motion, but in plants more real power. A horse is certainly far stronger than a vine; yet a small vine can not only support, but can raise, a column of fluid five times higher than a horse can. [The comparison here is between the sap of plants and the blood of animals.] Indeed, the power which a plant exercises of holding a leaf erect during an entire day without pause and without fatigue is an effort of astonishing vigour, and is one among many proofs that a principle of compensation is at work, so that the same energy which in the animal world is weakened by being directed to many objects, is in the vegetable world strengthened by being concentrated on a few." These are specimens which "will illustrate the grasp of Hunter's mind," and are thought by Mr Buckle "to contain a large amount of important though neglected truth." It is a pity that the grasp is of shadows. Had Newton made such a grasp, it is probable that he would have considered it his duty to ascertain whether the vine did, or did not, raise and support the column of fluid; and on finding that there was no such column in the vine, his conjectural comparison with the blood of the horse would have been suffered to vanish into the limbo of disproved hypotheses. Any botanist will assure Mr Buckle that although the phrase "circulation of the sap" is in current use, it does not imply a process similar to that of the blood-circulation. There is no column of sap ascending from roots to buds, and descending again. The sap is contained in a series of closed chambers (cells), through the walls of which it oozes, by the law of osmosis, and is thus conveyed from one cell to another wherever two cells are in contact, and not in an ascending column. Further, we may remark that the power of the plant to hold a leaf erect without pause and without "fatigue," is less astonishing than the power of pillars to support the roof of a temple without "fatigue" during several centuries, and has about the same relation to muscular effort. We have by no means exhausted the objections to be made against Mr Buckle's numerous remarks on Method; but we hope to have vindicated our assertion that it is a subject on which his views are confused. In concluding our notice of his scientific errors, it is but common honesty to say that we have mentioned all the errors we have observed. This statement becomes the more demanded, because of a vicious practice which many critics follow, when, instead of candidly saying "these are all, or nearly all, the blunders we have detected," they name all they detect, and present them as "samples which might easily be multiplied "-thereby doing the author great injustice, and implying in themselves an immense superiority. Such critics would be rightly punished if they were publicly forced to make good their boast, and produce the blunders they pretend to leave unmentioned. For ourselves, we have spoken of Mr Buckle's errors without reticence; but we have to add that were they more numerous they would not prevent our admiration of his abilities nor our respect for his learning. SIR CRESSWELL CRESSWELL. Of all the COURTS throughout the land, The justice we delight to read of, Is that where sits Sir CRESSWELL CRESSWELL. What cases has he to determine, The Man who there displays his ermine? DEATH is his first great Cause of causes: Is it well made, or but a blot? Or has some knave contrived to dress well But the main fact that brings him Cases, I've heard inquiring females ask— But then how good Sir CRESSWELL is! His powers, now great, should still be greater. O! what a World of peace and pleasure This very case, or rather its parallel, was put by the late Duchess of Gordon to Sir William Scott, who said he could not then answer the question, as the idea had not suggested itself till he had the honour of knowing her Grace. The (once so-called) UNITED STATES, As shedding one another's blood. 'Twould end their discord and distress well, To be divorced by old Sir CRESSWELL. VENETIA, if her lord and master By kindness cannot fix her faster, But there's a thing some people want, As if 'twere Venice or Virginia. Our French Friend plays his game of chess well, But could not soon checkmate Sir CRESSWELL. THE STAGE OF WEIMAR. A LETTER. MY DEAR IRENEUS,-If all the world's a stage, the world of Weimar and the stage of Weimar are the same; and the subject of this letter is only a continuation of that of last April, but written, alas! under circumstances how different! The curtain of that pretty little world, or stage, as you may please to call it, has dropped for me-I hope not, but I almost fear-for ever. Under these circumstances, "I feel like one Who treads alone but with this difference, that I have departed and left the lights (the footlights), and the garlands thrown to histrionic success, behind. The charm of the bird-like accents of our Prima Donna warbling a translated "Last Rose of Summer" in the opera of Martha, still rings in my ears, and I dream of dramatic, social, pictorial, poetical, and evergreen Weimar, among all the whirling life of this highly self-satisfied and well to-do Jewish paradise on the bank of the Maine. The view of the Taunus Mountains, with Cromberg and Königstein nestling in them like the robber strongholds of Italy, cannot avail to make the change agreeable; nor even centrality of position, with all its superior conveniences. There is a charm about the free, fine, bracing air of the Thuringian Forest which recalls the oxygen of Scandinavia, whether it blows over the fatal slope to the west of Jena, the wild primeval pine forests of Ilmenau and Elgersburg, or plays among the Arcadian beechwoods and labyrinthine glens of Eisenach. But unhappily this very enjoyable air has been the motive of our forced migration. So we have returned from the town where Goethe died to that in which he was born, a town altered not for the better by wealth and commerce. The Römerberg is still there, with its hall of Kaisers; the old gutted houses in the middle town still tell of the picturesque eye of the architects of the middle ages; the cathedral, which, "the likeness of a kingly crown has on," still stands everlastingly asking for a spire; but the old German Hanseatic character of the place is gone, and it is only a depraved and Cockney taste which would not now vastly prefer Bamberg, or Augsburg, or Nuremberg. Though the ramparts have been changed into pleasant enough gardens, where the citizens recreate themselves, showing off the Eschenheimer Thor, the model of an old gate-tower, to great perfection, through a row of planes; yet the town is completely enclosed in pretentious suburbs, devoid of all national or local character, made of vast villas, compared by Indians to the great houses in Calcutta; and the new main street, which is mainly inhabited by millionaires-so it is said-is a model of architectural formality and ugliness only to be surpassed by the much-bepraised Rue de Rivoli in Paris, where the houses are like rows of soldiers, with all individuality drilled out of them, and figuring the military despotism under which France is destined to groan. But woe be to good taste and good feeling in any community where the people are the governors! Is not this, barring its perpetual state of siege by Austrian, Prussian, and Bavarian regiments, in all municipal matters at least, the free city of Frankfort-on-the-Maine? Quite consistently with this freedom of the city, foreigners are charged twenty-four florins a-year and some odd kreutzers for permission to reside here; and the ancient guilds still remain a standing nuisance in these modern times, subdividing butchers into beef, mutton, pork, and veal butchers, and making penal the employment of unprivileged artisans in any kind of work. Under the circumstances, added to the fact of its being the Jewish metropolis of Christendom, I very much wonder how the poor pork-butchers are able to exist at all. Alas for poor freedom in this nineteenth century! "Of old sat Freedom on the heights," and has, I fear, been sitting there so long, that she has come to that time of life when French ladies say a moral "crise" comes on from the long ennui of virtue, which tempts them to do something a little wicked. In her pet Disunited States, she is endeavouring as far as she can to justify the ex-king of Naples, enacting inconsistencies which make the angels (including Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe) weep, preaching abolition to the South, and refusing to let her own free negroes wear her uniform. I only know one state in the world where freedom, as poets imagine her, is realised, and that is in the dominions of the Grand - Duke Karl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar. But what of England? you indignantly ask. Well, I suppose England must be considered as a free country. She has had a long education in freedom, and it is her own fault if she does not know how to be free by this time; but no country can be free where there are not wholesome checks on the tyranny of individuals. Is it no deduction from freedom that strikes among workmen are allowed to exist, in which honest deserving fellows are bullied out of their bread by a faction of lazy drones? Is it, again, no deduction from freedom that railway companies are allowed to murder and mutilate her Majesty's subjects wholesale, and yet every director escapes unhanged? There is a neighbouring Thuringian potentate who, conceiving that he has a mission to emancipate, has been endeavouring to give his subjects a larger measure of liberty than that accorded by his princely fellows. The Duke of Coburg-Gotha has placed himself in the van of the German national party, has placed his army under the command of Prussia, and his local power in the hands of his people. He is evidently a fine open chivalrous character, and animated by the best intentions. But he has in part discovered his error when too late, and has been 600 forced to write a plaintive letter,* Well, this natural and healthy desire to preserve his highness's game, instinctive to all real sportsmen, who know that without preservation game would cease to exist, is actually made the object of much grumbling by the discontented radicals in Saxe-Coburg Gotha. The Grand-Duke of Weimar practises with the radicals somewhat more reserve. He allows them to fraternise to any extent, and even to sing patriotic songs under his windows when they are drunk; but he preserves a dignified silence as to their aspirations, and does not seem disposed to abate a jot of his own rights and privileges, probably because it has never been proved to him that such concessions would be for his - * See the pamphlet entitled Der Herzog von Gotha und sein Volk. |