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I shall conclude with a sonnet, the patiate upon, for you will instantly feel beauty of which I need not ex

it

"Not love, nor war, nor the tumultuous swell,
Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change,
Nor duty struggling with afflictions strange,
Not to these alone inspire the tuneful shell;
But where untroubled peace and concord dwell,
There also is the muse not loth to range,
Watching the blue smoke of the elmy grange
Skyward ascending from the twilight dell.

Meek aspirations please her, lone endeavour,
And sage content, and placid melancholy;
She loves to gaze upon a crystal river,
Diaphonous because it travels slowly;
Soft is the music that would charm for ever,
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly."

So much for Wordsworth. I look upon you already as one of his champions, and and as a first proof of your zeal in his cause, I call upon you to make the nearest approach to scolding, of which your gentle nature is capable, for Mr. Poplar's benefit when you next see him. I daresay if you command him on pain of your displeasure, never again to let a "note" into his Magazine about Mr. Wordsworth, except it be a note of praise, it will be quite sufficient. I am singularly obliged to your lively friend Caroline, for being so condescending as to remember my existence, and for wishing to be informed whether I go to many "parties." You may tell her, that since I had the age of twenty years to answer for, I never much affected the assemblies so called, and I have utterly forgotten the nature of the pleasure, which for a few years, between boy and man, I felt in being one of these crowds. It is strange, how many young people seem to exist upon the excitement of going out to encounter what now seems to me so excessivly inconvenient and unamusing,

"mais chaq'un ou chaq'une à son gout;" and as Miss Caroline wants to know something about these goings on in London, so far as I know about the matter, I shall tell you, and you may translate the same for her, according to what flourish her nature will.

In a certain rank, the manners of the English and the Irish are the same In Grosvenor-square or Merrion-square, you would find little, if any difference. At an evening party in either you have the satisfaction of hearing your name shouted forth as lustily as if you were the Khan of Tartary, or Princess of Rusti Fusti, first by the hall porter to the man at the foot of the stairs, who taking up the cry, transmits it to the man on the first landing-place, who in his turn shouts to the groom of the chambers at the drawing-room door, who last but not least, calls aloud to the mass of people within that you, the said gentleman or lady, whoever you be, are about to make your appearance. If you are modest, you are ashamed to have your name bandied about among the echoes, and

think people will stare at you; but fret not thyself; they will do no such thing, and equal to them would be the announcement that you had broken your neck in going down stairs, as that your neck was about to progress into their company by coming up stairs. I say your neck, for unless you go very early that is all that for the first ten minutes you must reckon upon getting into the room, and by thrusting that forward in a crane-like fashion, you perceive a crush of coats and balloon sleeves-a waving of feathers and blonde, and artificial flowers, and you inhale a sort of steam impregnated with the odours of hot-house plants, and Eaux de Cologne, and de Lavande, and de Mousline, and Jasmine, and I know not what, all in a "concatenation accordingly." And you hear in the remote distance, the sound of harp and pipe, and you judge, by a peculiar motion of heads, gliding along in certain regularly irregular lines, which you see over the shoulders of the intervening multitude, that they are dancing quadrilles in those foreign parts. Then you talk to three or four people about nothing at all, and unless you have some particular individual appointment, you go away in half an hour to some other place to go through similar absurdities, or go home and go to bed, as the case may be.

Among the middle classes there is, however, as it seems to my ignorance, a good deal of difference in the modes of conducting these momentous affairs in London and Dublin. In Dublin people give parties several times in a year-here among among those of moderate means, it is too troublesome and expensive an affair to happen more than once, or at most twice, and then they imitate the bad habits of those in the ranks above them, by making the assembly a complete crush, in which there is no room to dance, and scarcely enough to eat, with comfort. The excuse made, is, that a party is so expensive a thing, that they cannot give many, and must ask all their friends, and half of all, that is twice as much as the house will conveniently hold, probably come, and they make one another uncomfortable, and "what say a delightful party," and the folly continues from house to house, from the beginning of March to the end of June. One great difference is, that whereas

in Dublin almost all the people at an evening assembly know something of one another, and they have something cheerful to talk of to one another-that is, they can ridicule one another's mutual friends, which I take to be one of the most amusing descriptions of conversation on such occasions; in London, out of a hundred people at any house, no ten will be at all intimately acquainted with any other ten, or even with their affairs. When two people do meet who know one another you shall probably hear one of them say, "Ah, how d'ye do? I don't think I have seen you since I met you here last year." "No indeed," the other replies, "I believe not; why do you never call?" "Call," rejoins the first, "why so I would, only that I haven't been in your part of the town, nor within three miles of it, for the last three years." Again, the people in England are in general not lively; there is even among intimates less conversation and less laughter, and there is an evenness of manners-a uniformity of easy and self-possessed politeness, which in the same class of society would perhaps not be found in the Irish metropolis. I believe few things strike a young Irishman more, when he first goes into society in England, than the easy selfpossession of the young ladies; there is neither timidity nor boldness-neither blushing and confusion, nor romping forwardness, but an unembarrassed manner, as if they felt quite assured of what was right to say and do.

I don't know that I have anything more to say upon this highly important and interesting subject, except I were to describe to you why parties are more expensive here than in Dublin, which would involve me in details more fit for a housekeeper's journal than a letter to you. I think upon the whole matter you may tell Miss Caroline, that though she would find the people uncommonly well dressed at parties here, she would set them down as rather dull, and that is the sum and substance of my information, or the "summum bonum" of it, as a very learned servant I had in Ireland used to say, when he meant to indicate a summary.

Farewell, dear Lucy; may you ever be as happy as you are kind, and gentle, and affectionate. So prays Your loving cousin,

To Miss Lucy O'Brien.

HARRY R.

THE CAROUSE.

[The following lines are intended as a sort of shifting panorama, representing the mind of a conscience-stricken reveller, through the various scenes of a convivial meeting. I wish I could say that it was not experience that supplied the colouring. It is not, however, a recurring experience, and I now put forward the picture merely in terrorem to others.]

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NATURAL PHILOSOPHY-GEOLOGY-No. I.

The history of philosophy is one of the most interesting studies of the man of letters. The view of the progress of knowledge, from its earliest recorded development, to its present extended diffusion, offers to the reflecting mind a field of contemplation worthy of traversing. If we compare the feeble efforts of the most ancient philosophers to penetrate the veil of ignorance, which then surrounded mankind, with the mighty power of the promoters of knowledge of the present day, we must be struck with the extraordinary progress of the human mind, through the different stages of barbarism, semi-civilization, and recent advancement. In the very remote periods of human society men were chiefly occupied with warfare, either among themselves or against the beasts of the field. The knowledge actually required by them was trifling. Adroitness in managing weapons was, perhaps, the most esteemed qualification which a man could possess; and when once the object of contention was at tained, the gratification of animal, and not of intellectual pleasure, was sought after and indulged in. For this gratification little was necessary, and when once obtained, unless a new excitement was found to influence the barbarian, he sank into an indolence approaching almost to torpidity. The commencement of what is called knowledge would, perhaps, never have been made, had it not been that there is a difference in the character of individuals, even amongst barbarous tribes; a dissimilarity in their dispositions-in their modes of acting, and in their passions. Some will pursue the chase with more ardour than others-some will be more esteemed for their skill in war, while a few will be found less prone to action than their fellows, and whose intellectual powers, being less dormant from their inferior bodily activity, become sharpened by being more exercised. From their enduring less fatigue than their more active brethren, they are less liable to fall

into the same indolence, and from their not overstraining their corporeal powers, their mental ones are exercised and improved. Such men will imperceptibly reflect on what they see about them, and will thus lay the foundation of knowledge. Their field of ideas being more extended than that of their less inquisitive fellows, they would naturally acquire a mental superiority. They would, consequently, be enabled to take advantage of superstitious fears, so prevalent among barbarians, and acquire thus an influence, sometimes unbounded. Still it is such men that we are to regard as the first discoverers, and as the earliest repositories of knowledge. The pagan priesthood discovered, even in the earliest ages, some important truths, which they diligently stored up along with much concomitant falsehood and imagination. As ages rolled on, and as the arts of life were improved, this knowledge increased, and became more valuable. In those nations where civilization was of an earlier date, the priests may be considered as learned men, from their possessing the results of the experience of a long period of time, and they were frequently visited by the inquisitive of nations of more recent refinement. We thus find the Greek philosophers travelling Egypt and India, to study the science possessed by the priests of those countries, and on their return teaching this to their pupils. Let us, therefore, consider the kind of knowledge ac quired by these philosophers on their travels.

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Thales, of Miletus, visited Egypt, where he studied geometry, astronomy, and cosmogony. He was the founder of the Ionian sect of philosophers, upon his return to his native place. He appears to have taught the cause of the inequality of days and nights, and the theory of eclipses. He maintained that water is the principle of which all the bodies in the universe are com posed-that the world was the work of God, and that God sees the most

secret thoughts in the heart of man. It is related that he measured the height of the pyramids of Memphis by the extent of their shadows; and he is considered the first who employed the circumference of a circle in the measurement of angles.

Pythagoras studied geometry among the Egyptians. This science he improved by his subsequent discovery of several important propositions. He is the earliest recorded teacher of the true system of astronomy, and he made many important discoveries in the other physical sciences. He observed many curious phenomena on the surface of the earth, which must have led him to reason on the changes which this surface must have undergone in the lapse of ages. In the 15th book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a number of these observations are mentioned, which are extremely curious, and testify, in a very remarkable manner, the superior mind of the philosopher.

Plato also travelled into the east, where he became versed in the learning of the Persians and the Egyptians. He wrote several works, which treated chiefly of metaphysical subjects. He mingled together his doctrines of Theogony and Cosmogony, so that it is a difficult matter to separate his peculiar notions of the latter. The passage in his writings most interesting to the modern geologist is that which treats of the Atlantic, recorded by Plato as a large continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and which had sunk under water, thereby giving place to the present Atlantic Ocean. He made many improvements in geometry; to him is ascribed the discovery of the mathematical bodies, called the regular solids. He conceived the world to be a figure shaped like one of these solids, called the Dodecahedron.

Of the opinions of Aristotle respecting the formation of the world, we have not any very clear account. He wrote upon a variety of subjects, among which natural history occupied a prominent place. He regarded the matter of the heavens as ingenerate and eternal-that mankind, and all species of animals have subsisted from everlasting by a perpetual course of generation, without any original beginning or production; and that the earth has for ever been adorned with trees, plants, flowers, minerals, and other produc

tions, as we now see it to be." (Univ. Hist. 78-11.) It is possible that he may have taken the idea of the eternity of the world from Ocellus Lucanus, a disciple of Pythagoras, who is the most ancient asserter of this idea, so different from the opinion of his master.

We thus find that the most eminent ancient philosophers indulged more or less in reveries respecting cosmogony. In studying other branches of learning they must have been frequently led into considerations of the probable origin of the world which they inhabited, and they endeavoured to frame hypothesis, some of which were very ingenious, but more generally, extremely absurd. Occasionally a master-mind, like that of Pythagoras made an approximation to the truth, which has astonished the learned of later times. Sometimes facts were related in corroboration of these hypotheses-sometimes they were distorted to explain the dreams of philosophic fancy. But among the ancients the observation of natural facts was not made in a way to benefit science. We find many of the arts and sciences brought by the ancients to a considerable degree of perfection. In architecture, poetry, eloquence, and perhaps in some other branches they equalled the moderns. The progress made by them in geometry was admirable indeed, and they based that science upon a foundation fitted to bear the splendid superstructure raised by modern ingenuity. But in those branches that required a combination of the perceptive and reasoning powers, their progress was very limited. Chemistry and experimental philosophy are of modern origin; at least what was effected in them by the ancients, or rather what is recorded as having been effected, is very trifling. In botany, zoology and mineralogy a number of detached observations have been recorded in the writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Pliny, but no classification was ever attempted, nor any extended train of reasoning from these facts adopted by the ancient philosophers.

If we turn our attention to the state of knowledge among the Arabians we shall find that the mathematical sciences were for the most part cultivated by them. They devoted, it is true, some attention to astronomy and to Alchemy, but the former being studied for the

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