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When the not unexpected defeat of Gladstone was announced, and the nation had given a suitable number of groans for Oxford and Hardy, the whole country showed a consciousness of relief. With a singular unanimity the liberals agreed that if Oxford had lost a great representative, England had gained a leader. As poor Carl the dwarf, under the gash of Sir Gawaine's sword, had the evil spell broken and arose to the noble height of Sir Carleton, so did Gladstone stand before his new constituency of South Lancashire higher by a head and shoulders than before. The very crowds perceived this transformation, and expressed their sense of the fitness of things at the shop-windows, where Mr. Gladstone was represented as a schoolboy dismissed by an ancient, sharp-featured school-ma'am with-"You forward boy, you!" and taken by the hand by Britannia; or as Pegasus just released from an ox-cart. Mr. Gladstone-though deeply wounded by his defeat, and disposed to defend Oxford-acknowledged himself "unmuzzled ;" and, by a series of more outspoken speeches than he had ever made before, justified the anticipations of the Liberals, and suddenly checked the pæans of the Tories.

the windows of that Professor's study in Baliol❘ was "the dethronement of intellect." College. Very far indeed was William Ewart squire is known to have said, unctuously, as he Gladstone from being a robust, eupeptic states- left the poll, "I thank God that I have always man; by many a narrow vote on ecclesiastical voted against that d-d intellect, and I always questions had he pained his truest friends, that shall!" he might conciliate the University which he represented; yet, do what he could, Nature would approximate the noble outlines she had marked for him. Mr. Gladstone, born and reared under Tory auspices, and with many shreds of Toryism about him yet, has for many years been slowly traveling forward. He clasped the hand of the Past with a warm grasp, but he had steadily set himself to go to the larger England. Fondly, passionately did he desire to take Oxford along; and no doubt, had the real heart of the University been felt, it would have gone with him; but, unfortunately for Oxford, her every living graduate has the mortgage of a vote upon her, and the true academic heart was smothered by those who know and represent the Oxford of from twenty to sixty years ago, and have never been quickened by the flood of thought which has swept away the old landmarks. The Tories saw their chance for an Encyclical against all the tendencies of the age. It was unwittingly put into their hands by Mr. Dodson's bill, which enabled persons at a distance to vote by voting papers." Mr. Gathorne Hardy-a country squire, a sincere and active Tory, not without some vigor of mind, but a sorry picture to put beside Gladstone-It may be now easily predicted that the Liberals was put forward to unseat the leading statesman of England. Of course none feared that Gladstone would be left out of Parliament-he had already the unusual honor of standing before another borough-but it produced much pain with all enlightened men to see narrow The new Parliament has what may be called churchmen and ignorant parsons spawning their a working majority of about sixty for the Govvoting-papers from every little village and rec- ernment. Mr. Disraeli thinks that this will be tory upon the Old University. But Oxford can reduced by setting aside corrupt elections. More not keep her cake and eat it too; she can not credit is perhaps to be given to his declaration rest upon the old red sandstone and reach to the that the Tories who have been returned are nobler miocene forms. The true knight of to- more out-and-out men, and that the Conservaday is too large for the belt of Alfred's day. tive Party in the next House will wield a greater The jokes of the young Oxonians who this year influence with their more compact minority than gathered around the hustings when the High they did with a larger but less trust-worthy numBailiff read the election writ, in Latin, meant ber. But Mr. Disraeli is likely to find that the something; so did the smile of the voter when causes which demoralized his ranks in the last he had to give in his name as “Johannes" or Parliament will act upon them in the next more "Gulielmus," when the great issues before En- strongly. It is always the few who are really gland (and not ancient Rome) were in his made strong in the ratio of the increase of opthoughts. Five days the polling went on, and position. The Tory party has but little hope at last this too-faithful servant was dismissed of ruling England directly: its plan is always (though he polled 500 more votes than ever be- to reduce the game, if possible, to a perpetual fore), through the same door by which Sir Rob- check, with the hope that occasionally (as in ert Peel had been expelled when he gave the 1858) the Government-normally Whig-may first sign of sympathy with the millions groan- by some enormous blunder enable it to snatch a ing under the corn-laws. Mr. Gladstone was stale-mate. And, moreover, though it is truc expelled entirely by religious bigotry. The that there is a hard set of Tories in the new Broad Church was for him; the High Church Parliament, it is also true that they will find was for him. It was that great, impenetrable, much more than an offset in the powerful array characterless mass between right and left, and of Radicals who have been returned. The party which has been well called the Hard Church," below the gangway" will be far stronger than that managed to rule at Oxford. Indeed, one it has ever been within this generation; and it of the watch-words at Oxford of this Hardy party is almost certain that the centre of balance in

will build their highest battle-monument-as the Americans have that of Bunker Hill-on the spot of their apparent defeat; for there was slain the last fear of the liberal Premier of the future plodding on in old Oxonian ruts.

appear in the United States when the organic law permits a district to select its Member of Congress from any portion of the Union, and not exclusively from within its own limits.

the House, which every Ministry instinctively seeks, will naturally fall a good degree to the left of any position which a Government has yet occupied. On that bench, whence Cobden has departed, leaving behind only three or four real On the whole, the recent elections need only Radicals-as Bright, Forster, Stansfeld, and to be studied well to convince us that neither Taylor-will now sit Mill, Hughes, Fawcett, Ledru Rollin nor Emerson have quite reported Trevelyan, and Pim. But not one drop of new the whole fact in intimating that England has blood has been transfused into the Tory party. reached her solstice or is in decadence. One EnWe may then at least predict that the franchise gland has indeed just shriveled like a snakewill be extended to a six-pound, possibly to a skin, and will presently be sloughed off, just as five-pound rental, which will make a hole big one Union has been cast by the living form of enough to help all England through after a lit- America; but it now seems to me, who once tle. It is a most hopeful sign that the tendency shared the hopeless theory about England, that should so plainly be to wear away the colorless although the movement is still slow and earthmiddle-party, the "rest-and-be-thankfuls." bound there is in her the germ of a noble transThere will be a far sharper line between Conservatism and Progress than ever before in the next Commons; all will have to go somewhere; and when that is done the conflict, of which the issue is not doubtful, can not be far off.

There is one regard in which the new Parliament is especially interesting to Americans. It is certain that the attitudes of parties upon the late American war entered prominently into the elections, and it is equally true that the friends of the North were generally returned, and that the ranks of the "Southern sympathizers" were thinned. While the American cause has not lost a single prominent champion, it has gained many-as Mill, Hughes, Fawcett, Cowan, Potter, and Pim-who have been from the first its distinguished supporters. On the other hand, among the fallen Confederates are now to be numbered Lindsay, Hennessy, Cox, Fitzgerald, Lawrence, Heygate, and others who might be named-one who must be especially named, Walter, owner of the London Times.

formation.

THE SILENT.

MUS, tie theme with the poet.

[USIC, in all ages of the world, has been a The songs

of the morning stars, the music of the spheres
and of growing things-of these he has written.
But much of this is imaginary—music addressed
to the soul rather than the ear-for all do not
hear with the poet's sensitive organs.

"The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above."

And of that sound which is real much becomes insignificant when relatively considered. The greatest agencies are noiseless; the grandest results are wrought in silence.

The position might be maintained by ingenious argument that on the morning of the creation the great Master-Workman spoke no word as He called the universe into being; that in obedience to a thought, amidst universal silence, the myriad worlds rolled into space as noiselessly as soap-bubbles float on the wind. But it is not necessary to embark upon this sea of speculation to demonstrate that the domain of Silence is great.

The number of literary men in the new Parliament is greater than in any preceding one. In addition to Earls Russell and Grey, Lords Derby, Stanhope, Dufferin, Houghton (R. Monckton Milnes), Brougham, Dr. Thirlwall, the Bishops of London and of York, and the Duke of Argyll of the Peers, and E. Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, Kinglake, Sir R. Palmer, Mr. Gladstone, and one or two of less distinction in the world of letters, who were in the last Parliament, there will be John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hughes, Mr. Fawcett (Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, and author of a fine work on Logic), Mr. Trevelyan (the "Competition Wallah"), Lawrence Oliphant (author of various books of travel), Mr. Forsyth (author of the best "Life of Cicero"), Mr. Torrens (au-alone is great; all else is small.” thor of "The Industrial History of Free Nations," the candidate, by-the-way, who was returned by the largest majority received by any in the late elections), Sir G. Bowyer, Mr. Gosepen, Viscount Milton (whose valuable work on Western America and the Indians has just been published), and others known in more limited circles for literary ability. This introduction of scholars and men of genius into the Legislature is the best feature of the electoral rule of England; and it is one which we may hope will VOL. XXXI.-No. 186.-3D

Astronomers have calculated that of the worlds of our system some are so far removed from earth that light, traveling at the rate of two hundred thousand miles per second, would consume three millions of years in traversing the distance. Admitting the theory of sound as generally received, and granting to each world an atmosphere a thousand times the extent of ours, there yet remains a stretch of space almost infinite where no sound is ever heard.

"Silence! the great empire of silence! that

But we design to narrow our views, and consider the silent as it exists around us--the silent of which we are cognizant. You stand beneath the smiles of a spring morning. You remember that two days since the earth was naked, and cold, and brown; now a carpet of the purest emerald is stretched over hill and valley. But did you hear the hum of the wheel as the warp and woof of this perfect carpet were being spun? Was the sound of the busy loom in which it was woven borne to your ear during

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the stillness of some winter's night? Heard | lence; all her great forces work silently you any thing of the ceaseless flying shuttle? of the most wonderful among these is chemical Did the murmur of the weavers' voices ever affinity. This brings together and unites the reach you? component parts of every animal, mineral, and plant. By this agency the coal-beds are formed. What powerful action was necessary for this is seen from the following estimate: "Were the present consumption of the world quadrupled, and the enormous amount of four hundred million tons of coal used annually, the amount of this material in our own country would supply the demand for ten thousand years."

Where yesterday the bare branches of the wood lifted themselves clear and cold, checkering the chilly clouds, you see green leaves unfolding, as though on fleecy canvas some great picture is growing beneath an artist's pencil. In a single day a hundred million "leafy banners" have been floated upon the wind. What ear heard the footsteps of those who unfurled the vernal pennons? Whence came and whither have flown the noiseless workers?

Myriads of flowers, blue-eyed and snowy-bosomed, are opening around you. Go to that unfolding bud; stoop down; place your ear close; listen do you hear it breaking its winter casing? Do you hear the life-blood throbbing through its subtle veins? Does your ear catch its perfumed breathings?

The silent sunbeam, the source, perhaps, of all the forces of nature, visits the earth, and she is transfigured-clothed with beauty as a garment. It paints the woods and meadows; it gives to the fields their gold, and to the orchards their crimson and yellow. It causes the flow of the brook which turns the mill, and of the ocean which beats the cliffs. It steals among the particles of air quietly dreaming on the plain, and the sleeping atoms awake; they move lazily among themselves, murmuring sullenly. Then their movements quicken; they play among leaves and flowers, and caress the fevered check. Then their voices swell; they move wildly:

Six thousand times has that emerald carpet been spread; six thousand times have the woods waked into life and beauty; six thousand times have bursting corollas sweetened the air; but in what history is it recorded that the seal of silence which God set upon these works was ever broken? When were these things done noisily? Have you ever stood on the banks of the Mississippi and looked away across the vast ocean of trees until their tops melted into the blue distance? Then, mind out-traveling the eye, have you not been lost in the thought of the millions of trees which must have stood on the earth since God said, "Let the earth bring forth the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind?" And now think of it, if you have not before, in si-petual circle, sweeps from tropic to pole and lence the forests are formed.

"His dew drops mutely on the hills." It comes to the earth as a physician, bearing healing to the seared hearts of flowers. It visits the roots of the scorched plant, creeps up its veins, and lo! the crisped leaves expand in smiles, and put on a fresher green. Even the king of the forests, lifting his royal head to the stars, is stronger and more beautiful for the ministry of the silent dew, reminding us that every nature, however high, is indebted to trifles.

The frost is a silent worker. He visits the window of the invalid, and her wakeful eye observes the frescoing by the moonlight growing, but her sensitive ear catches no sound of the workman's coming or going. The murderer at his victim's grave, whose guilty ear wrests from the night air its faintest sound, hears not the sprite as he weaves a net-work of pearls over the freshly-turned sod. He steals some night into a fair garden, and the flowers droop beneath his Judas kiss; he touches the green leaves, and they die; he breathes upon the brook, and its laughter is hushed; he looks upon the rivers and lakes, and the tide of commerce is staid; he waves his wand over the fields and orchards, and gaunt famine stalks through the land.

66 -They take the cataract's sound;
They take the whirlpool's fury and its might;
The mountain shudders as they sweep the ground;
The valley woods lie prone beneath their flight
The clouds before them shoot like eagles past;
The homes of men are rocking in the blast;
They lift the roofs like autumn leaves, and east
Skyward the whirling fragments out of sight."
Through the influence of the sunbeam the
wonderful trade-wind is born, which, in a per-

from pole to tropic, softening the severities of these two regions. Nor is this all. It bears on its broad wings the oxygen evolved-likewise through the influence of the sunbeams-from the orange orchards and magnolia groves, from the citron and banyan and palm of the tropics, exchanging it in the temperate and polar regions for poisonous carbonic acid, the nutriment of plants; thus furnishing man with food for his lungs prepared by fragrant-mouthed flowers a thousand miles removed.

In what a glory does the golden sunlight, falling upon church and turret and tower, enrobe them! And yet it is a philosophical fact that the sunbeam rests on nothing without producing on its surface a chemical and molecular change. The granite mountain, the strong Rock of Gibraltar, the pyramids of Egypt, the white shafts which point out the homes of the dead, are all wasted by the sunbeams, and would soon crumble beneath their silent, irresistible influence but for the beautiful arrangement for their reparation under the darkness of night. During its silent hours the molecular changes, like Penelope's knitting, are all undone, and the destruction of the day silently and mysteriously repaired.

The sunbeams resolve themselves into artists, All that is grand in nature is achieved in si- outstripping all others in celerity and accuracy

of delineation.

Yet these artists are silent. | ly circulated, the most wonderful geographical They offer no suggestions as to attitude or ex- changes on our globe have been wrought in sipression; they hold no pleasant chat with their lence by little creatures, the largest of which sitters that they may catch the light of thought are scarcely perceptible to the naked eye. We upon the face. With steps as noiseless as an refer, of course, to the polyparia. There is, angel's footfall on empty space they come and according to Mr. Mantell, in the Indian Ocean, go from their studio. to the northeast of the coast of Malabar, a chain of coral reefs and islets four hundred and eighty geographical miles in length; on the east coast of New Holland an unbroken reef three hundred and fifty miles long; between that and New Guinea a coral formation extends upward of seven hundred miles; and the Disappointment Islands and Duff's Group are connected by six hundred miles of coral reefs, over which the natives can travel from one island to another. Thus, in the language of Dr. M'Culloch, "the labors of a worm, which man can barely see, form mountains like the Apennines, and regions to which Britain is as nothing. The invisible, insensible toil of an ephemeral point, conspiring with others in one great design, working unseen, unheard, converts the liquid water into solid rock, the deep ocean into dry land, and extends the dominion of man, who sees it not and knows it not, over regions which even his ships had scarcely traversed. Thus is the great Pacific Ocean destined at some future day to be a world."

The sunbeams furnish man with all his available mechanical force. They lift the waters from the oceans and lakes, and return them to the earth in springs, in brooks, and rivers which drive the busy wheels of manufactories. The coal which energizes the appliances of steamlocomotion owes its power to the sunbeams. In the remote ages, when the atmosphere was reeking with carbonic acid, the sunbeams, as the plants absorbed the gas, "gave them the power to store up the carbon in their tissues." That carbon is our coal. We have shown that the sunbeams make the winds which propel ships across the ocean. The thought has occurred to few, perhaps, outside of the scientific world, that the sunbeams, causing, according to received theory, the magnetic currents which circulate around the earth parallel to the magnetic equator, form the force which keeps the needle, the mariner's guide, true to the pole. Even all animal force, sustained as it is by vegetable food, may be traced to the sunbeam.

the ocean?"

There is a messenger, rivaling the light in The beauty of this little animal's work was fleetness, which in silence runs his course. Over well expressed by Ehrenberg as he exclaimed, unbroken prairies and through forests where on beholding the coral reefs of the Red Sea, broods the silence of the grave his flying steps "Where is the paradise of flowers that can rival awaken no sound. No force can wrest his mes-in variety and beauty these living wonders of sage from him, no bribe tempt to its betrayal. He passes the solitary traveler on the highway, the lonely laborer in the field, but loiters not to gossip of the message he bears. By train after train of crowded cars he dashes without a word of greeting. Through village and crowded city, bearing the tidings of an empire's fate, he speeds, but in silence. No sigh escapes the lightning post-boy though charged with a message of woe, no glad song, though joy be the

burden

When the microscope came into man's possession it was as though a second Columbus had appeared, announcing the existence of a new world. And not of one merely. It reveals in a single drop of water a globe peopled, according to Ehrenberg, with five hundred millions of living creatures different from any thing which man has seen before. It shows every bit of clay and stone, every leaf and flower, a world crowded with its busy multitudes. Is it not an interesting thought that all around you, on every object, as it were, which meets the eye, are millions of creatures, living, moving, and working in silence. From this silent but mighty world Paley, and Ray, and other theologians have drawn some of their finest arguments for the Christian religion.

Volumes might be written on the silent in nature. No one can study nature without feeling that in this domain God achieves his great ends in silence. But other departments await us.

Man's burial-places have never been more beautifully described than as the "cities of the silent." All over the sad earth, side by side with the thronged marts of men, rise the white shafts and columns of these peaceful cities, from which there is no emigration, and whose vast population is momently increasing. From their crowded subterranean streets there rises no sound of wheels, no tramp of busy feet. From their myriad houses there come no sounds of social gatherings, no morning prayer or evening hymn. Children are there, but no laugh or cry of gladness; parents are there, but they tell the children no pleasant stories, offer no word of counsel or warning. Husbands and wives are there, but no syllable of endearment; enemies are there, but no bickerings; preachers and people, but no sermons; musicians, but no music; paupers, but no alms-asking. "Silence, deep as that before the worlds were," reigns through the populous streets.

We have seen how in nature the domain of silence is over all that is great; how all grand And this brings us to consider the works of results are wrought out in quiet. But there are this silent animal world. Not to mention the other departments in which this is more apparsilk-worm, which in silence spins its beautiful ent. Any single faculty of a single mind, lofabric, by which £200,000 is said to be annual-cated we know not where, existing we know not

izes the world. Christianity, a little seed plant-Ild's drum upon the highway—but it came