Currency would compensate us for the money the feasibility of introducing a National Cur losses of the rebellion. rency by means of rechartering the Bank, with And this may be done so quietly, and will a provision that it should issue this Currency, grow so gradually, that all existing banking and no other. The President listened favora and other business will adapt itself easily to the bly; he told Congress that if applied to, he change. There is no uncertainty about it: the would furnish such a charter as he would be experiment has already been made in Great Bri- willing to approve. Congress would not ask tain by means of the Bank of England. That him, and the great opportunity passed away. At Corporation issues 30 millions sterling of notes, the end of thirty years it is again in our power. secured by 15 millions of Government Stock The pressure of financial necessity crowds us and 15 millions of gold. We have not, and do into the right path; the Treasury Department not need, any such gigantic Corporation to come has already entered upon it; the Press advobetween the Government and the people. cates it; the public is prepared for it, and Seoretary Chase has it in his power to take rank with Alexander Hamilton. Fully impressed more than forty years ago with these principles, the writer saw an opportunity of reducing them to practice when the charter of the United States Bank was about to expire. He visited President Jackson, to show Office of Littell's Living Age, TABLE OF SINKING FUND AND CURRENCY FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. This calculation, at the same rate, when extended to 1888, will show an investment of 1007 millions, of which 350 is Principal and 657 Interest. 10 489 29 10 260 520 10 528 31 10 270 540 10 569 34 10 280 560 10 613 37 10 290 580 POETRY.-Childless Mother, 530. Autumnal Thought, 530. A Deathless Love, 576. Rediviva, 576. SHORT ARTICLES.-A Live Yankee in China, 544. Recognition of the South by England, 567. Discovery of a Relic in Quinn Abbey, Ireland, 567. 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. THE CHILDLESS MOTHER. BY THOMAS MILLER. WITH one hand pressed against her head, Nor Grief be ever making moan! Among those pictures of the past The living mingling with the dead; What was, still linked to what is now,Like one who in a wildering maze Goes round about, but knows not how. "I sleep!—but in my love awake, Still feel about for him in bed, Shifting my arm, as if to make A pillow for his pretty head. And in my dreams again I fold My darling closer to my bosom. Then wake to find the spot is cold Where nestled once my blue-eyed blossom. His form in many a thing I see, In many a sound I seem to hear him And start, as if I still were near him. Which he in turn did tease and nurse; Still is the creaking rocking-horse, Of which I did so oft complain, When mounted there he shook the floor: Oh! could I have thee back again, My child! I ne'er would murmur more. That rocking sound awoke the bird, And it would sing, and thou wouldst shout Until the very house seemed stirred. Now-a sad silence hangs about, Made sadder if that poor bird sings. I fix my eyes upon the door, For back another voice it brings, Whose music I shall hear no more. Worse than a desert unto me My garden seems; I sit for hours, And all the while I only see A little coffin filled with flowers. And then sometimes I sit and mend The garments in thy gambols torn; And while I o'er them fondly bend, Forget they will no more be worn ;- And clasp my hands in misery. I now bow down on thrice a day ;- I doze at times, and fancy brings His footstep sounding on the stair: His little hands untie my strings, His busy fingers pull my hair. And then I waken with a start, And wonder how the inward eye Makes such a fluttering at the heart, Then say, 'This love can never die.' "I fondly hoped I should have seen Thy children gathering round my knee; Pictured the comfort they'd have been In my old age to thee and me, With her thou to thy heart wouldst fold: But while I sat and wove the chain In fancied links of lengthening gold, It suddenly was snapped in twain. "I saw thee in my dreams last night, Sitting beside a starry gate, 'Mid other children robed in light, Who for their mothers seemed to wait, As if they feared to go alone, Where golden pillars stretched away, And in my dream I heard thee say, Who by the starry gate did stand. While heavenly music 'gan to sound; And voices, for this earth too sweet, Anthemed within, The lost is found!" -St. James's Magazine. AN AUTUMNAL THOUGHT. And frisks the woodland hare, So easy a thing to die? That thus, dear leaves, ye fly, From the boughs where never again Without the wrestling and pain, From The Edinburgh Review. ter. This is of so delicate a nature, that, 1. Researches on the Solar Spectrum, and the when applied to the examination of the subSpectra of the Chemical Elements. By stances composing our globe, it yields most G. Kirchhoff, Professor of Physics in the new, interesting, and unlooked for informaUniversity of Heidelberg. Translated by Henry E. Roscoe, B.A., Professor of tion. At the same time it is of so vast an Chemistry in Owens College, Manches- application as to enable us to ascertain with ter. Cambridge and London: 1862. certainty the presence in the solar atmos2. Chemical Analysis by Spectrum Observa- phere-at a distance of ninety-five million tions. By Professors Bunsen and Kirch- miles-of metals, such as iron and magnehoff. Memoirs I. & II. Poggendorff's sium, well known on this earth, and likewise Annalen (Philosophical Magazine, 4th to give us good hopes of obtaining similar Series, vol. xx. p. 89, vol. xxii. p. 1). knowledge concerning the composition of the London, Dublin and Edinburgh. fixed stars. Here, indeed, is a triumph of science! The weak mortal, confined within a narrow zone on the surface of our insignificant planet, stretches out his intellectual powers through unlimited space, and estimates the chemical composition of matter contained in the sun and fixed stars with as much ease and certainty as he would do if he could handle it, and prove its reactions in the test-tube. 'Ir is unnecessary to insist, at the present day, upon the incalculable value of discoveries in natural science, however abstruse they may be, or however far-distant may appear their practical application. If we put aside for the moment that highest of all intellectual gratifications afforded by the prosecution of truth in every form, the perception of which is one of the chief distinctions of human from mere brute life, and if we look to the results of scientific discovery in benefiting mankind, we find so many striking examples of the existence of truths apparently altogether foreign to our every-day wants, which suddenly become points of great interest to the material prosperity and the moral advancement of the race, that we are less apt to utter the vulgar cry of "cui bono respecting any scientific discovery; and if we are not advanced enough to love science for the sake of her truth alone, we at least respect her for the sake of the power she bestows. Not once, but oftentimes in the annals of science, it has turned out that discoveries of the most recondite truths have ere long found their application in the physical structure of the world, and even in the common interests of men; for in the range of scientific investigation, it can never be said how near the deepest principle lies to the simplest facts. How can this result, at first sight as marvellous and impossible as the discovery of the elixir vitæ or the philosophers' stone, be arrived at? How did two German philosophers, quietly working in their laboratory in Heidelberg, obtain this inconceivable insight into the processes of creation? Are the conclusions which they have arrived at logical consequences of bond fide observations and experiments-the only true basis of reasoning in physical science-or do they not savor somewhat of that mysticism for which our German friends are famous ? Such questions as these will occur to all who hear of this discovery; and it will be our present aim, in reviewing the publications which are placed at the head of this article, to answer these and similar questions, and to show that, far from being mystical, these results are as clear as noon-day, being the plain and necessary deductions from exact and laborious experiment. And here we may express A great discovery in natural knowledge, our satisfaction at the change which has ocfor which no equivalent in direct benefit to curred within the last few years in the direcmankind has as yet been found, but which tion given to the powerful intelligence and nevertheless excites our liveliest interest and the indefatigable industry of Germany. The admiration, has lately been made in the rap- labors of the Germans in physical science idly advancing science of Chemistry. This have far surpassed in their results those specdiscovery, which is one of the grandest and ulative researches which had rendered "Germost important of all the recent additions to man philosophy" the synonym of all that science, consists in the establishment of a was unintelligible and perplexing: and it is new system of chemical analysis-of a new impossible to overrate the services which power to investigate the constitution of mat- men like Liebig and Bunsen (the chemist) and Kirchhoff have rendered to mankind. | that these colors were no peculiar effect of In chemistry, Germany may now be said to the prism, because a second prism did not take the lead of England, of France, and of produce a fresh alteration of the light. He Italy already she has paid an ample con- showed that the white light is thus split up tribution to the common stores of human into its various constituent parts; and by knowledge. It is a remarkable circumstance bringing all these colored rays together in that although for several years the once pro- the eye, and again obtaining the white image ductive fields of German literature have been of the hole in the shutter, he proved that the comparatively barren, or have at least pre- kind of light which produces on the eye the sented us with no work of the highest order, sensation we term whiteness, is in reality the supply of German works on natural sci- made up of an infinite number of differently ence is immense, and the quality of these colored rays. works excellent. મ The colored band thus obtained by Newton did not, however, reveal to him all the The only channel through which we on the characteristic beauties of solar light, because earth can obtain information of any kind in his spectrum the tints were created by the whatever concerning the sun and stars, con- partial superposition of an infinite number sists in the vivifying radiance which these of differently colored images of the round luminaries pour forth into surrounding space. hole through which the light came. It was The light and heat which we receive from not until the year 1802 that Dr. Wollaston, the sun not only supply the several varieties by preventing the different colored lights of force which we find in action upon the from overlapping, and thus interfering with surface of the earth, thus rendering the whole each other, discovered that great peculiarity human family truly children of the sun; but in solar light which has led to such startling a knowledge of their nature enables us to as- discoveries in the composition of the sun itcertain the chemical composition of those far- self. Dr. Wollaston noticed, when he aldistant bodies upon which the existence of lowed the sunlight to fall through a narrow our race so intimately depends. The exam-slit upon the prism, that a number of dark ination of the nature of sunlight and star- lines cutting up the colored portions of the light has led to the foundation of a science of stellar chemistry; and it is likewise upon the examination of the light given off by terrestrial matter, when through heat it becomes luminous, that the new method of spectrum analysis is founded—a method so delicate as to enable the analyst to detect with ease and certainty so minute a quantity as the one one hundred and eighty millionth part of a grain of substance. The world owes to the great Newton its first knowledge of the nature of sunlight. In 1675 Newton presented to the Royal Society his ever-memorable treatise on Optics; and amongst the numerous important discoveries there disclosed and recorded, was one demonstrating the constitution of white light. He describes what he observed when he passed a beam of sunlight, from a hole in the shutter of a darkened room, through a triangular piece of glass called a prism. He noticed that, instead of a spot of white light corresponding to the hole in the shutter, a bright band of variously colored lights, showing all the tints of the rainbow, was thrown on the wall of his room. Newton concluded spectrum, made their appearance. These dark lines, or spaces, of which Wollaston counted only seven, indicate the absence of certain distinct kinds of rays in the sunlight; they are, as it were, shadows on the bright background. It is, however, to the celebrated German optician Fraunhofer, that we owe the first accurate examination of these singular lines. By a great improvement in the optical arrangements employed, Fraunhofer, rediscovering these lines, was able to detect a far larger number of them in the solar spectrum than had been observed by Wollaston. He counted no less than five hundred and ninety of these dark lines, stretching throughout the length of the spectrum from red to violet, and in the year 1815 drew a very beautiful map of them, some of the most important of which he designated by the letters of the alphabet. Fraunhofer carefully measured the relative distances between these lines, and found that they did not vary in sunlight examined at different times. He also saw these same dark fixed lines in reflected as well as in direct solar-light; for |