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rally poetic temperament, which destroys ten
for the one it crowns.
I remember Albert rest
less in his cradle, and weeping at melancholy
music; and as to Lucy, the difficulty with her
was always to keep her tranquil. You have,
my dear lady, applied excitement where you
should, in my humble opinion, have removed it."
"But would you have had them grow up in
ignorance?" inquired the lady.

"That is so like a woman," said the old bachelor, smiling sadly; "jumping from one extreme to the other. I talked of undue excitement, and you immediately fell back upon extreme ignorance; an excitement is the destruction of health and strength, and is to mind the very pestilence of education. The children were doing very well, learning as much as at their age they ought to learn without forcing-that is all that children should do."

"But some learn more quickly than others, my dear sir."

"The rose would have been healthy enough in the conservatory, I suppose," said the doctor.

"Bless you, sir, it would have lived long enough to make a timber tree if I wanted it; but such fierce forcing cuts them off even before they blossom. It's a principle in nature, sir; my old governor never would have any thing forced beyond nature. Thomas,' he used to say to me, 'let us help nature; let us assist the old gentlewoman as well as we can--she deserves it of us; and it is our duty, as well as our interest, to keep friends with her, for there's one thing certain, she won't stand no nonsense.' He was a plain-spoken Scotchman, sir; but, like all of his country, he had a great acquaintance with nature."

The doctor made no further observation; but a glance at Mrs. Erris showed him that her face was bathed in tears.

So they do; some require keeping back, others bringing forward, but, with both, time is the only safe developer and strengthener. I never knew an instance where a precocious child was not the better for being kept back. It is positively offensive to come in contact with those forced children; to find mammas and INDIA AND CHINA.-THE overland mail from papas absurd enough to mistake indications of India, with dates from Calcutta to the 23rd talent for talent itself, and treating you to little March; Bombay, April 1st; Canton, 22nd Febmiss or little master's poetry or prose. Well, ruary, arrived in town on Sunday. The importmy dear lady," he added, ashamed of his pet-ance of the Indian news is limited to the fact tishness, "I have at least to thank you for your of the annexation of Scinde to our Indian empire. already made known by the telegraphic despatch, patience; you have listened to me, and I thank In Hyderabad, the capital of Scinde, treasure you. I will go, if you please, to-morrow, if it and jewels amounting, it is said, to one and a were only to prove how I value your forbear-half million sterling, have been discovered. Doubts ance; but just look at our flowers and this new forcing-house, which, I think, you have not seen, and which our gardener would have, because the clever family have one." Mrs. Erris looked at the flowers; the doctor having set aside the subject they talked of, she knew would not return to it; so she admired the plants, and the good old gentleman's anxiety for Lucy and Albert was for a few minutes obliterated by the interest he felt in his favorite flowers. On leaving the conservatory for the forcing-house, they found the gardener busied with some plants that had been placed upon a stand; amongst them was a white moss rose, its green leaves fading; the buds, through whose soft moss the faint streak of white was more or less visible, hung their heads, from their feeble and seemingly twisted

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have been entertained if this treasure trove is to be considered prize-money. The matter has been referred to the Queen in Council. In the mean time, the Governor-General has declared Scinde to be a British province, abolished slavery therein, and appointed Sir C. Napier to be Governor; and also declared all transit duties abolished, and the is said to be a most fertile district, which, when Indus open to the ships of all nations. Scinde cultivated, will repay every cost tenfold, and render the territories of the Indus something like the banks of the Ganges.

The Governor-General was at Agra. He has ordered the celebrated Somnauth gates to be locked up there. Bundelkund remained still in an unsettled state, some disturbances having occurred along the frontiers of Cutch, facing Scinde; but the rest of India was tranquil. Dwarkanauth Tagore has been excluded from his family caste, in consequence of his repeatedly eating with the unclean Europeans."

The most conflicting accounts were circulated respecting the state of Cabul. Akhbar Khan is no longer popular there, and another was said to have seized the government. Dost Mahommed was going back from Lahore to Cabul, but it was not known how he wonld be received there. He wished to be aided by the Sikhs, but they did not seem inclined to give him any assistance.

"It was so beautiful, sir," said the man; "I never saw any thing more beautiful. I didn't like to be out-done in early flowering by Mr. The interest of the Chinese news is almost ex Diggons's gardener, and got more heat on; and Doubts are I'm sorry to say this is not the first plant that clusively of a commercial nature. said to exist of the durability of any arrangement has served me so; the blossoms have dropped now entered into. The Chinese were busy in off many; so that, after all my care, and though repairing all their forts, and in strengthening their willing to sacrifice the plant for one good flow- positions in the different places attacked last year. ering, it won't always give that, but die away-Trade was dull, but was expected to revive speedright away." ily.-Court Journal.

For the Eclectic Museum.

THE PRESS AND THE AGE.

FUGITIVE THOUGHTS.

From the Vierteljahrs Schrift.

TRANSLATED BY F. A. STRALE.

that practical egotism of individuals, which so strangely belies the philanthropy of the ories and the charity of institutions.

and abstracted lords of creation, do not so much after the old fashion pay their submissive homage at the shrine of beauty, by flowery speeches and wire-drawn compliments; that they do not every moment offer incense to the ladies as to their acknowledged and petted little despots, who by the fundamental laws of nature are disqualified from holding a seat and giving a vote in the graver councils of men.

Literature, in those days, was merely a sprinkling, a passing cloud, from behind which the cheering rays of the social sun. In the good old times, a hundred years burst forth the merrier; in our times, she ago, or so, a vast deal less was printed than shrouds the heavens in thick and portenat present. People did not read as much tous gloom, and were any one to represent as they now do, but they talked a great this reading generation by a flock of geese, deal more. The organ of the Press, as it who forgetting their lively cackle in the is now called, was comparatively in the storm, with contemplative gravity look up helpless state of a chrysalis, while the or- askance to the heavens; the comparison, if gans of speech were developed in full vi- not very refined, would at least be an apt gor, by their volubility in furnishing the one, as predicable of a social state, where prattle, pot-eloquence, sycophancy and gal- so much more is written and read than lantry of the age. The Frankford Post ar- spoken, where familiar and cheerful interrived only twice a week; the Bremen In- course is struck with the palsy, and very telligencer of Wit and Science appeared many of the social virtues, besides old-fashonly once a month; but yet often enough ioned and honorable gallantry, have become to serve throughout the holy Roman Em- defunct. Whence come the wild notions of pire, in the nightly orgies of the Academi- many scribbling and reading women, but cians, or at the tea-table of the literary ep- from their much reading, from their peevicure, as the accredited guides and oracles ish habit of shaking the fruit off the tree of in questions of general interest, natural phe-knowledge, and from the fact that the busy nomena, and standards of taste and talent. How much sense and nonsense, how many sallies of wit and of vain conceit, were not wasted on the desert air, in discussing the passing events of the day; such as the bloody strife between Frederic and MariaTheresa, the paper-war between Bodmer and Gotsched, the elevation of Madame Pompadour to the throne, and Christian Wolf's recall to Halle, the severe winter of 1740, and Lord Anson's voyage around the world. The same exhalations ascend from the heads of men in our day, like steam produced by the contact of water with iron at a white-heat, but an infinitely greater portion of the component particles are precip itated daily, and in thousands of places, in the shape of types on paper. From this important change in the intellectual atmosphere of the world, proceeds in truth almost every thing, whether it be for the better or for the worse, in great matters or in trifles, which distinguishes the age of the semi-weekly snails-post (SchneckenPost), the bag-wig, and of demonstrative philosophy, from the age of steam, kidgloves and absolute ideas; from the age marked by the mighty impulse given to science and art, the revolution effected in the views of both rulers and people, and by the controlling power of public opinion; as well as by the great schism which has supervened between theory and invention, between the right of conscience and the cravings of mind, the desolation and yet sober awakening of the masses, together with

In those days, when a man delighted in his own cogitations on passing events, he generally brought them to some gossiping market; he looked about for people to whom he could unburden his political weather-wisdom, his scientific projects or his artistical enthusiasm. That which now goes by the name of Society, consists of two classes: one, writing down their thoughts on politics, commerce, sciences and arts, while the other read what these have written. Interchange of thought through the medium of conversation, has only this in common with that carried on through the medium of printing, that they produce no result, abstractedly considered; for after all, every thing which at each succeeding moment is embraced under the heads of science, literature, political economy and the whole domain of research, is surely nothing else but the sum total of all the great and little accounts, which are constantly adjusting between millions of great and little individuals.

In an age where every body is writing; where words appearing in a book are fre

quently hardly weighed more scrupulously unfold themselves in the remotest perspecthan in daily colloquy, the writer will doubtless be permitted also to scatter on paper a few thoughts on the aspect of the exist ing era; thoughts which in the good old time he would have wasted in talk, while now, having the comfortable assurance, that no one will contradict him, while writing, he can think himself to be in the right, until he sees some criticism of his pages, and afterwards too.

tive. Once, the country-village was comparatively lively, and vocal with the commotion of debate; as has been said, even a hundred years ago, there was comparatively much more tale-telling and less printed news; while now, with the newspaper in his hand, the citizen quid nunc holds converse with every portion of the habitable globe, in the crowded coffee-room, or in the rail-car, without bestowing a single word on his neighbor, to give a jog to the intellectual faculties of either.

Mankind, when they had no printing, were divided in detached groups, each of whom enjoyed its own immunities and characteristic identity. Their thoughts

hallowed inclosures, leaving the surplus, if any, to make excursions into the fields of nature and of religion. At first, indeed, before they were merged in states and kingdoms, communities resembled some isolated galvanic elements, within the contracted spheres of which, the affections and aspirations of the soul were forever gamboling in self-exhausting gyrations. Time gradually added other elements; but slow was the progress which men could make in knowledge and power through the mere instrumentality of tradition and manuscript, both indifferent conductors, and the battery, though its multiplied parts endowed it with increasing force, soon wore itself into decay. Then the Press at once became the communicating medium of the ethereal fluid, and by its infinitely superior adaptedness, raised the civilized world to the proud eminence which it now occupies on the heaving galvanic pile of mind, which seeks to outstrip the farthermost bounds of the very heavens.

The Press is that main engine of development, which for three centuries, uninterruptedly and in a progressive ratio of speed, is carrying the human race towards some goal yet undiscernible and unknown. It has left mankind, what they ever were; but it is a leaven (Gährungs-stoff) which and affections occupied the space of these has given a characteristic scope and direction to that momentous disjunction which is going on between us and antiquity, and has infinitely multiplied energies and relations, and then again simplified them. With the art of printing commenced a new era in the culture of the human mind, which before had enjoyed a holiday of two thousand years, since acquiring the accomplishment of writing. The Press is a machine embodying an idea, by whose developments, the heir-loom of History itself, so to speak, has been re-constructed, to the effect that it incessantly throws off the antiquated materials of power, of thought and of passion, descended from our forefathers, in ever varying, ever increasing, ever bolder, finer and more elaborate patterns. As manual labor was the productive genius of the primitive and middle ages; so machinery is of modern times-but still it is the same genius which is at work. We are so accustomed to the common, all-pervading vehicle of thought, to the ability of scanning every movement in the worlds of matter or Every unit, whether great or small, from of mind, that it is with no small difficulty we the individual to the state or the nation, are able to place ourselves in a bygone age; feels itself, in the midst of the whirl and and the superficial thinker is utterly at a commotion of conflicting powers, identified loss to comprehend the intellectual great- in its thoughts, purposes and actions, as a ness of certain periods which were desti- part of one undivided whole, and all may tute of the present facilities for disseminat- perceive how the materials of fate are dising and interchanging ideas. The noiseless posed of in the fervent heat incident to the tread of the historical muse, led onward concentration of their powers at the poles only by traditional legends, strikes us as of the ever-working battery; and how thus gloomily as unearthly steps in the haunted destiny is every instant evolved, be it chamber of Ugolino; while an old man through the agency of man himself, or be it would become bewildered with terror in in his despite. It is pre-eminently this beholding how, by the necromancy of print- universal sensitiveness of the body social, ing, the hidden workings of the times are this ever present consciousness of historiunmasked, how the levers and shuttles pass cal dignity, which stamps the present cenand repass with inconceivable swiftness, tury as differing so strikingly and essenthe wheels buzz and fly, the woofs are reel-tially from the last, so faintly acted upon ed off, and everywhere images and designs by the Press, and which renders it so diam

etrically opposite to the earlier ages of the world. Every pleasing and noble feature in the aspect of our times, as well as every equivocal and fatal distortion, springs from this psychological revolution; from this source flow all those schemes and efforts in state, in science and in art, which characterize the present generation.

Even long after the invention of printing, comparatively but a very few privileged individuals were enabled to watch the course of the world, to confront and measure the events which passed before their eyes, by the past, as recorded on the page of History, thence to draw definite conclusions, to set the horoscope of the city, the state or the age, and to announce all this to their contemporaries. With the progress of this "black art" the feelers of society became proportionably more numerous and acute, its vision into futurity sharpened, and the one half of what is now printed is made up of judgments abstractedly pronounced by this conscientious and self-criticising age, whether in a sober mood, or misguided by passion, on the past, present and future. It happens, however, in the arena of literature, as it it does in the British Parliament. There, every speech being directed to the chair, the speaker is the focus, or rather the centre of all the radii of debate, and in a somewhat analogous manner every author or scribbler, in all his plans or strictures on the affairs of the world, addresses himself to the Public, that presiding hydra, which holds in terrorem the power of life or death in its grasp, over all Magazines, Journals, and Gazettes. The Public and the Speaker-both much less speaking, than spoken to-have no perceptible influence over the issue, the result of the debate; the same as in judicatory assemblies, a thousand valuable or silly thoughts fall to the ground, and that which is finally effected, often has no relationship, either to the efforts of genius expended, or to the end contemplated; so the assertions and demurrers, the demands and the refusals, the triumphs and the lamentations of the political press, are daily set at naught by the executive tribunal of History. The universal development of the go-ahead principle, which in modern times has been so wonderfully accelerated, is chiefly the effect of the inherent and ever augmenting power of the press; and consequently, while the plot thickens, while so many conflicting phenomena appear, while what is past, as well as that which is yet to come, arouses the most opposite passions; the energies of the press receive increased stimulus,

and the bustle among claimants and objectionists, among the contending masses, and in the consultations among Savans at the couch of diseased humanity, grows ever louder and more confused. Nothing can transpire in any of the provinces of metaphysics, politics, religion, art, trade or science, which does not produce manifold and heterogeneous results, in a society rendered thus sensitive through the agency of the Press. Where one sees only health and safety, another scents a gangrene; the identical fact calls up to the imagination of one a series of the most flattering images, to that of his neighbor it portrays nothing but the rake's progress-to one the beginning of a felicitous consummation-to the other the beginning of a gloomy end. The one cannot comprehend how it is that the world does not advance more readily, universally, or in this, and that and the other particular quarter, where genius such as his applies the lever. Another is astonished again to find his transcendent abilities baffled, and like Jonah becomes fretful at the failure of his prophecies; but is not the less positive, that with such elements of discord and destruction within, the world cannot long hold together. All admit, however, even those who draw the most favorable auspices for the future from the present, that with the present striking advance of certain elements of power, other certain elements which caused the peculiar bloom and glory of departed ages, have become extinct; but while A beholds in this deficiency, or rather substitution of energies, the prognostics of a universal dissolution, B adopts it as merely another round in the physiological ladder of the species.

Those faculties of man, by which in observing, experimentalizing, analyzing, dissolving, and again combining, condensing and making deductions, he penetrates deeper and farther into outward nature and into his own, have manifestly been exalted and enlarged through the revolution effected by the press. This is more especially ap parent in the great strides which the present age has made in the various departments of natural science.

The rich and fair legacy of learned lore, transmitted from antiquity, even within the precincts of natural philosophy, was preserved during the middle ages by a few men of towering genius, and, though with considerable drawbacks on the one hand, it obtained on the other some slow and unequal acquisitions. The single-handed thinker and seeker after truth, cramped and fettered by authorities, could make but feeble,

The natural sciences are the boast of the age-yes, and in their alliance with industry, have made it arrogant. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the achievements of the human mind, subsequent to the laws established by Keppler and by Newton, as yet have made but very few stages in its boundless career. Here the prospect is lost in distance; the re-actions on society, the re-modelling, emancipation and ennobling of the whole system flowing from a conquest of nature's forces, in great things or in small, in the aggregate or in the abstract, it is impossible to compute. But when this new movement first became apparent, about fifty years ago, after the great and important discoveries had been made in chemistry and in physic, mankind were affected somewhat in the manner of a man who for the first time travels on a rail-road. Though mounting the car very cautiously, and apprehensive of not being able to endure the rapid motion, he soon becomes reconciled to the novelty, and in a little while begins to suggest that the speed might very well be increased, without either inconvenience or danger. Just so people spoke then, in verse and in prose, in half jest and full earnest, of the gigantic undertakings of mind, of the flight of Icarus, and pennis non homini datis. But soon one became accustomed to the rushing locomotive of science, whose scintillations were as many seeds of the utile dulce; and now the faction of science and the multitude cried out vehemently to the other multifarious arts, fa presto, and the impatience to gain and to enjoy infinitely outstrips the sober and legitimate march of improvement. One prominent example will suffice; in that we may see reflected all the phantastic expectations, anticipations, misconceptions, misconstructions and fallacies through the medium of which one generation throws a halo of imaginary glory over the darkness of those yet unborn.

unproductive, and withal hazardous explor- the young brood of new discoveries are ing expeditions into the hidden chambers carefully nursed and fed after the most apof nature's laboratory; and consequently proved rules of dietetics. the efforts of genius either soared away into the clouds, or else diverged into the winding and obscure paths of a labyrinth, where arose on some circumscribed basis of experiments, the speculative structures of the theosoph, the astrologer and the alchemist. The seeds of science, so vigorously deposited by the ancients, were barely kept scathless during the iron-age. The press prepared the soil to receive the seed, and scattered it abroad; it speedily produced a thousand-fold, and now the entire domain of civilized life, is clothed in luxuriant verdure, and a stately crop of true knowledge, hides, if it cannot choke, many a rank weed, the seed of which the press has, in its heedless race, also dropped. The same thought, which called forth a general interchange of mind, gave to science the principle of vitality, no longer of a stunted growth, a stagnant vegetation, and this vitality and growth kept exact pace with the increase of books. Once, the science of natural philosophy was a rigid, compact mass, easily scanned and mastered by one mind. Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany, Physic and Metaphysics, lay all huddled together in the brains of the Doctor mirabilis. In proportion, however, as the magic circle, which the press had thrown around the philosopher and thinker, became more and more intensely electrified with this vitality, the mass became more fusible, and the materials of science more redundant. Soon it could no longer be scanned, much less mastered by individual minds; it separated into ever various fragments and ramifications, each of which required its master workman, and thus was set on foot that division of labor, that unfailing distribution, that constant gathering and re-issuing (Wieder-abgeben) of materials, which at the present day gives to the activity of genius a feature so much resembling a mathematical concatenation of productive mechanism, or rather of a fraternity of skilful insects. That which instinct effects in the little community of bees, a general wakefulness and sharp-sightedness bring to pass in the Republic of Science-all that has been done at every point, and all that is yet to be done. Inspired by the common impulse, the student knows as by intuition, which flowery chalice he must crush in order to extract the purest honey; cell is added to cell as by rule and compass in the prolific hive of scientific literature, and

Mankind have scarcely succeeded in moving over the surface of their planet at the rate of forty miles per hour, scarcely do they anticipate with any degree of certainty, that the rail-road will infuse a renovated nervous system into the body social, before they grasp, no one can tell how many degrees higher, and pant for the immediate realization of the antiquated hobby, which so often is honored with fruition only in our dreams: they would fain fly on

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