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And the trifler's commonplace smile, She has left them all in the crowded walk, To speak with herself awhile.

Her lips may utter no word,

Yet, her spirit speaks through her eyes, And an angel writes the record,

While she looks on the boundless skies.

"Oh passionate heart of mine, Is this thy perfect estate;

Of the long northern twilight between the day Have thy spring-time hopes here reached their

and the night,

When the heat and the weariness of the world

are ended quite;

When the hills grow dim as dreams, and the crystal river seems

Like that River of Life from out the Throne, where the blessed walk in white.

Oh the weird northern twilight, which is neither night nor day,

When the amber wake of the long-set sun still marks his western way;

And but one great golden star in the deep blue east afar

Warns of sleep and dark and midnight—of oblivion and decay.

Oh the calm northern twilight, when labor is all done,

And the birds in drowsy twitter have dropped silent one by one;

And nothing stirs or sighs in mountains, waters, skies;

Earth sleeps-but her heart waketh, till the rising of the sun.

Oh the sweet, sweet twilight, just before the time of rest,

When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed;

And the dead day smiles so bright, filling earth and heaven with light

You would think 'twas dawn come back againbut the light is in the west.

Oh the grand, solemn twilight, spreading peace from pole to pole!—

Ere the rains sweep o'er the hill-sides, and the waters rise and roll,

In the lull and the calm, come, O angel with the palm

In the still northern twilight be the parting of the soul.

-Macmillan's Magazine.

REVERIE

"TIs a sweet secluded way

Midst sunbeams, shadows, and flowers, There is peace in the winds that hitherward stray, Diffusing their fragrant showers.

Not even the startled hare

Dashes swift through the dark-green grove,
A spirit reigns in the charmed air-
Is it sorrow, or hope, or love?

Who stands by the clustering vine?
More fair than all flowers is she-

prime,

Is there naught more solid or great? "Have I tasted the purest joy,

Or must I evermore pine
To find in the noblest no alloy,
In the search no folly of mine?
""Twere sweet to be called fair,

If it left not a restless mind;

I long to grasp what I yet might share Of a better and lovelier kind.

"Tears force a way to my eyes,

For I know not whom to trust?
And a woman's tenderest sympathies,
Like leaves, may be trampled in dust.
"Oh! is it not sad to stand

In a world so marked with power, O'ershadowed by God's irresistible hand, As weak as a summer flower?

"Love can scarcely cost me a sigh-
Love with its silly parade,
Its boasted golden power to buy

The blush of a modest maid.

"Life is more than a selfish rest,

Our pity should crush our pride; These hands are ready to work their best If a master-mind would guide.

"My bosom is not all steel,

It is tender enough when found;

I can feel for those that feel,

And would bind up some inward wound. "I hardly can grope a way

To life's brighter, happier part;
O that some angel now would say
Where I may trust this heart:

"Till I see e'en a shadowy way
To that land where the young find rest;
If not to enter at once and stay,
Yet, to feel its light in my breast."

-London Society.

VERY LONG AGO.
LISTENING in the twilight, very long ago,
To a sweet voice singing very soft and low.
Was the song a ballad of a lady bright
Saved from deadly peril by a gallant knight?

Or a song of battle, and a flying foe?
Nay, I have forgotten-'tis so long ago.

Scarcely half remembered, more than half forgot,
I can only tell you what the song was not.
Memory unfaithful has not kept that strain,
Heard once in the twilight-never heard again.
Every day brings twilight; but no twilight brings
To my ear that music on its quiet wings.
After autumn sunsets, in the dreaming light,
When long summer evenings deepen into night,
All that I am sure of, is that, long ago,
Some one sang at twilight very sweet and low.
-Temple Bar.

"THE E'EN BRINGS A' HAME." UPON the hills the wind is sharp and cold, The sweet young grasses wither on the wold, And we, O Lord! have wandered from thy fold; But evening brings us home.

Among the mists we stumbled, and the rocks Where the brown lichen whitens, and the fox Watches the straggler from the scattered flocks; But evening brings us home.

The sharp thorns prick us, and our tender feet Are cut and bleeding, and the lambs repeat Their pitiful complaints-oh, rest is sweet

When evening brings us home!

We have been wounded by the hunters' darts;
Our eyes are very heavy, and our hearts
Search for thy coming; when the light departs.
At evening, bring us home.

The darkness gathers. Through the gloom no

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BRIEF LITERARY NOTICES. Religion and Chemistry; or, Proofs of God's Plan in the Atmosphere and its Elements. Ten Lectures delivered at the Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y., on the Graham Foundation. By JOSIAH P. COOKE, Jr., Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University. Sampson, Low & Co. This is a very able and very sensible performance. The subject prescribed by the founder of the Lectures at the Brooklyn Institute is "The Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as Manifested in his Works." At the time these lectures of Mr. Cooke were written, "Darwin on the Origin of Species" was exciting apprehension in many minds as having an injurious bearing on the argument for design. Our author therefore undertook to show that "there is abundant evidence of design in the

properties of the chemical elements alone," and thus to place the great argument for natural theology on an independent and secure basis, apart from all questions of organic development. He dwells chiefly on the properties of air and water and their constituent elements. In discussing generally the questions at issue between religion and science, his observations are characterized by sound sense and judgment. The tendency among some Christians to ignore the wellestablished results of science and to denounce its legitimate tendency he justly characterizes as short-sighted, illiberal, and unchristian. But, he adds, "fortunately such fearful souls constitute but a small party in the Christian Church. There is a far nobler and more courageous faith than theirs a faith so strong in its convictions that it fears no criticism, however searching, and no scientific analysis, however rigorous it may bea faith which finds in the Bible, not a series of dead formulas, but a mass of living truth. It is the men with a faith like this who are the really brave Christians. They are not alarmed at the apparent contradictions between science and revelation."-The Reader.

Le Voyage au Parnasse de Michel de Cervantes. Traduit en Français pour la première fois par J. M. GUARDIA. Paris: Gay. We suspect that very few of the admirers of Cervantes know any of his productions except the adventures of the famous hidalgo Don Quixote and of his no less celebrated attendant Sancho Pan

za.

The satirical poem which Doctor Guardia has just published under the title of Voyage au Parnasse is a work well deserving to be studied

because it illustrates a feature in the character of Cervantes with which most people were little, if at all, acquainted; whilst, at the same time, it is full of valuable information respecting the history of Spanish literature. It would have been impossible to find a person better qualified than Dr. Guardia to translate and edit the Voyage au Parnasse. The value of this volume is very much enhanced by the addition of-1, an excellent biography of Cervantes; 2, an introductory chapter on the voyage itself; and 3, an alphabetical series of short sketches of the Spanish writers quoted. This last division of the work will enable the reader to form a very good idea of the state of literature in Spain during the sixteenth century.-Saturday Review.

The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. By the Rev. THOMAS MCLAUCHLAN, M.A. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. We are glad to find that a minister of the Scottish Free Church can have time and inclination for such studies as have led to the issue of this volume. The "learned leisure" so needful for their successful prosecution is more often the fruit of royal patronage than of the countenance and favor of the good folks who throng the pews of the chapel. Yet Mr. McLauchlan has managed to produce a very scholarly, and, at the same time, readable book. His able paper on Emigration and the Highlands, which appears in the Transactions of the Social Science Association for 1863, would have led us to expect as much. In the present volume he traces the story of the early Scottish

Church from its first beginnings till the final establishment of Diocesan Episcopacy by David I., when the Culdees, or national clergy, were at last compelled to succumb to the influence of Rome. A minute account is given of the growth and peculiarities of the Culdee Church, which our author holds to be identical with the Columban, as well as of the labors of the early missionaries, especially of St. Columba, with whose name our readers who have made the trip to Iona are doubtless familiar. The contemporaneous civil history of the kingdom also passes under review. To those who delight to trace in the distant past the germs of the present, The Early Scottish Church will afford gratification and instruction.-The Reader.

Following the Flag. From August, 1861, to November, 1862, with the Army of the Potomac. By “CARLETON," author of " My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. Multitudes of our readers will be glad to see another volume by Mr. Coffin, whose communications have frequently appeared in the Congregationalist. He gives a straightforward, clear, and comprehensive history of McClellan's memorable campaigns, describing with thrilling interest the battle at Ball's Bluff and the various movements on the Peninsula; and nearly one hundred pages are devoted to the battle of Antietam. The details of this battle are given with more perspicuity than in any other account which has met our eye-perhaps too minutely for the best popular effect. The scrupulous care of the author to make a reliable book, the sound principles which it inculcates, and its high moral tone, all add to its claims for a wide circulation.-Congregation alist.

From the same publishers we have received an elegant edition of Shakspeare's Sonnets; also Clever Stories of Many Nations rendered in Rhyme, by JOHN G. SAXE; illustrated by W. L. Champney, a beautiful book. Also a small and neat edition of Enoch Arden; also the House and Home Papers of Mrs. Stowe, which are admirable; also a Tribute to Thomas Starr King, by RICHARD FROTHINGHAM, on tinted paper; an eloquent and highly appreciative memoir, which thousands will read with interest, mingled with regret at his untimely end.

Essays, Historical and Biographical, Political, Social, Literary, and Scientific. By HUGH MILLER, Edited, with a preface by PETER BAYNE, Bos ton: Gould & Lincoln, 1865. Pp. 501. Anything from the pen of Hugh Miller is certain to find readers. These essays originally appeared in the Witness; but they deserve a permanent place in the literature of the age. They are on a great variety of topics, and for the most part are characterized by superior literary merit and by sterling value.

House and Home Papers. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865. Our readers will be glad to get these admirable sketches of domestic life, which Mrs. Stowe furnished for the Atlantic Monthly last year, in this neat and permanent form.

Eye, Ear, Throat Diseases, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma. A Book for the People. By FRANZ ADOLPH VON MOSCHZISKER, M.D., Oculist and

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Aurist. Philadelphia: Published for the Author. For sale by J. S. Claxton. 1865. This treatise is dedicated to Dr. Edward I. Sears, "In appreciation of his able efforts to expose and discredit Medical Quackery." We are not competent to express judgment on its scientific merits.

Theories of Currency. By Hon. ELEAZAR LORD. 8vo. 42 pp. Debates of the Fiscal Convention, 8vo. 96 pp. New-York: For sale by the American News Company. The Currency Question, next to our military situation, is one of the gravest and most important subjects which claims attention at the present time. These pamphlets discuss the subject in a light new and original, and with a thoroughness and ability which we have nowhere seen equalled. The views presented, and the results reached, are radically different from those which now obtain, and deserve, not only for their novelty but for the fresh and masterly ability with which the whole subject is discussed, the attention of all who are interested in our finances.

SCIENCE.

A striking discovery and singularly interesting experiment by Pofessor Tyndall, are a good beginning of a scientific session. A short time ago, he demonstrated that an opaque solution of iodine would intercept the luminous rays of a highlyheated body, but allow the obscure rays, or heatrays, to pass. The same effect takes place with pure bisulphide of carbon, so that with these two substances an experimentalist can detach one set of rays from the other, although they are issuing at the same time from the heated substance. This power of separation enables him to experiment on one set or the other at pleasure, and it is Professor Tyndall's experiments on the obscure rays which we are now to notice. He produces an electric light, and of course heat, by a powerful battery; then placing his solution of iodine at a proper distance, the luminous beam was cut off; but the intolerable temperature felt on placing his hand at the focus, proved that the heat-rays were still passing. To quote the Professor's own words:

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Thin plates of tin and zinc were placed successively in the dark focus, and speedily fused; matches were ignited, gun-cotton exploded, and brown paper set on fire. It is extremely interesting," he continues, "to observe in the middle of the air of a perfectly dark room a piece of black paper suddenly pierced by the invisible rays, and the burning ring expanding on all sides from the centre of ignition."

On the 15th of October last, Professor Tyndall artificial light. He placed a hollow lens, filled repeated the experiment with sunlight instead of with the iodine solution, in the sun's rays, and took precautions to prevent the passage of light even around the edges: the heat-rays alone passed through. Although the atmosphere was somewhat cloudy and smoky, the focus of the lens was burning hot. The same effects of burning and exploding, with the addition of explosion of gunpowder, took place as in the experiment above mentioned. In fact," remarks Professor Tyndall, "we had in the focus of the sun's dark rays a heat decidedly more powerful than that of

66

the electric light similarly condensed, and all the effects obtained with the former could be obtained in an increased degree with the latter." We foresee that out of these experiments further results will be achieved, and unusually interesting Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institution. With this fresh proof before us of Professor Tyndall's genius and activity, we have the more pleasure in hearing that the Royal Society have awarded to him their Rumford Medal-a medal of great value, specially founded by Count Rumford for experiments in light and heat. In this instance, it is a recognition of merit about which there can be no question.-Chambers's Journal.

Bone-caves. Some of our savans who took advantage of their vacation for a run to Gibraltar and the south of France, have returned with a considerable addition to their knowledge of the bone-caves which they travelled to explore. The Gibraltar cave, in particular, engaged their attention, and it appears to be more interesting than any of the others. We mentioned some months ago the ancient relics of men and animals from that cave which had been exhibited at scientific meetings in London. Their scientific value was fully recognized; and we now hear that fresh facts of much importance have been brought to light by this last visit. The result of the visit to Bruniquel and other caves in the south of France is the discovery, that bone and flint relics exist there in prodigious quantities, and that the British Museum paid by far too high a price for the collection which it bought at the beginning of the present year.

Glaciers.-A professor who went to Norway to pursue his examination of the fields and glaciers, came to the conclusion that direct sunshine melts snow more rapidly than warm air, rain, or any other influence. During continuous sunshine, the Norwegian rivers are all full; but should two or three weeks of rain occur, the water falls several feet, as was the case in a river in which the professor caught salmon during his visit. The weather was, besides, so cold and cloudy for most of the time as to afford him good opportunity for observing the effect on the ice and snow of the hills; and his conclusion is, that if cold and cloudy weather would only last long enough, a glacial epoch might be reproduced in Norway. If a great sheet could be stretched a few hundred yards above the surface all over the country, the same effect, namely, a glacial epoch, would be produced by artificial means. These are interesting facts. We may expect that ere long they will be fitted into some theory of climate. A learned professor, writing from Berlin, expresses his fear that another glacial epoch has begun in the north of Germany, for the weather there has been so cold and wet that the crops have failed, and the country looks drenched and miserable.

What a contrast to our summer!

Laws of Nature Generally but not Necessarily Regular.—The fixity of the laws of nature is appealed to; that, say they, is the palpable and incontestable fact established by the experience of mankind, and upon which rests the conduct of human life. In presence of the permanent order of nature and the immutability of its laws, we cannot admit any partial, any momentary infractions; we cannot believe in the supernatural, in

miracles. True, general and constant laws do govern nature. Are we, therefore, to affirm that those laws are necessary, and that no deviation from them is possible in nature? Who is there that does not discern an essential, an absolute difference between what is general and what is necessary? The permanence of the actual laws of nature is a fact established by experience, but it is not the only fact possible, the only fact conceivable by reason: those laws might have been other laws-they may change. Several of them have not always been what they now are; for science itself proves that the condition of the universe has been different from what it is at present; the universal and permanent order of which we form part, and in which we confide, has not always been what we now see it; it has had a beginning; the creation of the actual system of nature and of its laws is a fact as certain as the system itself is certain. And what is creation but a supernatural fact, the act of a power superior to the actual laws of nature, and which has power to modify them just as much as it has had power to establish them?-Guizot's "Meditations on Christianity."

The Last Number of the Moniteur Scientifique gives a very interesting account of the recent meeting of German naturalists and medical men at Giessen, at which place many of the German scientific world congregated this year. Oken, to whom the idea of these autumnal gatherings is due, would have been well content had he lived to see the little 1822 gathering at Leipzig expanded into the really very successful meeting of this year. Giessen, which has numbered, or still numbers, Liebig, Hofmann, Will, Fresenius, Bischoff, Kopp, Wehnher, Leuckart, Hoffmann, and Seitz among its professors, lent itself admirably to the occasion, and the thousand odd who this year visited it found more than the officers of the association to receive them, for M. Carl Vogt is mayor, and under his auspices committees for everything, even for ornamentation and victualling, were formed. The German association's programme differs somewhat from our own. Thus, for instance, there is a bal solennel, to which all hosts and hostesses and their families are invited, and at which five hundred jolies danseuses "assisted;" and here we confess the Germans are in theory ahead of us; and there is, moreover, a dîner solennel, which possibly was more solemn from our point of view. Hanover has been chosen for the next place of meeting, and on the same day a telegram was received from the chief magistrate. Innsbruck was suggested, but some unlucky wight suggested that the association was too liberal and too Protestant to be well received there, upon which Carl Vogt is reported to have said that "Il n'y avait pas lieu de parler de religion, attendu que les naturalistes sont ou audessus ou au-dessous des vues de ce genre."

The French Geological Congress, which met in the latter days of October at Marseilles, has been a very successful meeting. Upwards of forty geologists, including among them MM. Daubrée, De Verneuil, Hébert, and P. Gervais, assembled under the presidency of MM. Coquand and Matheron. These gentlemen have made a special study of the geology of Provence; and the various strata of the chalk formation, which

they have shown to be similar to those of the central coast-line of Western France, were among the formations principally studied in the various excursions.-The Reader.

A Correspondent in the Times gives an account of a wonderful engineering feat in Brazil. The railway from the port of Santos to San Paulo has to cross, eight miles from the former place, the mountain range of Sierra do Mar, and to accomplish this an ascent of 2600 feet has to be made in the course of five miles. To effect this Mr. Brunlees, the engineer, has devised a scheme by which the ascent is made in four divisions of a mile and a quarter each, with stationary engines at their summits, the gradient throughout being one in ten. The first division is already in operation, and rapid progress is being made with the third, the most arduous of all. The line has there to cross a gloomy ravine nine hundred feet in breadth, known as the "Bocca do Inferno," and rests on iron columns bedded on stone piers two hundred feet below. The steel wire rope used for drawing up the trains is one and one eight inches diameter. All this engineering skill has not been exhibited to no purpose, as the line will open up a most important coffee district at present almost inaccessible.-Spectator. A Celebrated Physician, residing at Metz, has written a treatise on the medicinal qualities of wine, in which he states that, considering wine in the point of view of the mineral salts which it contains in a large quantity, such as potash, soda, lime, magnesia, iron, manganese, chlorides, sulphates, carbonates, phosphates, the juice of the grape constitutes a real natural mineral liquid as active and even more charged with mineral principles than many justly esteemed springs.

VARIETIES.

English Catalogue of Books.-This Catalogue gives the title, size, price, number of volumes, publisher's name, and date of publication of 67,500 distinct works; being the English publications, importations of original American works, and Continental English books, for the eight years from January, 1835, to January, 1863. The latest edition of the London Catalogue-now incorporated with this work (S. Low and Co.) gave 42,340 works for the twenty-five years from 1831 to 1855; additional researches have added to this number about 5300 titles which had escaped former compilers; from which, however, 1500 must be deducted, omitted by reason of the four years difference of date in commencement. This calculation leaves 21,960 books published during the last eight years, or an average of 2787 per annum, exclusive of reprints.

history and writings. The Dramatic Author's
Society have good hopes of discovering his
Boyer's French Dictionary one of these days.
We trust also to hear of the recovery of his
Book of Cab-fares, which, as is well known, sug-
gested to him the line in Macbeth, "fare is foul
and foul is fare." We fear that his last Brad-
shaw is destroyed, at least we have no evidence
that the poet imitated the one careful man of our
own time, who binds his old Bradshaws, but his
Euclid, from which he drew the beautiful image
in the Winter's Tale, about "the Angle that
plucks our son thither," may yet be heard of, and
we shall rejoice with unfeigned joy to learn that
his Book of Etiquette has reappeared, from which
no doubt he got the idea for the rule he pre-
scribes (in Henry VIII.) to gentlemen who go
for a walk with ladies:

"I were unmannerly to take you out,
And not to kiss you."

About Ten Thousand Pieces of Roman Money, principally of the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, have just been discovered in the bed of the Mayenne, at St. Leonard. Their presence is explained by the fact of a dangerous ford having formerly existed at this spot, and the custom of travellers to throw in the river a piece of money ex voto.

Jasmin, the French Poet, whose death was recently announced, was a barber of Languedoc, and wrote in a patois, being to his people what Burns is to the Scotch. The only remarkable fact of his history is, that after being caressed and fêted in Paris, dining with Louis Philippe, and receiving a gold medal from the Academy, he returned to his native town, Agen, and went resolutely on with his business, put his decorations on the counter, and called one of his collections of poems Curl Papers. In his Familiar Letters from Europe, recently published by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, the late President Felton gives an interesting account of an interview with Jasmin.

M. Faller some years ago translated into French verse some of the more translatable passages of Aristophanes. Encouraged by the success of his twenty-undertaking, he now gives us a revised and enlarged edition of the work, including a complete version of the Plutus. The reader will be much struck by the à propos with which M. Fallex applies the withering sarcasms of the Greek poet to the vices and follies of modern times. As we read the description given of Cleon by the Chorus in the Wasps, we are reminded of Marat; the Clouds immediately recall to us Palissot and his caricature of Jean Jacques Rousseau in Les Philosophes. The translator, whose version deserves commendation both for its fidelity and its elegance, gives us at every step an opportunity of identifying some obscure allusion or illustrating some interesting point of literary history.

Shakspeare's Library. Shakspeare's books, says Punch, are being discovered in various directions. His Prayer Book is reported to have turned up somewhere in Wales, and it is probable that he took it with him there in case he might have to go to church while on the journey he took to get up facts about the Welsh lady in Henry IV. He was very particular about going to church, as must be clear to all students of his

The largest churches in Europe will contain the following number of persons: St. Peter's, Rome, 54,000; Cathedral at Milan, 37,000; St. Paul's, at London, 25,000; St. Sophia, at Constantinople, 23,000; Notre Dame de Paris, 21,000; Cathedral of Pisa, 13,000; St. Mark's, of Venice, 7000.

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