sure, and the introduction of labor-saving machinery, has of course within the last few years entirely changed this state of society. conditions are to some extent, and will be still more, reversed by the introduction of mowing, reaping, and thrashing-machines. The education of the villagers was very rudimentary. The Protestant communi- The greatest catastrophe in the life of ties had, indeed, not only schools, but every peasant was at the time of the levy often even efficient schoolmasters; still of soldiers; not that the sturdy agricultuthe children went only in winter to school, rist would have objected to the military nominally from Michaelmas to Candle- career, but because it implied a long exile mas; but even then the parents interrupt- for the recruit torn from the bosom of ed the studies of the children whenever his family. In older times, as already rethey thought they might earn or save some- marked, the duty of defending the counthing by the help of the urchins. They try devolved exclusively upon the landed rarely learnt more than the catechism, gentry and aristocracy; their retainers and the hymns sung at church; very who followed them to the field were volfew mastered reading, writing, and ciph-unteers. In the beginning of the last ering so thoroughly as not to forget it in their manhood. The mind of the peasant was not sufficiently alive to the advantages of education; and as there existed no compulsion for the parents to send their children to school, they remained mostly uneducated. The dress of the Hungarian peasant varied according to nationality. The great majority, however, were clad in broad linen trowsers, a short shirt, scarcely reaching to the loins, and the bunda, that heavy, loose, sheepskin cloak well known to the Crimean soldiers; strong leather boots and a broad felt hat completed the usual attire of the Magyar. On Sunday, however, his dress was more showy; the tight-fitting Hungarian trowsers and jacket, mostly of a blue color, with red lining, and beset with glittering buttons, a red waistcoat, a long black neckerchief, often fringed with gold, a gaudy printed cotton handkerchief, and spurs on his boots, gave him a soldier-like appearance. Married women never uncovered their hair it was always hidden, either under a black cap or a cotton handkerchief; but the girls always displayed their hair plated and adorned with ribbons and with a kind of gilt diadem. The bodice, laced with gold in front, and showing a shirt of fine linen, was commonly red and black; the skirt, ample and falling in many folds to the feet, of a dark color; the boots on Sunday were red. They liked to display their finery, especially at church; and where this lay at some distance, and the road was muddy, they often went barefooted in order not to soil their red boots, and put them on only under the porch of the church. The emancipation of the peasants, the increase of their wealth due to this mea century, however, a standing army was established by act of parliament, which was to be under the exclusive control of the German government as regards the way in which it was commanded and officered, and the places where it had to fight the battles of the Emperor. From a defensive militia it had become a tool of aggression; accordingly the nobility and gentry thought themselves dispensed from serving in it, and threw the whole burden on the peasantry. Since, however, this army might easily have been used as a weapon against the constitutional liberties of Hungary, the Hungarians refrained from introducing regular conscription, and reserved the right of voting any levy of soldiers exclusively to the Dict. The government, on the other hand, avoiding as far as possible the necessity of asking soldiers from the Diet, kept the army voted in 1715 for life. Every recruit becoming a soldier knew that he was to remain a soldier forever, and had to bear arms until wounds or infirmity should make him unfit to serve; but then he not only got his discharge, but was provided for by a pension as long as he lived. To fill the ranks thinned in the natural course of events, government resorted during peace to the system of bounties, and regularly found sufficient volunteers to keep the army complete. In warlike times, however, the ministers had to ask levies from the Diet, which they uniformly got without serious struggle, upon condition that, after the war, all the grievances of the nation would be removed, and reform taken into consideration. But when, in 1815, peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, and the time of fulfilling the promises made during the French war had arrived, the Emperor Francis I. backed out, and at tempted to overthrow the constitution. He refused to call Parliament together, and trying to break down the last barriers against Austrian despotism, he raised the amount of taxes, and ordered a levy of soldiers without any vote of the Diet, in 1823. All the municipalities of the country protested against this coup-d'état; some of them yielded, however, to the threats of the government, the majority defied them, and military execution had to be resorted to. The agitation rose at last to such a hight, that the Emperor had to yield; accordingly he assembled the Diet once more in 1825. Frightened by the conspiracy in Russia, he made ample apology to the nation in 1826, and by a declaratory statute once more confirmed the liberties and constitution. In 1830 a new levy was demanded by the government, and the Diet now introduced a kind of regular conscription, limiting the term of service to ten years, which expired in 1840; therefore in 1839 a new vote had to be asked from the legislature. The levy of soldiers, coming thus at long intervals, frightened the peasantry like a great impending calamity. The drawing of the lots in the villages by the assembled youth, in presence of the magistrates and of course of all the peasantry, the subsequent examination of those who had drawn the fatal numbers by the army surgeon, and lastly the cutting of the long flowing hair of the recruit, was accompanied by universal wailing; every body knew that the young soldier would not come back to his village for ten years, which he had commonly to spend in some distant country, in Italy or Bohemia. The idea of becoming a soldier not by free-will, but by drawing a lot, was so repugnant to the Hungarian ideas of freedom, that in many Magyar villages, and nearly in all the towns, it was dispensed with, either the community or the parties interested clubbing together sufficient funds for a handsome bounty, and offering it to volunteers. This course was nearly always successful, and scarcely ever failed to furnish the required number of recruits, who were, with bands of music and amid the rejoicings of the village, escorted to the principal town of the district. When again, in 1848, the war of independence began, and the Hungarians knew that they fought for their own country and not for the German, that they would be officered by Hungarians, and have every chance to become officers themselves, there was no need to draw lots, every young man presented himself voluntarily; and the only check on all the inhabitants of military age leaving their villages and entering the army was the difficulty of arming them. Thus the military spirit of the nation waits only for the right cause to shine out with the same splendor as when Hungary bore the proud name of the barrier of Christendom against the Crescent. Nothing but Austrian misrule could make the army unpopular. So. IMPEDIMENTS TO THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH.-Truth and error, as they are essentially opposite in their nature, so the causes to which they are indebted for their perpetuity and triumph are not less Whatever retards a spirit of inquiry, is favorable to error; whatever promotes it, to truth. But nothing, it will be acknowledged, has a greater tendency to obstruct the exercise of free inquiry than the spirit and feeling of a party. Let a doctrine, however erroneous, become a party distinction, and it is at once intrenched in interests and attachments which make it extremely difficult for the most powerful artillery of reason to dislodge it. It becomes a point of honor in the leaders of such parties, which is from thence communicated to their followers, to defend and support their respective peculiarities to the last; and, as a natural consequence, to shut their ears against all the pleas and remonstrances by which they are assailed. Even the wisest and best of men are seldom aware how much they are susceptible of this sort of influence; and while the offer of a world would be insufficient to engage them to recant a known truth, or to subscribe an acknowledged error, they are often retained in a willing captivity to prejudices and opinions which have no other support, and which, if they could lose sight of party feelings, they would almost instantly abandon.-ROBERT Hall, THE recent death of this distinguished and venerable philosopher has been acknowledged in every part of Europe and of the world where the physical sciences are cultivated or valued, as a loss not easily to be supplied, and as creating a blank in the science of the age not readily to be filled up. In any isolated departments of science many men of equal, or superior, qualifications might be named to sustain the honor of those branches; but no one who, like Humboldt, was gifted to advance and adorn them all together. von Friedrich Heinrich Alexander Humboldt, the younger son of Major von Humboldt, (who had been in the service of Frederic the Great,) was born in 1769, September 14th, at Berlin. After some early instruction at home under a tutor, accompanied by his elder brother Wilhelm, he entered the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where his preference led him to the studies of natural science and political economy, while his brother followed those literary and philological pursuits in which he afterwards became so Of many a confessedly great man it is eminent. Thence, in 1788, he removed to often asked, and not very easily answered, the more celebrated University of Göttinwhat has he done? An individual, in fact, gen, where he pursued an extended course often attains a high reputation, built up of the same studies. It was here that in as it were out of a vast number of minor the son-in-law of the celebrated scholar claims, each in itself but small, yet in the Heyne, he found a friend, George Forster, aggregate rising to a large amount; while, who had been the companion of Captain perhaps, it is more the general character Cook in his second voyage, and whose adof high ability pervading them all, and venturous spirit as well as his skill in not unfrequently even that high ability botany and natural history, tended greatly alone, evinced less in actual great results to awaken Humboldt's desire for travelthan in undeniable manifestation of powering, and to give it a scientific direction. to achieve them, which constitutes the basis of a high reputation. But with the subject of this brief memoir the case was very different. Humboldt affords an instance of a man singularly and strongly marked in his whole life and character by earnest and entire devotion to one single great object - the vision and aspiration of his earliest years worked out in untiring detail through his middle life, and carried on to its completion and fulfillment in the unusual vigor of his long-protracted age. In one word, the study of universal nature in all her variety, in all her minuteness, and all her vastness, and the final bringing together of the assemblage and accumulation of these treasures of knowledge in the display of their connection and unity in one grand whole, laying an enduring groundwork for the loftiest contemplations of which the human soul is susceptible. VOL. XLVIII.—NO. I. From his earliest youth, Humboldt informs us, it had been his earnest wish to explore untrodden regions of the earth. In the first instance, the mere desire of adventure, the spirit of enterprise, all the more intensely stimulated when not devoid of a degree of danger, were perhaps his only motives. To these were added, as his mind expanded, the increasing desire of knowledge; and on more close and accurate study, a perception of existing deficiencies and an estimate of those special quarters and regions in which the blank most imperatively demanded filling up. He was particularly impressed with the great extent of the earth's surface of which little or nothing was known, and much remained to be explored even in better-known regions. Thus, at the age of eighteen, he tells us, he had fully conceived the idea of those labors to which the main part of his after-life was devoted, and the acquaint-] of war in Italy forced them to abandon an excursion into that country. During the two next years he resided temporarily in various parts of Europe, but especially at Jena, where he formed the acquaintance of Göthe and Schiller. He published Researches into the Structure of Muscular and Nervous Fiber, and The Chemical Processes of Life, (1797,) as well as Investigations on Various Gases, then imperfectly known, (1799,) evincing the very varied as well as accurate nature of his studies. ance which he formed with the kindred spirit of George Forster, stimulated and animated to the utmost the ideas he had already so vividly conceived, besides materially aiding their accomplishment by advice and information on points connected with natural history and the collection of specimens. In company with this friend, he made excursions through several parts of Europe, studied the volcanic phenomena of Italy and Sicily, the Alps and the banks of the Rhine, and in 1790 visited Holland and England. His first publication was a dissertation, the result of these excursions, On Certain Basaltic Formations on the Rhine, 1790. His destined profession was that of official employment in the mines under the Prussian Government, with a view to which he pursued the study of mineralogy at Freiburg, under the celebrated Werner; and in 1792 was subsequently appointed superintendent of mines at Beyreuth. During his continuance there, he contributed various minor publications to natural and mineralogical science. But his ardent desire for traveling overcame every consideration of professional advancement; and, in consequence, he resigned his employment in the mines in 1795. Disappointed in his hope of joining in two proposed expeditions under the French Government one to Egypt and Syria, the other to the South-Pacific which were frustrated by the convulsed state of Europe at that period, four years elapsed before he was able to put his project in execution. The time, however, was not lost; he diligently employed it in prosecuting those preparatory studies which enabled him to apprehend in their due relations all the varied and important points of science which would claim attention, and open new fields of research; while the study and practice of methods of observation, and the use of physical and astronomical instruments and apparatus, were essential preparatives for the course of investigation he had planned. In 1797 he remained for some time at Vienna, preparing for botanical excursions by studying the collections of exotic plants in that city; after which he had the advantage of traveling through Salzburg and Styria in company with the great geologist Von Buch, and was about crossing the Tyrolean Alps, when the breaking out Having, as we have seen, been disappointed in obtaining any opening in connection with Government expeditions, he now determined to rely on his own resources. His friendship with M. Bonpland enabled them jointly to concert plans of exploration. With that eminent botanist he spent some time in France, with the intention of making an excursion into Africa and the East; but here again various difficulties interposed; and finally, the continent of South-America appeared to offer in many respects the most eligible field for their operations, and for which they made their preparations accordingly; and in 1799, after traversing a considerable part of Spain, they finally embarked at Corunna for the Azores. The voyage, so far from being wearisome, or lost time, was to Humboldt a source of ever-new interest. The aspects and productions of the ocean, the phenomena of the atmosphere, the views of the heavens under a tropical sky, were all topics of fresh research and deeply instructive study, of which he knew how to avail himself to the utmost. In a sketch like the present, we of course make no pretension of following the travelers through the varied scenes of their explorations: from the shores of Spain to the Canary Islands, and the Peak of Teneriffe; whence crossing the Atlantic, the more arduous task of exploring the South-American Continent occupied them nearly four years; commencing from the northern coast, and investigating successively the montainous regions of those parts, the Llanos and Pampas, the rivers and marshes; studying earthquake phenomena in the Carraccas; and comparing the volcanic phenomena of the Andes with those of Mexico; investigating the physical aspects of the West-Indian Islands. We can only observe, in general, throughout every part of these wan derings, how rich a field then almost entirely new to scientific research was opened to their inquiries. These vast regions, as to their physical structure and conditions, as well as their animal and vegetable productions, hitherto for the most part very little examined, were more fully disclosed to their research; and no opportunity was lost of examining and registering all the variety of interesting physical phenomena and diversified forms of animated nature, which in such endless profusion presented themselves for examination. During these lengthened explorations the masses of collected specimens, geological, botanical, zoological, and miscellaneous, became by degrees enormous. The difficulties of packing and conveying them were great, and the fear of losing them still more a source of anxiety to the indefatigable collectors. Triplicate sets were prepared and packed; one set sent, as opportunity offered, to the United States, for shipment to England; another to France or Spain; while the third continually accompanied the travelers on a long train of mules, and was anxiously kept under their own eyes. Of the two former sets, in the state of warfare in which the European Powers were then involved, it was not surprising that many failed in reaching their destination, or that few, in fact, were preserved or recovered; but it is satisfactory to know that a valuable portion (chiefly those collected from the shores of the Pacific) were secured to science, owing to the generous exertions of Sir Joseph Banks with the British Government; to whom Humboldt pays the graceful acknowledgment, that "amidst the political agitations of Europe he unceasingly labored to strengthen the bonds of union between scientific men of all nations." Gifted with a constitution and bodily powers of unusual vigor, he encountered not only without inconvenience, but with pleasure, the difficulties and privations which beset a life of wandering in regions for the most part untrodden by civilized visitants; and even in the more frequented parts having to make his way among persons of very different pursuits and ideas, to whom the objects of his mission could not but appear strange, even if they did not excite prejudice and hostility. Yet we are surprised in many parts of the narrative at the apparent ease and familiarity with which he seems to have conciliated the good-will of the various grades and classes of person with whom he was brought in contact. The vivid and glowing language in which he dilates on the surpassing richness and variety of objects presented to his observation in the new scenes thus opened, and the diversi fied forms of animal and vegetable life with which every part of nature in those regions teems, can not be effaced, even at this distance of time, from the memory of those who perused his descriptions with that eager curiosity which they excited at the time of their publication, when those countries were so little known, and when vast varieties of plants and animals now familiar to us in our zoological collections and botanical conservatories, were new to European science. Few writers have combined in a higher degree powers of scientific investigation with those of graphic and forcible description. In the perusal we seem actually present at the scenes of his toilsome struggle through the tropical forests, and his strange bivouacs under their shelter. Thus, to recall a single scene: We seem to belong to the party on the banks of one of the tributaries to the Orinoco-to see the crocodiles and other aquatic neighbors attracted to the banks by the light of their fires where the hammocks are slung on oars; we follow with all their anxiety the footmarks of a tigress and her young ones left in the sand when going to the river to drink-we hear the terri fic howlings of the jaguars and pumas responded to by the fearful cries of alarm from the peccaris, the monkeys, and the sloths-the screams of the curassao, the parakka, and other birds; and we observe the dog ceasing his bark and cowering under the hammock as, amid the din, he distinguishes the growl of a distant tiger. Yet animated and encouraged by the fearlessness of the native guides, they snatch brief repose. On the return of day all these alarms are effaced by the contemplation of the marvelous scene of matchless beauty which the tangled depths of the tropical forests present; when, as Humboldt expresses it, "the explorer can hardly define the varied emotions which crowd upon his mind"-the deep silence of the solitude-the beauty and contrast of the forms-the gaudy plumage of innumerable varieties of birds-the unceas |