which would give a double usefulness to the knowledge which we may obtain of the new substances which we procure by the decomposition of the coal itself. At present we can only look upon these latter products with an isolated interest, that which their own in

trinsic worth may attach to them. The coke, the say that whole districts in the metropolis and its

have remained without increase. The mortality, which had risen from the usual weekly average of 900 to 3000, would not have remained many weeks as low as 3000. Had it gone on in the same ratio of increase, it is hardly too much to

tar, the gas-the solid, liquid, and fluid products in which the coal lives again after its dissolution in the

suburbs would have been laid bare and desolate. True, this would have happened among the abodes of the very poor. But would the consequences of

in which they existed in the coal, by any intelligi

the affliction have been restricted to these spots? Could whole families have been plunged into destitution, and whole parishes have been desolated by

retorts-cannot be connected with the former bodies

ble scheme of metamorphosis. All we know is, that the transmigration has occurred. The thread of consciousness, as it were, is broken; and we must

rest content with what we can find out of the prod- panic, in the offskirts of a huge city, without ucts we can actually see and handle, till we have infecting the other and healthier elements of sociattained by experiment to introvision into the re-ety? Impossible. Of the plague which has torts, or to intuition into the essence of coal.

already, we trust, spent its worst malignity, the

These are surely the words of one to whom deaths which it caused were not the sole nor the God has given eyes to see His works, and a heart most terrible result. The great historian of Greece

to understand the meaning of them, and a mouth to speak that meaning to his fellow-men. Mr. Mansfield has yet much more to see, and much more to say.

From the London Times.

CESSATION OF CHOLERA IN LONDON.

It would be as impossible to exaggerate the sentiment of gratitude which is felt throughout the metropolis at the abatement of the pest from which we are beginning to escape, as it would be to exaggerate the misery which its further continuance would have inflicted. The plague is stayed. Death strikes with a feeble and fitful hand where he so lately smote with so fearful a force. Terror and despondence, the satellites and companions of death, are flying before the Power which has destroyed the gaunt destroyer. The streets, which still bear the aspect of mourning and sadness, no longer witness the daily insignia of mortality. One meets, indeed, in every place, the memorials of irreparable losses, and the tokens of lasting grief. In the throng of the Exchange, in the great thoroughfares, in the crowded streets, we jostle against those who have, within a few days, lost their nearest kin. One man, a week ago the happy husband or proud father, has since followed wife and children to the grave. The prat

has depicted, in indelible colors, the moral which goes hand in hand with the physical pest. We, as a nation, indeed, may not be in the same state as that refined and volatile people which erected altars to "The Unknown God." But can any one, who knows anything of our great cities, and especially of our greatest, say that, were a pest let loose with unmitigated violence on them or in it, the mere destruction of human life would measure the havoc and the calamity endured? Would the poorer masses of our population go untainted by that same utter recklessness of all save present gain and present enjoyment-the same indifference to death or life-honor or dishonor-good or evil -which poisoned the minds of the Athenians more than the plague destroyed their bodies? The historian of the great plague of London bears testimony to the frightful immorality, hardness of heart, and savage recklessness which disputed with piety, contrition, and repentance, the dominion over men's minds. In our age, the vast increase of population, the more than proportionate increase of luxury and wealth-the great contrasts of conditions and fortunes, have all raised up elements of discord, contention, and bitter strife, which were unknown in De Foe's time, but which, in a wide-spread pestilence, might now ferment into anarchy and ruin. The metropolis could

tle of infancy, and the soft accents of affection, not have suffered alone. It would have infected have been suddenly hushed in a thousand homes. all England. We have escaped these evils. We wider mortality! For this exemption from all the rest-that we are in the hands of a higher the worst evils of a national pestilence, the nation is generally and profoundly thankful.

A havoc has been wrought in innumerable families which a long life will fail to repair. But the plague is already stayed; and, great as the calamity may have been, it is slight compared with what old traditions and modern experience taught us to expect. London has escaped with half the loss sustained in Paris, and a tithe of the destruction which ravaged Moscow, Petersburgh, or Delhi.

have escaped panic. We have escaped anarchy. We have escaped national convulsion. There have, doubtless, been great suffering, privation, destitution, and despair inflicted on us. There have, likewise, been much hardness, selfishness, and cruelty elicited by it. But, still, how little have these been, compared with the probable and almost inevitable consequences of a heavier and

Power.

And this is a merciful dispensation. Without such, men would stagnate into a moral apathy, and, forgetting the existence of a God, would forget the duties which he has enjoined. It is by these visitations that men are reminded that they are weak. But they are also reminded that they are accountable. There never yet was a great national affliction without some previous neglect of public or private duties. The very plague which has visited us was made more violent by the omission of kindly acts and the neglect of beneficent laws. The loss of life, and the loss of money, which we are suffering, are penalties by which Almighty Wisdom punishes the delinquencies of governments and states. Had we observed the duties of charity and justice more than we have, we should have suffered less than we have. we been more devout, we should have been more just and more charitable.

And, if this be, as we believe it to be, the case, does not an occasion so solemn deserve an expression of sentiments so profound? Should there not be some public and universal recognition of the Might which has stood between the living and the dead-of the mercy which has spared us the consummation of a dreadful chastisement? We know that there are men who refuse to acknowledge the hand of God in any great dispensation of his providence to whom all the vicissitudes of the material world are but the casual results of fortuitous combinations, or the inevitable operations of undetected laws. Fortunately, the majority of mankind have not concurred in ousting the DEITY from all concern in the world which he has made. Most men still feel sensible that there is one OMNISCIENT and ALL-POWERFUL, who directs and determines the issues of life and death to men and nations. It is useless to talk of secondary causes. Those who have suffered, and those who have Secondary causes are but the instruments which escaped, the pestilence of this year, will need no the Deity chooses to employ. Sickness, famine, exhortations to acts of individual devotion and and death, are warnings by which He reminds thanksgiving. But the suffering assumed the mankind of their weakness, their helplessness, form of a national suffering; the deliverance has and their mortality. Every man feels this in his been a national deliverance. The thanksgiving own family, person, and circumstances. The should be national also. The form and mode of sickness that hurries a favorite child, or an affec- it we do not undertake to prescribe. But we are

tionate wife, to an early grave, is a humbling but effective example of divine power and human weakness. The palsy that prostrates the strong man in the full flush of health and vigor-the distress and poverty which stun the rich man in the height of his prosperity-these are but secondary, often tertiary causes; they may often be traced, step by step, through devious but connected consequences; but each man, in his own heart, feels them to be the indications of a supreme will and the tokens of supreme power. And when these befall individuals, the prayer is put up in an earnest confidence that He who has inflicted the wound -though he may not heal it will yet temper the infliction with a blessing.

Had

confident that the people of this land will feel it their duty to utter a solemn and public expression of their thanks to Him who has heard their prayer in due season; and that, moreover, they will not forget that the mere expression of thanks, solemnized by whatever ceremonial it may be, will, in a season like this, be but a poor and unworthy homage at the throne of Infinite Justice. There is a sacrifice which should be performed. The graves of our cities have been crowded with the victims of greedy speculation, careless legislation, and frigid selfishness. They who have perished have for the most part perished in fetid alleys, noisome and pestiferous houses, vile and infectious cellars, the structures or properties which were owned by

Doubtless the cholera, like any other phenom- selfish covetousness, and erected by selfish indifferenon, either of the corporeal or the mundane sys-ence. Let us take warning from our past stupidtem, follows certain definite and ascertainable ity or neglect, and not mock a religious solemnity laws. So does typhus fever, so do hurricanes, by persisting in cruelty and apathy. While we

so do waterspouts, so do thunderstorms, so do earthquakes. But the laws of which we speak are but a convenient phrase to express the will of the great Lawgiver. He who made can abate, modify, suspend, or warp them. He who can bid a plague rise in the East, may direct its sinuous course so as to baffle the observations of the most sagacious, and the deductions of the most intelligent. After all, when we have ascertained the law, we are nearly as helpless as we were before. We may foresee a certain number of cases, and mitigate a certain number; but the highest degree

allow the houses of the poor to be without air, light, or water-while we taint the breath of the living with the exhalations of the dead, and while we squabble in the midst of a destroying pest about the rights of vestries and commissions, our fast will be but an impious hypocrisy, and our prayers a hideous mummery.

"Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? To bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the

of knowledge which we attain is, that we know fast that I have chosen?-to loose the bands of but little about them; and our utmost skill is wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to baffled by contingencies which defy its explana- let the oppressed go free; and that ye break every tion. One fact ever appears prominent above yoke?"

From Bentley's Miscellany.

MEMOIR OF MISS PARDOE.

Miss Pardoe's powers of description and habits of observation appeared to point out to her her line of literature as peculiarly that of recording

THE lady whose portrait* forms the illustration the wonders of foreign lands, and a tour which to our present number, is one who has largely the family made through the Austrian empire, ministered to the instruction as well as the amuse- enabled her to give the world the results of her ment of the age.

Miss Pardoe is the second daughter of Major Thomas Pardoe, of the Royal Wagon Train, an able and meritorious officer, who, after having partaken of the hardships and shared the glories of the Peninsular campaigns, concluded a brilliant military career on the field of Waterloo, and has not since been engaged in active service. It is but doing bare justice to this amiable and excellent man, to say that he was as much beloved by the men whom he commanded, as he was popular among his fellow-officers, and his honorable retirement is still cheered by the regard and respect of all who have ever known him.

observations on Hungary in that excellent work, "The City of the Magyar," a work now more than ever deserving of public notice-less gay and glittering than "The City of the Sultan," her work on Hungary exhibits deeper research; its statistics are peculiarly accurate; and it is on all hands admitted to be one of the best books of travel ever submitted to the public.

A very short time after the publication of this work, appeared "The Hungarian Castle," a collection of Hungarian legends in three volumes, interesting on all grounds, but especially as filling up a very little known page in the legendary history of Europe.

About this time, Miss Pardoe, finding her health suffering from the too great intensity of study and labor to which she had subjected herself, retired from the great metropolis, and has since resided with her parents in a pleasant part of the county

Miss Pardoe gave promise, at a very early age, of those talents which have since so greatly distinguished her. Her first work, a poetical production, was dedicated to her uncle, Captain William Pardoe, of the Royal Navy, but is not much known, and though exhibiting considerable of Kent. The first emanation from her retire

merit, will hardly bear comparison with her more mature and finished productions. The earliest of her publications which attained much notice, was her "Traits and Traditions of Portugal," a book which was extensively read and admired. Written

ment was a novel entitled "The Confessions of a Pretty Woman," a production which was eagerly read, and rapidly passed into a second edition. In due course of time this was followed by another"The Rival Beauties." These tales are more

in early youth, and amid all the brilliant scenes able than pleasing; they are powerful pictures of which she describes, there is a freshness and charm the corruptions prevalent in modern society, and about it, which cannot fail to interest and delight bear too evident marks of being sketches from the the reader. life. We have placed "The Rival Beauties" out The good reception which this work met with of its proper order, that we may conclude by a determined the fair author to court again the pub- notice of those admirable historical works on lic favor, and she published several novels in suc- which Miss Pardoe's fame will chiefly rest-her cession-"Lord Morcar," "Hereward," " Spec- "Louis the Fourteenth," and "Francis the First."* ulation," and "The Mardyns and Daventrys." The extremely interesting character of their times In these it is easy to trace a gradual progress, both admirably suited Miss Pardoe's powers as a writer, in power and style, and the last-named especially and she has in both cases executed her task with is a work worthy of a better fate than the gener- great spirit and equal accuracy. The amount of ality of novels. But we are now approaching an information displayed in these volumes is really era in the life of Miss Pardoe. In the year 1836 stupendous, and the depth of research necessary

to produce it fully entitles Miss Pardoe to take a very high rank among the writers of history.

Her style is easy, flowing, and spirited, and her delineations of character as vivid as they are just; nor would it be easy to find any historical work in which the utile is so mingled with the dulce, as in those of Miss Pardoe.

she accompanied her father to Constantinople, and, struck by the gorgeous scenery and interesting manners of the East, she embodied her impressions in one of the most popular works which have for many years issued from the press. "The City of the Sultan" at once raised her to the height of popularity. The vividness of the descriptions, their evident truthfulness, the ample opportunities she enjoyed of seeing the interior of Turkish life, all conspired to render her work universally known and as universally admired. This was speedily Looking on her portrait, we may trust that she followed by "The Beauties of the Bosphorus," a has half her life, or more, still in the future, and work, like "The City of the Sultan," profusely may reasonably look to her for many contributions and splendidly illustrated, and this again by "The to the delight and learning of ourselves and our Romance of the Harem."

* Very bright! Would we could copy it.-Liv. Age.

She is now, we hear with much pleasure, engaged on "A Life of Mary de Medici," a subject extremely suited to her pen.

posterity.

* Reprinted by Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia.

From Chambers' Journal.

MR. ROBERT SIMPSON'S COURTSHIP.

ABOUT three years have elapsed since Mr. Robert Simpson succeeded, at the demise of Mr. Isaac Simpson, ironmonger by trade, fishmonger by livery, and common councilman of the city of London by election, to the prosperous business and municipal honors established and acquired by his respectable, pains-taking parent. Some natural tears he shed; but, the exigencies of business and the duties of his corporate office-replacing, as he immediately did, his father in the representation of the important ward in which his shop was situated-not permitting a protracted indulgence in the selfish luxury of woe, he fortunately recovered his equanimity in a much less space of time than persons acquainted with the extreme tenderness of his disposition had thought possible. Mr. Robert Simpson, albeit arrived at the mature age of thirtyfive, was still a bachelor; and not only unappropriated, but, as ward-rumor reported, unpromised; at perfect liberty, in fact, to bestow himself, his very desirable stock in trade, business premises, and three freehold houses in the Poultry, upon any fair lady fortunate enough to engage his affection, and able to return it. Indeed, to this circumstance, it was whispered at the time of his election, he owed his unopposed return to the municipal niche so long and worthily occupied by his departed father; Mr. Crowley, the highly respectable spectacle-maker, having suddenly withdrawn from the contest on the very day of nomination; thereto induced, hinted gossips of the city, by the fact that Miss Crowley, who chanced to meet Mr. Robert Simpson on the previous evening at the house of a mutual acquaintance, had been by him most courteously and gallantly escorted home. The matrimonial inference drawn from so slight a premise as a few minutes' walk along unromantic Cheapside, by gas, not moonlight, proved, as might be expected, an altogether erroneous one. The Fates had other views regarding the prosperous ironmonger; and as those " sisters three," like most ladies, generally contrive to have their own way, Mr. Simpson was ultimately quite otherwise disposed of; and Miss Crowley, for aught I know to the contrary, remains Miss Crowley to this day.

Such was the Mr. Robert Simpson who, about two o'clock on the afternoon of March the 1st, 1847, stepped, richly and scrupulously attired, into a Brougham, specially retained to convey him to dine at his friend, Mr. John Puckford's, modest but comfortable establishment at Mile End, where he was by express arrangement to meet his ex pected, expectant bride. Before, however, relating what there befell him, it will be necessary to put the reader in possession of certain important incidents which had occurred during the three previous days.

On the evening of the preceding Tuesday, Mr. Simpson, finding himself at the east end of the town, and moreover strongly disposed for a cup of tea and a quiet gossip, resolved to " drop in" upon his new acquaintance, Mr. John Puckford, hoping to find him and his wife alone. In this, however, he was doomed to disappointment; for he had scarcely withdrawn his hand from the knocker, when he was startled-Mr. Simpson was, as I have before hinted, a singularly bashful person in the presence of the fairer and better half of creation-by the sound of female voices issuing, in exuberant merriment, from the front parlor. There was company, it was evident, and Mr. Simpson's first impulse was to fly; as the thought crossed his mind the door opened, and Mr. Puckford, who chanced to be in the passage, espying him, he was fain to make a virtue of necessity, and was speedily in the midst of the merry party whose gayety had so alarmed him. That the introduction was managed in the usual way, I have no doubt; but the names, however distinctly uttered, seem to have made no impression upon the confused brain of the bashful visitor; so that when, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to recover his composure, he found himself in the presence of three ladies and one gentleman, of whose names, as well as persons, he was profoundly ignorant. The ladies were two of Mrs. Puckford's married sisters, and Miss Fortescue, a young lady of reduced fortunes, at present occupied as teacher in a neighboring seminary. The gentleman was Mr. Alfred Gray, a bachelor like Mr. Simpson, but nothing like so old, and scarcely so bashful. Mrs. Frazer, the eldest of the two sisters, a charming lady-like person, of, you would say, judging from appear

Not that Mr. Simpson was by any means in-ances, about twenty-three or twenty-four years of

sensible to female fascination; he was, unfortunately for his own peace of mind, somewhat too susceptible; an ardent admirer of beauty in all its hues and varieties, from the fair and delicate grace and beauty of the maidens of the pale north, to the richer glow and warmer tints of orient loveliness. The strict surveillance of his honored father, joined to a constitutional timidity he was quite unable to overcome, had, however, sufficed during that gentleman's lifetime to prevent rash impulse from eventuating in rash deed. He was also, I must mention, extremely fastidious in his notions of feminine delicacy and reserve; and his especial antipathies were red hair, or any hue approaching to red, and obliquity of vision of the slightest kind.

age, seemed after some oscillation between her and Mrs. Holland, whose fuller proportions, dark hair, and brunette complexion, contrasted not unfavorably with the lighter figure, and fair hair and features of her sister-to engross Mr. Simpson's whole attention, and to arouse, after awhile, all his conversational energies, which, by the way, were by no means contemptible. Mr. Simpson's time was come: ere a couple of hours had fled, the hapless ironmonger was hurt past all surgery; had fallen desperately in love with a married lady, and the mother of three or four children! On the only single female present, Miss Fortescue, Mr. Simpson had bestowed but one glance on entering the apartment: that had been quite sufficient to

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