POETRY.-Irish Temperance Hymn, 391.-Hope and Memory, 400.- The Farmer's Plough; Beneath the Wayside Tree, 412. - It cannot last, 413. - Massachusetts, 430. NEW BOOKS, 430. PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favor ably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader. The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Cominon Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with out selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee. Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very fully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own. While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Mag- day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against The steamship has brought Europe, Asia and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Traveliers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Bromfield sts., Boston; Price 12ł cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be addressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows: of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified. We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff," by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste. Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangements in all parts of North America, for increasing the circulation of this work--and for doing this a liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this subject with any agent who will send us undoubted refer ences. Postage. When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 4 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (1) cts.) We add the definition alluded to : A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than on month, conveying intelligence of passing events.” Monthly parts. For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in Binding. We bind the work in a uniform, strong, and good style; and where customers bring their numbers in good order, can generally give them bound volumes in exchange without any delay. The price of the binding is 50 cents a volume. As they are always bound to one pattern, there will be no difficulty in matching the future | eighteen months. volumes. WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845. Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS LITTELL'S LIVING AGE. - No. 290.-8 DECEMBER, 1849. THE curiosity of the British people, which the wonders of science have fed so profusely for the last fifty years, has latterly not only spread over a larger area as knowledge has diffused itself, and increased in intensity as it grew by what it fed on, but has also remarkably altered its direction. From the days of the Stuarts down to a comparatively recent period, the unscientific portion of the nation was chiefly interested by marvellous natural phenomena; and concerned itself little in even the most practical applications of the experimental sciences. In our own day a totally opposite feeling prevails. A worthy naval captain comes home to announce that he has seen a great sea-serpent. His account is scarcely published before it is depreciated, criticized, and derided, from one end of the island to the other. The "Gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease," may differ among themselves as to what the good captain did see, but are quite at one as to what he did not see. In the seventeenth century any number of sea-serpents would have been credited; and the bigger and more uncouth they were, so much the better. None, indeed, of the treasures of natural history which the British Museum can now exhibit, are half so strange as a Londoner could take his country cousin to in the times of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. Feathers could then be produced which had dropped from the tail of the Phœnix. Ostriches were to be seen which, unlike the birds of the present day, had not pecked their way into the world through an eggshell, but had been born alive. Bones were plentiful, of giants compared with whom Goliath was a dwarf. Petrified babies were not very rare; or solid thunderbolts, or unicorns' horns-or barnacles which had first been shell-fish, and then changed into Solan Geese! Our forefathers rejoiced for the most part in believing such things; and the few that were sceptical could only hazard a doubt. Credulity, however, never absorbs the entire man. It appears, on the contrary, to necessitate a countervailing scepticism. Credulity and scepticism, indeed, are two blind imps playing at see-saw. Neither sees his opposite although each would be flung off if not counterbalanced by the other; and VOL. XXIII. 28 ccxc. LIVING AGE. the arc which the one describes determines the space through which the other must travel. The terrified gazer at comets, and implicit believer in astrology, made himself amends, accordingly, by denouncing as a wizard the man who showed him the sun's spectrum on a wall, or the image of a tree turned upside down in a camera obscura; so that even the contemporaries of Newton thought it prudent to hide, under anagrams and verbal enigmas, their more striking discoveries from the vulgar observer. His faith was unlimited in one direction, and his intolerance in another; and he allowed each full play. To slay one's enemies was not only a lawful but honorable thing; to hang, draw, and quarter a traitor was the duty of a loyal subject; to shut up a man stricken with the plague, and leave him to his fate, was the most tender mercy which he could expect; but to dissect the dead body of foe, traitor, or plaguepatient, was a crime against God and man! The credulous believer in a thousand imaginary natural and supernatural phenomena, unconsciously revenged himself for his credulity, by a fixed disbelief in man's power to conquer physical nature; and would not have stirred from his door to witness the most curious mechanical invention-or have wished it success, or expected good from it. But these things have been long completely changed. The popular mind, like a magnet struck with lightning-which reverses its poles, so that it points to the south with the end which formerly pointed to the north-has been so electrified by the triumphs of experimental science, that it has whirled round like the disordered compass-needle; and what it formerly admired it now despises, and what it once despised it now admires. Had it been wise, it would have kept much of its old faith, (to which it will yet return,) and would have been content with adding to its previous beliefs whatever it found admirable in the youthful or regenerated sciences. But at present, when there seems no end to the achievements of experimental science, these achievements alone engross attention; and the public has not yet had time to count the cost, or grow weary of its new toy. It was not at all necessary, however, that botany or zoology should be thrown aside, because chemistry and electricity had recently abounded in wonders. A nettle or a limpet, the meanest weed or humblest insect, still more a nautilus or a humming-bird, is, after all, at least as curious a thing as gun-cotton or chloroform; and a torpedo or gymnotus is in reality a much more wonderful machine than a voltaic battery. Many-voiced, however, as the public is, it is not many-sided. It has latterly remorselessly narrowed its taste to a very few scientific subjects; and the present period marks something like the culmination of a mor-ology, except as a searcher for coal, metallic ores, bid relish for the exploits of applied physics. Su- limestone, or gold, is not the popular science it is pernaturalism is either entirely discredited, or reduced to a quite tangible realism, and subjected to manipulation-as in animal magnetism and phrenology. From chairs of chemistry, lectures are delivered on the nature of the soul; and the pupils of such a class, in a celebrated university, may be instructed one day as to the properties of magnesia or cream of tartar, and learn, on the next, that the burning-kisses which passionate lovers exchange, are accompanied by actual flames, which the duly gifted may perceive hovering round their meeting lips! So strangely in our own day has the once invisible eagle, who dwelt near the sun, submitted to have his wings clipped, and taken his place among tame geese and barn-door fowls. often supposed to be. It is too difficult, comprehensive, and expensive a pursuit, to be largely followed by any but the highest grade of amateurs. The number of unscientific persons, accordingly, who realize to themselves, so that they can properly be said to believe, that coal was once wood, and ironstone once mud, and that there formerly lived on this earth such creatures as Pterodactyles or Icthyosaurs, is, in fact, very small. Unscientific religious people are still, to a great extent, ready to account for every fossil by Noah's deluge; and reluctant to make any creature older than Adam. The irreligious, semi-scientific public, on the other hand, reads eagerly whatever seems to contradict the book of Genesis; but understands too little of what it reads, and finds what little it understands too far removed from its everyday cares, hopes, and fears, to trouble itself much with the speculations of palæontology. The oldest and grandest of the sciences fares no better. Although astronomy has recently been discovering planets at the rate at which she formerly discovered comets, and by her one gift to the known heavens, of Neptune, has cast far into the shade all the younger branches of knowledge, yet the public heard with perfect indifference the really idle, but for it, trustworthy announcement, that Neptune had gone a missing, or rather had never been found. Were it to be rumored, however, that the electric light had proved, or would prove on the large scale, a total failure, its extinction would be lamented as a public calamity; or had it been but hinted that the wires of the electric telegraph were found to be rapidly losing their power to conduct electricity, and would soon refuse to conduct it at all, the whole island would have taken fright. The natural history sciences, in short, although now of far greater interest to philosophers than they ever were before, have been completely eclipsed in general estimation by the experimental sciences. Travellers' tales have long been at a discount. The most distant places of the globe are now so near, in time, that it is worth no one's trouble to palm a deliberate fiction upon us as to their condition-when a few weeks at furthest may expose the fabrication. Every fortnight brings a mail from India and the New World; so that two weeks on an average bound the longevity of the most plausible imported lie. The public, needy as it was, waited with patience for exact information concerning the Californian gold; and its patience has been rewarded. It is still more willing to suspend its merely speculative curiosity till the mail shall arrive. We now hear little, accordingly, of marine or transmarine monsters; and the few that do present themselves are called to so strict an account by Professor Owen and his brethren, that if so much as a scale, a bristle, or a claw are out of order, it goes hard with them; and they are likely to be refused their certificates, like doubtful bankrupts. All this is well, and but wholesome discipline for the world of science. But the unscientific public has gone far beyond the most sceptical naturalist, in excluding from favor the once prized objects of natural history and phenomenal science. The only rare animals that have recently excited interest have been all, we think, of the human species-Red Indians, Bosjesmans, and Tom Thumb. Zoological gardens are everywhere in Great Britain struggling against extinction, and are indebted in many places to the humiliating assistance of fireworks or gymnastic exhibitions for their prolonged existence. How great the extremity is, may be gathered from the fact, that even the Zoological Society of London has gone the unusual length of prosecuting the defaulters among its members for their arrears. The same spirit appears in the loud outcry at present raised against the expenditure of public money on the palm-house at Kew-whilst thousands which no tax-gatherer demanded have been voluntarily flung away on hopeless projects which experimen- pounded, are Natural Philosophy and Chemistry tal physics were rashly supposed to sanction. Ge--though it would probably be more just to say In speaking thus, we must be understood as excluding from our reference not only all those who study science as science, and all those who study it professionally as the basis of art, but likewise all that large class of intelligent amateurs of both sexes, who cannot be divided by a sharp line of demarcation from the students of science, or art, among whom they are often amply entitled to take their places. But after deducting the philosopher, the professional man, and the amateur, there remains the great bulk of the people of all ranks, who only indirectly and occasionally interest themselves in science. They are very important, however, not only by their numerical proponderance, and as the raw material out of which the special students must be drafted, but likewise as filling the important offices in the community of treasurer, banker, and pursebearer-and as furnishing the supplies, without which neither science nor art, in many of their provinces, any more than war, can be carried on. The sciences which the public, thus defined, at present crowds to popular lectures to hear ex that the arts springing out of these sciences are popular, than that the sciences themselves are. The laws regulating the elasticity of steam at different temperatures, the theory of waves, the "Idea of Polarity," the doctrines of diamagnetism, of electromagnetics, of isomerism or organic types, and much else, find no favor with such disciples; but screw-propellers, electric lights, and new manures are cordially welcomed. The preference thus shown for the sciences of Experiment, as contrasted with those of Observation, appears to admit of a twofold explanation. The former have always the charms of novelty about them; the latter have long been familiar to all. Among the sweetest remembrances, no doubt, of happy childhood, are the early listening at a mother's knee to the sacred record of the Creation; the appointment of the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night; and Adam's giving names to the living creatures in the garden of Eden. Nor is there any toy more welcome to children than the well-freighted Dutch-built Noah's ark, nor any spectacle more delightful than a wild beast show, or a peep through a telescope at the man in the moon. But when childhood and youth are once gone by, natural history is but too often left behind with them; and the starry heavens are seldom consulted-except at the changes of the moon, when the roads are dark and the weather threatening. A character of peacefulness, serenity, and unchangeableness, belongs to the phenomenal sciences; and is one of their charms for those who study them profoundly: and this indeed is more or less clearly perceived by all. The heavens upon which we gaze are felt to be the heavens to which the first pair lifted their eyes in Paradise. The plants and animals we now see are not distinguishable from those which the Egyptian draughtsman made his designs from, or the Greek artist carved on his relievos. But this thought, so soothing in some moods of mind, is out of keeping with the turbulent activity of busy manhood -especially as it occupies itself in our own country at present. Man's newest planet is probably heaven's oldest one. The last discovered flower has been growing for any one to pluck, since the flood; and kangaroos were in New Holland before Britons were in Great Britain. An air of majestie antiquity and completeness belongs almost exclusively to the phenomenal sciences. But even this makes them less attractive to a generation living more in the future than the past. In addition too, to the great charm novelty, the idea of Power is much more connected by the people with the experimental than the phenomenal sciences. The experimental sciences have in truth, within this century, effected so vast a revolution in the political, commercial, and social relations of the world, that men do not now know what next to dread, or to expect, from them. The natural history and phenomenal sciences, on the other hand, have not very visibly affected the recent progress of mankind. The services of geology in discovering valuable minerals, of zoology in pointing out the localities of valuable fisheries, and of botany in introducing new vegetables, have been unobtrusively rendered; and have not come before the public in such a way as either to startle and be wondered at, or even to be understood or appreciated. Mechanics is applauded indeed for its steam-ships; but geology is not thanked for discovering, in Labuan, Chili, Australia, Vancouver's Island, and elsewhere, the coals, without which the ocean steamers could never have ventured on their stupendous careers. Chemistry has the whole credit of introducing guano; the fertil izing virtues of which had, however, been indicated by natural history long before chemistry had subjected it to analysis. This habitual application of an utilitarian test to the sciences has necessarily excluded from attention some of the noblest of them. What was the planet Neptune to the utilitarian public, or that public to Neptune? His appearance in the heavens did not lead to any reduction in the window tax, or to any saving in candles. The skies looked no brighter for his coming, and the street lamps were as needful as before. The sea-serpent comes home to no man's business, and we trust will come home to no man's bosom. But the gunpowdermakers naturally enough quailed at the report of gun-cotton; and Sir Walter Scott's famous stagecoach companion, who, silent on every subject suggested for conversation, exclaimed at last, "Tak me on bend leather, and I'm your man!" would, if now alive, have taken interest in at least one additional topic, and have woke up at the sound of " gutta percha soles." The shareholders in the gas companies go about anxiously inquiring concerning the electric light; and coal merchants look blank at a recent newspaper paragraph which announces a method of producing an inflammable vapor from resin, charcoal, and water. In all this, however, there is nothing surprising, and not much to be lamented. The scientific discoveries of recent years, and their marvellous applications in the arts, have been of such a nature and magnitude, as to astonish the most sober philosophers; so that we cannot wonder that they have filled the less reflecting public with extravagant hopes and fears. We are far from wishing to impute to the mass of the people a merely selfish or sordid interest in applied science. The least avaricious may well take alarm, at the prospect of a single unlucky invention ruining his trade or profession; and in a densely peopled country like this, enterprising young men, unpossessed of capital, naturally entertain sanguine expectations as to the substantial gains and honorable independence which may accrue to them from one successful investigation or ingenious device. But apart altogether from the perception of a pecuniary interest in the progress of discovery, every newspaper reader, however unscientific, perceives that the world is moving onwards at an accelerated ratewhich, according to his temperament, exceedingly delights or exceedingly alarms him. Intelligent appreciation, in short, childish fear, childish won der, a feverish spirit of speculation, and a strong infusion of cupidity, are all strangely mingled in but an electro-magnetic steam fire-balloon, which the popular estimate of what the sciences are des- will cleave the air like a thunderbolt, and go tined to effect for the world. The general faith straight to its destination as the crow flies, is an in science as a wonder-worker is at present un-invention which many hope to see realized, before limited; and along with this there is cherished the conviction that every discovery and invention admits of a practical application to the welfare of men. Is a new vegetable product brought to this country from abroad, or a new chemical compound; discovered, or a novel physical phenomenon recorded! The question is immediately asked, cui bono? What is it good for? Is food or drink to be got out of it? Will it make hats, or shoes, or cover umbrellas? Will it kill or heal? Will it drive a steam-engine, or make a mill go? And truly this cui bono question has of late been so often satisfactorily answered, that we cannot wonder that the public should persist in putting it, somewhat eagerly, to every discoverer and inventor, and should believe that if a substance has one valuable application, it will prove, if further investigated, to have a thousand. Gutta percha has not been known in this country ten years; and already it would be more difficult to say what purposes it has not been applied to, than to enumerate those to which it has been applied. Gun-cotton had scarcely proved in the saddest way its power to kill, before certain ingenious Americans showed that it has a remarkable power of healing, and forms the best sticking plaster for wounds. Surgeons have not employed ether and chloroform as anæsthetics for three years; and already an ether steam-engine is at work in Lyons, and a chloroform engine in London. Polarization of light, as a branch of science, is the enigma of enigmas to the public. What it is, is a small matter; but what work it can perform is a great one. It must turn to some use. The singularly ingenious Wheatstone, accordingly, has already partly satisfied the public by making polarized light act as a time-keeper, and has supplied us with a skypolariscope; a substitute for a sun-dial, but greatly superior to it in usefulness and accuracy. Of other sciences we need scarcely speak. Chemistry has long come down from her atomic altitudes and elective affinities, and now scours and dyes, brews, bakes, cooks, and compounds drugs and manures, railways are quite worn to pieces. We may soon expect, too, it seems, to shoot our natural enemies with saw-dust fired from guns of the long range pointed at the proper angle, as settled by the astronomer-royal; which will enable the Woolwich artillerymen (who will hereafter be recruited from the blind asylums) to bombard Canton, or wherever else the natural enemy is, and save the necessity of sending troops to the colonies. A snuff-box full of the new manure, about to be pa tented, will fertilize a field; and the same amount of the new explosive will dismantle the fortifica tions of Paris. By means of the fish-tail propeller to be shortly laid before the Admiralty, the Atlan tic will be crossed in three days. Dreams little less extravagant than these are floating through the brain of many at the present day; not so sharply defined, perhaps, as we have here laid them down, for then their visionary character would be detected; but sufficiently distinct to fill the dreamers with a feverish anticipation of what the future is to effect. We think it well, therefore, to tell the public betimes, that it is a little crazed at present on the subject of applied science, and must learn to moderate its expectations; otherwise, after some additional disappointments, destruction of life, property, and capital, a reäction will assuredly come-which, alike for the sake of the scientific and unscientific sections of the public, we should greatly deplore. For, to the unthinking faith of the people, and the instinctively sagacious empiricism of the unscientific and semiscientific, we are substantially indebted for many of the most precious gifts of modern science. These gifts are, no doubt, the true children of science; but, like the ostrich, she would have left them in the sand. They have to a great extent been nursed and developed into their energetic manhood by other than parental hands. Without science we should not have had our lighthouses, railways, locomo tive engines, ocean steamers, or telegraphs; but it needed something more than science to secure their speedy realization. Had not blind faith put her with contented composure. Electricity leaves hand into her pocket, and become shareholder and her thunderbolt in the sky, and like Mercury dis- banker, science must have wanted the black-board missed from Olympus, acts as letter-carrier and and chalk of actual trial, with which alone the message-boy. Even the mysterious magnetism- necessary problems could be solved. An unhesiwhich once seemed like a living principle to quiver tating empiricism stopped its ears, when it was in the compass-needle, is unclothed of mystery, and told by the oracles of science that no steam-ship set to drive turning lathes. The public perceives could possibly cross the Atlantic and incontinently all this, and has unlimited faith in man's power freighted goods for New York-which were duly to conquer nature. The credulity which formerly delivered! It was laid down, with equal authorfed upon unicorns, phœnixes, mermaids, vam- ity, that railways must go as nearly as possible in pires, krakens, pestilential comets, fairies, ghosts, straight lines and on dead levels; but empiricism witches, spectres, charms, curses, universal reme- would not read the statute-and railroads now me dies, pactions with Satan, and the like, now tampers with chemistry, electricity, and magnetism, as it once did with the invisible world. Shoes of swiftness, seven league boots, and Fortunatus' wishing caps, are banished even from the nursery; ander safely in winding curves, and up and down most formidable slopes. It is the combination, in short, of rigid, cautious, hesitating science, with bold, sagacious, and often reckless empiricism, that has made the Anglo-Saxon races in the old and |