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ing it at once. We have great confidence in the maxim that ultimately everything in this world finds its proper level there may be ups and downs, and they may be violent, and they may be long continued, but "time mellows all," and men and things take their true stand in the long run. If the Institute "deserve success," it will "command" it, despite of opposition--if it do not, the want of opposition, and the positive element of puffing in addition, will not save it from dissolution. We would therefore have Mr Buckingham to write no more -but to remember that the only thing which effectually disarms ridicule is good nature. If Punch was former. ly taken into the Institute, let it be taken in more abundantly, until two or three copies are on every table, and it will soon be found that this will do more good than writing pamphlets. In strategy neither wood nor iron are used to save the houses of a besieged city, but bags of wool.

But while we hold that Mr Buckingham has not done wisely, are we to say that there is nothing wrong on the other side? Punch we regard as the most honest periodical in the country, but still it is not infallible. It respects not Whig or Tory, Churchman or Dissenter, peer or peasant; and it has given a lesson of independence to the periodical press, which, we trust, will not be thrown away, and which, we must take the liberty of saying, was very much wanted. So much was the fourth estate given over to the idolatry of partizanship, that a short time ago there was not a great public question mooted, on which, before opening them up, one could not predict with certainty what would be the verdict of almost every journal in the kingdom. They were like the French ships at the battle of Aboukir-their shot was all from one side. Punch, on the contrary, like a lively corvette, not only has carried guns on both sides, but has sailed round and round the fleet, and poured its fire into the timber of all and sundry. We therefore respect Punch, and should be sorry to find it abuse its power, admitted on all hands to be so vast. One source of strength which it possessed at starting, was the mys tery in which its writers were shrouded-they were not known, and blows from unknown hands are always dreaded. But that veil has been removed, and the sons of Momus stand revealed to public gaze, a compact and effective brotherhood-but, like all other brotherhoods, exposed to the dangers of coterieship, They may, like other labourers in like fields, draw round them a given circle, and proclaim war to all beyond it.

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Bunn, Brougham, and Buckingham, have regularly been gibbetted in Punch, and that with a pertinacity so intense and sustained, that whispers have gone abroad that something more than a sense of public duty may possibly have dictated the castigations which these illfated men have been dogmed to receive. It may, or may not, have been the case--we presume not to judge. Punch is erratic, and, in the plenitude of its waggery, there may be something alliterative in its enmity to the trio. But, at all events, the whole three are public men, and, as a matter of course, public game; still the question occurs, has public censure no limits? The barber who shaved Newman Noggs, refused to operate on a coal-carter, and declaring that "the line must be drawn

somewhere," announced it as the rule of his establishment, to shave nobody below a baker. If humbug attaches to Buun, Brougham, or Buckingham, undoubtedly every one has a right to expose it; but is it to be exposed to the very utmost verge that the law of libel admits of! Is it not enough to do a man brown? must he also be done black? Is it not enough to put a man down but must he also be kicked and cuffed when he is down? In commenting on a man's character in a public print, it is the reverse of the doctrine laid down in Othello--if you touch Brougham's "good name" as an author or statesman, you touch not his "purse” as the recipient of a national pension-but if you touch Bunn as the manager of a theatre, or Buckingham as the resident director of an institute, you touch their "purses;" and, in meddling with the means of their livelihood, literally “ take all they have, and make them poor indeed." The strolling player who was hissed, at once disarmed his critics, when he told them that their condemnation might be enjoyment to them, but it was the loss of bread to him; and, in like manner, humanity and good taste should impose limits to Punch, even in the lashing of folly.

As to the special points raised in the controversy, we have little to say. Mr Buckingham asks the public press of Great Britain to put down Punch, because both sides of politicians are attacked, along with the Queen, Prince Albert, and Louis Philippe and his sons. Both sides of politicians stood in need of some common castigator. The Queen and Prince Albert appear to have philosophy enough to laugh at Punch; and if they had not, what law could be passed for their exemption from Punch's jokes, which would not endanger the liberty of the press; and touching Louis Philippe, the same law that enabled Bonaparte to prosecute Peltier, is still in existence, if he chooses to call it into operation; but we shall be much surprised, if, in this, as well as in other matters, Louis Phillippe does not show more tact than his predecessor. Sir James Mackintosh's speech in defence of Peltier did Napoleon more damage than the pen of Peltier, and, without doubt, a philippic from Serjeant Talfourd would not increase the European popularity of the present French monarch. The question, therefore, reverts to Mr Buckingham, and there the ground is narrowed.

Mr Buckingham plainly insinuates that Punch may be bought; let him prove that, and its occupation is gone. Punch as plainly says, that Mr Buckingham did not return certain subscriptions raised on the faith that he was to command a circumnavigatory expedition, which never was undertaken; let Punch prove that, and Mr Buckingham will fall by ship-money as ingloriously as Hampden was elevated by it. And till these two points are completely disposed of, no other topie need be discussed.

On the last occasion that Mr Buckingham prosecuted for libel he was victorious-having recovered L.400 damages from W.J. Banks, M.P. for having charged him with pirating notes and drawings made by Mr Banks during his journey in Syria, and published by Mr Buckingham in his Book of Travels.

Wade's British History, p. 825.

THE ALLEGED ANTAGONISM BETWEEN POETRY AND CHEMISTRY. BY GEORGE WILSON, M.D., LECTURER ON CHEMISTRY.

The following remarks on the alleged unpoetizing effect of the study of Physical Science, especially of Chemistry, formed the concluding part of a lecture, introductory to a course on the Chemistry of the Gases, delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Association, on 7th November 1845, and was preceded by an exposition of the nature of Pneumatic Chemistry, which is here omitted.

I take it for granted that the greater number of those who attend these lectures, and that at least those ladies who honour 'me with their presence, come here to study chemistry as an intellectual gratification, not because they think it will prove to be of utilitarian value. Your object, ladies, is not to acquire information how to take a stain out of a soiled dress, how to remove a spot of port wine from a discoloured winerubber, or to make marking-ink or blacking. All this is useful and necessary knowledge in its way, and will not be overlooked in these lectures; but it is chemistry in another aspect you desire to study. Will you bear with me, then, for a brief space, whilst I endeavour to combat a prejudice which exists pretty widely, as to the effect of chemical studies in destroying the taste for other intellectual pursuits. I am afraid there may be not a few here who partake of the prejudice to which I am about to refer, and, unless I can satisfy them that their apprehensions are groundless, I despair of securing their sympathy throughout the course.

It has been affirmed that chemistry is of all the physical sciences the one most opposed to poetry, so that whosoever engages in the study of the one, must bid farewell to the other. All men acknowledge that astronomy is, even in its most prosaic aspect, a poetical science,-that it is as it were the poetry of God, written on the midnight sky. Geology too, with its primeval chaos, its earthquakes and its volcanoes, its centuries spent in wearing down and in building up mountains, its ante-diluvian dragons and other pre-Adamite monsters, has a poetical interest for all men. But experimental science, with its smaller than microscopie atoms, and chemistry especially, with its acids and its alkalies, its smoke and its fumes, stands at the one pole, and poetry at the other.

Over the door of every chemist's laboratory is written, (though perhaps you never saw it,) an inscription like to that which Dante beheld written on the gate of the world of woe, and which, though invisible to all other eyes, is deciphered at once by the poet,

"Abandon beauty, ye who enter here."

We live, we are told, in a prosaic age, an age of brass and of iron,—an age of rail-roads and steam-engines--of screw propellers and electric telegraphs,-a restless utilitarian age, which counts it its highest good to be whirled through space at rocket speed, and knows no sound so sweet as the unearthly screech of the steam-whistle. The chemist, offspring and type of this restless era, has done his best to prove himself worthy of it. His vocation has been to prowl around like a very demon, seeking what of the poet's property he might lay hands on and devour; to prove himself a man of the earth; earthy, alike by profession and by relish for the work of a disenchanter, to whom a mystery is interesting only because it may be explained, and an object beautiful, because the cause of its beauty may be discovered. This chemist, it is declared, has gone about peering and prying into every thing hallowed, mysterious, and sublime, striving to dissect or decipher it, or break it down into fragments, and rejoicing only when his victorious analysis has obliged his poetical brethren to acknowledge with sorrow, that there hath passed a glory from the earth.

If it be so, you may think twice, before you make up your minds to attend these lectures. If chemistry be so

essentially unpoetizing a study as it is asserted to be, you may tremble for the effect it will produce upon your own minds, and hesitate before you submit voluntarily to its degrading influence. Will it not be a price too dear to pay for a knowledge of the properties of oxygen, or of hy- drogen, or of any or all of the other gases, to find, that Shakspere has, in consequence, no longer any power to soothe, or terrify, or melt, or delight you? that all the fascinations of Scott's magic are gone; and that Milton's "Paradise Lost" has become a paradise lost indeed: so that not only are you forced, like King Lear, to crave

"An ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination;" but find, that only after long and sedulous devotion to poetry, and painting, and music,—are you able to lay hold on a Jacob's ladder, by which to climb to the lost heaven of delight, or to take the least pleasure in Paradise Regained. I am long ago hopelessly prosaic, and, like the workers in the quicksilver mines, poisoned to the core; but you are only on the threshold, and may still draw back; nor is it yet too late to crave that your money, taken upon false pretences, be returned you at the door.

It is true that the thoughtful directors of the Philo sophical Association, if they have supplied the bane, have furnished the antidote also. If my distinguished colleague, Professor Nichol, my friends Mr John Goodsir and Dr Maclagan, and myself, are to do our best to unglorify every thing, you have at least the consolation that Mr Haydon and Mr Gilfillan are coming bye and bye, and may hope that they will invest all nature with a halo again. And although it is numerically an unfair division, four men of science and prose, to one painter and one orator, yet Mr Haydon is a host in himself, and a match for at least: three of us; and so eloquent a discourser as Mr Gilfillan will more than cry quits with the fourth. But then the painter and the orator will not be here till February, and before that time all the mischief may be done. It is bet-ter to prevent than to cure, and you must take heed to it. Week after week you may sit here unsuspectingly, pleased with the exhibition of blue lights, and phosphorus fires, and electric flashes, and think the whole display at least entertaining, and not perhaps uninstructive. And so also you may innocently listen to Mr Goodsir's revelations of all the strange peculiarities of our fearfully and wonderfully made bodies, and conceive that nothing but good can come of such knowledge. But is it not notorious, that those who have long dwelt in low valleys or flat plains, if suddenly transported to the summits of high mountains, find the expanded air of these altitudes too thin and rare for their lungs, accustomed to the denser atmosphere of lower regions? And may it not be so in a figurative sense with you. After the chemist has shown you that all the magnificence of air, and earth, and sky, are but the results of certain combinations between some fifty-five bodies, each one of which he will name, and describe, and label for you, and show you how certain laws and forces produce the whole. After the anatomist has told you that he of whom you have been accustomed to say "what a piece of work is man!" is only a collection of certain jointed levers with strings to pull them, surrounded by some tubes and threads covered with quilting and padding to keep them from injury. When you have learned that the heart never breaks under a load of grief, or any other

14 ALLEGED ANTAGONISM BETWEEN POETRY AND CHEMISTRY.

load, but is only a hollow muscle for propelling the blood;
when you have realised the truth, that all the beautiful
faces of women, and all the noble and stately ones of men,
are only so many masks of flesh hiding grinning skulls
behind them; are you certain that you will take to poetry
and painting with the same love and relish as before?
May you not have to tell Mr Gilfillan, with Hotspur, that
"you'd rather be a kitten and cry mew, than one of these
same metre ballad mongers;" and crave Mr Haydon to
carry his mistimed eloquence and enthusiasm elsewhere,
because, for you, the most matchless tints of Titian and
Rubens have become only certain metallic oxides, and
organic colouring matters, and the Elgin marbles objects
of no greater interest than any other weather-worn frag-
ments of carbonate of lime. May not each of you have to
say with Wordsworth :-

"It is not now as it hath been of yore,
Turn wheresoe'er I may

By night or day,

The things which I have seen, I now can see no more."

Is it then the case (for I will leave Mr Goodsir to speak for himself.) that the chemist is such a destroyer and dis. enchanter? Has he in reality broken the poet's magical staff, and "buried it certain fathoms in the earth," and sunk his wondrous book "deeper than did ever plummet sound?" Goes it so heavily with the chemist's disposition, that "this goodly frame, the earth, seems to him a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, appears it no other thing to him than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours ? Does man delight not him, nor woman neither?"

If you will believe some whose zeal for poetry is not according to knowledge, it is even so. The diamond is for the chemist no better than lamp black. The sapphire and the ruby only crystallized clay. The Medicean Venus, and the Apollo Belvidere, "the statue that enchants the world," "the god of the unerring bow," are interesting to him only as grand stalactites, curious solely because each of them contains twenty-two parts of carbonic acid and twenty-eight of lime. A thunder storm has for him neither terror, nor beauty, nor sublimity. It is only the union of so much positive and negative electricity. If you go with him to his laboratory, he will show you it all with his glass machine or his voltaic battery. It is true it will be on a somewhat smaller scale. "The fire and cracks of sulphurous roaring" will be rather dim and faint, and the "thunder, that deep and dreadful organ pipe," will be somewhat shrill. But you can set off against this, that you may sit comfortably at the fireside, and see and hear it all, without risk of danger from the lightning, or any fear of wetting from the thunder-plump.

That sea, which, in other men's mind's gives birth to so many deep and unspeakable emotions. That sea which recalls to all others, Miriam's rejoicing song when Pharaoh and his host "sank as lead in the mighty waters." That sea which the ten thousand Greeks welcomed with so glad and exulting a shout, when foot-sore and weary, they beheld it again. That sea which wrecked a Spanish Armada, and saved us from becoming the prey of the spoiler. That sea whereon the fleets of the nations have careered; which carried the ship of Columbus to a new hemisphere, and wafted Vasco de Gama round the Cape of Storms; which bore the little May flower and the Puritan fathers to the unshackled freedom of the New World, and has floated so many other vessels from Noah's Ark down to the Queen's Fairy Steamer. That sea, with its Archimedes-screw steamboats, and its missionary barques, its goodly merchant ships and gallant men-of-war; with its battles of the Nile, and its battles of the Baltic, its glories of Camperdown, and mournful triumph of Trafalgar. Shakspere's "wild and wasteful ocean," Cole

ridges "silent sea," Shelley's "sunny sea," Wordsworth's "everlasting sea," Byron's "deep sea," with "music in its roar," Campbell's sea, where "our flag has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze"- the Bride of Venice, whom poetry, and painting, and sculpture, and music, have never grown weary of adorning. What is this "great sea" to the chemist? Why, only a great pool or puddle filled with a solution of table salt and Epsom salts. To these declarations, that the "looks and thoughts" of the chemist, like those of Milton's Maminon, before he fell from his first estate, are "always downward bent, admiring more the riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, than aught divine or holy," what can I answer? I would reply, “I am a chemist. Hath not a chemist eyes? Hath not a chemist hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as the poet is? If you prick us do we not bleed if you tickle us do we not laugh? if you poison us do we not die? and if you wrong us will we not revenge?" The revenge we take, is to affirm that between the true poet and the true philosopher, there never has been, or can be cause of fend. It has been the poetaster on the one hand, the dabbler in science on the other, who have involved the lovers of truth and of beauty in a most needless and foolish dispute. Without entering into any subtle discussion as to the nature of beauty, or the laws of æsthetics, I may say this much at present without fear of contradiction. The "great God and Father of us all" has created each of us with a love of knowledge for its own sake, of truth because it is true, entirely apart from any consideration of the beauty, terror, or other æsthetical or emotional quality which the truth may possess. Lord Bacon in his Novum Organon has made a beautiful appli cation of one of the proverbs of King Solomon in illustra tion of this law of our nature. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." On which the great father of modern science remarks, that it has pleased God purposely to conceal his designs from us, that our faculties may be exercised by penetrating through the transparent veil, which hides them. When we satisfy this necessity of our being, by inquiring into the causes of the phenomena which all na ture presents, we play the part of philosophers, or become students of science. All men," says our gifted professor of logic and metaphysics, Sir William Hamilton, "all men philosophise. They may philosophise ill or well, but philosophise they must."

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Again, God has endowed us all, with more or less of intense love and passionate admiration of whatever is beantiful in form, or colour, or sound; and with more or less of a capacity of being affected by whatever excites our feelings of pleasure, of hope, of mirth, of fear, of pity, of terror, or of sublimity. When we gratify this necessity of our nature, we become for the time, though not perhaps professedly, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, or otherwise devote ourselves to westhetical pursuits. Let poetry, in the meanwhile, as more widely relished than any of the other fine arts, stand as representative of them all, and we may say, that as all men are more or less philosophers, so all men are more or less poets. In some, the æsthetical faculty is much more developed than the mere apprehending one, and they are poets. In others the clear scientific intellect prevails, and they are philosophers. But there is no man who is entirely the one, or entirely the other.

We see these two different classes of faculties influencing us all, even from our earliest years. The little child to whom a curious toy is given, rejoices for a while with unmixed and unalloyed delight over its beauty. But bye

and bye, the pleasure which its colour, or its form, or the sounds which it emitted, or the curious movements which it made, begins to pall on the senses. The little poet grows weary of the unexplained wonder; the descendant of Eve proves himself worthy of his heritage, and the toy is broken that the tiny philosopher may discover what is the hidden spring of its motions, the secret or supposed cause of its beauty. It is so with children of a larger growth also. All things in nature are like Janus, two-faced, and have a double aspect for us. In the one, they are plain facts calmly apprehended by the cool intellect; in the other, they are truths which set heart and brain on fire.

A noble, manly countenance, a lovely female face, looked at scientifically, are aggregates of certain bones, and muscles, and nerves, and blood-vessels, which may be dissected with scalpels, and anatomised even to the last fibre. They are compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, along with some combustible substances and certain metallic salts, which may be digested, and dissolved, and analysed in retorts, and alembics, and crucibles. Looked at poetically, these same faces are seen to bear the image of God in which they were created, to be porticoes of temples in which the Divine Spirit refuses not to dwell, and the sight of them fills our hearts with emotions of love, and joy, and admiration, or with fear, and dread, and trembling terror.

A Hallelujah chorus, considered in the one aspect, is the result of certain aerial pulses, set in motion by the vibration of tubes of wood and of metal; is the sum of certain effects produced by a stream of wind modulated by levers, and wires, and stops, and valves, and keys, and pedals, moved by the fingers and feet of the performer, and accompanied by the voices of singing men and singing women. Considered in the other light, it is a glorious combination of sounds the most melodious and harmonic, which stir our souls from their inmost depths, and fill our hearts with awe and wonder. In like manner, the sea is in one sense only so much water saturated with salts, in another it is the mirror and image of the Eternal, and we cannot find words adequate even to so much as the naming of the indescribable feelings which it kindles within us. Now what is most important to be observed in all this is, that both aspects we have been considering are true, and that neither of them interferes with the other. According to the mood we are in, we fix our thoughts on the one or on the other, according to the native cast of our minds, and the consequent bent of our occupations, we habitually look in the one direction or in the other. The philosopher prefers the one view, the poet prefers the other, but each is aware of, and often makes use of the aspect which is alien to his ordinary mode of contemplation. Poetry and science then stand in direct contrast, but not in opposition to each other. The aim of science is truth. The desire of poetry is beauty, and, in a glorious sense, all truth is beautiful, and all beauty is true. It is not necessary to destroy the truth before we can discern the beauty, -to bid farewell to the beauty before we can discover the truth. Poetry no more requires that science shall be annihilated before it can flourish, than music asks that painting be abolished, in order that it shall come into being.

It was therefore that I began this discussion by affirm. ing, that there is no feud between the true poet and the true philosopher. They stand in an amicable, not in a hostile attitude toward each other. The office of the philosopher is to furnish to the poet new truths which he is to sublimate and glorify. The duty of the poet is, "his eye in a fine frenzy rolling, to give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name." The chemist, for example, shows the poet a spiral of iron wire burning in oxygen gas. The poet sees in it a world on fire revolving in the heavens, The chemist shows the poet a lime-ball light. The

poet sees in it a mimic sun, a star of glory. The chemist shows the poet an electric telegraph, transmitting intelligence more swiftly than light travels. The poet sees in it a wondrous Ariel and most nimble sprite, compared with whom, Shakspere's Puck, who "could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes," was but a slow and halting laggart.

You must have observed, how strongly our literature is becoming impregnated with allusions gathered from modern science; and no one, I think, will say that, in the hands of men of taste, it has been otherwise than enriched and enlivened by these additions. The Greek and Roman classics, and the Hebrew and other ancient literatures, will ever be objects of devoted worship to all who are accomplished enough to enjoy their beauties. But the day is gone by, when an English author would think it any thing but folly to invoke Minervas or Venuses, or crave the help of any heathen god. Our inspiration must be derived from other sources; and I confidently appeal to all who are familiar with the highest and purest literature of the day, if modern physical science has not been found to be full of the richest inspiritings for the poet. It has been so, I believe, from the very beginning. Who is the most poetical in style of all our philosophers? Lord Bacon, the most philosophical of them all. Who is the most scientific of our poets? Shakspere, the greatest poet of them all. The most gifted poet of the Germans, Goethe, was not only a diligent and earnest student of anatomy, botany, optics, and general physics, but was a great discoverer in vegetable physiology. Did he find the dissection and microscopic examination of plants, or the handling of mouldering bones, take the edge off his genius, or quench his love of poetry? So far was this from being the case, that many of his greatest works were produced after he had published on morphology, and while he was spending many hours daily in studying the forms of human and animal skeletons, and in working out a theory of optics. Nor was this all. He infused a new fire into Schiller's genius, who was taught by him to see the poetical capabilities of botany, and ever afterwards filled his poems with allusions to the habitudes of plants. In proof of this, I need only remind the readers of Schiller of the Song of the Bell, and of the Lament of Ceres over the death of Proserpine. We have seen a similar fellowship in our own country. Coleridge attended the lectures of Sir Humphrey Davy, in order, as he stated himself, to obtain new ideas. Southey rejoiced in the friendship of the same great chemist; and you will see the fruits of it in his Doctor. Sir Walter Scott honoured that philosopher also, and delighted in his communications. Davy himself, after a life spent in the furtherance of chemistry, published his Last Days of a Philosopher, a book full of the truest poetry. The great German chemist, Liebig, is a man of most poetical mind; and so is Mulder, the chemist of Holland, who will one day have a world-wide reputation. Shelley was himself a chemical experimentalist. In a beautiful rhyming letter published in his works, he refers to the apparatus which, at the time of his writing, lay around him, and adds-

"Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old Chemistry." Wordsworth tells us, in the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, that he doubts not the time will come when each of the physical sciences shall contribute its quota to enrich poetry. I will say no more on this point. I have said more than enough already. It has ever seemed to me most wonderful, that beings such as we are, who "look before and after, and sigh for what is not,"-who see immensity, infinity, eternity around us on every side, who believe in a God and a coming judgment, who anticipate an endless life in a world to come,-that we, who are

every day subjects of so many conflicting emotions,-who burn with passionate love, and grow pale with bitter hate, -who feel remorse, like a vulture gnawing at our hearts, -who are "joyful, and sorrowful, and thoughtful, sad unto death," and sunken in despair, that any one of us should imagine that all these feelings would be driven away, if a chemist should fire off one of his hydrogen pis. tols in our ears, or dazzle our eyes with his phosphorus fires. Let me, then, assure you, if there be any still sceptical, that in spite of the chemistry and anatomy you may learn here, you will find you can abundantly relish Mr Haydon and Mr Gilfillan, when they come. Believe me, that if hitherto, with Shakspere, when

"Night's candles are burned out,"

jocund morn has stood

"Tiptoe on the misty mountain tops,"-

with Shakspere, morn will stili,

"In russet mantle clad, walk o'er the brow of yonder eastern hill."

If, with Milton,

"Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern elime, Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearls;" with Milton, morn will still,

"Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand, Unbar the gates of light.”

If, with Wordsworth,

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

To you did seem

Apparelled in celestial light;"

with Wordsworth, you will still find that

"The meanest flower that blows, can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

I believe the strange delusion I have been combating, has arisen from the fact, that many men of science are notoriously unpoetical and prosaic; and it is taken for granted that it is their science which has made them so. They were once, like the larva of the honey-bee, which may either develope into an ordinary worker, or become transformed into a queen-bee. They might have been poets, had they taken the right course; but the aqua fortis and the chlorine of their laboratories, have as effectually bleached the poetry out of them, as they destroy the colours of tissues exposed to their action. It should be remembered, that among the students of science, there must ever be a large number who were born with little or no relish for poetry,- whose love for it, like that of Anne Page for Slender, "was slight to begin with, and grew less on further acquaintance." Such persons, though nursed upon Homer, and fed upon Dante, and dieted upon Shakspere,

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would be found in the end as prosaic as at first. The unpoeticalness of such men will prove nothing except the truth of the old adage, that "poets are so by birth, and cannot be manufactured." To establish the unpoetising effect of scientific studies, it should be shown that an embryo Mil. ton, or Wordsworth, or Shakspere, has been made a man of mere "facts and figures," by studying anatomy, chemistry, or any other physical science. But whilst I will not say, that an anatomical room, or a laboratory is the best place for cultivating a poetical genius, I will affirm that such a genius will triumph over all the distractions of such scenes, that it will feed on all it finds, and grow by what it feeds on.

I have trespassed too long upon your patience, but I will be done. Allow me a parting word. Were a sculptor to embody science and poetry, he would carve the former as a figure resembling those which have sprung from the Egyptian chisel, with a frame stately and massive, and a countenance like that of the Memnon, "hushed and solemn and beautifully serene." Poetry would be one of those graceful, airy, godlike forms, which the Grecian chisel could alone call into being. If the painter were to try the task, he would draw science as a grave and dignified middle-aged man, striding calmly on in the straightest possible direction towards his destination. Poetry he would depict as a beautiful winged woman, winding "at her own sweet will" in a meandering path, which ever and anon touched on and intersected the straight line along which her companion was walking; often rising high off the ground and circling in the air, but never far from her fellow, and destined in the end to reach the same goal. Or, finally, if you will allow me to use a comparison which I have used elsewhere for a different purpose before, but would now use once again, because I know none other half so suitable to express the relation I wish to enforce:--I would liken science and poetry in their mutual inter-dependence to those binary stars often different in colour, which Herschel's telescope discovered to revolve round each other. "There is one light of the sun," says St Paul, "and another of the moon, and another of the stars. Star differeth from star in glory." It is so here. That star, or sun, for it is both, with its cold, clear, white light, is SCIENCE; that other, with its gorgeous and ever-shifting hues and magnificent blaze is POETRY. They revolve lov ingly round each other in orbits of their own, pouring forth and drinking in the rays which they exchange. And they both also move round and shine towards that centre from which they came, even the throne of Him who is the source of all truth, and the cause of all beauty.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

SONG OF THE RETURNED EMIGRANTS.

Bright glows the scene, pass round the sparkling glasses,
Strange this reunion should bring nought but tears;
Time's ceaseless course for ever onward passes,
And we can ne'er recall long vanished years.

Yet fair these fields and bright this sunny sky,
Fair as we pictured them in days gone by.
Oft in those days we rambled o'er these valleys,
Ling'ring in moonlight by yon turrets grey;
But where the friends who joined those midnight sallies?
Go ask the heaving turf and mouldering clay!

Yet fair these scenes and bright this sunny sky,
As gladdened by their smile and sparkling eye.
Woods, river, vale, the ever-during mountain,
Smile fresh and youth-like, still renewed by time,
Sweet is the daisied knoll, the gushing fountain,
And the same tone comes from the village chime.

Fair these green fields and bright this sunny sky,
But where the thrilling voice and sparkling eye?

This is the land and birthplace of our fathers,
They revelled loved and sung, and where are they?
Let us be joyous when time us too gathers,
Our children then will keep their holiday.

Fair these green fields and bright this sunny sky,
"Twill be so after as in days gone by.

THE CHRYSALIS. (Papilio Cerulea.)

Awake! the vernal day Shines bright and balmy.

With the south-west gale

Come life and joy; the dancing sun-beams play
On mossy bank and vale.

Wake, from thy silent tomb,

Where thou hast slept the wintry hours away,
Heedless of chill November's sleety gloom,
Or the fierce storm's array.

Wake, to fresh joy and light,

Perhaps to thee new life,-all former things
Swept from thy brain, 'mid thy lone dreamless night,
Summer new being brings.

Each flower, each bud is new;

The buoyant air; the incense-breathing field;
Fresh is the fragrance of nectareous dew;
Untasted joys all yield.

'Tis not the icy chill

Of freezing winter thy stiff frame congealing,
But through thy quivering limbs the balmy thrill
Of life's tide o'er thee stealing.

Just like a spirit freed

From mortal pangs, and dull encumbering clay; Into bright realms on glittering wing you speed, Mounting away! away!

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