any rate, we see in the present diffusion of literature the tendency to universality of which I have spoken.

*

*

*

*

*

The remarks now made on literature might be extended to the fine arts. In these we see, too, the tendency to universality. It is said that the spirit of the great artists has died out; but the taste for their works is spreading. By the improvements of engraving, and the invention of casts, the genius of the great masters is going abroad. Their conceptions are no longer pent up in galleries open to but few, but meet us in our homes, and are the household pleasures of millions. Works, designed for the halls and eyes of emperors, popes, and nobles, find their way, in no poor representations, into humble dwellings, and sometimes give a consciousness of kindred powers to the child of poverty. The art of drawing, which lies at the foundation of most of the fine arts, and is the best education of the eye for nature, is becoming a branch of common education, and in some countries is taught in schools to which all classes are admitted.

I am reminded, by this remark, of the most striking feature of our times, and showing its tendency to universality, and that is, the unparalleled and constantly accelerated diffusion of education. This greatest of arts, as yet little understood, is making sure progress, because its principles are more and more sought in the common nature of man; and the great truth is spreading, that every man has a right to its aid. Accordingly, education is becoming the work of nations. Even in the despotic governments of Europe, schools are open for every child without distinction; and not only the elements of reading and writing, but music and drawing are taught, and a foundation is laid for future progress in history, geography, and physical science. The greatest minds are at work on popular education. The revenues of states are applied most liberally, not to the universities for the few, but to the common schools. Undoubtedly, much remains to be done; especially a new rank in society is to be given to the teacher; but even in this respect a revolution has commenced, and we are beginning to look on the guides of the young as the chief benefactors of mankind.

Thus we see in the intellectual movements of our times the tendency to expansion, to universality; and this must continue. It is not an accident, or an inexplicable result, or

a violence on nature; it is founded in eternal truth. Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against, when it is doomed to ignorance. The divine gift of intelligence was bestowed for higher uses than bodily labour, than to make hewers of wood, drawers of water, ploughmen, or servants. Every being, so gifted, is intended to acquaint himself with God and his works, and to perform wisely and disinterestedly the duties of life. Accordingly, when we see the multitude of men beginning to thirst for knowledge, for intellectual action, for something more than animal life, we see the great design of Nature about to be accomplished; and society, having received this impulse, will never rest till it shall have taken such a form as will place within every man's reach the means of intellectual culture. This is the revolution to which we are tending: and without this, all outward political changes would be but children's play, leaving the great work of society yet to be done. CHANNING.

A NIGHT AT THE HERRING FISHERY.

The night gradually darkened, the sky assumed a dead and leaden hue, as if surcharged with vapour-a dull grey mist roughened the outline of the distant hills, or in wide and frequent gaps blotted them from the landscape. The sea, roughened by the rising breeze, reflected the deeper hues of the sky with an intensity approaching to black; it seemed a dark uneven pavement, that absorbed every ray of the remaining light. A calm silvery patch, some fifteen or twenty yards in extent, and that resembled, from the light it caught, a bright opening in a dark sky, came moving slowly through the black. It seemed merely a patch of water coated with oil; but, obedient to some other moving power than that of either the tide or the wind, it sailed aslant our line of buoys a stonecast from our bows-lengthened itself along the line to thrice its former extent-paused as if for a moment—and then three of the buoys, after momentarily erecting themselves with a sudden jerk on their narrower base, slowly sank. "One, two, three buoys," exclaimed one of the fishermen, reckoning them as they disappeared, "there are ten barrels for us secure." A few minutes were suffered to elapse, and then unfixing the halser from the stem, and bringing

it aft to the stern, we commenced hauling. The nets approached the gunwale. The first three appeared, from the phosphoric light of the water, as if bursting into flames of a pale green colour. Here and there a herring glittered bright in the meshes, or went darting away through the pitchy darkness, visible for a moment by its own light. The fourth net was brighter than any of the others, and glittered through the waves while it was yet several fathoms away;-the pale green seemed as if mingled with broken sheets of snow that, flickering amid the mass of light, appeared, with every tug given by the fishermen, to shift, dissipate, and again form; and there streamed from it into the surrounding gloom myriads of green rays, an instant seen and then lost-the retreating fish that had avoided the meshes, but had lingered until disturbed, beside their entangled companions. It contained a considerable body of herrings. As we raised them over the gunwale they felt warm to the hand, for in the middle of a large shoal even the temperature of the water is raisedfact well known to every herring fisherman; and in shaking them out of the meshes, the ear became sensible of a shrill chirping sound, like that of the mouse, but much faintera ceaseless cheep, cheep, cheep, occasioned apparently-for no true fish is furnished with organs of sound-by a sudden escape from the air-bladder. The shoal, a small one, had spread over only three of the nets-the three whose buoys had so suddenly disappeared; and most of the others, had but their mere sprinkling of fish, some dozen or two in a net; but so thickly had they lain in the fortunate three, that the entire haul consisted of rather more than twelve barrels.

a

We started up about midnight, and saw an open sea as before; but the scene had considerably changed since we had lain down. The breeze had died into a calm; the heavens no longer dark and grey, were glowing with stars, and the sea, from the smoothness of the surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and starry as the other, with this difference, however, that all its stars appeared comets: the slightly tremulous motion of the surface elongated the reflected images, and gave to each its tail. There seemed no line of division at the horizon. Where the hills rose high along the coast, and appeared as if doubled by their undulating strip of shadow, what might be deemed a dense bank of cloud lay sleeping in the heavens, just where the upper and nether

firmaments met; but its presence rendered the illusion none the less complete; the outline of the boat lay dark around us, like the fragment of some broken planet suspended in middle space, far from the earth and every star; and all around we saw extended the complete sphere-unhidden above from Orion to the pole, and visible beneath from the pole to Orion. Certainly sublime scenery possesses in itself no virtue potent enough to develop the faculties, or the mind of the fisherman would not have so long lain asleep. There is no profession whose recollections should rise into purer poetry than his; but if the mirror bear not its previous amalgam of taste and genius, what does it matter that the scene which sheds upon it its many-coloured light should be rich in grandeur and beauty-there is no corresponding image produced;-the susceptibility of reflecting the landscape is never imparted by the landscape itself, whether to the mind or the glass. There is no class of recollections more illusory than those which associate as if they existed in the relation of cause and effect-some piece of striking scenery with some sudden development of the intellect or imagination. The eyes open, and there is an external beauty seen; but it is not the external beauty that has opened the eyes.

*

It was still a dead calm-calm to blackness; when in about an hour after sunrise, what seemed light fitful airs began to play on the surface, imparting to it in irregular patches, a tint of grey. First one patch would form, then a second beside it, then a third, and then for miles around, the surface, else so silvery, would seem frosted over with grey; the apparent breeze appeared as if propagating itself from one central point. In a few seconds after, all would be calm as at first, and then from some other centre the patches of grey would again form and widen till the whole frith seemed covered by them. A peculiar poppling noise, as if a thunder-. shower was beating the surface with its multitudinous drops, rose around our boat;-the water seemed sprinkled with an infinity of points of silver, that for an instant glittered to the sun, and then resigned their places to other quick glancing points that in turn were succeeded by others. The herrings by millions and thousands of millions were at play around us-leaping a few inches into the air, and then falling and disappearing to rise and leap again. Shoal rose beyond shoal, till the whole bank of Gulliam seemed beaten into

N

foam, and the low poppling sounds were multiplied into a roar, like that of the wind through some tall wood, that might be heard in the calm for miles. And again, the shoals extending around us seemed to cover for hundreds of square miles the vast Moray Frith. But though they played round our buoys by millions, not a herring swam so low as the upper baulk of our drift. One of the fishermen took up a stone, and flinging it right over our second buoy into the middle of the shoal, the fish disappeared from the surface for several fathoms around. "Ah, there they go,” he exclaimed, "if they go but low enough. Four years ago I startled thirty barrels of light fish into my drift just by throwing a stone among them." We know not what effect the stone might have had on this occasion, but on hauling our nets for the third and last time, we found we had captured about eight barrels of fish; and then hoisting sail, for a light breeze from the east had sprung up, we made for the shore with a cargo of twenty barrels.-HUGH MILLER.

THE CHOLERA.

66

In the year 1817, a new and terrible pestilence broke out in a densely peopled district of Hindostan. During the twelve succeeding years it was going to and fro, and walking up and down," in that immense tract of country which intervenes between British India and the Russian dominions in Europe. It passed from province to province and city to city. Multitudes," which no man could number," stood waiting its approach in anxiety and terror; a few solitary mourners gazed at it from behind. It journeyed by the highways, and strewed them with carcases. It coursed along the rivers, and vessels were seen drifting in the current with their dead. It overtook the caravan in the desert, and the merchant fell from his camel. It followed armies to the field of battle, struck down their standards, and broke up their array. It scaled the great wall of China, forded the Tigris and the Euphrates, threaded with the mountaineer the passes of the frozen Caucasus, and traversed with the mariner the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. Vainly was it deprecated with the rites of every religion, exorcised in the name of every god. The Brahmin saw it rolling onwards, more terrible than the car of Juggernaut, and sought refuge in his