him, except those he took prisoners, in order to eat them, like oysters, while they were yet alive. It was a great deliverance when he fell a victim to Arthur's prowess; though there was another giant, named Ritho, who was, if possible, still more formidable: for Ritho, not content with warring on the meaner sort of people, actually clothed himself in furs which were made entirely of the beards of the kings he had killed! Him, also, as was right fitting, Arthur slew; but how he disposed of his remarkable costume, we believe is not related, which is a sad oversight of the historian.

Such are some of the eccentric accounts of men and things which, under the name of history, formerly passed current with the world. And it is to be observed that they are not taken from obscure writers, but from the works of high Church dignitaries, who were the most liberally-cultured and most intelligent persons of their generation.

Geoffrey of Monmouth was raised to the Bishopric of St. Asaph—a preferment which he is said to owe to the reputation of his book, which, moreover, on its first publication, was dedicated to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the son of Henry the First. As is remarked by Mr. Buckle-to whose researches we are indebted for the group of curiosities here collected-"A book thus stamped with every possible mark of approbation, is surely no bad measure of the age in which it was admired." One has only to compare it with any modern

history, conceived in the spirit of modern investigation, to perceive the immense progress that has been made in the methods of historical inquiry. Such a comparison, moreover, affords an evident and very important proof of our advances in civilization-of the nearer and more perfect accuracy which is now demanded and attained in all departments of human interest and belief; proof, in short, that men are very considerably more cultivated and enlightened than they used to be; that they have reached a stage of intellectual development, in which Truth, and not Fables, is required to satisfy their mental cravings; and that if truth can not be had, in historical or other provinces, it is best to admit that in such provinces there is nothing certain to be known, and with that result to be content. There is no good in tilling an utterly barren soil; and a wise husbandman will always choose to labor only in fields that are likely to yield him a return, in the shape of some reasonable crop. The history of every nation runs back into fabulous traditions, even as navigable rivers have their sources in intricate mountainregions; and neither rivers nor nations are to be estimated by the misty remoteness of their origin-but rather by their services in the divine plan of the universe; in that vast and magnificent economy in which all earthly and human things are working, and are ordained to work, in subservience to the appointment and will of the Creator.

BIRD of the sunny spring,

Oh! thou art heralding Moments that soon will bring

Roses loved well.

Violets and cowslips blow, Bluebells and fern-leaves grow, Where, a short while ago, Icicles fell.

Ah! well thou know'st again, Past is cold Winter's reign, Flow'rets in Nature's train,

Rise from decay.

Up from the sunny dells,
Gladly thy music swells,
Welcome as chiming bells

On God's blessed day.

Glad are thy tidings, bird,
Joyous thy strain is heard,
Sweet as a kindly word,

Breathed to the sad;
For when thy voice we hear,
Summer we know is near,
Earth's brightest forms appear,
All things are glad.

ADDISON, on Saturday, the twentysecond of November, 1712, delighted the readers of the Spectator with a paper on anatomy, so charmingly written that all the unpleasant details of the science are kept out of sight, while abundant evidence is given from the outward and inward make of the human body, that it is the work of a Being transcendently wise and powerful. As yet Geology, in the sense which it now bears, was not. If the structure of the earth was alluded to at all, the allusion to it was mere crude speculation. Paleontology, the now vigorous handmaiden of Geology, by whose aid the medals which illustrate the history of the earth are so plainly deciphered, was nonexistent. If any one was induced to look at any of the numerous organic remains whose preservation in a petrified state is now accepted as incontrovertible proof that life from its earliest manifestation in the paleozoic rocks was followed by death, the forms were regarded as mere curiosities. The extinct fauna, which is now, thanks to our palæontologists, among whom Professor Owen stands preeminent, almost as well known as that which at

present exists, was hardly noticed; or if

attention was called to the multitudinous

examples turned up by the plow or the pickax, they were attributed to a vis plastica in the earth itself. Yet we find plastica in the earth itself. Yet we find Addison, in the second paragraph of the paper of the twenty-second of November,

* Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology. By WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D.D., F.R.S., Reader in Geology and Mineralogy in the University of Oxford, and Dean of Westminster. By Professor OWEN, F.R.S., etc.; Professor PHILLIPS, M.A., LL.D., etc.; Mr. ROBERT BROWN, F.R.S., etc. And a Memoir of the Author. Edited by FRANCIS T. BUCKLAND, M.A., Assistant Surgeon

Second Life Guards. 8vo. 2 vols. London: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & Co. 1858.

and in the beginning of the last century, writing thus in the spirit of prophecy:

"The body of an animal is an object adequate to our senses. It is a particular system of Providence that lies in a narrow compass. The eye is able to command it, and by successive inquiries can search into all its parts. Could the body of the whole earth, or indeed the whole universe, be thus submitted to the examination of our senses, were it not too big and disproportioned for our inquiries, too unwieldy for the management of the eye and hand, there is no question but it would appear to us as curious and well-contrived a frame as that of the human body. We should see the same concatenation and subserviency, the same necessity and usefulness, the same beauty and harmony in all and every of its parts, as what we discover in the body of every single animal."

Few words could better foreshadow the work before us, written twenty-one years since at the request of Mr. Davies Gilbert, then President of the Royal Society, in the Earl of Bridgewater, to illustrate pursuance of the testamentary wishes of the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." There was but one opinion as to the fitness of the selection; and when it was known that the President had chosen Dr. Buckland as the exponent of the geological branch of the subject, every one competent to pronounce judgment felt that here, at least, the right man was in the right place.

When the book appeared in 1837, it fully justified the foregone conclusion. The arrangement, the comprehensive view of the extensive subject, the aptness of the argument, the brilliant descriptive power, the number and accuracy of the illustra tions, combined to make the two volumes the most attractive of the treatises: no small result, when all were so good. In the production of this remarkable work,

Dr. Buckland received the willing assistance of many scientific friends, whose aid was handsomely acknowledged at the commencement of the treatise. Nor must we forget the great help which he derived from one of the best women that ever lived, his good and gifted wife. Well up in the subject, and an accomplished mistress of her pen and pencil, she wrote and wrought at the dictation of her husband, perseveringly and indefatigably. Nearly the whole of the Ms. was in her handwriting. Nor let it be supposed that the slightest blame is to be attached to the memory of the eloquent author for suffering such a consumption of midnight oil by his affectionate and gifted partner. The hearts of both were in the work. Hear the son of this exemplary wife and mother:

"During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honor of editing, my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this, often till the sun's rays shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking, the wife to rest her weary

hand.

"Not only with her pen did she render material assistance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate illustrations and finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's works (see several drawings in Vol. II. of this Treatise, likewise in Cuvier's Ossemens Fossiles.) She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken fossils; and there are many specimens in the Oxford Museum now exhbiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape from a mass of broken and almost comminuted fragments. It was her occupation also to label the specimens, which she did in a particularly neat way; and there is hardly a fossil or bone in the Oxford Museum which has not her handwriting upon it.

"Notwithstanding her devotion to her husband's pursuits, she did not neglect the education of her children, occupying her mornings in superintending their instruction in sound and useful knowledge. The sterling value of her labors they now, in after life, fully appreciate, and feel most thankful that they were blessed with so good a mother. She also occupied herself much in schemes of charity for promoting the comfort and education of the villagers of Islip, (Dr. Buckland's rectory near Oxford,) where her name will long be remembered with love and respect among its poorer inhabitants.'

Sir Roderick Murchison, in his obituary memoir of Dr. Buckland, justly characterizes her as "A truly excellent and intellectual woman, who, aiding him

Never was tribute better deserved. Her whole life was spent in doing good. Twenty-one years had elapsed since the appearance of the Bridgewater Treatise; and twenty-one years in this vigorous age of improvement, when the car of Science is driven onward with a rapidity strongly contrasted with the sluggish advances of the last century, produce marvelous changes. A new edition, bringing down the progress made in geology since the time of its first appearance to the Saturday night preceding its second was called for. The call has been well answered by the author's eldest son.

But

The names of the eminent men which adorn the title-page as assistants of the efficient editor, form a sufficient guarantee of the value of the present edition. it is a remarkable proof of the sterling soundness of the original work that so much remains unchanged. The alteration of some names in accordance with the present geological nomenclature was of course necessary, and some emendations consequent on the advanced state of the science were requisite. The lucid arrangement and argument, and the highly interesting details, remain as the hand of the gifted author left them.

tion of the work, you will naturally wish But before we enter upon the considerato know something of the author.

William Buckland was born on the twenty-fourth of March, 1784, at Axminster, in Devonshire. His father, the Rev. Charles Buckland, was Rector of Templeton and Trusham, in that county; and the family of his mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Oke, had since the time of the Stuarts occupied extensive lands in the neighborhood of Combpyne, near Axminster, where her father, a landed proprietor, lived.

Near William's birthplace were the Axminster lias quarries, abounding in organic remains. His father,* who like many clergymen of that time, took great interest in the improvement of roads, made his son the companion of his walks, and both collected ammonites and other shells from the quarries; so that young Buckland had fossils for playthings. An inclin

in several of his most difficult researches, has labored well in her vocation to render her children worthy of their father's name."

*The Rev. Charles Buckland was afflicted with blindness, the consequence of an accident, during the last twenty-two years of his life.

ation for natural history showed itself early, unfortunately for the poor birds, in a talent for finding their nests and collecting their eggs; and his ichthyological propensities were manifested at the expense of the flounders, roaches, eels, minnows, and miller's thumbs, whose habits he studied in the Axe. The birds'-nesting passion must have been very strong. We have seen the Dean feed a nest of young jackdaws, which had been taken from the towers of Westminster Abbey, with all the skill and something of the satisfaction of the boy.

When William was thirteen years old, he was sent one for one year to the grammar-school at Tiverton, and when he had attained the age of fourteen, Dr. Huntingford, Warden of Winchester, moved thereunto by the good offices of Mr. Pole Carew, then (1798) Speaker of the House of Commons, gave him a nomination to the noble foundation of William of Wickham. This was a great step. The boy's uncle, the Rev. J. Buckland, Rector of Warborough, Oxford, and fellow of Corpus, wrote to his father: "As William appears to excel your other boys by many degrees in talent and industry, he will probably make a better return for extraordinary expense you may incur on this occasion." These words of a stern but sagacious and judicious man, who was ever encouraging or admonishing his nephew, flowed from a prophetic pen.

any

Established at Winchester, the boy soon became familiar with the chalk formation. He could not pass along the pathway to the playground on St. Catherine's Hill, without coming close upon great chalk-pits, abounding in petrified sponges and other fossils. He could not dig the field-mice out of their holes in the vallum of the ancient camp on the top of the hill, where the Roman soldiers once kept watch and ward, without penetrating the surface of the chalk. Nor did he not hunt for mole-crickets in the valley,

"Where Health, a Naiad fair, With rosy cheek and dripping hair, From the sultry noon tide beam, Dives in Itchen's crystal stream." Such were young William Buckland's amusements. "He was slow to learn, taking time thoroughly to understand what he read, but what he once comprehended he never forgot." He construed Latin remarkably well, and was ready

with the nearest corresponding English words in the rendering of difficult phrases. His uncle says of him: "William is a very good Latin scholar, not a very good Greek one, and a very bad English one." The writer was, we suspect, in no very good humor when he was delivered of the last member of that sentence; for it certainly does not agree with the boy's acknowledged aptitude at applying the nearest corresponding English expressions to the construction of difficult Latin passages. That he was above the average is manifest from the observation of Dr. Goddard, the head-master, who on one occasion, when the boy had lost several places in his class, and immediately afterwards retook them, said to him: "Well, Buckland, it is as difficult to keep a good boy at the bottom of the class, as it is to keep a cork under water "—and Dr. Goddard was no flatterer.

Buckland left Winchester, leaving the usual tablet inscribed with his name; and, in 1801, became a candidate for a vacant scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, by the advice of his uncle; and on the thirteenth of May in that year, had the satisfaction of thus writing to his father:

been elected the Senior Scholar for Devonshire, "I am happy to inform you that I have just after a course of many days' rigorous examination against eight competitors; all of whom, especially Moore and Strong, have received high commendations from the electors a very formidable phalanx, among whom were the Head of Tiverton School, the Head of Gloster, the Head of Truro, and the Head of Exeter the testimonial Dr. Huntingford sent of my behavior was highly approved of by the President and electors."

The scholar of Corpus, in his journeyings from Axminster to his college through Charmouth, purchased for a college friend such specimens of lias fossils as were brought for sale to coach-passengers by itinerant collectors from the cliffs above; but though this friendly act may have revived his recollection of his old playthings, the ammonites, and have made him familiar with the form of belemnites, it does not appear that he then thought of collecting for himself; indeed, we think we may safely assert that he did not.

In 1804, he took his Bachelor's degree, and in 1809 was elected Fellow of Corpus. In the same year he was admitted into holy orders at the Chapel Royal, St.

James's, by the Bishop of Winchester. The interval between his Bachelor's and Master's degree afforded him leisure to attend the lectures of Dr. Kidd on mineralogy and chemistry, and of Sir Christopher Pegge, then Regius Professor of Anatomy. These no doubt revived the early taste for natural history, and fanned the latent fire: but the time of the Fellow of Corpus was principally occupied in taking pupils, and no one would have then thought of the road by which he was to arrive at fortune and fame. One of those accidents, slight in themselves, but which have in so many instances exercised an influence on the career of remarkable men, went far to pave the way for Buckland's brilliant future.

There was at this time a young undergraduate of Oriel College whose father possessed a very fine collection of shells and corals, and a very good cabinet of minerals and organic fossils, all of which the under-graduate had arranged according to the systems of that day before he had seen fourteen summers, and before he was entered Oxford in the early part of the present century. As the old cock crows, so crows the young; and the spirit of collecting was strong in the youth. Birds of a feather soon get together, and the under-graduate was kindly noticed by the graduate. On one occasion, after a breakfast at Corpus, during which the under-graduate had held forth rather enthusiastically to his host upon geology in general, and organic fossils in particular, both set out to walk over to Oriel, to see what fossils old Snow, the quarryman, (who was expected,) had brought for the undergraduate. As they were passing across Corpus quad toward the neighboring college, Buckland, kicking over two loose flints lying on the gravel, said:

"I suppose you will say next that these are organic, and once had life."

66

They contain what once had life; and, if you will crack one, you will find the remains of a sponge, or of an alcyonium." "We'll soon see that. Mr. Manciple, be so good as to bring a hammer."

แ

The hammer was brought, and a blow struck on one of the flints, which happened to be a very good specimen, and exhibited just what the under-graduate had foretold. Without saying a word, Buckland put the pieces in his pocket, and walked on to the neighboring college,

where old Snow opened his budget, and the under-graduate explained the contents as well as he could. Among the specimens were two marsupial jaws - from Stonesfield,* one of which, at his earnest desire, the under-graduate spared to his friend. A walk to Shotover hill followed, and within a week afterward, Buckland was seen riding into Oxford with a huge cornu ammonis at his saddle-bow. He thus writes in a Ms., which is in the possession of his son Frank, the editor of the present edition of the Treatise:

took my first lesson in Field Geology, in a walk "In my earlier years of residence at Oxford, I to Shotover Hill, with Mr. William John Broderip, (late magistrate at the Westminster Policecourt, then of Oriel College,) whose early knowledge of conchology enabled him to speak scientifically on the fossil shells in the Oxford oolite formation, and of the fossil shells and sponges of the green sand of the Vale of Pusey, (Pewsey,) near Devizes, as to which he had been instructed by the Rector of Pusey, (Pewsey,) Mr. Townsend, the friend and fellow-laborer of Mr. William Smith, the father of English Geology. The fruits of my first walk with Mr. Broderip formed the nucleus of my collection for my own cabinet; which in forty years expanded into the large amount which I have placed in the Oxford Geological Museum."

The impulse was now given, and the earnest energy of Buckland soon carried him deep into the subject. He collected every thing that he could lay his hands on illustrative of it. Long afterward, and when he had attained to his well-deserved eminence, he was wont to introduce Mr. Broderip to strangers as his "tutor in geology," not a little to their surprise, as they marked the difference of age. The answer of the "tutor" was as obvious as it was true: "The pupil has become far wiser than his teacher."

Sir Roderick Murchison thus writes:

"The study of the collection made by his juvenile companion, including the jaw of a marsufirst awakened the dormant talent of Buckland. pial quadruped found in the Stonesfield slate, Cultivating the friendship of the precocious fossilist, he soon developed that peculiar power which characterized him through life, of catching up and assimilating with marvelous rapidity, every thing that illustrated the new science of