go with the bridal procession, so you must put up with the loss of your wine. How do you like that? After having gone to such expense (to pay for the day's feasting), not even to receive a glass! Spooney has the advantage of his poor dear father-in-law! Do you, pray, look on at all the fun; and when it is over, go home, and set about preparing for the wedding-party. Possibly you may be able to ingratiate yourself into the favor of your rich son-in-law.

*

Matchem, you have done your office. I will further trouble you to conduct Miss Sharp to Spooney's to the wedding. Be quick, and put on your dress suit. Matchem.-Certainly! certainly ! Your worship's decision has not disappointed me. Messenger. The musicians and bearers

A party of friends meet at the parents' home, a day or two after the marriage, when the bride visits her family.

for the procession are all waiting at the west side-entrance, your worship.

Mandarin (to a body Servant).-Tell them within to send Miss Sharp to the west sideentrance, where she will enter her sedan. Let the bearers go round there and wait. Send two policemen to see that everything is right, and to accompany the bride to Spooney's, returning when she is safely left there. Let one of the policemen on duty see that More Sharp and Adam Sharp are with the procession. If not, let me know it immediately.

A note in the original says: "This case was obtained from a friend, who himself It is here reported it from the Yamun. inserted as an aid in learning the (Mandarin) language, on account of its bearing on the influence of authority in improving the morals of society, and of its being, moreover, I very amusing."

SOUNDS BY GALVANIC CURRENTS.- Mr. Gore, F.R.S., has produced visible vibrations, and sounds of different intensity, by the passage of voltaic currents through a solution of cyanide of mercury and potash in dilute hydrocyanic acid. When a small number of cells of a large size are employed, the vibrations are small, and the sounds emitted high; but when the cells are numerous and small, the vibrations of the mercurial connections are large and the sounds produced bass. The number and pitch of the vibrations produced by the same current can be varied by transmitting it through primary or secondary coils of wire. The inference drawn by Mr. Gore from these extremely interesting and valuable experiments is, that they prove electricity, like light and heat, to consist essentially of vibrations, which, under ordinary circumstances, are so minute as to be unappreciable; but that, under certain conditions, as in these experiments, may be so modified as to become visible.

A GIGANTIC CEPHALOPODE.-At the meeting of the Institute of France on Monday week, M. Flourens read a communication from the commander of the corvette Alecton, transmitted by Marshal Vaillant, giving a detailed account of a monster of the deep which the ship encountered about forty leagues north of Teneriffe. It appeared like an immense horn, consisting of soft, red glutinous flesh, terminated by a great number of very strong arms or tentacula. It measured from ten to fifteen mètres in length and more than two in diameter. M. Bauyer, the commander of the corvette, endeavored to get possession of it, and gave it battle; but his shot went through its soft body without seeming to do it any harm, and his harpoons would not hold. At last, however, he got a line round it, and was proceeding to haul it up, when the cord cut into its body, and the anterior part, bearing the tentacula, escaped the tail only-weighing about half-hundred weight-being got on board. The crew begged that a boat might be let down that they might come to close quarters with the monster; but the commander, apprehending that by its strong arms and suckers it might stave or sink the boat, refused, and left it in the abyss. The communication was followed by some remarks from M. Moquin-Tandon, to the AMMONIA FROM THE WASTE GASES OF effect that he had received still more circumstan- | COAL.-A method of collecting ammonia from tial narratives of the same kind from M. Berthe-the waste gases produced in the combustion of lot, Consul at the Canaries. And the discussion coal has been patented by Mr. J. A. Manning. was closed by M. Milne-Edwards, who gave his sanction, stating that he regarded these observations as verifications of similar narratives which are as old as the time of Pliny, the monster being, no doubt, a cephalopode of the cuttle-fish

kind

A jet of steam is injected into the escaping gas, when it combines with the ammonia, and the vapor thus impregnated is condensed in suitable refrigerators, and an ammoniacal liquid obtained, from which sulphate of ammonia may be made by the ordinary processes.

POETRY.-The Christmas Child, 690. Until the Day Break, 715. Franconia, 715. No Thanks to You! 715. The March of the Regiment, 743. The Cavalry Charge, 744. Our Victory, 744.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Color in the Moon, 706. Spectrum Analysis, 705. Icthyosaurus, 705. Books of the Old Testament in Rhyme, 710. Buonaparte Family at Rome, 715. Glazed Tiles for Buildings, 718. The Source of Life-Blood, 724. Sanscrit, Jesuits, 724. Macaulay's Conversation, 728. Waldenses, 728. Screwing on Nuts, 740. Coins of Cashmere, 740. Japanese Swords, 740. The Horse-Chestnut Tree, 742. Our Autumn Foliage, 742. First Missionaries, 742.

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Le Vieux-Neuf: Histoire ancienne des Inventions et Decouvertes modernes. Par Edouard Fournier. Paris.

From The British Quarterly Review. |points of history and literature are in most instances untrue; and when true, that they are rarely so, in the first place, if at all, concerning those to whom they are popularly attributed. He has, in the volume before us, undertaken a similar task with regard to inventions, scientific and otherwise. His theory, if reduced to a few words, would sound very like the old saying, that there is nothing true that is new, and nothing new that is true. But odd and occasionally grotesque as it is in some of its details, it is worthy of a more full exposition than this. There is much ingenuity in the theory, and much learning in the detailed support that it receives; combined with a most intensely French (and, need we add, a most savage anti-English?) spirit in the commentary.

ABOUT eight-and-twenty centuries ago a preacher of some eminence proclaimed the dearth of invention, the world's exhaustion, and the lack of novelty, in forcible phrase, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us." And since then, almost every age has had its complainant, or its "laudator temporis acti," who has reiterated the reproach upon the existing time. Especially was this the case after the invention of printing. Very soon it became the fashion with a certain class to find all alleged novelties in the works of previous writers, actually or by inference; as Chaucer writes,

"For out of th' olde fieldes, as men saith,

Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of olde bookes, in good faith, Cometh all this new science, that weve lere." The nineteenth century has usually had the credit of having invented many new things; but we are told to correct our belief. It has improved upon, and utilized, many old ideas; but as for invention, it is eminently barren and unprolific. Do we hesitate to assent to this proposition? Perhaps so. Perhaps we think that the Argo was not a "steam screw-propeller "—that Cæsar's notorious tri-verbal despatch was not conveyed by "International Magnetic Telegraph," in anticipation of the European Mail (limited) -that Armstrong guns were not used at the siege of Troy, and that the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, with many "improvements and additions," is something more than an expansion of the inscriptions upon the ancient obelisks. Perhaps we do; but before we commit ourselves to any positive opinion upon these or allied matters, it apparently behooves us to know and examine carefully what may be said for our ancestors' prior claims.

M. Fournier has recently undertaken to show that the epigrams and melodramatic *See L'Esprit des Auteurs, recueilli et raconté; Paris, 1857; and L'Esprit dans l'Ilistoire: Recherches et Curiosités sur les Mots historiques; Paris,|

1860.

The nineteenth century (auct. loquent.) has no original ideas- -no invention; in fact, it came too late † for that; all had been thought before. It is, therefore, only an era of maturation and utilization. Research and application are the chief glories of our age,

66 Il a du moins l'honneur d'avoir tout entrepris."

But further than this, there is no individual inventor.

*M. Fournier's opinion itself is no exception; in other words, is not a novelty. Witness the following passage, which contains a summary of many modern investigations into the history of inven

tions:

"Modern writers, by way of accounting for their dulness, explain frankly that the ancients stole all their best ideas from them; and although modern philosophers are slow to admit the same fact as regards themselves, they cannot hold out against proof. One by one our new discoveries and original inventions have been shown to be thousands of years old. Telescopes must have been directed to the stars of the antique heavens, or its astronomy could not have existed. The Emperor Shan, 2225 B.C., employing the movable tube which is used to observe the stars, put in order what regards the seven planets.'-(Ancient Chinese Chronicle, der's copy of the Iliad enclosed in a nutshell could quoted in Thornton's History of China.) Alexannot have been written without the microscope; the gem through which Nero looked at the distant gladiators, was nothing else than an opera-glass; steam-railways mesmerism hydropathy-all were familiar to the long bygone generations of the trade; and Hobbs borrowed his lock from the tombs earth; guano was an object of ancient Peruvian of Egypt! And we have much to do still in the way of rediscovery. The malleability of glass, for instance, the indellibility of colors, and fifty other things of importance, dropped by the ancients into the stream of time, we have to fish up anew."See Chambers's Journal, for Sept. 2, 1854. Le Vieux-Neuf, vol. i. p. 400. La Fontaine.

ity, yet, in order to an idea becoming practically important, it must be some time enunciated, and the first enunciator has the proper title to the merit of its discovery. Now, the third part of M. Fournier's theory contains the doctrine that this inventor has generally been a Frenchman, in those particulars which are the most prominent fea

"The first thought of all that man was to do and create, during the existence of this earth, was created at the same time with himself; but under the formal condition that the muturity of the one should not precede the maturity of the other. What could the man of earlier ages, with his unskilled hand, his cramped and limited capacities, have done with those things which were to be the glory of his emancipated thought and edu-tures of our age; and that the ideas have cated faculties? What could he have done with steam? What with printing or gunpowder? Nothing. If he knew of these things, it is not as we know of them; they were but playthings; he had them in a rudimentary state."

The human race is the only true inventor; and that not by chance, but at the proper hour, and according to its needs. Man is little, but humanity is great. "When the modern era draws nigh, when thought requires stronger wings, then printing is invented, and gives it them. When feudality has had its day, and the people, crushed by iron armor, are prepared for freedom, artillery gives them that equality in fight that is necessary for their liberation." And so for all other discoveries; each one arose only for and on its occasion; or if a germ of the idea had been known before, it perished for lack of appreciation, and its promulgator was laughed to scorn or persecuted. As has been often observed, woe to him who is before his generation! Thus, as if to unite all generations, and to show that we can only act efficiently by association with others, it has been ordained that each inventor shall only interpret the first word of the problem which he solves, and that each great idea shall be the resume of the past, and the germ of the future."

almost invariably been subsequently stolen by an inhabitant of perfidious Albion. Plagiarism, forgery, robbery—all are laid to the charge of our countrymen with a lavish pen. We stole our ideas of macadamized roads, of iron bridges, of gas and steam, of iron ships and nautical almanacs, of a thousand inventions from the French. They were ever inventing, and neglecting their own inventions; we were always (says the Abbé Prevost) reading the reports of the proceedings of their Academy, and seizing upon all available ideas to claim them changed or unchanged, as our own.

These allegations may or may not be true, in whole or in part; but it can scarcely be contested, that he who first points out the practical application of an idea, may fairly claim it as his own. It is none the less honor to the discoverer of the art of printing, that some germ of the principle had been known and in use from almost immemorial time. Nor is the merit of the discovery of gunpowder as a means of warfare lessened by the fact that some inflammable or explosive composition had been used by perhaps both Romans and Chinese, to make fireworks of, for many centuries.

Leaving out of M. Fournier's comprehensive volumes the Anglo-Gallican contest, which certainly occupies a considerable But although on this theory no one indi-space, and overlooking some other minor vidual should lay claim to absolute original

Le Vieux-Neuf, vol. i. p. 5.
Ibid. vol. i. p. 88.

points of speculation, we find a very consid

erable mass of information connected with the early development of ideas which have According to M. Fournier, printing only be- afterwards assumed important positions in came what it is, because it came exactly at the time when thought required the expansion that the world's history. It is interesting to see this could furnish. Had it been discovered earlier, how frequently it has occurred that when it would have doubtless perished. Disraeli believes that the Romans were acquainted with the the fulness of scientific time had come, a secret of movable types, but would not let it be discovery would be announced from various known, for fear of the spread of knowledge and the consequent loss of aristocratic monopoly of enlightened thought. De Quincey holds that printing was long known to the ancients, but that it made no progress for want of paper! Gunpowder had very long been a pyrotechnic plaything, before it was elevated to its present sad pre-eminence, in obedience to the increasing wants of the world.

"Tant il est vrai que la liste de ces contrefaçons de l'Angleterre pourrait être interminable."-(Le Vieux-Neuf, vol. i. p. 278.) We may add that we have stolen our so-called national dish of plum-pudding-not in this case from the French, but from the ancient Greeks. The same is alleged of our " bifteack."