Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

evils which three conquests had wrought | the remaining task has not been accominto the tenure, provided the means of ed-plished, and England restored to the ucation for the whole people, and trans- place Schiller truly gave her among the ferred the control of the Army from the nations as "man's stout defence from rich to the body of the people, it is per- wrong."

haps a little ungrateful to sigh because

OUR readers may remember the story of thdescription in Sanscrit of the battle of Sedan be a Prussian lieutenant of Hussars, who in ordiy nary life happened to be a privatedocent. The news of this linguistic feat has, through the channel of English papers, now reached the Ganges, and wonderful are the native observations passed upon it and the war generally. Thus the Nûr-ul-Absar, in describing the extraordinary German victories, hint not indistinctly that they were not so much the result of prowess and tactics as of the cunning with which the German warriors, well acquainted with the Eastern tongues, had made use of the magic formulas found in the Vedas, notably ahe fourth book; and King William at Sedan is represented under the guise of that fabulous Indian monarch who, lotos-flower in hand, calmly awaits in the thick of the battle its final issue. The "Light of the Eyes," or Nûr-ul-Absar, therefore recommends the French most seriously to seek for a means of repaying her enemies where alone they will find it, viz. in the Puranas and Sutras, the assiduous study of which will provide them with formulas stronger even than those used by the Germans. Whereupon the Semaphore satirically observes that an essay on artillery might, perhaps, prove still more efficacious.

Pall Mall Gazette.

ing prism noticed. There seems, also, to be evidence that this minute interval of time is sufficient for the production of various subjective optical phenomena: for example, for the recognition of Loewe's rings using cobalt glass; also, the radiating structure of the crys talline lens can be detected when the light is suitably presented to the eye. Hence, it is plain that forty billionths of a second is quite sufficient for the production on the retina of a strong and distinct impression; and as obliteration of the micrometric lines in the experiment referred to could only take place from the circumstance that the retina retains and combines a whole series of impressions, whose joint duration is forty billionths of a second, it follows that a much smaller interval of time will suffice for vision. If we limit the number of views of the lines presented to the eye in a single case to ten, it would result that four billionths of a second is sufficient for human vision, though the probability is that a far shorter time would answer as well, or nearly as well. All of which is not so wonderful, if we accept the doctrines of the undulatory theory of light; for according to it, in four billionths of a second nearly two and a half millions of the mean undulations of light reach and act on the eye.

Once a Week.

In the celebrated experiment of Wheatstone on the duration of the discharge of a Leyden jar, the conclusion was drawn that distinct vision is possible in less than the millionth of a second. The incorrectness of the data on which this conclusion rested was afterwards pointed out in an admirable investigation by Feddersen, who showed that the smallest measured duration he could obtain was one millionth of a second. In an article lately published by Professor Rood, he shows how, by the use of a much smaller electrical surface, he obtained and measured sparks the duration of whose main constituent was only forty billionths of a second. With their light distinct vision is possible. Thus, for example, the letters on a printed page are plainly to be seen; also, if a polariscope be used, the cross and rings around the axes of crystals can be observed, with all their peculiarities, and errors in the azimuth of the analyz

Ir only a few of the needless follies were removed from human life, human nature would rebound with joy. It would be like the remission of so many taxes. There would be so much time gained for the world. I suppose, however, we should spend a good deal of this time in the construction of some new folly. Still there would be an interval, during which the world might make a prodigious advance in real civilization.

By" needless follies" are meant foolish repetitions in public prayer; foolish forms of recreation, such as heavy dinners, late evening parties without amusement; after-dinner speeches, speeches in Parliament, and to constituents; long sermons; errors in dress; starch, moral, metaphysical, and physical; and all the tediousness which proceeds from absurd conventionality.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

TERMS

OF

SUBSCRIPTION.

FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for. warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

From The Gentleman's Magazine.

THE DEATH OF SUMMER.

BRAVE Summer, scorning that the Winter take Her prisoner, and mock her haunts on frosted pane,

With leaves flame-tinted from the wood and brake,

Arrays herself for death; no maidens twain Aid her attiring, like old Egypt's Queen; With heavy dews alone for diadem, See, weary-hearted, where she stays to lean

And still as she strayed the tide ebbed fast,
And the gleaming foam laughed on,
And the white fluff shrunk from the tiny feet,
And the little fat hands caught none.

She sat wearily down by the steep cliff's foot, Till the waves seemed to change their mind, And the white foam flowed to her as she sat, As though 'twould at last be kind.

And the fluff played over her soft white feet,
And the feathers flew up to her chin,

Against a copper-beech from whose strong And the soft loving water kissed her lips,

stem

A faithful robin chants her requiem.

She pauses where a canopy of shade

Was lately lit by myriad dragon-flies;

There, sighing, ling'ring, views the happy

glade

With wistful, tender longing in her eyes, Musing upon the death of all the flowers

Which in her blooming coronal were set,
To herald, each a joy of coming hours.
All gone! Nay, at her feet a violet,
Has bloomed afresh to speak her comfort yet.

Shall she, remembering her glorious prime,
Her saffron dawns, and slowly widening light,
Her golden noons, the idle, perfumed time

The dial recked not of the purple night, Vocal with song from wood and orchard ground, The same rich song our mother Eve first heard,

And, greatly marvelling at the matchless sound, Sweeter than any throat of warbling bird, Felt joys unknown within her bosom stirred:

Shall she, now warned by blasts of autumn's breath,

Not die? or yield her to the icy foe? Bring berries, bring bright leaves; she goes to death

Robed as a princess, as a queen should go. Drop, gentlest dews, and in an acorn cup

Let nimble squirrels bear them to her bier; Strew vineleaves round her, eglantine train up To wrap her shroud, that nothing come more

near

Than those sweet buds which most she loved to rear.

HUMAN LIFE.

A LITTLE child, with her bright blue eyes,
And hair like golden spray,

Sat on the rock by the steep cliff's foot
As the ocean ebbed away.

And she longed for the milk-white shining foam,
As it danced to the shingles' hum,
And stretched out her hand, and tottered fast
To bring the white feathers home.

And I carried my dead child in.

[blocks in formation]

ALL things on earth are beautiful, and bring
To happy hearts a harvest of content.
There is a glory in the bursting spring

Ere yet the sweet May-time of flowers is spent ;

And later summer, with its sultry noon,

But leads to slumbers in the leafy shade, But cold gray dawns and early sunsets soon Tell how the summer flowers e'en must fade; Then come the drowsy mists of Autumn-time, And lonely echoes sound upon the hills, And the sad music of the village chime

The soul with tender melancholy fills, Yet there is something beautiful withal In those still, dreamy moments of repose, That wait upon us in the Autumn fall, And bless the year's long labours at its close.

Once a Week.

From The Quarterly Review. GUICCIARDINI'S PERSONAL AND POLITI

CAL RECORDS.*

powerful realms permitted themselves, whenever interest prompted, against each other, were multiplied on the narrow area THE family and autobiographical "Ricordi" of Guicciardini vividly reproduce cipalities of medieval Italy. Consequentof the city commonwealths and petty prinin some of the last living examples that ly the aggregate of revolting outrages singular type of merchant statesmanship against all laws of peace and war appear which formed so important and predomi

nant an element in mediæval Italian re

publican politics. They afford us the same sort of vivid conception of that type as the "Lives of the Norths" do of the race of political lawyers and men of business who rose into eminence in the perturbed politics of the last Stuart reigns in England. The alternately conflicting and mingling aristocratical and commercial elements in Italian public life had produced between them something of the like sort of mixed character as they afterwards did in Eng

land. Even in the iron age of the Sforzas and Borgias, eminently respectable private and public characters were often the growth of the mingled influences which affected public life, so long as public life was not yet stamped out in Italy. What was much more rare was anything approaching the heroic type in Italian public That type is rare indeed in all ages, but in the age and country of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, as in the succeeding age of Lord Keeper Guilford and Sir Dudley North in England, all aspirations after it, as well as all approach to it, seemed to

men.

have in a manner ceased.

Mediæval Italy, to borrow a well-abused phrase of the late Prince Metternich, had

been little more than "a geographical expression," inferring no universal Italian rights or duties. Its several states had stood towards each other pretty much in Hobbes' state of nature, with fear, force, and fraud for sole effective regulators. The ordinary habitual relations of the

mediæval Italian States to each other had been those of wavering alliance, or of covert or overt hostility. All the unbridled excesses of outrageous violence and of shameless perfidy which larger and more

• Opere Inedite di Francesco Guicciardini Illus trate da Giuseppe Canestrini, e Publicate per cura dei Conti Piero e Luigi Guicciardini. Volume

Primo, Ricordi Politici e Civili. Volume Decimo,

Ricordi di Famiglia, Ricordi Autobiografici. Fi

renze, 1857-1837.

It may

to affix a deeper stigma on Italian than on
any other politics in those ages.
be doubted how far that deeper stigma is
relatively merited; it is at all events cer-
tain that Italian individual and social life
and morals cannot fairly be judged of from
the public or private crimes of the Vis-
conti, Sforzas, or Borgias.

The sixteenth century in Italy was an age of transition from spirited if ill-orual and secular despotism. It presents ganized autonomy to a dull level of spiritthe spectacle of a country foremost in the tion suddenly finding itself the helpless opening of the march of modern civilizaobject of rival rapacity to ruder but strongand characters had been formed in the er states its leading men, whose minds liberal school of world-wide commerce and uncontrolled self-government — suddenly compelled to transfer their political activity, if they were still bent on exerting it,

courts and cabinets of overbearing native from the councils of their country to the or foreign princes.

which the English word "Records " is not an exact equivalent — of noting down, not for immediate nor even ultimate publication, whatever, from day to day, seemed noteworthy in private or public, domestic or foreign transactions, was practised more methodically and systematically by fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth the Italian public men of the fourteenth, century than perhaps it has been by those of any other age or country. It was a habit which came, as it were, naturally to those merchant-statesmen. These SOcalled "Ricordi" had no more literary design or pretension about them than any of the other business entries in their daybooks or ledgers, amongst which, indeed, they were very commonly interspersed and intercalated, being made, like the rest, for use and not for show, and forming, in fact, as observed by the editor of the volumes

The habit of writing "Ricordi "— for

before us, a civil and domestic auto-ing family secrets which had been kept biographic chronicle, often begemmed for three centuries. Truly we know not with moral maxims and sentences, and any party in this nineteenth century, unScripture texts. Some of these Ricordi," less that of the Temporal Papacy, likely including those of Lorenzo the Magnifi- to feel scandalized at the publication of cent, and including, in their integrity, these imperii arcana of a bygone age. those before us, have first seen the light There is, indeed, enough in this long-dein these or in recent times. We are well ferred posthumous publication of the condisposed to believe the averment of the fidential communications of the favoured present editor that none of them approach civil and military minister of two succesthose of Guicciardini for depth of intel- sive Popes to claim a place in the papal inlectual insight not only into public affairs, dex, if the present conductors of that organ but equally into the inmost recesses of the of ecclesiastical criticism can summon up human heart, which is, after all, the prime courage to put it there. If they do, they mover of every earthly event and issue. will only give additional prominence to the fact that one of the most trusted and trustworthy servants of the Papacy, at the greatest ecclesiastical crisis, till that of our own times, confessed that, but for his personal position, he should have heartily wished Martin Luther all success against the "scellerati preti."

"The Italian historians," says Disraeli the Elder, in his "Curiosities of Literature," "have proved themselves to be an extraordinary race, for they have devoted their days to the composition of historical works, which they were certain could not see the light during their lives."

If that indefatigable literary chiffonier had had before him these ten volumes of remains of the most eminent of Italian historians, he might have found additional reason for ascribing an extraordinary character to that race of men which had in Guicciardini its most memorable representative. No part of the biographical or autobiographical matter contained in these volumes was designed, in the ordinary sense of this publishing age, to see the light at all, but simply to be preserved in the family archives of the Casa Guicciardini for the private instruction of the descendants of that house. "As I shall in these family memorials,” says their author, "tell the truth, I pray our descendants, into whose hands they will come, not to show them to any one out of the family, but keep them for their own use, since I have written them solely for that end, as one who desires two things more than any other things in the world, first, the perpetual exaltation of this city [Florence] and of its liberty; secondly, the glory of our house, not during my own life only, but in perpetuity. May it please God to preserve and increase both one and the other!"

Guicciardini opens his "Ricordi di Famiglia" by saying that he had been able to acquire no certain knowledge as to the origin of his family, but that the first notice he finds of it in Florence is as taking part in the exercise of the magistracy called the priorato about A.D. 1300. "Our house," he says, "remained for a good while, that is to say, about eighty years afterwards, in a middling condition, and might be described, according to the common way of speaking, as buoni popolani. From that time it has grown so much in wealth and station, that it has become, and still continues at this day, one of the first families of the city, and has shared abundantly in all its honours and dignities."

The first of his ancestors named by Guicciardini, Piero, assumed the rank of knighthood - by whom or on what account conferred his descendant could not tell. He acquired wealth in the management of large estates of a Neapolitan noble in Tuscany, and acquired, moreover, in the sharp eyes of the Church the character of an usurer, since his son Luigi, on the death of his father, was compelled, for fear his body should be seized at the suit of the bishop, to come to a composi The present representatives of the house tion with that holy inquisitor, and to tax of Guicciardini, by whom these volumes himself on a conjectural estimate of the are published, slightly apologize for reveal-so-called usurious gains of the deceased;

« VorigeDoorgaan »