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desire and its gratification the solution of any conception of the scale on which the great that wondrous enigma, the distance of the work of warming and lightning is carried on in stars; the problem upon which astronomers the sun? It is not by large words that it can "" must break with their glasses have exercised themselves be done. "All word-painting with such almost miraculous, and certainly consideration of great facts in the simplest landown, and it is only by bringing before you the exquisite delicacy and refinement. guage, that there is any chance of doing it. In achievements of trigonometry, or the process the very outset here is the greatest fact of all, of Triangulation, must seem to ordinary the enormous waste, or what appears to us readers almost as wonderful as to the sav- to be waste the excessive, exorbitant prodiage seemed "the Talking Chip," as he call- gality of diffusion of the sun's light and heat. ed it; the two or three scratches upon a bit No doubt it is a great thing to light and warm of shaving, which brought to the missionary the whole surface of our globe. Then look at from a distance of miles the tools and appli- such globes as Jupiter and Saturn and the ances he needed for the carrying on of the others. This, as you will soon see, is something building of his boat. The grand discovery astounding; but then look what a trifling space they occupy in the whole sphere of diffusion of the planet Neptune, by the calculations around the sun. Conceive that little globe of of Leverrier and Adams simultaneously pro- the earth such as we have described it in compaceeding seems almost to yield in its splen- rison with our six feet sphere, removed 12,000 dour to the discoveries more recently made of its own diameters, that is to say, 210 yards in the neighborhood of that great landmark from the centre of such a sphere (for that would of astronomers, the star Sirius, that "superb be the relative size of its orbit)! why, it would Star," as our author well designates it, whose be an invisible point, and would require a light, which it takes twenty of our years to strong telescope to be seen at all as a thing transmit to us, and whose glories it would having size and shape. It occupies only the take four hundred such suns as ours to kin- which it describes about the sun. So that 75,000 75,000th part of the circumference of the circle dle, has been for a long time one of the great of such earths at that distance, and in that cirlandmarks of astronomie observation. Cer- cle placed side by side, would all be equally well tain undulations of regular recurrence per- warmed and lighted, and, then, that is only ceived in it, and which could not be ascribed in one plane! But there is the whole sphere of to parallax, were by anticipation ascribed space above and below, unoccupied ; at any sin. to the attraction of an Unseen compan- gle point of which if an earth were placed at the ion; and, in January 1862, Mr. Alvan same distance, it would receive the same amount Clarke of New York, discovered in its neigh- of light and heat. Take all the planets togethborhood a minute star which had eluded all er, great and small; the light and heat they receive is only one 227-millioneth part of the whole previous observation. Its real existence has quantity thrown out by the sun. All the rest now been verified, and Sir John believes escapes into free space, and is lost among the there is every reason to regard this as the stars; or does there some other work that we unseen companion, the presence of whose know nothing about. Of the same fraction thus mild power awakened the mystic palpita- utilised in our system, the earth takes for its tions in the fiery planet forty-seven times share only one-10th part, or less than one-2,000the distance of the sun from the earth, cal- millioneth part of the whole supply. culations have fixed this dim and remote stranger. What an illustration does it furnish of those refined celestial measurements to which we have referred; but even the sun himself, who seems so near and essential to us, so much our daily neighbour and companion that we regard him with more familiar minds, furnishes a perfect retinue of wonders. The paper in this volume, entitled "The Sun," is full of what the author calls "statements so enormous in all their proportions, that I dare say, before I have done some of my hearers will almost think me mad; or intending to palm upon them a string of rhodomontades, like some of the mythical stories of the Hindoos." What an astonishing paragraph, for instance, is the following:

This paper, on The Sun, while it is perhaps most simply written, is also the most startling in the volume. The telescope has revealed wonderful things in this great friend and most essential force of our whole system, in whose being-we trust we may say, we live and move without irreverence

and have our being; and in a manner and to an extent of which very few units compared with the thousands of millions of our race, have ever had any conception. It is remarkable that experiment has been brought with such an infallible refinement to bear upon that immense and distant orb that, by the operation of its powers we have become aware of the very materials of which it is composed. The paper under notice is a simple, readable essay, such as might beBut how shall I attempt to convey to you guile a parlour fireside of its dulness. Pro

years ago. Everybody knew that Mr. Clay | Nor has Mr. Parton the culture which to was a leader of men, and that he was the some writers supplies the place of genius. author of certain compromises which from He was not educated and he does not edlandmarks in our political history; that Mr. ucate himself upon good models. We do Calhoun sowed the dragon's teeth which not mean to say that he never reads classisprung up in the form of armed men; and cal authors, but that he does not assimilate that Mr. Webster was more remarkable for the best qualities of what he reads. Aimstrength of statement, than for fertility of ing at popularity, he resorts to such means invention. Upon the value of Mr. Clay's for its acquisition as are employed by other leadership and the utility of his compromises, sensational writers. He strives for effect upon the sincerity of Mr. Calhoun and upon and obtains it. He has been saved thus far the quality of Mr. Webster's intellect dif- from the fate of many popular authors by ferent opinions obtained years ago, as they his industry, his skilful choice of subjects, still obtain. Mr. Parton gives a popular his activity of mind, his clearness of stateexpression to views long held in political ment, and by his common sense, when he circles, but he contributes nothing new. gives himself time to use it. The most striking portions of his article upon Webster, for example, those which have excited most controversy, were evidently inspired by Theodore Parker's well known sermon. What Mr. Parton has done is to translate Mr. Parker's language into his own vernacular and to find illustrations of his views in trivial incidents. His narrative is thus colored and the reader's mind is made up for him without his knowledge. It is not thus that a great man's character should be approached. The hidden sources. of his strength, the hidden springs of his conduct, the real inspiration of his language must be sought in a spirit of love and reverence. It does not do to cut the Gordian knot of such a man's complex motives. It must be patiently untied. A "speaking likeness" which says nothing to those who know the subject best is not a portrait that will live.

We might not have thought of making these suggestions had not Mr. Parton invited them. He ought to be content with a popular reputation, and not undertake to play the part of "posterity" for which he is in no respect qualified. As a popular writer he has great merits. Nobody goes to sleep over his articles. His commonplace is vitalized. His crude and frequently erroneous generalizations are soon forgotten in the bustle of the narrative. He just fails of being an excellent writer. He does not take the pains to condense or to prune, perhaps has not the discrimination necessary to judicious criticism of himself. He always writes just about so well, appearing to have no aspirations above a certain level. It would be difficult to find one felicitous expression in his last volume, or one graphic picture; yet there are numerous expressions that just fail of being felicitous, and sketches that just fail of being pictures:

"Oh, the little more and how much it is! And the little less and what worlds away."

The North American Review has been censured for admitting Mr. Parton's articles into the numbers which they enlivened, and undoubtedly our leading quarterly ought to be a model for its readers in point of taste as well as in point of temper and of scholarship; but it is, first of all, necessary that it should have readers, and these Mr. Parton attracted.

JOHN PENINTGON.

Mr. John Penington, of Philadelphia, who died on the 18th inst., was the last, if not the only, American bookseller who represented the old traditional booksellers. A scholar of fine parts, thorough in his knowledge of bookselling, with judgment and skill, a bibliographer in its broadest and best sense, he was an honor to the craft, and he took pride in it. He was a man of fine taste, of large reading, and of exhaustless service to all who were curious in scholarship or earnest in the study of letters. Descended from one of the old, respected, and wealthy Quaker families of Philadelphia, it was accident that made him a bookseller. His father's large fortune was suddenly lost. During his youth Mr. John Penington had gathered a valuable collection of books, and had frequently contributed to the literary proceedings of the various learned societies of his native town. Not caring for general mercantile pursuits, and suddenly thrown on his own resources, he quietly turned his library into his stock in trade, and with it opened one of the best bookstores of the country. Proud of his books, and contented with his shop and the fair profit which it brought him, he never allowed himself to be tempted from his chosen pursuit. His shop became the gathering place of scholars and men with a taste for letters, and one generation after another grew up almost under his

From the Saturday Review.

M. THIERS ON FRENCH POLICY.

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eyes in the various branches of literature always got from John Penington, of Philawhich he supplied. His business did not delphia. It is beside our present purpose stop with supplying books to his customers; to speak of him except as a bookseller; they were all his friends; they knew that but we should do wrong to forget that patrito him they could turn for help in every-otic Philadelphia during the last five years thing that related to books, and that his contained no man more sincere, and few knowledge was only surpassed by his readi- men more forward, in every good work that ness to impart it; and his help was never civil war imposed upon lovers of the counrefused to the earnest seeker after knowl- try. - The Nation, 28 March. edge, no matter how small his requirements of Mr. Pennington's services as a bookseller. Bookselling with him was not so much a trade as an art; books with him were valuable for their real, substantial merit; the book-buyer was precious in his eyes who knew what he wanted and why he wanted it. He never got rid of his old love of books for their own sake, and that love was too well founded in a knowledge of books ever to be lost in a poor ambition to become a great booksellera mere trader in so many thousand volumes of which he knew nothing and thought less. One of the matters of his trade in which he took pride was the fact that his list of subscribers to the new edition of Brunet was the largest outside of Paris, and thus he brought together the oldest bibliographer of the Old World and the youngest student in the New. With Brunet and with Bossange, as with all the other leading booksellers in Europe, his relations were intimate, and ripened always into fast friendships, each man finding in the other much to like and to respect. The sound judgment which characterized him in his private business was not lost in other things; and in political and public matters his advice was always safe. He was frequently called upon to assist members of Congress in framing such parts of the successive tariffs as were within his special business knowledge, and his recommendations were never biassed by his own interests. The loss of such a man, capable in his business, proud of it, and making himself dear to his friends, is at all times a great one. Particularly is this the case now and here, when study and scholarship are taking their accustomed places, from which they had been seriously disturbed by five years of war. The trade of book-selling in his hands was elevated to the dignity that it really acquires in the hands of competent men. Such men are rare everywhere. Here, unfortunately, they are growing rarer every day. In growing great rapidly we are not always growing wise, and the men who mean to study and want a book-shop and a bookseller to furnish them with the tools they need, will look long and vainly for such help as they

M. THIERS has attacked the foreign policy of the Empire in a speech which will be read with breathless interest by most Frenchmen. Seldom has there been more vigorous or skilful invective delivered against the conduct of the French Foreign Office. The moment was not inopportune. Half France has been wondering whether it is possible that the newfangled policy of Imperialism is, after all, a series of suicidal blunders, and that NAPOLEON III. is an overrated man. M. THIERS has seized the critical occasion to pronounce with all the authority of a connoisseur that, considered as a diplomatist, the EMPEROR is a failure. The old tribune, which this year has reappeared by Imperial permission in the Chamber, seems to have been restored just in time. The veteran debater and ex-Minister spoke of the familiar rostrum as of an old and valued friend, and, standing where he had not stood for twenty years, seemed like the ghost of old French Governments inveighing against the spirit of the new. M. ROUHER, himself no mean orator, was scarcely equal to the task of coping with the complete and polished essay of his animated antagonist. The admiration of the Chamber was equitably divided between the two opposite harangues, but the vehement address of the Opposition leader has produced out of doors a deep impression which the assurances and protestations of the Minister have not yet removed.

The charge brought by M. THIERS against the policy of the Empire is that it is not the policy of common sense. It has only succeeded, he thinks, in leaving France stranded and isolated in the middle of the Continent. Her true interest, he conceives, is not to preside over the rise of nationalities or the agglomeration of nations, but to stand by the balance of European power. Reduced to plain terms, this means nothing more than that, when Europe is weak, the French Empire will be strong. The "balance of power" is only a courteous way of expressing the hopeless division of the Con