From The N. Y. Evening Post, 24 Aug. POLITICS AS A PROFESSION IN THE UNITED STATES.

NATHANIEL P. BANKS has signified his intention not to accept a renomination to the office of Governor of Massachusetts. His chief reason for withdrawing from a position which was rarely, if ever, so satisfactorily filled before, and to which he would be recalled almost by acclamation, is, we believe, the primary duty of making more satisfactory provision for his family than a political career, with his notions of official propriety, will admit of. With these views he has accepted the position of resident director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and henceforth, at least for a period of years, his home will be in the State of Illinois. Of course this involves his entire withdrawal from political life, for the post to which he is invited is one which could neither be conferred nor accepted upon any other condi

tion.

I have reached the foot of the bow of promise towards which he has been so rapidly travelling, and where the treasure which politicians most covet is supposed to be buried, he deliberately drops his mattock, turns his back upon it all, and prefers to any distinction which political life can afford, an honorable alliance with the great industrial interests of his country.

Such a phenomenon -no feebler term would properly characterize it-in the horizon of American politics is full of instruction to those who know how to turn it to proper account. It is the most exalted testimony we have ever been able to quote in confirmation of the doctrines we have frequently professed in these columns, that popular governments, that is, governments resting upon a broad suffrage basis and a free press, cannot permanently retain in their service the best men of the country. As the stream will not rise higher than its fountain, so a representative government, in the proper acThe step which Mr. Banks has taken is ceptation of that term, will only attract to suggestive of profitable meditations to the its service the average talent and morality young men of his generation. Here is a of the people represented. We have been gentleman in the very prime of his manhood, feeling for years the silent operation of this who has won more popular distinctions, and, law upon every department of our governat the same time, has more of them now within ment, state and national. Every one who the legitimate range of his aspirations, than has made the effort knows how hard a thing any American of his age, living or dead. it is to get our more worthy and capable Though but forty-three years old, and the citizens to accept political trusts of any degraduate of a New England factory, Mr. scription. To find America's great men we Banks' life has been, politically speaking, an must seek the shades of professional life, or uninterrupted series of triumphs, without the great centres of material industry. We one single reverse. He was repeatedly take little risk in saying that there are more chosen to the Massachusetts Legislature, of the higher qualities of manhood employed and twice its speaker; he was a delegate to the convention for revising the state constitution, and was also called with great unanimity to preside over its deliberations. Of course we must not be understood to Three times in succession he was chosen to intimate that first-class men are never to be the House of Representatives, and once its found in political life among us, for the very speaker, when the Republican party achieved, statesman who has awakened these reflecunder his lead, its first memorable victory tions would be a living and conclusive testiin the federal arena; he has since been twice mony against us. It cannot be disguised elected to the office of governor, which he that many of the cleverest men this country now holds; there is no position, however ex- has produced have devoted the best eneralted, under the next administration, if Re- gies of their lives to political employments. publican-and there is little doubt, we be-. So we often see men in other professions lieve, that it will be-to which he would not who waste a large portion of their abilities be esteemed an acquisition; and yesterday from never discovering until it is too late there was probably no man in the country, that they were out of place. We only speak except Mr. Lincoln, who would not gladly of the tendency of our institutions to attract exchange with him his chances for the highest office in the gift of the American people.

After such a career of uninterrupted and honorable successes, with every thing behind to flatter and encourage him, and all that is most dazzling and seductive in front to tempt his ambition; just as he seems to

in directing the productive industry of this country than in all the executive departments of the federal government combined.

the average virtue and intelligence into the public service, and when it does attract a higher grade of men, it is, as a general thing, their misfortune; it conduces neither to their happiness nor to their usefulness, and, in nine cases out of ten, discharges them from its service disappointed if not broken-hearted.

The reasons why the best order of men

are rarely found in the public service lie upon the surface. There is no principle of political economy more universal in its application than that the supply of every thing will be proportioned to the demand. This is as true of statesmen as it is of seamen or soldiers, or wheat or cotton. It is the tendency of the representative system constantly to circumscribe the sphere of government, and to limit its function to the simple duty of keeping one man's hand off of another and off from his property. This duty does not require the first order of men; it is a sort of upper constable's work at the best, for which certain qualities that are not rare are most important. Of course the supply will correspond to the demand. The public will not pay for a better grade of ability than the service requires, and if it does, the competition with the multitudes who are supposed competent for it is such that the chances of success are not sufficient to induce those who are good for any thing else to incur its risks.

as will only be properly appreciated in another generation. Without speaking of such as are political in their character and still more or less the subject of controversy, it is but just to say that he has done more for the State of Massachusetts, as the simple custodian of her property, than any person who ever occupied his seat before him. To his indefatigable exertions Massachusetts owes a reduction of her state taxes of nearly $900,000 in two years; a reduction of town taxes to the amount of nearly $800,000, and an increase in the valuation of her property in eight years of $814,000,000. While he has been doing all this, with the co-operation of the excellent men which superior administrative talent is sure to bring about it, Mr. Banks himself has prospered only in honors; he is still one of the very poorest men in all New England.

And of all his distinctions which the future biographers of Mr. Banks will have to record, this deserves to occupy the very highest rank. He who possesses the ability If republican institutions did not have to bring himself within the reach of the this tendency, they would not deserve the greatest temptations, and the virtue to withencomiums which have been passed upon stand them, lacks nothing but the crown of them. poverty to prove him to be of the genuine Hence it is that, with honors literally rain-blood-royal and a ruler by Divine right. ing upon him from every quarter, Mr. Banks Without affirming that Mr. Banks leaves has not seen the day since he entered politi- political life for a position in which he can cal life when he would not gladly have ex-be more useful, we may with propriety say changed the pleasure which any of them that he leaves it for a position in which such conferred, for an assurance that the very talents as his are more needed, and theremoderate expenses of his family from week fore are much better remunerated. He will to week could be conveniently and surely be the local or resident manager of the met. He knew too well the value of his own self-respect to exchange it for affluence, as he readily might have done at any time in the various exalted positions he has held. With his views of statesmanship it was impossible for him to work for any but the state, and the consequence is that he finds himself to-day, after ten years of most honorable public service, and with every temptation to continue in it that political life can offer, a poorer man than he was when earning daily wages in a New England factory. And yet Mr. Banks has no expensive habits, and has lived with all the frugality which the positions he has occupied have permitted. While doing so little for himself, Mr. Banks' services to his country have been such

largest railway property on this continent, representing a capital of more than thirty millions, covering a territory larger than the State of Connecticut, or even than many of the states of the German Confederation, and furnishing daily employment to between three and four thousand men. For the management of such a property no one has too much capacity or character, and the direction of the Illinois Central Railway Company has never exhibited more sagacity and forecast, and they certainly were never in better luck than when they enlisted in their service the proved and distinguished administrative talents of the Governor of Massachusetts.

HOLDING UP THE HAND.-The form of ad- The man to be sworn listens to the oath, which ministering an oath in the French courts of po- an officer of the court recites, and then holding lice involves the holding up the hand, a cus-up his right hand exclaims, Je jure!-Notes and tom probably to be traced, together with other Queries. W. C. forms, to the usages of the old Roman law.

From Once a Week.
THE DUST IN A SUNBEAM.

or linen, or silk; whether a particle of dust is of flint, chalk, or brick; and we do this with the same precision as if we were distinguishing one animal from another, or one substance from another. If the characters are not sufficiently marked to the eye, we call in the aid of chemical tests. Equipped thus with a knowledge of marks by which to distinguish the separate particles, let us place a layer of dust, large enough to cover the surface of a fourpenny piece, under the microscope, and begin the examination.

You must frequently have watched the whirling cloud of dust in the sunbeam aslant a somewhat darkened room; and perhaps were a little staggered at this sudden revelation of the invisible air not being quite so pure as you had imagined. It is true that unless your housemaid is a woman of stern conscientiousness, the mortal enemy of spiders, implacable on the subject of cleanliness -(a housemaid, in short, who never advertises in the "Times," but is a tradition of the The composition of this dust will always be days that are gone)-you must on more than of two kinds-inorganic and organic, that is one occasion have found a layer of dust col- to say, mineral particles, and the skeletons of lected on your books, portfolio, or table, dust animalcules, or the skeletons and seeds of piled up in the corners of the picture-frame, plants. The mineral particles will of course dust covering your microscope case, dust depend on the nature of the soil, and position gathering in the carvings of the pianoforte of the spot whence the dust was derived. It legs, dust on the looking-glasses, dust on the may be swept in from the gravel walks of a windows, dust everywhere. And this you garden, from the highroad, or from the busy know must have been transported by the at- street. The grinding of vehicles, the wear of mosphere. But you are not astonished. The busy feet, the disintegration everywhere going atmosphere is an energetic Pickford. It car- on, keeps up a constant supply of dust. The ries clouds of dust on every highway, and smoke of a chimney and factory, steamship sweeps the sands over the fields and hedges. and railway, blackens the air with coal-dust. Nay, it is said to catch up quantities of frogs, If the rocky coast is not a great way off, we and whirl them away to distant spots, where shall find abundance of particles of silica, with they fall like hailstones of a larger growth. sharp angles, sometimes transparent, someBut you are not bound to believe this. Nor times yellow, and sometimes black. need you be more credulous of the showers this silica will occasionally be in so fine a of herrings which are also recorded. There is evidence enough of the transporting power of the air, without falling into exaggerations. By slow deposits from the air the temples of Egypt, Greece, and Rome are now to a great extent buried below the surface; and you have often to descend a flight of steps to get upon the ancient soil.

It is probable, however, that while you were perfectly familiar with the idea of the atmosphere carrying clouds of dust, on occasions, you never thought of the atmosphere being constantly loaded with dust, which is constantly being deposited, and constantly renewed. This sunbeam has made the fact visible. It has lighted up the tiny cloud of dust, which we see to be restlessly whirling.

powdered condition that the granules will look like very minute eggs for which indeed many microscopists have mistaken them. In this doubt, we have recourse to chemistry, and its tests assure us that we have silica, not eggs, before us. Besides the silica, we may see chalk in great abundance; and if near a foundry, we shall certainly detect the grains of oxide of iron (rust), and not a little coaldust.

Our houses, our public buildings, and our pavements, are silently being worn away by the wind and weather, and the particles that are thus torn off are carried into the dustclouds of the air, to settle where the wind listeth and the housemaid neglecteth. The very rocks which buttress our island are subSuppose we examine this dust, and see of ject to incessant waste and change. The what it is composed? Restrain your sur waters wash and scrub them, the air eats into prise: the thing is perfectly feasible. The them, the mollusc and the polype rasp away dust was invisible and unsuspected till the their substance; and by this silent, but inevrevealing sunbeam made us aware of its pres-itable destruction, dust is furnished. Curious ence; and now the microscope, which deals with the invisible, shall reveal its nature. For, in consequence of the united labors of hundreds of patient workers, we can now distinguish with unerring certainty whether a tiny blood-stain is the blood of man, a pig, a bird, a frog, or a fish; whether a single fragment of hair is the hair of a mole or of a mouse, of a rabbit, or of a cat, of a Celt or of a Saxon; whether a minute fibre is of cotton,

it is to trace the history of a single particle. Ages ago it was rock. The impatient waves wore away this particle, and dashed it among a heap of sand. The wind caught it in its sweeping arms, and flung it on a pleasant upland. The rain dragged it from the ground, and hurried it along water-courses to the river. The river bore it to the sea. From the sea-water it was snatched by a mollusc, and used in the building of his shell. The

beam reveals? By no means. Some ani- our Rotifer has fourteen times shaken off the mals will be found there; not always, indeed, cerements of death. Dead. Not he: nor very numerously, but enough to create I've not been dead at all, says Jack Robinson. astonishment. And these animals are not insects disporting themselves, they are either dead or in a state of suspended animation. A few skeletons of the infusoria, scales of the wings of moths and butterflies, and fragments of insect-armor, may be reckoned as so much dust; but there is also dust that is alive, or capable of living. You want to know what that dust is? It is always to be found in dry gutters on the housetops, or in dry moss growing on an old wall; and Spallanzani, the admirable naturalist to whom we owe so much, amazed the world with announcing what old Leeuwenhoek had before announced, namely, that these grains of dust, when moistened, suddenly exhibited themselves as highly-organized little animals-the Rotifers Tardigrades. Water is necessary to their activity. When the gutter is dried up, they roll themselves into balls, and patiently await the next shower. If, in this dried condition the wind sweeps them away with much other dust, they are quite contented; let them be blown into a pond, they will suddenly revive to energetic life; let them be blown into dusty corners, and they will patiently await better times. It may happen that the wind will sweep them into your study, and there they will settle on the gilt edges of Rollin's Ancient History, or some other classical work which every gentleman's library should be without; and in this position it has a fair chance of remaining undisturbed throughout the long years of your active career. But you die. Your widow has probably but an imperfect provision, and a very imperfect sympathy with Rollin and Co.; your books are sold by auction; the dust is shaken from them, and is blown into the street-from the street into the gutter, or the river, and there the dried Rotifers suddenly revive, to fight, feed, and propagate as of old. It is said that the Rotifer may be dried and revived fifteen times in succession. And if this be so, you may imagine what a history would be that of a single Rotifer under a fortunate juncture of circumstances. It might have seen life in a gutter at Memphis, or a pond at Thebes; been blown as dust to Carthage, and carried as dust to Rome; from thence to Constantinople; and, after being shaken from the robe of Theodora, or the code of Justinian, it might have accompanied the Crusaders to Jerusalem; from which place Mrs. B., after a two months' Eastern scamper, might have brought it back to London, where a chance breeze wafted it into the room which the very sunbeam I am discoursing about illuminates. From Memphis to my microscope, what a course! And during this adventurous course

Such are some of the things found in the dust of a sunbeam, and you will probably have been too much astonished at some of the facts to have made the reflection that among all these objects not a single egg has been named. A few spores of plants are, indeed, frequently found. Knowing that many plants are fertilized by the agency of the wind, one expects to find pollen grains abundant. Indeed, when we consider how rapidly bread, cheese, jam, ink, and the very walls of the. room, if damp, are covered with mould, which is a plant; when we consider how impossible it is to keep decaying organic substance free from plants and animalcules, which start into existence as by magic, and in millions, we have no difficulty in accepting the hypothesis of an universal diffusion of germs-eggs or seeds-through the atmosphere. No matter where you place organic substance in decay, if the air in never so small a quantity can get at it, mould and animalcules will be produced. Close it in a phial, seal the cork down, take every precaution against admitting more air than is contained between the cork and the surface of the water; and although you may have ascertained that no plants or animalcules, no seeds, or eggs, were present when you corked the bottle, in the course of a little while, say three weeks, on opening the bottle you will find it abundantly peopled.

To explain this, and numerous other facts, the hypothesis of an universal diffusion of germs through the air has been adopted; and the known fecundity of plants and animalcules suffices to warrant the belief that millions of millions of germs may be constantly floating through the air. Ehrenberg computes the rate of possible increase of a single infusory, Paramecium, at two hundred and sixtyeight millions a month. And it is calculated that the plant named Bovista giganteum will produce four thousand million of cells in one hour. As the mould plants are single cells, and as they multiply by spontaneous division, the rapidity with which they multiply is incalculable.

From all this you see how naturally the idea of universal diffusion of germs has be- ' come an accepted fact. If it is a fact, we must feel not a little astonished at finding the dust we examine so very abundant in starch, coal, silica, chalk, rust, hair, scales, and even live animals, and so strangely deficient in this germ-lust! The germs are said to be everywhere; millions upon millions must be diffused through the air; every inch of surface must be crowded with them. Do we find them? We find occasional pollen grains and