DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION OF BRITISH INDIA. 191 should imagine from the appearance of them that they are not such favorable specimens as could be produced by forcing the particles offer no practical difficulties, whilst the expense of converting an almost waste product into a very valuable substance is but trifling. Part of an Article in The Examiner. portion of oxide of iron, silica, and other gritty materials, are first finely powdered, and boiled in hydrochloric acid, to remove lime, part of the iron, and similar impurities. of the powder together in some of the The next operation consists in heating the hydraulic presses specially constructed for dried powder with a mixture of diluted sul- this purpose, the air being at the same time phuric acid and chlorate of potash. This exhausted from its pores. By this mode of mixture has the property of evolving a con- treatment we have no doubt that blocks siderable quantity of oxygen gas when it is superior in quality to the finest native black heated, and the graphite enters into some lead could be obtained. The product may be sort of combination with this gas and the considered as chemically pure carbon, and acid, the nature of which is, however, not leaves no appreciable amount of ash on invery well understood. Professor Brodie cineration. Professor Brodie's process has shows specimens of this sulphuric acid com- now been before the scientific world for some pound; in appearance it is very similar to years, but we are not aware that it has yet the coarsely powdered graphite, the lustre, been taken up commercially by any firm; however, being somewhat different. When this apathy on the part of our manufacturers this is heated in the dry state a remarkable is rather surprising, as the process seems to change takes place; the gas which is intimately combined with the graphite is suddenly evolved, and tears the particles of the mineral asunder, swelling it up to twenty or thirty times its original volume, and reducing it to a most intimate state of division. The operation being almost parallel to that brought out some years ago by Claussen for treating flax, the fibres of which were blown out and disintegrated in a similar manner by the sudden liberation of carbonic acid in the pores, reducing it to a material similar to cotton. The disintegrated graphite is then shaken up with water, and the coarser parTHIS is but the first volume of a large ticles, consisting of gritty matter, etc., work, and therefore we content ourselves with quickly fall to the bottom of the liquid, the a few words of notice, and reserve a full acgraphite remaining suspended. This is then count for its completion. The author has poured off from the heavier particles, and had experience enough of the people and the suspended graphite separated from it by country about which he writes to give his filtration, or other means, and dried. In account of them a vivid reality; but not so this form it presents the appearance of shriv-long a one, as has sometimes been the case, elled up leaves, not unlike some of Dr. Hassell's tea. It has the color of black lead, minical and Islamic proclivities. as to disanglicize him and give him Brahbut is quite devoid of lustre, and is excessively light, so much so that it is almost impossible to remove the cover from the jar without sending a cloud of the powder into the air. The original appearance of the graphite can, however, be restored to this light powder by pressure: a portion squeezed between the thumb and finger immediately flakes into one mass, and the slightest friction communicates to it a brilliant lustre. The last of the series of bottles exhibited by the professor contains several solid lumps of graphite produced by squeezing the powder together under immense pressure. We The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India. Volume the First, containing the Acquisition and Administration of the Punjab. By Edwin Arnold, M.A., University College, Oxford; late Principal Poona College; and Fellow of the University of Bombay. Saunders, Otley, and Co. In his introductory chapter Mr. Arnold gives a brief but graphic and impartial outline of our mad and fatal enterprise, the Afghan War, which certainly led to our wars with the Sikhs, and eventually to the crowning disaster, the rebellion of the Sepoys. We give such part of his account as our limits will admit : "It will be useful briefly to recount the and influencing his policy. To do so, it is events preceding Lord Dalhousie's accession, necessary to look back to the appointment of Lord Auckland in 1835. In that year our frontier on the North did not pass the desert strip along the Indus and its affluent, the Sutlej, from the Indian Ocean to the highlands of Gurwhal. The commercial character of the Company had just suffered extinction by the Charter of 1833. Ostensibly there remained to it the control of political and administrative affairs, but in subordinating her masters, the Home Government had brought India into the circle of European politics, and an independent policy there was no longer easy. The change soon made itself apparent. On insufficient grounds the ministry conceived the idea that Russia meditated dangerous advances; and they determined to anticipate an attack, which to await would have been to baffle. The support they relied on was as vain as the evidence which satisfied them was vague. On the side of prudence were the bourans of the northern plains, their blinding drifts of dust and snow, bitter frosts, salt lakes, and steep defiles, natural enemies to the invaders of Hindostan on the side of an offensive movement not much more than the nervousness of a minister. Lords Durham and Clanricarde, ambassadors at St. Petersburg, protested uselessly against the apprehension; the Muscovite Ambassador in London declared his master innocent of any hostile design; and the Czar went so far as to change the staff of his eastern embassage. The English Government refused to be reassured, and persisted in construing the attack upon Herat by the Shah of Persia as a first step in the interests of Russia. Yet if the penetration of an envoy could be cheated, and the word of a Russian deceive, facts might have seemed to reprove precipitation. The Shah could not take Herat, and the English force despatched to Karrack was sufficient to raise the siege, and could even have seized the Persian capital. Sir A. Burnes, who had been sent to Cabul, found Dost Mahommed inconveniently reasonable, and willing to remove every cause of suspicion. He wanted Peshawur, which had been an Affghan fief, but he wanted the friendship of the English only less. His desire to recover the territory wrested from the Doorannee throne by the Sikhs was resented as an affront to our ally Runjeet Singh, and the presence of a Russian major at his court was held to implicate him in the Russian plot. In vain Burnes deprecated the perilous quarrel with a well-disposed man: in vain he suggested compromise upon compromise, and declared Dost Mahommed's pretensions reasonable, and his the only natural authority in Affghanistan. His representations were set aside. a serious but pardonable independence, if they had not since been tampered with, and their author's reputation offered up on the altar of ministerial consistency. History, at last informed, rescues from unfair neglect the memory of a public servant as faithful to his duty as he was singularly fitted for it; and pronounces the official records of the time unworthy of firm reliance. The burden of perverting past documents, and of throwing doubt on those to come, is heavy, and rests, with that of the subsequent disaster, on statesmen to whose easy honesty of intention a generous nation has pardoned their infatuation. In October of 1837, Lord Auckland issued a proclamation to the troops at Simla, which announced the alliance of the British with Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah. By the terms of this we were to depose the rulers of Cabul and Candahar, and set up in their place a sovereign, for twenty years a stranger to the studies of government, and not less unwelcome to his subjects than the cares of state to his own declining age. The rest of the story is too well known. The Auckland War cost the British forces five thousand lives, sixty thousand camels, £12,000,000 sterling, and that which outweighs even the first and dearest item, the reputation of invincibility which in the impressible East had become a bulwark to our fortunate power. To carry on the war, fifty thousand men were added to the army, and a contingent from Bombay was despatched by a detour of nine hundred miles, through the Indus Valley, thus preparing a cause of quarrel with the Scinde Ameers. The army united at the mouth of the Bolan pass under Sir J. Keane, and though not seriously opposed, effected the passage in such confusion that Shah Soojah's force was reduced by twothirds. The Khan of Khelat declined to assist an expedition doomed by its own contrivers. 'You may take Candahar and Ghuznee,' he said, and even Cabul, but you cannot conquer the snows; and when they fall, you will neither be able to maintain your army nor to withdraw it.' Candahar and Ghuznee yielded, Cabul surrendered, and the English were masters of Affghanistan, but on so insecure a tenure, that in fourteen months they were thirtythree times engaged with Affghan troops, and thirteen times without profit. Upon the withdrawal of a portion of the expedition, the unpopularity of the imposed sovereign began to be shown, and the Affghans learning a lesson from our fears, made overtures to the Czar. In 1840, a Russian army did, as a counter-demonstration, march upon Khiva. It was buried in the snow-drifts, or perished of famine on the foodless steppes of Mid-Asia, comparatively few survivors returning, to humble Russian hope, and calm English apprehensions." The Part POETRY.-Garibaldi Down, 195. The Crisis, 195. Finding a Relic, 195. ing of Ulysses, 195. The Touch of Nature, 221. Autumn Joys, 221. The Flag, 239. The Drummer-Boy of Marblehead, 239. Summer Evenings long ago, 239. Time of Revolution, 1860, 240. An Apple Gathering, 240. A Song in SHORT ARTICLES.-Sensation Paragraphs, 221. Historical Scraps, 230. The Church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, 230. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. Or work forgotten-her dark eyes closed From the work her fingers would touch no more But your cheek is wet, and your lip is pale- L. C. THE CRISIS. THE cannon's thunders jar the air, While, mingled with the battle-cry, Swells the blown bugle's ringing blare; But over all I hear the prayer Breathed by our sires in days gone by. 'Twas theirs to win: 'tis ours to guard; They faltered not when faint and few; And shall we deem the service hard Who bear the banner many-starred, O'er which their victor eagle flew ? Oh, not in vain their memories plead That we should walk the narrow way, Content to scorn each selfish creed, And in our father's valor read The noble lesson of To-day. THE PARTING OF ULYSSES. I DARE not live, thy loving thrall; Is "onward e'en through hell!' Stay me not; raise, dread queen, thine eyes; Call me not cruel! curse my fate, Good rowers, take your place! Ah, loose thy clinging arms! their sheath Is life a boon, if I must part Yield me my mates, my frolic crew; Dear Ithaca, my rocky home, List, glittering Circe! wedded love Fair stars, that blind the day! By magie wiles made once thine own, Uncharmed, my weakness stands like stone, The gods draw back their lingering loan, Farewell! my crew, give way! W. -Once a Week. From The Eclectic Review. professors a model for imitation in teaching. the Secession. The writings of Dr. Lawson have long been well known to us, and we HERE is another of those entertaining have desired to know more than is conveyed biographic Scottish ana, in which we have in the very slight sketch of him prefixed to very much of the interest we find in the life a posthumous volume by Dr. Belfrage; but of Jupiter Carlyle and in Dean Ramsay's we were not prepared for a volume of such "Sketches of Scottish Character." The singular interest as this which Dr. Macfarbook would, we believe, have gained by lane has produced; nor were we prepared some abbreviation; it is full of very racy to find in Dr. Lawson so truly a benevolent anecdotes of old Scotch men and Scottish and accomplished man. As the works of life and manners, and it describes a section Johnson would convey but a slight concepof life upon which the volume to which we tion of the man without the pages of Boshave already referred does not touch. Here well, so whoever would see this great, wise, we have none of those scenes which, in the most lovable, and venerable oddity of a autobiography of Alexander Carlyle, show scholar must read the pages of Dr. Macfarhow the world and the flesh-not to men- lane. Students for the ministry will find a tion the third and more unpleasant party model for their imitation in acquisition, and can keep company with church professions. Such scenes, indeed abundantly justify the George Lawson was born in March, 1749, Secession in its departure. In this book we at Boghouse, a small farmhouse about two have, indeed, a most interesting document, miles from the village of West Linton, Peeillustrating the power and the piety of the men blesshire. He sprung from the peasant race of old. The men who are seen in these pages of old Scotland, his father uniting the work all belong to the schools of the prophets. It of a carpenter to the rental of a small farm. has been the pleasure of Carlyle and Som- He was, even in Scotland, remarkable for erville to give us pleasant glimpses of the his thrift and industry, and was sometimes Humes and Robertsons, and the Homes and known to begin and complete the making of Logans-men whose reputation was in the a plow before the sun rose; perhaps the worlds of literature and politics. Dr. Mac-plow was more in harmony with the agriculfarlane has varied the picture; has introduced us to many interesting persons grouped around his central hero-men who, in comparison with those names we have mentioned above, were obscure and unknown, but who fill a large circle in popular estimation, who lived and trod their hallowed round of humble and holy duty in their plain and unadorned churches and scattered mountain villages, and fed the flocks of God. Our Scottish neighbors are true hero-worshippers. Reverence is their true national characteristic homage, too, to great men. We do not venerate as they venerate, either the divine or human. It must be admitted that our national homage to genius or talent always becomes conventional or valetized-it is never, or seldom, spontaneous and free; and the little work before us, in its way, has all this national trait in it. It is a tribute of veneration to the men of the early days of The Life and Times of George Lawson, D.D., Selkirk, Professor of Theology to the Associate Synod: with Glimpses of Scottish Character from 1720 to 1820. By the Rev. John Macfarlane, LL.D. Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Co. London: Hamilton and Co. 1862. tural ways and means of that age than our own, but still it is an illustration of the industry of the man. The parents of George Lawson were connected with the Secession Church at West Linton; and although in these his first days he did not look out upon the wild and magnificent scenery of the Scottish mountains or moorlands, he passed his youth amidst the scenes hallowed by the blood of the Covenanters. Very frequently the famous Ralph Erskine came to preach in the neighborhood; and among the farmhouses and lowly homesteads of the neighborhood there dwelt a people who were accustomed to revolve in their minds and in their conversations the most abstruse problems of systematic divinity. In most of their houses might be found the works of Owen and Manton and Boston and Baxter; they met, too, at each other's firesides for the purposes of religious discussion and devotional exercise. How different are these things to any we have or hear of! How have we mended in our religious doings! Truly, it makes us mournful to think how far all these usages are from any we have among us now. |