Locke are, when compared to his discoveries, mere puerilities, and that Bacon and Newton were babies in knowledge, who had not even obtained a glimmering of Nature. Dr Tromp, whose science is universal, takes the infant at its birth, and the nurses to whose care his infant pupils are committed have been trained by himself, and no one save he and they are permitted to approach them; and though this may be considered a great hardship imposed on mothers, yet when they consider the amazing advantages which their children will derive from his tuition, they will cheerfully submit to the privation. He has discover ed how it is that the picture of an external object falling on the retina of the eye, conveys intelligence to the soul seated on her throne in the cellular substance of the brain; and by this means he can so improve the organ of vision, that a child of five years old shall be able to discover in the immensity of space, stars invisible to the most powerful of our telescopes. Dr Tromp asks of any unprejudiced man what are the discoveries of Galileo compared to this. That person only aided obscure vision; he lifts the veil from nature, and shows to the delighted beholder the hitherto hidden wonders of her temple; yet he has learned with indignation, that his discoveries have been vilified, and his name calumniated by persons who have descended so low as to pun upon it, as if it meant trompeur, and were not obviously the same with trump,-and may be considered as ominous of the bugle-sounds of his future fame. It is ever thus with men who rise above their contemporaries, and he shall only say to his detractors, that the light of his reputation will ere long kindle a fire that will consume them, and which they will in vain seek to escape. Dr Tromp has been likewise so successful in his processes for the perfecting the other senses, particularly the delicate canal by which sweet sounds are conducted to the mind, that on a fine starry evening he has seen a child of two years old leap for joy in the nurse's arms, from the music of the spheres. He has, indeed, realized much of what the ignorance of the ancients considered fabulous. Much has been said of the delicacy of touch to which some blind people attain, but in this respect they are far surpassed by Dr Tromp's scholars, who can to a certainty discover the approach of any unpleasant object,such as a beggar, a creature who always produces a sensation of disgust and shuddering in delicate nerves, and is, therefore, banished by all enlightened magistrates from this and every other well regulated burgh; or of any dangerous one, such as a mad-dog at the distance of many hundred yards, and even though a city-wall should intervene. The reason of this is plain; the sensation to which we give the name of touch proceeds from a fine fluid, infinitely more subtle than the electric fluid, passing from the substance to the sentient being, and by persons in whom this sense has arrived at any degree of perfection, may be felt at an amazing distance, and the substance from which it emanates can be discriminated with as much certainty as the delicate finger of a lady can distinguish a piece of satin from the back of a hedge-hog. In this way, all the feats of Miss M'Avoy are left far behind. In smell, too, the pupils of Dr Tromp have a sensation of unsavoury scents, while they as yet afford not an unpleasant titillation, and long before they become odorous; yet can they detect the villanous particles in how insidious a guise soever they may approach, in time enough to avoid the full tide of the nose-curling and hateful effluvia. This would be a most desirable faculty for an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and particularly for the members of the far-famed Dilettanti. This acquirement not only removes all the inconveniences arising from this equivocal sense, but opens a new channel to a thousand delightful sensations. Out of this system there is no perfecting of the nose, and it must still remain a degraded member, stuffed with snuff to avoid other abominations. Dr Tromp can likewise impart to mere infants a refinement of taste unknown to the most experienced gourmands; and connected with this important discovery, he teaches rules for the composition of meats, by which M'Culloch might furnish a table worthy of a royal palate, and for which he might charge a princely price. It thus appears that Dr Tromp has improved every one of the inlets of knowledge to a degree hitherto unknown, and even thought impossible, and the business of education, when this preliminary step is once attained, is nothing more than their proper direction and vigorous excitement. For instance, what is usually called memory is nothing more than an impression made on the brain; and by a manipulation known only to Dr Tromp, he can, while the scull of the infant is yet tender and flexible, so mould that region of it, which, after Dr Spurzheim, may not unaptly be denominated the organ of memory, (though situated very differently from what that gentleman imagines,) that when a picture of an external object is once made upon it, it does not pass away like the flecting colours on the canvas, but, like the stars of heaven, retains for ever not only its form but brightness. By this means Dr Tromp's pupils remember everything which they have once seen, or heard, or touched, or smelled, or tasted, or known,-in short, every idea that has passed before their mind; and thus the power of acquiring languages is increased to an amazing degree. A word once heard and its meaning explained, is never forgotten. In two days, at the rate of twelve hours a day well spent, all the words in the French language, for instance, in common use, might be repeated and explained in a child's hearing; in other two days their figures might be shown to him, and in two more their arrangement in sentences might be pointed out, and a day more allowed to the revision of the whole; thus, in a week, according to the theory of Nature Perfected, the fluent use of the most beautiful language in Europe might be acquired by a child of five years old, and he might be enabled to read, with understanding and feeling, the most profound, or the most imaginative authors. This is a "spring up" to knowledge indeed, and proves that Mr Dufiet is a mere waster of time, for Nature Perfected achieves that in one week, for the attainment of which his system requires ten months, and that Feinagle is a mere blunderer, with all his trumpery of crowing cocks and laying hens, and washing tubs; and little better than a quack, in as much as he undertakes the correction of the defects of an organ, of which he is totally ignorant. It has been whispered that this last-named gentleman took in the grey-bearded scavans of this eity, though it is notorious that they are the most knowing dogs in Europe; and that they now remember little of what happened at his lectures on Mnemonics, save the payment of the five guineas for their admission ticket, which the lecturer pocketed with a most significant smile. So much for languages; and it is obvious that those who have hitherto been considered the most famous for their knowledge of them, such as Sir William Jones, or Dr Leyden, or Dr Murray, or the Admirable Crichton, may be surpassed by a child of seven years of age, trained according to this system. In science the same wonderful results have been produced. It is well known that the difficulty of mathematics arises from the confusion of lines, and angles, and circles in our common elementary works, while the ideas which they represent are simple, and of easy apprehension. An elegant little machine has been invented, which demonstrates, in a few hours, every thing worthy of being known in the first six books of Euclid, in such a manner, that it may be understood, and, of course, never forgotten, by a boy of six years old. Simple rules are likewise prescribed to boys of the same age, by which they may surpass George Rose, or Zerah Colburn, in arithmetical and algebraical calculation. this mode of training, in a month, the scholar is in a state fully to understand Newton's Principia, and the discoveries of the modern philosophers. By In music, (for Dr Tromp's system is universal,) the progress of the pupil is equally astonishing, and indeed surpassing belief; yet he does not, like Logier, make a machine of his scholar, constraining his finger to strike the note aright by the clumsy and inelegant intervention of a cheiroplast; but on the principles of improved touch, already explained, the finger is directed to the right key as it were instinctively, and the ear and the finger seem to be endowed by the same soul. One of Dr Tromp's pupils, (for he does not teach music in classes,) a child of four years old, is at present performing a set of celestial airs, taken down by herself, from the music of Venus, the last time that that planet was above the horizon, when, it will be remembered, that she was more than usually brilliant; and it was known to Dr Tromp, and his pupils, that her music was uncommonly varied and melodious. Moore's love songs would gain incalculably by being sung to these airs, which are, of course, superior to the Hebrew, or the Italian, or the Spanish, or even the Scottish airs as set by honest Neil Gow. Of the English and French melodies it would be absurd to speak, for these nations have none, and it is the only thing in which they resemble one another. Ás to writing, and painting, and sculpture, these arts require no teaching, for the eye and the touch of Dr Tromp's pupils are so astonishingly correct, that by the one they can judge to a certainty of the effect to be produced, and by the other, they can, with as great certainty, accomplish it. One of them, a young lady of ten, has just finished a copy of the Car toons, which competent judges have pronounced to be superior to the originals. Another young lady, who has scarcely reached her twelfth year, takes landscapes from nature in a style greatly superior to Claude or Nasmyth, and a little boy has (with a chisel of a new composition, that receives an edge far finer than any thing yet known, and of his own invention) produced an infant Venus of more than celestial delicacy and grace. The boasted Venus is, compared to this chef-d'œuvre of art, a mere earthly beauty. One would think that the young artist had been admitted to Olympus, on the birth-day of the Goddess, and seen her with all the glow of heavenly radiance around her, with such a smile on her countenance, as when she perceives vanquished deities prostrate around her throne. But the rare merit of this young artist's performance is the genius with which he has combined all this with the infantine simplicity and beauty suited to it, and our admiration does not proceed so much from what we see transcendant as that is, as from what we are made to anticipate of the full developement of charms such as have never before been imagined. But the most wonderful of all Dr Tromp's doings is the exaltation which he has given to the feelings and the judgment, and the imagination, and the taste. To the imagination he has paid peculiar attention, and has so detected the goings on and the vagaries of that wayward and wonderful faculty, as to be able to prescribe in NOL. 111. fallible rules, by which any young man of sixteen may produce a poem superior to the Iliad, or Hamlet, or the Witch of Fife. The great advantage of this attainment will be, that no one will, in future, need to be dependant on another for the pleasures of imagination, and every man may, from the contemplation of a butterfly, or even of a worm, form combinations infinitely more original and beautiful than any of Homer's creations, from the glories of the Gods, or the virtues of men. We shall then no longer be troubled with the impertinences of the poets, of such vulgar fellows as vagrant minstrels, or runaway woolcombers, or vain-glorious ploughmen, or changeling shepherds, or cobbling shoemakers, or the still more intolerable annoyance of their wouldbe patrons, such pretenders as Capel Loft, and many of that class, who shine only by a borrowed light; but every man shall be his own poet, and neither be put to the expence of buying a dull poem, nor have the drudgery of reading it. It would require a volume to develope all the excellencies of Nature Perfected. In eloquence it is equally efficacious; and the Doctor has at present a few young men under his care, who will soon excel Demosthenes or Dr Chalmers in this divine art. the glory of the system has not yet been named: it is in a moral preparation which will, in its consequences, eclipse the laws of Numa and Solon, and my Lord Castlereagh, and the famous bill of Mr Owen, by which crimes shall cease, and an era shall be introduced, in which the guillotine and the gallows shall be accounted as the fables of antiquity. This shall be effected neither by sumptuary laws nor penal statutes, nor by moral dis cipline in Lancasterian schools, or factories, or cottages, but by a mode known to Dr Tromp alone, and which, if he is duly encouraged, he will reveal during his lifetime; if not, he will leave it as a legacy to mankind after his death. Medicine will be unnecessary; for, by Nature Perfected, there will be no diseases, and man will live in the full possession of his faculties till he have exhausted all the subjects on which he may rationally exercise them in this first stage of his existence, and then he will not die, but simply fall asleep, and awake 3 Y But in a higher stage of being. The Doctor is as yet uncertain whether this will be in Venus or the Sun, but there is every reason to think that he will visit every one of the stars, and pass a new life there, and thence move into regions of greater glory, always rising in the scale of existence. What a view of nature! And which, indeed, could only have been obtained by Nature Perfected! The falling apple of Newton and the forgotten grammar of Dufief shall be no more heard of. N. B. Dr Tromp has been honour It spread its own broad leaves, and flou- Unwarmed by Cæsar or by King! COVERED NEAR PENICUIK. D. ed with testimonials of the truth of every statement in this Prospectus from the Emperor of all the Russias, DESCRIPTION OF A FOSSIL TREE disand the Cham of Tartary, and the Grand Lama of Tibet. These certificates lie with the bookseller, and also with the learned and judicious Dr Syllogisticus. TRANSLATIONS FROM SCHILLER. MR EDITOR, SITH the ingenious PETER hath favoured thee with translations from Bürger, and hath thus opened an inroad into the grand field of Northern literature, (we were really getting sick of the sing-song sonnets of the south,) I, who am his cousin-german, hereby propound for thy acceptance two short pieces of the great Schiller, which may give thy readers some notion of the noble spirit prevailing even in the slightest compositions of that ful poet. If these are acceptable to thee, more may be forthcoming hereafter. At present I have no time for a long epistle. power PAUL. 1. On the Ancient Statues at Paris. How much in vain !-In silence all 2. The German Muse. From the Bibliotheque Universelle, edited by Professor Pictet of Geneva, to whom the description was communicated by Sir G. S. Mackenzie, Bart. [We sent our translated extract from the Bibliotheque Universelle to Sir G. S. Mackenzie, who has kindly corrected some mistakes into which Professor Pictet had fallen in the translation of his letter, and tation of this remarkable fossil.] enabled us to give a more correct represen To Professor Pictet. Edinburgh, 20th June 1818. SIR,-I hasten to fulfil my promise to give you some account of the remarkable fossil, which I had just time to mention on the morning of your departure from this city. I am not acquainted with any phenomena in natural history which demonstrate more clearly the amazing revolutions to which the globe has been subjected, than the fossil remains of organiz ed bodies, which we often discover at the greatest depth to which man bas been able to penetrate beneath the surface. As we advance in geological knowledge, we gradually perceive the inefficiency of those theories, which pretend exclusively to explain every thing that we see; and we are more and more disposed to attribute the wonderful effects which we attempt to trace, to the general action of the various powers of nature, than to ascribe to one power every new fact that occurs to our notice. Among the numerous facts which the study of mineralogy offers to our notice, we continually encounter some which defy the ingenuity of man to explain their origin. He forms conjectures, some of which offer a more or less probable explanation; but he never arrives at a complete solution of his difficulties. Philosophers are becoming every day less inclined to argue in favour of any system from isolated facts; and they wisely resolve to permit facts to accumulate, without attempting to explain them, until their number shall enable them to form the basis of a correct theory. The fact which is the subject of this letter has been known to me only a short time. It was pointed out to me near the village of Penicuik, which is situate 10 miles from Edinburgh; and it is one which I think will probably remain a long time without a satisfactory explanation. It is no uncommon thing to find vegetable fossils among the secondary strata; but hitherto I have not heard of any which did not appear displaced and broken into fragments. On the south bank of the river North Esk, a short distance above the paper-mill at Penicuik, where the strata usually accompanying the coal formation of this country are exposed, a large portion of the trunk of a fossil tree and several roots are visible. It rises several feet above the bed of the river, as far as the strata reach, and the roots spread themselves in the rock. It appears as if the tree had actually vegetated in the spot where we now see it. It is about four feet in diameter where thickest. The strata in which the remains of the tree stand are slate clay, and the tree itself is sandstone. There is sandstone below and immediately above the slate clay, and the roots do not appear to have penetrated the lower sandstone, to which they reach. Small portions of coal were observed where the bark existed, the form of which is so distinct on the fossil, that we may conjecture the tree to have been a Scotch pine. This conjecture may appear more probable from the roots spreading more horizontally than those of other species. There are several rents across the trunk, which may have been caused by frost. Sir George Clerk, Bart. on whose property this curious fossil was discovered by himself, proposes to protect it from the river floods; and I hope no mineralogist who may visit the spot, will touch it with his hammer; for it is one of those specimens which are truly valuable only in their natural place, and when entire. I am, &c. G. S. MACKENZIE.) |