THE PHILOSOPHY OF BACON.

It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind.

MACAULAY, "Lord Bacon."

STYLE OF KEATS.

Let any man of literary accomplishment, though without the habit of writing poetry, or even much taste for reading it, open "Endymion " at random (to say nothing of the latter and more perfect poems), and examine the characteristics of the page before him, and I shall be surprised if he does not feel that the whole range of literature hardly supplies a parallel phenomenon. As a psychological curiosity perhaps Chatterton is more wonderful; but in him the immediate ability displayed is rather the full comprehension of, and identification with, the old model, than the effluence of creative genius. In Keats, on the contrary, the originality in the use of his scanty materials, his expansion of them to the proportions of his own imagination, and, above all, his field of

diction and expression extending so far beyond his knowledge of literature, is quite inexplicable to any of the ordinary processes of mental education. If his classical learning had been deeper, his seizure of the full spirit of Grecian beauty would have been less surprising: if his English reading had been more extensive, his inexhaustible vocabulary of picturesque and mimetic words could more easily be accounted for; but here is a surgeon's apprentice, with the ordinary culture of the middle classes, rivalling, in aesthetic perceptions of antique life and thought, the most careful scholars of his time and country, and reproducing these impressions in a phraseology as complete and unconventional as if he had mastered the whole history and the frequent variations of the English tongue, and elaborated a mode of utterance commensurate with his vast ideas.

Lord HOUGHTON, "Life of Keats."

JAMES WATT.

I.

Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information, —had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodizing power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense,and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation with him had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured

out upon it, without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits.

II.

That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured, but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

JEFFREY, "Edinburgh Review."

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY'S HABITS.

The chief part of the year was passed by the whole family at Redesdale. His habits were now pretty much as they continued through life. He rose between seven and eight, and employed himself while dressing in meditating the subjects of letters, sermons, or literary undertakings; he then spent an hour, less or more, in his garden. He took delight in performing the ordinary garden operations with his own hands, sometimes working hard at digging, lopping boughs, or felling trees; at other times engaged in the lighter occupations of budding and grafting, in which he displayed much skill and ingenuity.

"His observation of nature," writes a friend who knew him well, was most universal and accurate, and

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nothing rare or monstrous in the works of nature escaped him. His remarks on, and explanations of, any phenomena in natural history were most acute and ingenious. His botanical knowledge was considerable, and his acquaintance with practical gardening far superior to that of the generality of gardeners. He delighted in experiments on the culture of plants and trees, in budding, grafting, in-arching, and other modes of propagating plants. His fondness for arboriculture indeed was a constant resource and agreeable relaxation; and his combinations of one species of plant with another on the same stem, by "approach grafting," made his grounds at Redesdale a very chaos of whimsical curiosities.

Miss WHATELY, Life and Correspondence of
Archbishop Whately."

EFFECTS OF THE INDIAN MUTINY.

The Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857-9 formed a crisis in the destinies of the great Dependency of India, and the circumstances which occasioned them caused a thorough change in the relations of the country to Great Britain. In 1858 the actual government was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown, and, as an immediate result, an amalgamation took place between the army of the Company and the British army. Since the suppression of the mutiny, the princes and chief landowners have been conciliated by allowing them certain privileges. The police has been reorganized; the administration of justice improved, and a new system of legislatures, local as well as central, established: natives, too, have been admitted, with the happiest results, to share in making the laws under which they live. A vast impetus has been given to the public works, most of which are now approaching completion, and it is to be hoped will soon yield those beneficial and prosperous results which have been so long and patiently expected. Enormous progress has been made since the mutiny, and is going on at an

increasing rate. Wages have vastly increased, and in many parts of India have nearly doubled The people everywhere are better fed and better clothed, and are getting out of debt to their native usurers. Roads and water-courses that have been long neglected also show signs of great and rapid improvement.

HEWITT, "Geography of the British Colonies."

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ATTACKED BY
PARALYSIS.

The year 1856 was one of some trial to the Archbishop. It began with an attack of inflammation of the tongue. But he was now beginning to experience a warning of a more serious character, in a symptom of "creeping paralysis" in the left arm and leg, which was now declaring itself. The shaking of the left arm continued to increase, and from this time forth never left him except in sleep; and the pain occasioned in the whole arm by this involuntary muscular motion was at times very severe. The difficulty of steadying the paper on which he wrote affected his handwriting; and that clear, round, bold caligraphy now began to show somewhat of the tremulousness of age. It was to the last more legible than that of many persons in their best days, and exemplified the advantage of the strenuous pains he had taken in this often-neglected branch. He always said it was a mark of selfishness" to write an illegible hand. But the alteration which growing infirmity made in his writing was painfully felt by him; and from this time he made use as much as possible of an amanuensis, latterly even in the " Commonplace Book." Dictation was never a painful effort to him; he performed it with clearness and accuracy as well as rapidity, and would often dictate a short article or memorandum on some interesting point while sitting at the breakfast table.

Miss WHATELY, "Life and Remains of Archbishop

Whately."