as a fixed quantity; which is what the phraseology in question points to. But I am deeply convinced that immense injury has been done, and is still in the doing, by certain habits of thought and language which assuredly have no scientific origin, and as assuredly no philosophical justification. This phraseology, with, of course, all its blundering implications, is clearly traceable to theologic sources, or, at least, to medieval constructions of theologic phrasing. But for a being whose whole point of view can be changed by an east wind, or a glass of wine, or an hour's less sleep, or many an act of indulgence or abstinence, for a being whose morale is deeply and inevitably affected by such a circumstance as celibacy, or the reverse condition, or the rate of the circulation of his blood,-to talk of the absolute control of the soul over the body is profoundly silly. What becomes of the control of the soul over the body, if you scoop out the skull? True, nobody does affirm, in so many words, the absolute control of the "spirit" over the "flesh;" but, perhaps, we may say so much the worse; for, in this case, we could deal frankly with it. But many assumptions which carry with them some such view are fatally prevalent among all of us. To take a slight example. In times of great exertion, accompanied by sudden strains upon the strength, and, of course, much fatigue, how difficult have I found it to impress upon those who have been working with me the duty of economy of vital force in minor particulars, or to make them understand the proper use of stimulants! In vain do you say, "You should laugh and talk less till you have got through this work;" or "You should, while the strain lasts, walk three miles a day instead of your usual six; or slightly alter the hours, the quality and the quantity of your food," the counsel is almost always thrown away, and at the bottom of the disregard of it lies, you perceive, a latent impression that the mind can do what it likes with the body. Perhaps you know a clergyman, or some one else, who is exhausting himself with "spiritual" labors: you look at his face, note the droop of the muscles, the slight feverish film on the lips, and the tendency to suffusion in

"That is not enough for a man doing your work. If I could take out your brain and lay it on a plate" (he smiles with an air of faint superiority, and shakes his head, mentally quoting several texts,)" and get you to compare it with a healthy man's brain on another plate, you would soon see that you do not get sleep enough." "But I can not leave my post; I must do my duty."

"But you are not doing your duty well. You may start; but if Icould go your rounds with you, I should be able to convince you that you often fail in your duty

"God will pardon my infirmities, if-" "For want of the sleep which is necessary to refresh your brain and enable you to take clear and straightforward views of things,-especially of other people's trou

bles."

"We have an anointing

66

Yes, I know; and that reminds me. You have nothing special the matter with you heart, liver, or lungs ?"

"No ?"-spoken wearily and deprecatingly, as if these were very irrelevant questions.

"Then strike work; go and get a Turkish bath; take a four-wheeled cab home with only one window open, (mind you don't get cold in your eyes, which look rather sensitive just now;) eat an easily assimilated dinner; drink a pint of champagne, and go to sleep."

"The spirit must hold up the flesh." "Ah, but you'll find the spirit won't." Exit clergyman, thinking I am on the downward road, though among all his friends and people there is possibly not one who is nearer to him heart and soul. In a month I hear that he is dead of small-pox; the doctors remarking from the first that, though the special attack was not severe, there was great danger, owing to the want of resistive or rallying power in the system of the sufferer.

That view of the subject of the relation of mind to body which is suggested by the foregoing sentences is trite enough to some intelligent people, but by no means to the majority; and the very reason it is at this moment uppermost in my own mind is, that I have lately come across striking illustrations of the fact that the majority, even of well-taught persons, habitually think of the mind as something totally independent of the body, or something which plays upon the frame, and can do as it

likes with it, just as if it were a mere instrument, with a will that had perfect command of it. Now it is not easy to invent language that shall express even what little we know of the real state of the case, without seeming to surrender something of what can not be foregone; something of our belief in our accountability, and in the resources that are at our command in our intercourse with the Father of Spirits. But it is useless shutting our eyes to the truth, and the truth is that there is in the "solidarity" of mind and body something which can not be called less than fatal. It is a perfectly arguable proposition that you should treat sane and insane criminals on the same footing; but it was nonsense for Sir John Coleridge, in cross-examining the medical experts in the case of the boy Connor, to ask whether, though his body was out of order at a certain time his mind was not in good condition. I am not for a moment suggesting that this boy was out of his senses, or yet responsible to the law; but it certainly looks the most obvious of all propositions, that you can not affect the body in any way without in some way affecting the mind too. And if the injury to the body have come about without the concurrence of the person's will, how can we refuse to admit that, to some extent, and in some way, however inscrutable, the person's moral responsibility is qualified? A man is bound to support his wife and children; we find him wanting in energy; after his death it is discovered that he had a flabby heart. In a case like this we have not a moment's hesitation in qualifying the moral verdict upon the man's career. Yet, if a diagnosis of another kind affirms that he was naturally deficient in that portion of the brain through the help of which firmness would be manifested, a good many of us refuse to admit any qualification whatever. But allowing the hypothesis, where is the difference?

However, I do not wish to prosecute this. It is a necessary part of the general question; but it arose here incidentally, and it may now pass. But let us choose another illustration of the way in which a bodily peculiarity may affect a person's character. Take two persons of entirely similar character and culture. They shall both be equally conscientious, equally good-natured, and equal, too, in intellectual promptness. But in one of them the eyes shall be prominent, in the other they

shall be deep-set. Now, place these two persons, alike, in situations where equal demands are made upon readiness in seeing and supplying the small wants of others. Suppose it is a time of pressure: that A should hand B a certain volume, open, at a certain exact moment; or know to a fraction of a second when C will be crossing a particular part of a room, or have a sleepless eye to the fire or the candles, or, in a hundred nameless ways, to what is going on all round,—is, we will suppose, of considerable consequence. Now, it is certain that, though (and because) we have supposed both our men equal in all other respects, the one with the prominent eyes (the all other respects including of course that the sight in both shall be equally good and pretty much of the same range when directed to an object) will be the most helpful of the two men. He will always know what is going to happen a considerable fraction of time before the other man will, and his "eyghen like an hare's" will see much more widely round and about. I am drawing from actual examples, and it is obvious that the hare-eyed man might even gain credit for more goodnature than the other, while he in fact might have less. Nor is this all, for the rapid and sensitive apprehensiveness of the "eyeghen like an hare's" might qualify the whole of a person's conduct, and have consequences which were distinctly moral, and which, taken in the mass, materially affected the lives of those about him.

We might carry this kind of criticism to almost any length, and, to say the truth, it is very much wanted. The moral difference between a "wiry" man and a largechested brawny man-other conditions, religious culture included, being supposed similar-are of the most marked description. True, to repeat what has been said before, all moral truth is best expressed in terms of morality, and a physiologically worded gospel of charity would be very unpleasant-to no one more unpleasant than to me; but it will be better for us if we apply physiological truths to their proper use in these matters-that, namely, of giving form, distinctness, and solidity to convictions and impressions which are too apt, unless fortified from the physical side, to pass off in gas. And it is really very curious to note how slow people are to think of these matters "off their own bats." When I was a little boy listening to a con

versation in which various friends of mine were endeavoring to get out of certain difficulties which maintain an iron grip upon every fair thinker, I heard it declared that those who had not heard the gospel preached would be judged without the gospel. I asked how often the person must have heard the gospel. Oh, if the way of salvation had been plainly laid before him, he was to be judged by the gospel. But I then wanted to know whether a person who had the gospel plainly laid before him at a time when he had as bad an ear-ache as mine on the previous Sunday would have to be judged by the gos

pel. There was no room for such questions in the philosophy of my friends. But, if we are to try and judge out fellowcreatures or ourselves (which is equally important, though there are forms of false humility" which would deny this) fairly, we must find room in our philosophy for a great many interpellations of the kind. And we will, in the next paper, endeavor to deal with some of them in reference to the methods by which attempts have been made by students of different schemes of physiognomy to guess at the quality of the brain. HENRY HOLBEACH.

SAMUEL FINLAY BREESE MORSE, whose portrait embellishes our present number, was born at Charlestown, Mass., on the 27th of April, 1791, and died at his residence, in New-York City, on the 31st of March, 1872, in the eighty-first year of his age. His father, the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., pastor of the First Congregational Church in Charlestown, was a leader in the controversial disputes of the day, and a shining light of the Orthodox party in their struggle against Unitarianism. He is best remembered by the present generation, however, as the author of a series of geographical text books, which for thirty years were adopted almost universaily in our schools, and were extensively reprinted in England and on the continent. Dr. Morse has been called indeed the father of American geography, for he was the first laborer in this field of science, and a large part of the material for his works was gathered by personal research and travel. Samuel was graduated at Yale in 1810, and having resolved to become a painter, went the next year to England with Washington Allston, to study under his tuition and that of Benjamin West. He showed a decided talent for art, and produced a model of a dying Hercules, which gained for him a gold medal from the Adelphi Society of Arts; but Providence had reserved him for other uses than those of the pencil and the chisel, and though he always retained his early fondness for æsthetic pursuits, and even made a second voyage to Europe in 1829 to complete his studies in the chief cities of the continent, he can hardly be

said to have really adopted art as his profession. He was one of the founders of the National Academy of Design in 1826; he was its first President; he was about the same time lecturer on the fine arts at the New-York Athenæum ; and during his second residence abroad he was elected to the professorship of the literature of the arts of design in the University of the City of New-York. It was on the voyage home in 1832 to enter upon the duties of the position that he conceived the great invention to which he owes his world-wide fame. Ever since his college days he had dabbled a little in chemistry. The new discoveries in the science of electro-magnetism had an especial attraction for him, and he had discussed them over and over again with his friend Professor J. F. Dana. On board the Havre packet Sully, which brought him home in October, 1832, the subject formed one day a topic of conversation among the passengers. Dr. Charles S. Jackson of Boston described an experiment recently made in Paris, by means of which electricity had instantaneously been transmitted through a great length of wire. "If that is so," said Morse, "I see no reason why messages may not be instantaneously transmitted by electricity." Before the packet reached NewYork, the invention of the telegraph was virtually made, and even the essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording apparatus, were sketched upon paper. Of course, in reaching this result, Morse made use of the ideas and discoveries of many other minds. No great invention ever sprang complete and

perfect from any one brain. Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before; electro-magnetism had been studied by savants for many years; Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put them, after years of trial, to a practical use; and though his claims to the invention have been many times attacked, in the press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated alike by the law and the verdict of the people both at home and abroad. Part of the apparatus was actually constructed by Mr. Morse, in NewYork, before the close of the year, but it was not until 1835 that he succeeded in putting up an experimental line, consisting of half a mile of wire stretched around and around a room, and exhibiting a telegraph in actual operation. With this instrument he could send and record a message only in one direction. By 1837 he had a duplicate apparatus, and now he gave greater publicity to his scheme by an exhibition at the University. The invention attracted a great deal of interest, but very few persons could be persuaded of its financial value. At the close of the year Mr. Morse went to Washington and asked Congress for an appropriation to build a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore. The House Committee on Commerce, at the head which was the Hon. F. O. J. Smith of Maine, gave him an attentive hearing and a favorable report, but the session passed without further action, and the disappointed inventor went to England and France. He met with no encouragement in Europe, and struggled on four years longer, renewing his appeal at Washington year after year, and still hopeful in the midst of poverty and trouble.

On the last night of the session in March, 1843, he left the capital entirely disheartened, after patiently waiting through the long day. But the next morning, to his amazement, he learned that in the hurry and confusion of the midnight hour the expired Congress had voted $30,000 for his experimental essay.

The difficulties, however, were not yet surmounted. Mr. Morse proposed inclosing the wires in lead pipes buried in the earth-a plan which soon proved impracticable. The expense far exceeded his ex

pectations, and he was endeavoring, with the aid of his friend, Mr. Smith, of the Committee on Commerce, to devise a sort of plow that would both open and cover a trench for the pipes, when accident brought him into association with Ezra Cornell, afterward so intimately connected with the progress of the telegraph in the United States. Mr. Cornell devised a machine, drawn by a yoke of oxen, which, as it moved along, opened the ground, laid the pipe, and covered it with earth; and with this, superintended by Cornell himself, the work was begun at Baltimore. Ten miles had been laid, when Mr. Morse was convinced that the pipe would not answer, and the story runs that Cornell saved him the embarrassment of confessing failure by purposely driving the machine at full speed against a rock and breaking it to pieces. The whole year was consumed in fruitless experiment. At last, when only $7000 of the appropriation remained, Mr. Morse gave the mechanical execution of the work entirely into Cornell's hands; the pipe system was abandoned, and the wires were insulated upon poles.

The first message was sent on the 27th of May, 1844. Every part of the apparatus worked imperfectly, but the feasibility of the project was established, and the long struggle was over.

There came afterward a long series of vexatious lawsuits. Morse's patents were violated, his honors were disputed, even his integrity was assailed, and rival companies devoured for a while all the profits of the business. But these troubles were finally overcome, and though his pecuniary rewards seem small in comparison with the colossal fortunes amassed by other men out of his invention, he nevertheless obtained a full recognition of his services to the world, and dies with the knowledge that two hemispheres spoke his name with gratitude. Rarely, indeed, in the history of invention has mankind been so prompt and hearty in honoring their benefactor. All the principal nations of Europe gave him tokens of distinction. So early as 1848 the Sultan presented him a decoration set in diamonds. Gold medals were awarded him by Prussia, Austria, and Würtemberg. France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Denmark gave him the cross of Knight of the Dannebrog; Spain, the cross of Knight

Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. At the instance of the Emperor of the French, representatives of the European States-France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Sardinia, Tuscany, the Holy See, and Turkey-met at Paris to decide upon a collective testimonial to him, and the result of their deliberations, was a vote of 400,000 francs. Scores of learned societies all over the world admitted him to membership. In 1856, the telegraph companies of Great Britain gave him a banquet in London. In 1858, the American Colony in France entertained him at a grand dinner in Paris. On the 29th of December, 1868, the citizens of New-York gave him a dinner at Delmonico's. In June, 1871, a bronze statue of Professor Morse erected in Central Park by the voluntary contributions of telegraph employees throughout the country, was formally unveiled, with an address by William Cullen Bryant; and in the evening a reception was held at the Academy of Music, where one of the first instruments used on the original line be

tween New-York and Washington was placed upon the stage and connected with the wires, that Professor Morse might send with his own hand a word of greeting to all the cities of the United States and Canada.

It should not be forgotten that to Professor Morse we also owe the invention of the submarine cable. One moonlight night in October, 1842, he laid in New-York harbor the first submarine telegraph, anticipating thus by more than a year and a half the actual construction of the first land line. It was only an experiment, but it enabled Professor Morse to predict the next year in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury the certainty of the great project which so long afterward was carried out by the energy of Cyrus W. Field.

The latter years of Professor Morse's life were passed in quiet comfort, chiefly at his residence in Poughkeepsie. His venerable figure was often seen at public gatherings, and wherever he appeared he was always one of the most honored and distinguished guests.

THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN; from his Birth to his Inauguration as President. By Ward H. Lamon. Boston: Osgood & Co. 1872.

From the time Abraham Lincoln came prominently before the country, and especially since his death, there has been an unsupplied want of an authentic and at least approximately complete biography of him,-a biography which would pos. sess us of the facts of his earlier and more obscure years, and give us some clue to his great and, in some respects, unprecedented subsequent career. Those of us who had heard of Mr. Lamon's work, of the long time he had spent upon it, and of the material which he had at his command, have been hoping that he would furnish the public with some such biography; but with the volume before us we are compelled to say that he has not only failed utterly, but has written a work which must inevitably lower and confuse the popular estimate of Lincoln's character.

The record is copious enough, the smallest and most obscure incidents of his life are brought out with microscopic minuteness; but Mr. Lamon has made the great mistake of preparing his biography on the theory that a mere multiplication "of facts from any and every source would convey a correct impression of the character and life of Mr. Lincoln. Hence his ponderous volume consists chiefly of the recollections of Lincoln's schoolfellows, neighbors, and acquaintances, in

Indiana and Illinois; most of whom were about as capable of estimating him as of computing the orbit of a new planet, and to whom the great part which he played in the nation's history was evidently a mere caprice or accident of fortune. There is an ancient proverb that "A prophet is never without honor save in his own country," and a modern version of it declares that "A man is never a hero to his wife or to his valet." It is easy to imagine, therefore, the reflection of Mr. Lincoln we are likely to catch from the tradesmen, tavern gossips, and village associates, with whom the longer and less-known, but most significant, part of his life was spent; and just what we would be likely to anticipate is what we find in Mr. Lamon's book. On this point the Evening Post of this city says: "It is said that the late Abraham Lincoln in his fits of dejection was in the habit of repeating a somewhat lugubrious poem entitled, 'O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?' At least his latest biographer, Mr. Lamon, repeats the statement to that effect, made in this paper years ago, and certainly no more convincing proof of the abstract truth of the sentiment or its appalling significance to Mr. Lincoln could be found than the biography itself. Whether our lamented President had some premonition of a kind of martyrdom that should last beyond the grave; whether he felt the shadow of an impending Herndon or a coming Lamon; whether, looking