2 T to sweep away every obstacle which prevents "the English father from being the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home," which prevents ists most unmercifully forgetting that events, is as definite as that of any Tory geese should be reverenced if their cackle who ever lived, and it is always the same, saves Rome he admitted that to defend England a new army, a larger and a better had become a necessity. As to the Peers, he declared plainly that while believing that the constitution of the Upper House might him, that is, from realizing his own reasonbe improved, he should think once, twice, able ideal, an ideal which the hearty cheers even thrice before he eliminated the hered- of the multitude showed that they underitary principle, for which, as he showed stood. We cannot conceive of a speech by two most amusing stories, the English uttered by a man responsible to a nation people had a sort of instinctive kindness. for every word which, within its limits, Even when protesting against the exclu- could be more definite or consistent, nor, siveness of a Cabinet they entrusted their we would add, one which, always withprotest to a Lord, and when workmen in those limits, deserves more heartily wanted social reforms they were strongly the approval and support of all good attracted by the reported adhesion of a Liberals. group of men of whom "one only was a Of course the defect of such a speech as commoner." On Education he averred, in this consists, and must consist, in its omisterms which, cautious as they are, cannot sions. To us, and as, we believe, to a vast be mistaken, that the Education Act was majority of Englishmen, the dignity and a vast stride on the road of progress, that the strength of the State, of the nation inreason and common-sense required us to corporated, its power and its disposition to utilize existing schools, and that State perform its duties abroad as well as at home, money raised by rate or otherwise "should its action and place in the world as well as not be expended on subjects on which un- at the fireside, appear elements vital to the happily religious differences prevail; " that happiness and still more vital to the nobleis, that no payment to any school should ness of character of the individual citizen. be granted or refused on account of its re- Mr. Gladstone disregards this too much, ligious instruction; that, in short, he ap- or rather allows his pity for the people, proved and intended to support Mr. Fors- for the mass whose progress upwards is so ter's Act. And finally, he told the work- choked with obstacles, to fill his mind so men that as to their special demands, they completely, that he forgets to think of the had, as a class, been relieved and raised State as well as of the units which commore than any other in the past thirty pose it; and some day or other, perhaps years had been exempted, for instance, soon, he and the nation aud the Liberal. from all but self-imposed taxation that party will all alike suffer for this forgetthey had received political power, and fulness. But we cannot have out of a man were about, through the Ballot, to receive what is not in him, least of all on an occafreedom for its exercise; that means had sion when, if the quality had been there, been found for their education, some- its display might have seemed incongruous times at the expense of their wealthier or inconvenient. The speech at Greenneighbours; that the road to the highest wich was a speech to constituents as ignoeducation, and therefore the highest ca- rant of foreign politics as of logarithms, reers, had through the abolition of tests and even Lord Palmerston would proband the action of the Endowed Schools' ably have avoided any reference to a topic Commission, been cleft open for them; on which, of all others, knowledge in the and that for the future the first questions audience as well as the speaker is essential for them would be the decrease of intoxi- to edification. That Mr. Gladstone was cation i.e. some moderate but effective probably grateful for the opportunity of Licensing Bill a reform in the position of women as regards property and earnings, i.e., the "removal of the social," not the political "inequalities under which they labour," and the securing to labour its due respect in the world, that the poor be no longer despised," but the idle. It is open to any man to say that on any or all of these subjects the Premier is wrong, but it is not open to him to say that he is either feeble, or indistinct, or dreamy. His purpose, at all avoiding a subject distasteful alike to his intellect and his convictions is, in our judgment, a misfortune, but one which arises naturally from the special character of the mind that on so many other sides is of such inestimable service to the country. When tasks so great have been performed within a space of time so small, when one man has, as he and we believe, redressed the grand wrongs of Ireland, abolished a Church which had defied justice for three centuries, removed the chief evils which three conquests had wrought the remaining task has not been accom- OUR readers may remember the story of thdescription in Sanscrit of the battle of Sedan be a Prussian lieutenant of Hussars, who in ordiy nary life happened to be a privatedocent. The news of this linguistic feat has, through the channel of English papers, now reached the Ganges, and wonderful are the native observations passed upon it and the war generally. Thus the Nûr-ul-Absar, in describing the extraordinary German victories, hint not indistinctly that they were not so much the result of prowess and tactics as of the cunning with which the German warriors, well acquainted with the Eastern tongues, had made use of the magic formulas found in the Vedas, notably ahe fourth book; and King William at Sedan is represented under the guise of that fabulous Indian monarch who. lotos-flower in hand, calmly awaits in the thick of the battle its final issue. The "Light of the Eyes,' or Nûr-ul-Absar, therefore recommends the French most seriously to seek for a means of repaying her enemies where alone they will find it, viz. in the Puranas and Sutras, the assiduous study of which will provide them with formulas stronger even than those used by the Germans. Whereupon the Semaphore satirically observes that an essay on artillery might, perhaps, prove still more efficacious. Pall Mall Gazette. ing prism noticed. There seems, also, to be evidence that this minute interval of time is sufficient for the production of various subjective optical phenomena: for example, for the recognition of Loewe's rings-using cobalt glass; also, the radiating structure of the crys talline lens can be detected when the light is suitably presented to the eye. Hence, it is plain that forty billionths of a second is quite sufficient for the production on the retina of a strong and distinct impression; and as obliteration of the micrometric lines in the experiment referred to could only take place from the circumstance that the retina retains and combines a whole series of impressious, whose joint duration is forty billionths of a second, it follows that a much smaller interval of time will suffice for vision. If we limit the number of views of the lines presented to the eye in a single case to ten, it would result that four billionths of a second is sufficient for human vision, though the probability is that a far shorter time would answer as well, or nearly as well. All of which is not so wonderful, if we accept the doctrines of the undulatory theory of light; for according to it, in four billionths of a second nearly two and a half millions of the mean undulations of light reach and act on the eye. IN the celebrated experiment of Wheatstone on the duration of the discharge of a Leyden jar, the conclusion was drawn that distinct vision is possible in less than the millionth of a second. The incorrectness of the data on which this conclusion rested was afterwards pointed out in an admirable investigation by Feddersen, who showed that the smallest measured duration he could obtain was one millionth of a second. In an article lately published by Professor Rood, he shows how, by the use of a much smaller electrical surface, he obtained and measured sparks the duration of whose main constituent was only forty billionths of a second. With their light distinct vision is possible. Thus, for example, the letters on a printed page are plainly to be seen; also, if a polariscope be used, the cross and rings around the axes of crystals can be observed, with all their peculiarities, and errors in the azimuth of the analyz IF only a few of the needless follies were removed from human life, human nature would rebound with joy. It would be like the remission of so many taxes. There would be so much time gained for the world. I suppose, however, we should spend a good deal of this time in the construction of some new folly. Still there would be an interval, during which the world might make a prodigious advance in real civilization. By "needless follies are meant foolish repetitions in public prayer; foolish forms of recreation, such as heavy dinners, late evening parties without amusement; after-dinner speeches, speeches in Parliament, and to constituents; long sermons; errors in dress; starch, moral, metaphysical, and physical; and all the tediousness which proceeds from absurd conventionality. * 1 NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers. the LIVING AGE will be punctually, for. warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second " Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. A faithful robin chants her requiem. She pauses where a canopy of shade With wistful, tender longing in her eyes, Shall she, remembering her glorious prime, The dial recked not of the purple night, Vocal with song from wood and orchard ground, The same rich song our mother Eve first heard, And, greatly marvelling at the matchless sound, Sweeter than any throat of warbling bird, Felt joys unknown within her bosom stirred: Shall she, now warned by blasts of autumn's breath, Not die? or yield her to the icy foe? Bring berries, bring bright leaves; she goes to death Robed as a princess, as a queen should go. Drop, gentlest dews, and in an acorn cup Let nimble squirrels bear them to her bier; Strew vineleaves round her, eglantine train up To wrap her shroud, that nothing come more near Than those sweet buds which most she loved to rear. HUMAN LIFE. A LITTLE child, with her bright blue eyes, Sat on the rock by the steep cliff's foot And she longed for the milk-white shining foam, LIKE some poor shipwrecked mariner I stand; My friends are going,- I am left alone; Before the spread of those green churchyard Yet is my trust in Thee, O Lord, the more, Knowing Thou garnerest this love for me; And evermore my storm-worn spirit craves The blissful land where there is no more sea, Knowing full well, that on that happy shore The love Thou hast absorbed, Thou wilt tenfold restore. ALL things on earth are beautiful, and bring Ere yet the sweet May-time of flowers is spent; And later summer, with its sultry noon, But leads to slumbers in the leafy shade, ban But cold gray dawns and early sunsets soon Tell how the summer flowers e'en must fade; Then come the drowsy mists of Autumn-time, And lonely echoes sound upon the hills, And the sad music of the village chime The soul with tender melancholy fills, Yet there is something beautiful withal In those still, dreamy moments of repose, That wait upon us in the Autumn fall, And bless the year's long labours at its close. Once a Week. powerful realms permitted themselves, whenever interest prompted, against each other, were multiplied on the narrow area of the city commonwealths and petty principalities of medieval Italy. Consequently the aggregate of revolting. outrages against all laws of peace and war appear to affix a deeper stigma on Italian than on any other politics in those ages. It may be doubted how far that deeper stigma is relatively merited; it is at all events certain that Italian individual and social life and morals cannot fairly be judged of from the public or private crimes of the Visconti, Sforzas, or Borgias. publican politics. They afford us the same sort of vivid conception of that type as the "Lives of the Norths" do of the race of political lawyers and men of business who rose into eminence in the perturbed politics of the last Stuart reigns in England. The alternately conflicting and mingling The sixteenth century in Italy was an aristocratical and commercial elements in age of transition from spirited if ill-orItalian public life had produced between them something of the like sort of mixed ganized autonomy to a dull level of spiritual and secular despotism. It presents character as they afterwards did in Eng- the spectacle of a country foremost in the land. Even in the iron age of the Sforzas opening of the march of modern civilizaand Borgias, eminently respectable private tion suddenly finding itself the helpless and public characters were often the object of rival rapacity to ruder but stronggrowth of the mingled influences which er states its leading men, whose minds affected public life, so long as public life and characters had been formed in the was not yet stamped out in Italy. What liberal school of world-wide commerce and was much more rare was anything ap- uncontrolled self-government — suddenly proaching the heroic type in Italian public compelled to transfer their political activThat type is rare indeed in all ages, ity, if they were still bent on exerting it, but in the age and country of Machiavelli from the councils of their country to the and Guicciardini, as in the succeeding age courts and cabinets of overbearing native of Lord Keeper Guilford and Sir Dudley or foreign princes. North in England, all aspirations after it, as well as all approach to it, seemed to men. have in a manner ceased. Mediæval Italy, to borrow a well-abused phrase of the late Prince Metternich, had been little more than, "a geographical expression," inferring no universal Italian rights or duties. Its several states had stood towards each other pretty much in Hobbes' state of nature, with fear, force, and fraud for sole effective regulators. The ordinary. habitual relations of the mediæval Italian States to each other had been those of wavering alliance, or of covert or overt hostility. All the unbridled excesses of outrageous violence and of shameless perfidy which larger and more • Opere Inedite di Francesco Guicciardini Illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, e Publicate per cura dei Conti Piero e Luigi Guicciardini. Volume Primo, Ricordi Politici e Civili. -Volume Decimo, Ricordi di Famiglia, Ricordi Autobiografici. Fi renze, 1857-1867. The habit of writing "Ricordi for which the English word "Records " is not an exact equivalent of noting down, not for immediate nor even ultimate publication, whatever, from day to day, seemed noteworthy in private or public, domestic or foreign transactions, was practised more methodically and systematically by the Italian public men of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth century than perhaps it has been by those of any other age or country. It was a habit which came, as it were, naturally to those merchant-statesmen. These SOcalled "Ricordi" had no more literary design or pretension about them than any of the other business entries in their daybooks or ledgers, amongst which, indeed, they were very commonly interspersed and intercalated, being made, like the rest, for use and not for show, and forming, in fact, as observed by the editor of the volumes |