Thus, whatever the matter in hand, his broad, mercurial, rich nature was formed to get at the bottom of it, to comprehend it, to make it entirely his own. No half-way tasting of existence, in any of its forms, was satisfactory to him; no manifestation of the great soul of humanity, be it a rural pastime or a great world-venerated intellectual system, could be uninteresting to him; he looked at mankind in all their likings and leavings with open eye, with a sunny, open heart. In the paraphrase of his own distich, "Life, his inheritance, broad and fair,

Earth was his seedfield, to time he was heir."

With such a nature, and such a developement of it, having met and overcome most of the trials of the more impulsive periods of life-a naturally strong, noble figure of a man, richly adorned and embroidered with all the graces that fortune, family, education and society can superadd, Goethe found a sphere for which he was peculiarly prepared, in the brilliant court of Karl August. The young Prince of Weimar, attaining his majority and his power just about the same time, was fortunately one who had a heart capable of love, as well as a head fit to rule. The sudden but lasting attachment which sprung up between himself and Goethe, was as honorable to both, as it appears to have been cordial and dignified. Thoughtless radicalism has imputed to Goethe that this, on his part, was devotion to the ruler rather than to the man; but the fact was, that this friendship was one of reciprocal respect and equal favor, where any social advantages conferred by the Arch-Duke were more than compensated by the celebrity conferred by the poet. The life of neither of these illustrious personages was made up of court parades or court intrigues, but of useful labor in their several spheres. Karl governed his little province with a manly sense of his duty. Goethe immortalised it by the best works of the best modern literature. Indeed, it was a rare and beautiful sight-this intimacy and good will, cemented in earliest youth, and carried on to late old age, between one worthily born of a race of kings, and another destined to become greater than any king. There was nothing in it to carp at-there was much in it to admire. Goethe it placed at once in a position where his majestic and graceful intellect could freely unfold; in a circle of cultivated friends, possessed of leisure and means for the pursuit of art, and capable of the most delicate appreciation of his own lofty endowments. An organization so fine, and yet so magnificent, found its genial atmosphere in the almost ideal refinement of a court. The simplicity of his manners could not be corrupted by it, while it nourished and enriched his imagination. True, Jean Paul has said that "under golden mountains many a spiritual giant lies buried," but had they been greater giants, they might, as Goethe did, have melted these mountains into images of beauty. His court life was valuable to him, however, not because of its glitter and show, but because it simply gave him freedom. 'Tis a mistake to suppose that genius always thrives best in loneliness and poverty; for life, in every sort, finds its most sure and healthful growth in a fitting and congenial medium. Burns, as a peasant, was no greater than he would have been as a prince. On the other hand, a larger nurture would have aided in a larger developement. Men of strong native force will, it is true, overcome obstacles of formidable compass, but the same force will exert itself all the more effectively where such obstacles are wanting, or are of another less oppressive magnitude. In the one case, we may get a rugged, monstrous upshoot-a very Polyphemus of savage energy. In the other, we are likely to have a mightier, self-poised, majestic Jupiter. True enough! "Gold mountains have buried many a spiritual giant," but there have been many more, we think, as this world has gone, lost in mud-holes and ditches.

Goethe, we have said, valued his prosperous condition for its freedom: it gave him opportunities for a rare and expansive culture; it gave him books, and it gave him the instruments of Art; it gave him access to all modes of life-to all classes of society, to noble and ennobling companions; and what was better than all, and so essential to his being, the means of a free communion with Nature, by observation and travel. That impartial judgment of men and things which was one of the kindly traits of his character; that many-sided interest in all that relates to the minuter and grander destinies of Humanity in all its phases; his unceasing researches into the realms of science, and his miraculous activity in those of literature, are all to be more or less ascribed to the graceful comfort of his external circumstances. Had he been cramped and tortured by the pressure of indigence and obscurity, as poor dear Richter was, our noble, well-proportioned Goethe, the delight of all women and the admiration of all men, might have become a rude, double-fisted, burly iconoclast, battering away at established things with the fierce revenge of an oriental demon. It would have been a sight, truly, that-for men to look at and tremble-such sights, too, being necessary at times; but we are persuaded that Gocthe has served us better in his place of the calm, creative Jove.

Let it not be thought, however, that Goethe's life at court was in any degree the life of a courtier. It was a life of universal activity, and of the broadest intercourse with men. No society can be conceived more elevated and desirable than the society of Weimar during Goethe's ascendancy. With a princely family at its head, whose taste diffused a love of art and letters, while its active beneficence cherished the best affections of the people; with the two most illustrious of poets to give tone to its opinions and provide its amusements; with the excellent Herder and kindred spirits for its preachers and models of virtue; visited all the year by Richters and Humboldts and De Staels; by the most eminent in rank and science, and virtue of all lands; the centre of thought and literary productiveness to cultivated Germany,-it was just the sphere for a Goethe. Yet he was not confined to it. He often sought the refreshment of more rural scenes; now wandering away into the sublimities of Switzerland, and then again losing himself amid the beauties of Italy. Who, indeed, can estimate the influences upon his spirit of these far journeyings? The record of them is in his works-in those glorious conceptions of the All-Fair, which, filling his soul, overflowed into his poems. What must Italy, always so enrapturing to the northern imagination, have been to the fancy of Goethe! A land of wonder -of magic-of glory. Its monuments of the highest man has yet achieved in art; its statues, its pictures, its architecture and its music; its waters and its skies, so early longed after, so passionately enjoyed, as the lover longs for his mistress, and dissolves in the soft ecstacy of her embrace, translated him into a new and heavenly world. "This day," said he, referring to his first sight of the Paradise of Art-" this day I was born anew." Earth had no more to give him-the uses of Fame were fulfilled.

Thus, in endless studies-in the purest interchange of friendship-in the creation of immortal thoughts-in delicious visits to the most delicious climes, the hours of Goethe's manhood passed away. For eighty years and more he knew no rest and no haste," like a star keeping on its "God-appointed way"-years of exalted worship, of calm victorious effort. When death came, it met him busy with the pen, the implement at once of his pleasure and his power; and he sunk, as a child, who, with the glow of the day's activity still on his cheek, looking forward to a morrow of hope and joy, folds himself to sleep. "Let the light enter," were his last words, echoed, we may well suppose, from a region where all is light.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW-YORK.

(Continued.)

It is a favorite, though we believe fallacious, theory of a class of geologists, that a correspondence exists between the rocks of America and those of Europe. If some of them are rightly understood, they are attempting to trace out the rocks of New-York among English formations. Now, either our geological theory is very much at fault, or else, such attempts must prove, and should prove, altogether futile. We have no doubt but the synchronous rocks can be discovered and pointed out; and indeed this has been done to a considerable extent with our rocks. Lyell thinks that in point of age our rocks, up to and including the Clinton group, agree with the "lower silurean;" thence up to and including the Helderberg series, with the “upper silurean," and the remainder with the "Old Red," systems of England. But farther than this, we do not believe that any similarity is to be traced between the rocks of the two continents. We have reason to suppose that at the same periods of the earth's history, mainly the same genera of fauna existed upon the various parts of its surface, as is the case at present. But Mr. Lyell says, that of the strata corresponding in age in the two continents, "while some species of the fossils agree, the majority of them are not identical." Those species, he says, which have been found identical in the two continents, are just those which have the greatest vertical range, and which thoroughly show themselves capable of surviving many changes upon the earth's surface, and thus enjoyed a wide geographical range. Synchronism may easily be believed to exist between strata of different countries, since it involves no absurdities; and if existing, would be likely to be shown by the fossils of the two countries. But not so with the lithological character and succession, and order of position of the rocks of countries so widely separated as England and New-York. Says Lyell :

"The horizontal silurean rocks of this region, (western New-York,) are in general extremely like those of corresponding age in Europe, consisting of mudstones and limestone, with similar corals and shells. But there is one remarkable exception-the occurrence, in the middle of the series,* of a formation of red, green, and blueish grey marls, with beds of gypsum, and occasional salt-springs, the whole being from 800 to 1000 feet thick, and undistinguishable in mineral character, from parts of Upper New Red, or Lias, of Europe."-Travels, p. 44.

Now let those geologists, who so eagerly look for any farther resemblances between foreign and American rocks than those exhibited in their fossils, be reminded by this anomaly in their theory-not to be "wise above what is written," and not to attempt to force accidental analogies into real and necessary similarity. It is a fact, that rocks which exhibit hundreds of feet of thickness at the Hudson River, have disappeared at the Niagara, and that the very rocks on which the Niagara pours its ocean of waters, have scarcely a representative among the eastern rocks of New-York. It is a fact that the Hudson River group, composed for the most part of shale and slate, 500 feet thick in eastern and northern New-York, has no representative at all as far west as Cincinnati, unless it be a limestone, which also comprehends the Trenton limestone.

Suppose a rock, which its fossils prove of about the same age of any

"The Wenlock.

New-York rock, be discovered in any part of England, promising similar lithological appearances, are we, therefore, to suppose it an identical rock, formed at exactly the same period, and from exactly the same cause, and by the disintegration of the same continent or mountains? We have in NewYork a subordinate group only about 75 feet thick, and separated from the thick group above it by a distinctness of its fossils. This agrees with a certain English rock, not only in the genera of its fossils, but also in its lithological appearance. How shall we call their similarity any thing more than accidental? The two groups are the Utica slate of New-York, and the Llandeilo flags of England, which Mr. Hall, unless we greatly mistake his meaning, would attempt to point out as something more than identical in age. And the same of half-a-dozen other groups. Lyell says that many of the New-York rocks give evidence of having been formed in deep water, as also do many of the silurean of England. Is it at all possible, then, that they are in any respect the same strata? If they are, what have become of the 3500 miles of the same which must have intervened? Or do the geologists mean that synchronous rocks must be similar in lithological and other characters-that Nature could not at one and the same time form lime rock in England and sand stone in America, the genera of fossils in both continents alike, but their species disagreeing.

No where in the world have the lower fossiliferous rocks been so well studied as in New-York, and probably no where are they exhibited in equal extent. In the lowest rock of the system, the Potsdam Sandstone, the earliest vestiges of animal life exists, which have been revealed to man, in a small and delicate shell of the genus Singula, a genus which, strange to say, has survived all the vicissitudes and changes of the earth's surface, since the far-offera when it began to be. Who shall compute the countless periods of its existence, or begin to calculate the length of those ages which have elapsed since animal life began upon this ancient and time-worn ball? How worse than futile to set to God's handiwork the limits of man's chronology! One of the most interesting subjects discussed by the geologists is one examined by Mr. Hall: "The past, present and prospective condition of Niagara Falls."

In order to obtain a correct understanding of the merits of this subject and its bearings, let us first state clearly what the present condition of this magnificent cataract is. Lake Erie is situated 334 feet above Lake Ontario. Between them runs, in a direction mainly north, an immense river, which, within the distance of little more than one mile, falls through the greater part of this deep descent. Through this river there runs every minute a mass of water, probably not varying much from 20,000,000 of cubic feet, or every five and one half days a cubic mile, or every year sixty-six cubic miles! not far from the one-three-hundredth part of all the fresh water on the globe! From Lake Erie to Lake Ontario the whole channel of the river is worn through the rock, forming everywhere a deep, perpendicular chasm. But it is below the falls that the deepest portion of this gorge exists. From the falls to Lewiston it is seven miles, and for this whole distance the channel of the river is at the bottom of an excavation from three to five hundred feet deep, and from twelve hundred to two thousand wide. For the first two miles after leaving Lake Erie, the course of the river is quite rapid; it then becomes slower, separating into two branches at Grand Island, and farther down expanding into a broad lake-like sheet of water, filled with little islands. At the foot of this the stream begins to present a different aspect. It suddenly contracts in width, and plunges with inconceivable velocity down the rapids. Hitherto the descent from Lake Erie has been but fifteen feet; within about a mile it now falls fifty-two feet down the rapids, and then

plunges with terrific grandeur over a fall of 163 feet.* It then descends still 104 feet before reaching the lake below.

It is well-known to have long been the belief of those who have paid much attention to the subject, and we believe it is a current opinion in the neighborhood of the falls, that the cataract was once at the point where the Niagara river empties into Lake Ontario, or at Lewiston, seven miles below its present place. It is believed, by the advocates of such a theory, that the cataract has retrograded through these seven miles by its own action upon the rocks which give it existence, and that in retrograding it has dug out the immense gorge already described, which forms the river's bed below the falls. An opposite opinion has also prevailed, and heretofore extensively; for to the minds of some there has appeared one element in such a calculation wanting. That element was time. Until recently a school of philosophers has taught, that the utmost limit which could be placed to the age of the falls was some six thousand years; and that period, long as it is, appears without the trouble of calculation far short of that required to dig this vast ravine, in comparison with the greatness of which the mightiest of man's works sinks into insignificance. But we take a different view of the subject:

We say, that if the cataract can be proved to recede at all, even though but an inch an age, then, if ages enough be found, the cataract must have reached its present position by recession. And we say farther, that if the cataract can be shown to recede now, it must have been receding ever since it first commenced to flow. But if it has been receding, it must have worn a portion, at least, of the ravine. If, then, the cataract has worn its way back for a portion of the seven miles, the presumption is, that it has worn its way back for all of the seven miles, and time enough must be allowed for the work to be accomplished. If six thousand years are not enough—then, if necessary, sixty thousand must be granted, and the onus probandi lies with the opponents of our argument, in showing that for some satisfactory reasons so much time cannot be allowed. It lies with them, too, to explain away the absurdity of believing, that while half a mile of the ravine, or more or less, must be charged to the action of the cataract itself, the other six and a half miles of the same ravine, perfectly agreeing with the half mile in appearance and character, must be attributed to other agencies.

We have a magnificent a priori argument thundering in our ears the conviction, that at some far distant age the waters of Niagara poured themselves into Ontario over a precipice seven miles below its present position. No sane man can escape it. He might as well visit the studio of an artist, and after watching him carve out the finger of an almost finished Venus, sagely and with candor admit, that with regard to the finger no doubt could exist as to its author, and that it was even quite possible that to the same source might be attributed the hand, and perhaps the arm; but as for the head and form, and divine proportions which the marble presented, no reasoning should ever convince him, that so weak an instrument as a man and a chisel had ever accomplished so much.

With respect to the rate of the present recession of Niagara, unfortunately neither history nor observation can reveal much. It has scarcely been known to civilized man till within about fifty years. Many of the residents of its vicinity, who have known it for about this period, say that within fifty years the fall has receded fifty yards; but this seems to Mr. Hall an over estimate. But still, the frequent undermining and falling away of the cliffs which form the cataract show conclusively, that whether slow or other

*

Ordinarily, the American fall is 167.7 feet high; the Canadian 158. A strong west wind driving down the water from Lake Erie, frequently raises it from 4 to 20 feet higher.