cord of sleepless nights, and abundant proof of the toil of busy days; we have before us the clear-sighted, patient observer, stationed on his little gallery at the tube of his telescope, whence he so "oft outwatched the Bear," struggling against fatigue and sleep ;* we have the mechanist of his own observatory, the optician and constructor of his own

In

The final chapter on the Solar Spots does not easily admit of analysis. It is with more regret that we abstain from that section of the Appendix which contains an account of most ingenious and interesting experiments on the force of solar radiation at the Cape, deduced from the observed heating effects of the sunbeam; of which we find the philosophical expression in the result that it would have sufficed to melt a plate of ice covering the ground 1 inch thick in 2 hours 12 minutes; and the popular definition in the fact that Sir John constructed an "American dispatch" of some pieces of wood and two panes of glass, the sun being the only fire, in which eggs were roasted and beefsteaks broiled, "and eaten with no small relish by the entertained by-standers."-p. 443. common with all interested in this advancing branch of science (not gastronomy, but meteorology) we regret the absence of the copious series of observations on Solar Radiation made by means of the "Actinometer," an instrument originally invented by Sir J. Herschel, observations which he had prepared for the press, when an unforeseen source of error in the very construction of the instrument threw a doubt upon every result yet made with it. We cannot but hope that the same creative genius which has done so much for the deduction of correct results from data affected by certain or uncertain error, will yet find a way to extract from the great mass of existing observations of the actinometer a correction which will restore to them their value.

In taking leave of the author, and of his splendid work, we cannot help recalling the evidence which it presents of great and sustained labor. Here we have the actual re

the computer who co-ordinated and reduced all the multifarious results of the campaign ; and lastly, the philosopher who with consummate address has unfolded in clear and unambiguous terms the conclusions deducible from the whole. And if we are sometimes tempted to wish that some meaner hand had been found to work out the mechanical details of calculation, or to form those laborious star-maps of the densely populous regions of the sky which we have adverted to as displaying an effort of patience and care truly admirable, we are checked by reflecting upon the important lesson which it teaches; that in every branch of human acquirement, toil is the only fair and sure condition of fame'; that in the sweat of our brow the fruits of knowledge are to be gathered in, as well as those which the earth yields to our material wants; that the unflinching struggle of the mind against the tedium and disgust which operations of detail, or merely mechanical, often inspire, does really fortify the character and give weight to the decisions of the judgment.

The volume closes with the following paragraph:

"The record of the site of the Reflector at

Feldhausen is preserved by a granite column, erected after our departure by the kindness of friends, to whom, as to the locality itself and to the colony, every member of my family had become, and will remain, attached by a thousand grateful recollections of years spent in agreeable society, cheerful occupation, and unalloyed happiness.”—p. 452.

We have put the word granite into italics, for we believe that the column, or rather obelisk, is of Craigleith sandstone. How difficult is it to establish certainly the simplest facts! Had any contemporary authority of weight declared that Archimedes' tomb was built of lava, Tully would hardly have "paused" to look for the epigraph of the sphere and cylinder on a block of marble. A spirited wood-cut of the site is given as a tail-piece;

been made for the homely but useful purpose of *So in p. 167. "An occasional entry may have avoiding sleep, a thing not unattended with probability of broken bones."

66

It was long a principle of historians to seek out individual responsibility for every crime and folly they had to record. If they took any note of the force of circumstances -the peculiar conditions of the age or country-the state of knowledge-the social relations, or any of the external agencies by which human conduct is not only modified, but very frequently predestined-they admitted them as extenuations, not as causes; and sought out some scapegoat to bear all the sins of a whole generation into the dreary wilderness of controversial history, or still more dreary romance. If a man could not be found to be thus pilloried for self and fellows which was very commonly the case—a hunt was instituted for one of the softer sex, and to her was imparted the origin of everything in which she participated, however slightly, and the responsibility of most of the events which she but accidentally witnessed. This unfairness is especially characteristic of the French historians. Their general theory is that the Salique law, which excluded women from reigning in France, incited them to seek means of governing by intrigue, and that they thus acquired and exercised greater and

possessed by the ostensible sovereign. Having once adopted this theory, they gave way to the natural jealousy of sex, and ascribed all the abominations with which French history abounds to the influence of " wicked women," from the days of Brunehaut and Fredegonde down to those of George Sand, the supposed Egeria of Ledru Rollin.

In this long series of alleged female delinquents, far the most prominent place has been assigned to Catherine de Medicis. There is hardly a conceivable crime, from murder to petty larceny, which she is not said to have either instigated or perpetrated. But when we examine the evidence for these charges, we shall find that the proofs for the most part are like vanishing fractions, the farther we pursue them, the more evanescent they become. Assuredly, we shall not set up Catherine as a model of innocence and virtue. "The unsunned snow," to which she was compared by a contemporary poet, presents many a dark and ensanguined stain. But we contend that a fair examination of her career will redeem her from the category of moral monsters, to which she has been hitherto consigned, and will show that much of the guilt for which she has been held personally responsible, belongs to the age, the country, and other external circumstances, over which she could exercise little, if any, control. She had to maintain royalty in France against the Princes of Lorraine on the one hand, and the Huguenots, who aimed at establishing a Presbyterian aristocracy, on the other. She crushed both, evincing, it must be confessed, very little scruple in her choice of means. But Cæsar, who attempted to save the accomplices of Catiline, by appeals to pity for the vanquished, would probably have prevailed over Cicero, had he been supported by a factious press, and the journals of an unscrupulous opposition.

It was no fault of Catherine that she was sprung from a family-the famous house of the Medicis-which was sullied by more

crimes, during the three centuries of its existence as a sovereign power, than could be found in the annals of any other European family, hardly excepting the Borgias. One of its characteristics was to take no account of legitimacy. In no other house did the natural children act so conspicuous and prominent a part. It seemed to be a principle, that the mere acquisition of power was sufficient to legitimate its possessor. Mirabeau used to say, My family never made but one degrading alliance, and that was with the Medicis ;" for they were simple but rich merchants until 1314, when Averard de Medicis became gonfalonier of Florence. The first, however, who occupied an important place in the history of the Tuscan republic was Silvestro de Medicis, who became gonfalonier in 1378. He was the father of Cosmo and Lorenzo de Medicis, each of whom stand at the head of princely lines, which must be carefully distinguished. From Cosmo descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Duc de Nemours, the Duc d'Urbino, (father of Catherine,) Pope Leo X., Pope Clement VII., and Alexander, Duc della Citta di Penna, sometimes called Duke of Florence, but improperly; for though he usurped supreme authority in that city, he never assumed the title.

From Lorenzo descended Lorenzino, the Florentine Brutus, who slew the usurper, Duke Alexander; Cosmo, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his successors in that sovereignty, down to the year 1737, when the family became extinct.

Neither of these two branches reigned in the line of direct succession until Francis de Medicis, (father of Mary de Medicis, and queen of Henry IV.,) having completely subjugated Tuscany, established his family firmly as a dynasty. Alexander de Medicis, Duc della Citta di Penna, who acquired supreme power in Florence, was the son of the Duc d'Urbino (father of Catherine) and a Moorish concubine. Some have ascribed his paternity to Pope Clement VII., who certainly showed him unusual favor. But Clement patronized Alexander merely to gratify the Emperor Charles V., to whose favorite natural daughter the Duc della Citta di Penna was married. It is doubtful whether Lorenzino was led to assassinate Alexander by patriotic hatred of his usurp ation, or by the more natural indignation, excited by seeing an illegitimate son assume the headship of the Medicean house.

Francis de Medicis, the husband of Bianca Capella, recognized as his son the child of a

poor laborer, whom that celebrated Venetian lady had purchased and adopted. What is still more strange, Ferdinand de Medicis, when he succeeded Francis, maintained this adopted boy in all his pretensions and privileges. The lucky youth, known in history as Don Antony de Medicis, was recognized during four reigns as the great ornament of the family, to which he certainly rendered essential services, and he died universally regretted.

Almost all the early Medicis had natural children, who invariably rose to brilliant rank and fortune. Thus Cardinal Julius de Medicis, afterwards pope, under the title of Clement VII., was the illegitimate son of Julian I.; and Cardinal Hippolito de Medicis, who nearly attained the papacy, had a similar bar of bastardy on his escutcheon.

As Catherine cannot be held responsible for scandalous antecedents in her family, so neither is she to blame for the unfortunate circumstances that gathered round her infancy. Her mother, Madeline de la Tour d'Auvergne, died in giving her birth, leaving to Catherine, her only child, the nominal inheritance of the old Counts of Boulogne and Auvergne, with some plausible pretensions to the crown of Portugal. Her father, the Duc d'Urbino, followed his beloved wife to the grave, and the infant Catherine, deprived of both her parents, was left at the mercy of the factions then struggling for supremacy in Florence. Pope Leo X., the grand-uncle of Catherine, claimed the sovereignty of Florence, and delegated the government of the city to Cardinal Julius de Medicis, who, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, assumed the guardianship of Catherine, as her father's brother. In continental parlance, he was uncle of the princess "by the left hand;" some doer of memoirs into English rendered this phrase "the lefthanded uncle of Catherine," and such currency did this error receive, that in the various old lives of the popes we find Clement VII. described as left-handed. If the same person had ventured to translate Brantome's jest, Le Pape etoit son oncle en Notre Dame, it is hard to guess the perplexity that might have been introduced into genealogies.

Catherine was about nine years of age when the democracy of Florence expelled the Medicis, and established what would now be called Red Republicanism as their government. Clement VII., who had recently succeeded to the papacy, sent an army to besiege Florence, and demanded that his

niece should be sent to Rome in all honor | and safety. But the Red Republicans were pretty much in that day what they are in ours, a pack of cruel cowards; they had seized the orphan's property, and shut up Catherine herself in a convent, and when the pope demanded her liberation they held a council to deliberate on her fate. Baptiste Cei proposed that she should be brought to the ramparts and exposed to the fire of the besiegers' artillery; Bernard Castigleone recommended that she should be exposed to the brutality of the mercenary soldiers, and then sent dishonored to her uncle. The horror excited by this detestable proposition produced a reaction in favor of Catherine; the council resolved that she should be still detained as a hostage, but that at the same time she should be treated with all possible respect and kindness.

Italian historians, with some justice, call this the "Golden Age of Bastardy," and name countless instances in which the illegitimate branches of noble houses became the hope and pride of their families, quite eclipsing the legitimate branches. This was remarkably the case with the Medicis. The Duc della Citta di Penna was placed at the head of the family by Clement VII.; and after having established his supremacy in Florence, he undertook the guardianship of Catherine, then about eleven years of age.

Nothing like an impartial history of the sixteenth century exists, nor is it likely to exist until the task is undertaken by some enlightened Hindoo or Mohammedan. The passions which the Reformation awakened have never since been allowed to sleep; persons, events, and circumstances have been so distorted and misrepresented by hostile parties, that their identity can hardly be recognized in the opposing statements; and when we look for evidence of facts, we are presented with the arguments and deductions of theological controversy. Each man supposes that the honor of his religion is concerned in maintaining the purity and honesty of those by whom that religion was professed during the great struggle of the Reformation, which is about as reasonable as to imagine that the cause of Christianity was identified with the character of Constantine. Religion was a pretext and excuse, not a cause of most of the events which historians have ascribed to its influence. It was not because he was Head of the Church that Henry VIII. divorced and got rid of his wives, but it was because he wanted to get

rid of a wife that he proclaimed himself Head of the Church. Whoever writes the history of this period with the set purpose of maintaining the probity of either party will produce a mere improbable romance. Hornenghaus on one side, and D'Aubigné on the other, have produced not histories but tolerable imitations of the Waverley Novels.

Charles V., the great champion of Catholicity, who regarded Lutheranism not merely as heresy against the Church but treason against the empire, allowed Rome to be besieged by his armies, and the pope to be kept a close prisoner. He did more. After having fixed an enormous ransom on his captive's redemption, Charles ordered public prayers to be offered throughout the empire for the deliverance of the Holy Father, whom he could have set at liberty by a turn of his finger! Clement succumbed, and obsequiously courted Charles V., until he obtained the hand of the emperor's natural daughter for the Duc della Citta di Penna, an alliance which placed Alexander in possession of Florence. Scarcely had they achieved this end, when Alexander and Clement turned against Charles V., sought an alliance with his great rival Francis I., offering him the hand of Catherine for his eldest son, and promised to aid him in reconquering Italy. Lorenzino de Medicis, the Florentine Brutus as he is called, shared all the debaucheries and excesses of Alexander before he murdered him; and then pleaded that he did so seeking a favorable opportunity for his assassination. Philip Strozzi, in many respects one of the most noble-minded men of the day, not merely accepted this excuse, but vowed that each of his sons should marry a daughter of the murderer; and this vow the two sons religiously fulfilled, though they had attained fortunes and dignities in France which would have entitled them to far more brilliant alliances. Cosmo de Medicis, the successor of Alexander, to whom he was very remotely related, proclaimed himself the avenger of that duke, and at the same time deprived his son of his inheritance! Charles V. acquiesced in this robbery of his grandson, for whom, in the very instrument that confirmed the youth's inheritance, he professed the most unbounded affection. Cardinal Cibo, to whom Cosmo was indebted for his throne, was the very first person whom he sent into exile; whereupon Cibo accused the prince of having attempted to poison the son of Alexander. Don Garcias, the son of Cosmo, assassinated Cardinal John de Medicis, and was put to death by