There is something more, we trust, in his case, than a merely morbid mental state. A better moral view of the significance of life we hope has dawned upon him. His last two works have surprised the world by their improved moral tone, and their undiminished intellectual vigor and brilliancy. In one of them he repeatedly refers to a religious biography as the great book of the times for the support of a suffering soul-the Life of Robert Hall-a work with which he is himself evidently too familiar not to have received from it a profound impression. The remark imputed to him by the papers as above, would seem to indicate, in connection with these facts, that that corrected view of life, which often, though it may be through deep anguish, raises it to its true significance, has dawned upon the conscience of this greatest but most perverted of our popular writers.

There is, probably, in every man's history, a period when the soul-divinely illuminated for however brief a time-looks out with a right and therefore a startling vision upon lifewhen it sees things as they are probably seen by a man dying in the full possession of his faculties when the past shows itself in its true relation to the eternal future. A man thus aroused wakes up as from a dream, and perceives that his life has been without moral import has been a failure, so far as all its ultimate designs are concerned. Such is the case in respect to life as ordinarily pursued; but how much more remorseful must the retrospect of a life like that of Bulwer be?-a life in which the splendid gifts of intellect have been perverted to the terrific work of corrupting the soul-of murdering the moral life of men-a crime that transcends all mere physical violence, as it can multiply itself through nations, and extend its desolating effects through ages!

There is no responsibility so appalling as that of the man of genius who sends out into the world a bad book. A man may live on through centuries in a book, and live thus a more energetic life than ever he could have lived in person on the earth. The frightful fact of such a case is that there is no remedy for the mischief-it is beyond the control of the guilty intellect, however it may relent. Like those higher spirits which, as theology teaches us, are not only damned, but irrecoverably damned, because they have forfeited their probation and the power of self-recovery, the man of genius who has cursed the world with a pernicious book, cannot stop the mischief. There are such men, who have been hundreds of years in their graves, and whose moral responsibility is still going on in this world perhaps as extensively as the most prominent living man's. They may see, with unutterable anguish, from their position in the spiritual world, the moral havoc their writings are producing, but they cannot arrest it, and every day adds to the account which they must at last render unto Him who is not only "the Judge of the quick"-the living-but also of "the dead." Fortunate the man, though unutterably miserable, who sees his guilt before the light of another world shows it, and who spends his remaining days in mitigating and deploring, though he cannot wholly

THE QUESTION IN EUROPE.-Our own country has almost alone the unenviable credit of disputing the Scriptural hypothesis of the unity of the human race. At the thirty-first meeting of the Society of German Naturalists, held lately at Gottingen, Professor Magner (Holforth) of Gottingen read an address in which he treated, with much severity, the new speculations on the subject, giving no quarter to the few Germans who have adopted it. The subject he had chosen was "On certain Portions and Modes of Considerations of Anthropology." A better title, he observed, would perhaps have been, "On the Creation of Man and the Substance of the Soul." The main objects of his address were, 1st, the praise of Blumenbach; and 2d, a polemical attack on the anthropological views of a modern author whom he did not name, but who is supposed to be Carl Vogt, whose doctrines he denounced as immoral and derogatory to human nature. After explaining Blumenbach's doctrine of the five races which showed no greater differences than the local and geographical varieties of the same species in many of our domestic animals, and which had been confirmed by modern science, he stated that these views were still further strengthened by the recent linguistic investigations. Then comes the question-are all men of one race, and are all descended from one pair? Notwithstanding partial assertions to the contrary, the result of his scientific investigations had convinced him that no argument could be drawn from the study of the natural history part of the question against the existence of only one species; and, moreover, although it was difficult to adduce any direct scientific proof for or against the descent from one single pair, he was equally convinced that there was no argument against such a view. He then proceeded to discuss the other portion of his theme, and to consider whether modern science, either as natural history or physiology, had made any progress respecting the future life, or with regard to the state and nature of the soul. Materialism in this respect had made great progress in latter times; and he vehemently attacked the views of a modern author, who, among other things, asserted that to assume a spiritual soul dwelling in the brain, and thence directing the motions and actions of the body, was the greatest absurdity, and who had also denied the truth of such a thing as individual immortality. Were the views of this author, who also denied the existence of free will, founded in truth, or even recognized as such, where would be the use of all the exertions of those great and good and learned men who for centuries have labored and worked for the improvement and instruction of the human race? There would be nothing great or noble in man's nature; there would be no reality in history-ne truth in faith. Where would be the result of all our scientific investigations? He concluded by observing, that however difficult or even impossible it might be to explain the nature of

the soul, we must be satisfied that the answer could not be one which was opposed to all morality and all virtue. Sound logic this. Professor Owen, who is now at the head of English naturalists, delivered an address before the last session of the British Association on the same subject, in which he vindicated the Mosaic doctrine of the unity of the race.

Mr.

BEAUTY AND GENIUS.-It is not often (so at least say certain squeamish satirists) that "the strong-minded" of the sex are its most beautiful angels. Mr. Clapp, the well-known clergyman of New-Orleans, thinks however that he has found an exception, in the authoress of the Lamplighter-a work which the New-London Quarterly places above "Uncle Tom." Clapp, on a late visit to Dorchester, saw Miss Maria Cummins, its writer, and says in a letter to the Picayune:-"I wish that my words could convey to your readers some adequate ideas of her personal appearance. But I have no talents for this kind of description. Miss Cummins, to my taste, is very beautiful. She is of middling stature, fair complexion, soft, delicate auburn hair; cheeks with the red and white delicately blended; eyes clear, blue, and beaming with intelligence. The form of her person is symmetrical, elegant, and dignified; her conversation is easy, natural, and unaffected. Indeed, simplicity is the crowning ornament of her manners as well as writings. Though possessed of superior genius, a lively fancy and brilliant imagination, she is perfectly free from pedantry, and all those arts of display which are dictated by the love of distinction and flattery. No lady of my acquaintance is more richly endowed with those mild, social, refined, and gentle qualities which, in the view of our sex generally, constitute the principal beauty of the female character. Is it not surprising that one brought up in the seclusion of rural life-so younghardly out of her teens, should write the best novel that has been published in our day?"

ALL THE GOLD IN THE WORLD.-Taking the cube yard of gold at $10,000,000, which it is in round numbers, all the gold in the world at this estimate might, if melted into ingots, be contained in a cellar twenty-four feet square, and sixteen feet high. All our boasted wealth already obtained from California and Australia would go into an iron safe ten feet square, and ten feet high; so small is the cube of yellow metals that has set population on the march, and roused the world to wonder!

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excess of births over deaths was nearly onethird-615,000 births to 390,000 deaths-and yet the peopling force of the nation, if we may so call it, is only exerted in a comparatively moderate degree. A large number of men and women, in every part of Great Britain, who live to advanced ages, never marry. The Registrar General's editor announces, somewhat triumphantly, that the British population contains a reserve of more than a million unmarried men, and of more than a million unmarried women, in the prime of life, with as many more of younger ages;" and that if these celibate millions were married, it would result that the births per annum, instead of being 700,000, would be 1,600,000. The Gazette contends that the world should no longer sneer at bachelors and old maids, but rather honor them for their single blessedness. It admonishes those who are married to beware lest the unmarried millions marry, and so double and quadruple the annual compound increase of births to an extent which might in that case be really alarming. "The perpetuity of the British nation is thus secured," continues the registrar's report, "against all contingencies:"

sequently the population, are regulated, not so much "The proportion of children to a marriage, and conor so immediately by the numbers of the people who marry as by the age at which marriage is contracted. The mothers and fathers of nearly half of the children now born are under thirty years of age; and if all the women who attain the age of thirty should marry, and none should marry before that age is attained, the births would decline to about two-thirds; and if the marriage age were postponed to thirty-five, the births would fall to one-third part of their present number; so the population would rapidly decline-firstly, because the number of births to each generation would grow less; and secondly, because, as the interval between the births of successive generations would increase, and the duration of life by hypothesis remain the same, the numbers living cotemporaneously-in shed. The age at which first marriages take place other words, the population-would be further diminnecessarily varies according to circumstances in different populations and in different classes of the same population: in the eldest and youngest sons of noble families; in the various rising or declining professions; among skilled artisans and laborers. The twentysixth year is the mean age at which men marry, and the twenty-fifth year the mean age at which women marry in England and Wales. About this period of life the growth of man is completed. Half of the husbands and of the wives are married at the age of twenty-one and under twenty-five; the higher average age is the result of later marriages, which occur in great numbers at the age of twenty-five and thirty."

The results of the census are decidedly in favor of Christian morals. The licentiousness of the century from 1651 to 1751-the reaction of the Puritan strictness-was terribly fatal to the popular increase. The Registrar General, or rather his editor, discusses the subject in detail. He shows that the population of Great Britain increased only sixteen per cent. during that

fourteen thousand for the hundred years!" The restoration of morals was the restoration of the people.

CLERICAL ODDITIES.-The recently issued memoirs of Jay, of Bath, present some striking portraits and anecdotes. The famous Rev. John Ryland is drawn to the life. He was one of those whimsical, overbearing, eccentric divines -Johnsons and Parrs of the Tabernacle churches -who belonged to old times, and whose say

ings and doings there is small chance of any modern chapel-goer seeing reproduced. His apprehension, imagination, and memory, to use an expression of his own, rendered his "brains like fish-hooks, which seized and retained everything within their reach." His preaching was probably unique, occasionally overstepping the proprieties of the pulpit, but grappling much with conscience, and dealing out the most tremendous blows at error, sin, and the mere forms of godliness.

"The first time I ever met Mr. Ryland," says Jay, "was at the house of a wholesale linendraper in Cheapside. The owner, Mr. B-h, told him one day, as he called upon him, that I was in the parlor, and desired him to go in, and he would soon follow. At this moment I did not personally know him. He was singular in his appearance: his shoes were square-toed; his wig was five-storied behind; the sleeves of his coat were profusely large and open; and the flaps of his waistcoat encroaching upon his knees. I was struck and awed with his figure; but what could I think when, walking toward me, he laid hold of me by the collar, and, shaking his fist in my face, he roared out, Young man, if you let the people of Surrey Chapel make you proud, I'll smite you to the ground!' But then, instantly dropping his voice, and taking me by the hand, he made me sit down by his side, and said, 'Sir, nothing can equal the folly of some hearers; they are like apes that hug their young ones to death.' He then mentioned two promising young ministers who had come to town, and been injured and spoiled by popular caressings; adding other seasonable and useful remarks. From this strange commencement a peculiar intimacy ensued. We were seldom a day apart during my eight weeks' continuance in town, and the intercourse was renewed the following year, when we were both in town again at the same time. As the chapel was very near, and spacious, he obtained leave from the managers to deliver in it a course of philosophical lectures, Mr. Adams, the celebrated optician, aiding him in the experimental parts. The lectures were on Friday mornings, at the end of which there was always a short sermon at the reading-desk; and the lecturer would say to his attendants, 'You have been seeing the works of the God of nature; now go yonder, and hear a Jay talk of the works of the God of grace." "

The following anecdotes are in harmony with the opening scene :

"The young could never leave his company unaf fected and uninstructed. I once passed a day at his house. It was the fifth of November. He took advantage of the season with his pupils. There was an effigy of Guy Fawkes. A court of justice was established for his trial. The indictment was read; witnesses were examined; counsel was heard. But he was clearly and fully convicted; when Mr. R., himself being the judge, summed up the case; and, putting on his black cap, pronounced the awful sentence-that he should be carried forth and burned at the stake; which sentence was executed amid shouts of joy from his pupils. Of this, I confess, my feelings did not entirely approve. Speaking of him one day to Mr. Hall, he related the following occurrence: When I was quite a lad, my father took me to Mr. Ryland's school at Northampton. That afternoon I drank tea along with him in the parlor. Mr. Ryland was then violently against the American war; and, the subject happening to be mentioned, he rose, and said, with a flerce countenance and loud voice,-"If I was a General Wash

ington, I would summon all my officers around me, and make them bleed from their arms into a basin, and dip their swords into its contents, and swear they would not sheath them till America had gained her independence." I was perfectly terrified. What a master," thought I, "am I to be left under!" and when I went to bed, I could not for some time go to sleep' Once a young minister was spending the evening with him, and when the family were called together for worship, he said, Mr., you must pray.' 'Sir," said he, 'I cannot.' He urged him again, but in vain. Then, sir,' said he, 'I declare, if you will not, I'll call in the watchman.' At this time a watchman on his round was going by, whom he knew to be a very pious man, (I knew him too;) he opened the door, and calling him, said 'Duke, Duke, come in; you are wanted here. Here,' said he, is a young pastor that can't pray; so you must pray for him.""

It was Mr. Ryland, moreover, who, in the Surrey-Chapel pulpit, called Belshazzar a " rascal," not worthy of wasting a sermon upon. "So meet extremes." The divine's outbreak is a worthy companion to the fine lady's comment upon the proceedings of Adam in Paradise, conveyed in her explanation, “Shabby fellow!"

Here are a few traits of Rowland Hill:

"Mr. Hill was not, as many think, who have only heard of him by report, that lying tale-bearer, a mere sionally even vehement; but in common his voice only boisterous bawler. He was sometimes loud, and oecs

rose with his subject; and it was easy to perceive that it was commonly influenced and regulated by his thoughts and feelings. He was not like those who strain and roar always, and equally, having no more energy or emphasis for one thing than another. As the parts of a subject must vary, some being more tender, some more awful, some more plain, and some more abstruse, a uniformity of vehemence must be unnatural; it is obviously mechanical; and will, after a while, have only a kind of automaton-effect. Mr. Hill had an assistant that erred this way, and I remember how he one day reproved him. J- -,' said he, you yelp like a puppy as soon as you get into the field; but I am an older hound, and do not wish to cry till I have started something.'** Not very long before his death, meeting an acquaintance who was nearly as aged as himself, he said, 'If you and I don't march off soon, our friends yonder,' (looking upward,) will think we have lost our way.' Reading in my pulpit the words of the woman of Samaria at the well, the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans,'-looking off, as if he saw the parties themselves, he exclaimed, But the devil has had dealings enough with both of you.' Mr. Hill sometimes rendered a word of rebuke equally strong and witty. Thus, when a preacher of no very good reputation was in the vestry of a place where he was going to preach, and seemed uneasy lest his servant should not arrive in time with his cassock, Mr. Hill said, 'Sir, you need not be uneasy; for 1 can preach without my cassock, though I cannot preach without my character.' As he was coming out of a gentleman's house in Piccadilly, he met in the passage a minister with a begging case, who, though popular with some, had, it was suspected, been imposing for a good while on the religious public; who offered him his hand, but Mr. Hill drew back, and looking him in the face, said, 'Ah, I thought you had been hanged long ago.'** I know that once at Wotton he was preaching in the afternoon, (the only time when it seemed possible to be drowsy under him,) he saw some sleeping, and paused, saying, 'I have heard that the miller can sleep while the mill is going, but if it stops it awakens him. I'll try this method; and so sat down, and soon saw an aroused audience."

Here is a specimen or two of the well-known caustic and sometimes almost cruel wit of Robert Hall :

"He was at the Tabernacle the first time I ever preached in Bristol, and when I was little more than seventeen. When I came down from the pulpit, as I passed him, he said, Sir, I liked your sermon much better than your quotations.' I never knew him severe upon a preacher, however moderate his abilities, if, free from affectation, he spoke with simplicity, nor tried to rise above his level. But, as to others,

lies in his having somewhere transposed figures; that is to say, he has put down 92 for 29, 83 for 38, &c., with any other transposition. The difference of any such transposition is always a multiple of 9. The knowledge of this will at once direct attention to the true source of error, and save the labour of adding up often long columns of figures. The difference between 92 and 29 is 63, or 7 times 9; between 88 and 88 is 45, or 5 times 9; and so on between any transposed numbers."

STARTLING FACT.-The late census shows that the number of Irishmen in the United States is less than one million; and our federal, state, and municipal "Blue Books" show that a majority of the public officers and places in the United States are filled by Irishmen. So say the newspapers, but we cannot believe the latter assertion. The statement cannot be correct unless among the "Municipal Blue Book" appointments are included the posts of scavengers, police, watchmen, &c.

Sheridan Knowles has been lecturing in Manchester, England, against Popery, and his son has been joining the Catholic Church; a brace of facts which, says one of our exchanges, may show either a want of logical power in the father, or unfilial perversity in his boy.

GREAT EVENTS FROM SLENDER CAUSES.-Dr. Paris observes, that "the history of great effects from small causes would form an interesting work."

"How momentous," says Campbell, 66 are the results of apparently trivial circumstances! When Mohammed was flying from his enemies, he took refuge in a cave; which his pursuers would have entered, if they had not seen a spider's web at the entrance. Not knowing that it was freshly woven, they passed by the cave; and thus a spider's web changed the history of the world."

When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterward Henry II., of England. She had for her marriage dower the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions of men. All this probably had never occurred, had Louis not been so rash as to crop his head and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of Queen Eleanor.

Warton mentions, in his Notes on Pope, that the treaty of Utrecht was occasioned by a quarrel between the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne about a pair of gloves.

The coquetry of the daughter of Count Julian introduced the Saracens into Spain.

"What can be imagined more trivial," remarks Hume, in one of his essays, "than the difference between one color of livery and another in horse races?" Yet this difference begat two most inveterate factions in the Greek empire, the Prasini and Veneti; who never suspended their animosities till they ruined that unhappy government.

The murder of Cæsar in the capitol was chiefly owing to his not rising from his seat when the senate tendered him some particular honors.

The negotiations with the Pope for dissolving Henry Eighth's marriage (which brought on the Reformation) are said to have been interrupted by the Earl of Wiltshire's dog biting his holiness's toe, when he put it out to be kissed by that ambassador; and the Duchess of Marlborough's spilling a basin of water on Mrs. Masham's gown, in Queen Anne's reign, brought in the Tory ministry, and gave a new turn to the affairs of Europe.

"If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter," said Pascal, in his epigrammatic manner, " the condition of the world would have been different."

Luther might have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped the thunderstorm; Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if the appeal of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St. Andrew's Castle; and if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1764, his memorable resolution as to the expediency of charging certain stamp duties on the plantations in America, the western world might still have bowed to the British sceptre.

Giotto, one of the early Florentine painters, might have continued a rude shepherd boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon a stone had not, by the merest accident, attracted the notice of Cimabue.

PHYSICAL BEAUTY AND MORAL EVIL.-" It is almost awful," said Dr. Arnold, when sitting above the beautiful Lake of Como, in Switzerland," it is almost awful to look at the overwhelming beauty around me, and then think of the moral evil. It seems as if heaven and hell, instead of being separated by a great gulf from one another, were absolutely on each other's confines, and indeed not far from every one of us. Might the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as my delight in external beauty; for in a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than anything else, abides a saving knowledge of God! It is not so much to admire moral good; that we may do, and yet be not ourselves conformed to it. But if we do really abhor that which is evil-not the persons in whom evil resides, but the evil which resides in them, and much more manifestly and certainly to our own knowledge, in our own hearts-this is to have the feeling of God and Christ, and to have our spirit in sympathy with the Spirit of God."

FAITHFUL JACK.-An English writer remarks that sailors preserve their technical terms more steadily than any other class of men. Those of sailors remain the same, though numberless terms of other trades and professions have become obsolete within the last two centuries. Scarcely the half of the technical terms of various trades and professions that may be found in that most curious omnium gatherum, Randle Holme's Academy of Armory, would be understood by their respective craftsmen at the present day; whereas every nautical term in the much earlier production, A Ship of Fooles, would be understood by the modern seaman.