THE THACKERAY SCANDAL-It is very unfortu nate that, from the fact of Mr. Thackeray having been the subject of Mr. Yates' offensive article, and Mr. Dickens the most prominent supporter of Mr. Yates against the Committee and the Club, the original matter of quarrel should, almost insensibly, have assumed the aspect of a faction fight between the parties of our leading novelists. An amusing, though any thing but an edifying chapter might be added to a future edition of the Quarrels of Authors out of the materials which this aflair has already supplied, or is likely to furnish, before it is finally disposed of. Talk of the lukewarmness of one's acquaintance! A man does not know how many uncommonly zealous adherents he has till he gets into a row. It is true the same occasion is apt to reveal a host of "d-d good-natured friends." Already this Garrick fracas has uncemented more old intimacies, divided more literary houses against themselves, and supplied more apples of discord to the coteries who gather round the skirts of literary celebrities, than quiet sensible "outsiders," ignorant of the "wraths" of "celestial minds," would conceive possible. True it is a tempest in a tea-cup, but then the tea-cup is set on a rather conspicuous table, and there is such an abundance of spoons— Jerrold might have said-to stir it, that no wonder it froths rarely, and gives rise to no end of scandal and speculation.

DEATH OF MRS. WORDSWORTH.-The widow of the poet Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount. near Ambleside, on Monday night last, the seventeenth. She had reached beyond the age of four-score years, and passed away tranquilly after a short illness. She was of so great assistance to her husband in all the works he gave to the public, that she was not an unimportant member of the literary world, though a silent one. Her life was long, and it was as pure, beautiful, and useful as the most ardent admirer of English domestic character could imagine. The poet could not have been blessed with a household companion more meet for him; and, better still, the

poet knew and felt the blessing he possessed in such

a companion:

RELIC OF MARIA THERESA.-There is a story about an elbow-chair which was put up for auction after the death of a patient in the Hotel Dieu here, as part of the poor woman's effects. It fetched five hundred francs, though not worth ten. It seems that this piece of furniture was originally presented to the Empress Maria Theresa, and it figured many years in her working cabinet up to the marriage of Marie Antoinette, who brought it with her to Paris, and it was such a favorite memento of her mother that she asked for it to be sent to her prison in the Temple. Her valet, Fleury, after her execution, carried it to England, and gave it to the Prince Re

gent, from whose possession it got into that of the Duke of Cumberland, who brought it over to Hanover, and it subsequently found its way to Berlin, where it was given to an upholsterer to repair. In the wadding of the back a crayon portrait of a boy was found, and also a breast-pin set in brilliants-which latter was sold to a watchmaker called Naundorf, as well as some closely-written pages of MS. With the contents of the MS. Naundorf found himself in a position to personate the Dauphin, and set up as Duc de Normandie. A German, who had kept an eye on the old chair in its wanderings, has now secured it for presentation to the Austrian Court. -Globe Paris Correspondent.

MILTON ABROAD.-Lycidas was written in the autumn of 1637, and in the following April Milton set out for Paris-not to return home until such time as the disorders in England had reached a pitch when it became incumbent on every bold and honest

man to choose a side, and make some sacrifices for the truth. Milton's foreign tour lasted fifteen of France to Nice; from Nice to Florence, visiting months; from Paris he traveled through the South en route Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa. At Florence he staid two months, where he found some valuable Galileo in his villa near that city. From Florence friendships among the Italian literati, and visited he went on to Rome, and from Rome to Naples, where he made the acquaintance of "Manso," a name well known to the readers of Milton's Latin poems. He was now about to visit Sicily and Greece, when the English news that reached him induced him to turn his steps homewards Still he traveled leisurely; returning by way of Rome and Florence, from thence to Venice, then making northwards for Geneva, and so through France again to England, to find the misrule which he had already denounced now boaring full fruit.-Literary

Gazette.

THE LOCALITY OF "COMUS."-Ludlow Castle is through the dark passages of which the visitor now a crumbling ruin, along the ivy-clad walls and clambers or gropes his way, disturbing the crows and the martlets in their recesses; but one can stand yet in the doorway through which the parting guests of that night descended into the inner court; and one can see where the stage was, on which the sister was lost by her brothers, and Comus reveled with his crew, and the lady was fixed as marble by an enchantment, and Sabrina arose with her waternymphs, and the swains danced in welcome of the earl, and the spirit gloriously ascended to its native heaven. More mystic it is to leave the ruins, and, descending one of the winding streets that lead from the castle into the valley of the Teme, to look upwards to castle and town seen as one picture, and, marking more expressly the three long-pointed windows that gracefully slit the chief face of the wall towards the north, to realize that it was from that ruin and from those windows in the ruin that the verse of Comus was first shook into the air of England.-Masson's Life of Millon.

THE deepest coal pit in Great Britain, and probably in the world, has, after twelve years' labor, been completed and opened at Dukinfield, Cheshire. The shaft of this pit is six hundred and eighty-six and a half yards deep, and the sinking of it cost nearly one hundred thousand pounds.

LIBRARIES IN AMERICA.-Thore are in the United States fifty libraries containing upwards of 15,000 volumes, thirteen containing over 30,000, and six over 60,000 volumes. Massachusetts has eight libraries of the fifty, or one sixth; New-England sixteen, or one third; New-York eleven, or more than one fourth. The Harvard College Library has 112,000 volumes; the Astor Library 80,000; Boston Athenæum, 70,000; Library Company, Philadelphia, 65,000; Congress Library, 65,000; Yale College, 63,000; New-York State Library, 50,000; New-York City, 47,900; New-York Society Library, 40,000; Smithsonian Institution, 40,000; Brown University, 37,000; Boston Public Library, 34,896; Dartmouth College, 32,438; Bowdoin College, 29,920; Andover Seminary, 26,669; American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, 26,000; Georgetown College College, D.C., 26,000. The number of volumes in these fifty libraries is nearly 4,000,000. Massachusetts has 635,111; New-York, 617,484.

EFFECT OF OCCUPATION UPON LONGEVITY.-Dr. Edward Jarvis, of Boston, (U.S.,) President of the Statistical Association, has prepared a table from the mortality reports of Massachusetts, from May first, 1843, to December thirty-first, 1856, showing the average ages of men of different occupations. He divides the community into classes, and finds that in that time the average age of the cultivators of the earth who died, was about sixty-four, of professional men, fifty-three, merchants and capitalists forty-eight, mechanics active abroad forty-eight, active mechanics in shops forty-seven, sailors forty-six, laborers forty-five, common carriers, forty-four, inactive mechanics in shops forty-two. Of the particular occupations, the average age of clergymen was fifty-five, lawyers fifty-five, physicians fifty-four, coopers fifty-seven, blacksmiths fifty-two, carpenters fifty, masons forty-eight, tanners forty-eight, merchants and clerks forty-seven, shoemakers fortythree, painters forty-two, tailors forty-one.

MENAI STRAITS, PAST AND PRESENT -It is remarkable that near the very spot where the last battle was fought, having for its object the extermination of a sanguinary and baneful superstition, there now stands a great monument of the triumphs of progress. The Britannia Tubular Bridge crosses the Menai Straits near the place where the army of Suetonius fought the Britons who had assembled to guard the Druids, whom they reverenced as a sacred order of men; where women ran up and down like furies; and where the Druids were burnt in the fires they had kindled to sacrifice their enemies. No longer have we need of extermination: the aim and effort of to-day is to mingle the families of the human race, and to trust to the peaceful operation of truth, to root out error and superstition, wherever they may still linger and clog the onward paths of men.-Philp's History of Progress in Great Britain.

ANTIQUITIES FROM CARTHAGE.-A vessel has just arrived, bearing for the British Museum one hundred cases of antiquities from Halicarnassus and Cnidus, further result of the excavation at those places by Mr. Charles Newton, the British Vice-Consul at Mytilene. Also about fifty cases filled with similar treasures from Carthage. Amongst those from Cnidus is a gigantic lion of Parian marble, in a crouching attitude, measuring ten feet in length by six in hight, and weighing eight tons.

VORACITY OF AFRICAN ANTS.-The house which was assigned to me inside the town was spacious, but rather old, and so full of ants that I was obliged to take the greatest care to protect not only my luggage but my person from these voracious insects. They not only destroyed every thing that was sus pended on pegs from the walls, but while sitting one day for an hour or so on a clay bank in my room, I found, when I got up, a large hole in my tobe-these clever and industrious miners having made their way through the clay walls to the spot where I was sitting, successfully constructed their covered walks, and voraciously attacked my shirt, all in an hour's time. - Dr. Barth's Journal of Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. iv.

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH INVENTED IN RENFREW IN 1745.--This wonderful invention of the electric telegraph, which we are accustomed to boast of as a proof of our progress in science, was known, (at least in principle,) and suggested so far back as the year 1745, in a letter from Renfrew, published in the Scot's Magazine of that date. The writer proposes to stretch twenty-five wires between two places, each wire representing a letter of the alphabet; to electrify the required wires at one end, which at the other end will pick up small bits of cork, each also representing a letter, and thus convey a message, the writer says, to any distance in the shortest time. Strange it is to think that a hint thus broadly given should have slumbered ineffectually for a century.

SURVEY OF THE ROMAN WALL.-Mr. Maclaughlan has completed his surveys of the Roman wall and of the Watling strect north of Pierce bridge, in Yorkshire, undertaken by order of the Duke of Northumberland, who has also had the plans of the surveys, the castra upon the line of the wall and along the Watling street elaborately engraved in the first style of art, certainly at the cost of some thousands of pounds. Although professedly printed for private circulation only, his Grace has been most liberal in his donations to the chief scientific and literary institutions in this and in foreign countries, as well as to privato persons interested in our national antiquities.

THE preparations for the marriage of Prince Napoleon with the Princess Clotilda, are going on actively. The corbeille of the young bride more Alençon lace of great value; three India shawls of particularly excites curiosity. A dress and shawl of extraordinary beauty; and the diamonds of the Princess Catherine of Wurtemburg, which were stolen in 1815, but afterwards found or repurchased by the family, will form some of the objects composing the marriage offering of the Prince. ficent diamond necklace is spoken of as a present from the Empress, and some blue fox and other valuable furs from the Princess Mathilde.

A magni

THE weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something: the strongest, by dispersing his powers over many, may fail to accomplish any thing. The drop, by continued falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock; the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves a less trace behind

EMIGRATION. In the forty-three years from 1815 to 1857 inclusive, there emigrated from the United Kingdom, 4,683,194. Of these 2,830,687 went to the United States, 1,170,342 to British North-America, 613,615 to Australia and New-Zealand, and G8,550 to other places. Of the whole emigration more than one half, namely, 2,444,802, emigrated in the eight years from 1847 to 1854 inclusive. In 1855 and 1856, the emigration fell to 176,806 and 176.554 respectively, principally in consequence of the demand for the army and navy, and the depart ments connected with them, during the Russian war; in 1857 the numbers rose to 212,875.

THE EXHIBITION OF 1861.-To discover the best means of setting on foot another Exhibition in the year 1861, the Council of the Society of Arts has issued a circular requesting the cooperation of the whole of the gentlemen who, from the very fact of their being members of the Society of Arts, may be considered to have "the oncouragement of arts, manufacture, and commerce" at heart. They request communications as to the best mode of representing the industry of each locality, and as to whether any and what improvement could be made on the arrange

ments of 1851.

away.

TIME, the most precious of all possessions, is commonly the least prized. It is, like health, regretted when gone, but rarely improved when present. We know it is irrecoverable, yet throw it wantonly We know it is fleet, yet fail to catch the current moment. It is the space of life; and while we never properly occupy its limits, we nevertheless murmur at their narrowness. It is the field of exertion, and while we continually leave it fallow, we yet sorrow over our stinted harvest.

"DEATH has quitted his busy occupation in the dungeons of Naples to strike at the door of the palace. Ferdinand the Second expired yesterday. The telegram comes with a sudden shock. The King is ill-the King is dead. Such are its rapid announcements. Ile was but forty-nine years of age. He is struck down in the prime of life-in the plenitude of despotism-at a moment when his cldest son, the Duke of Calabria, was on the point of celebrating an auspicious marriage."

WEALTH OF THE POPE.-It is said that his Holiness the Pope receives out of his State some $8,000,000 a year. Of this, $600,000 goes to his private affairs, and $2,192,000 to pay interest. $2,700,000 go to support the army and police, $600,000 to maintain the prisons, $24,000 to schools. Other expenses aro in proportion. The yearly deficiency is $1,800,000. The clergy own $100,000,000 worth of real estate, and hold all of the fat offices. The State debt is 27,000,000.

leyrand" away from you."

Ar the present day much attention is devoted in the highest seats of learning to the study of moral philosophy; yet at the same time the eclectic spirit of the age seems resolved to regard that science as interesting and curious merely in the historic point of view, not as any longer af fording materials for renewed systems or controversies. It will be seen in the following remarks, that whilst we cordially coïncide with this eclectic tendency, we consider that it needs both confirmation and guidance. We shall endeavor to show on the one hand that while the uniform failure of all attempts to erect moral truth into the form of a science, militates against the belief in the possibility of a

Essays on the Ethics of Aristotle. By Sir ALEXANDER GRANT. London: J. W. Parker & Son. 1857.

VOL. XLVI.-NO. IV.

ETHICS.*

satisfactory system of morals; on the other hand, moral truth has passed through so many handlings, and been placed in such different lights, that it is at least the duty of the nineteenth century to collect the various points eliminated by former thinkers. It will then appear that the fundamental facts of the different systems retain their value, although the systems themselves, founded respectively upon each of them, and which have arisen, like the palaces of the Byzantine Emperors, upon the ruins of their predecessors, must be steadily rejected.

We therefore abandon the expectation of conclusive value from any moral system; but we extol the value of the moral facts which have from time to time presented themselves to the imagination of speculative thinkers; we would seek for

30

the significance and worth of these facts in their influence upon the human mind; and we would hasten the conclusion, to which in our belief the thought of the age is fully tending, that all attempts to elaborate a system either moral or metaphysical must end in mere disappointment. The more truth is systematized, the more partial and one-sided it becomes, and the less vital, and the less useful in human life. A corollary to these demonstrations will be that the only safe basis for philosophizing is to be found in revelation; and that in examining and illustrating the positive doctrines of Christianity consists the safe and proper employment of the philosophic intellect. With the design of establishing and enforcing these assertions, we shall rapidly trace the ante-Christian and post-Christian history of moral philosophy.

The philosophers who prior to Aristotle pondered most deeply the mystery of being, were fraught with moral truth and insight. Every great philosopher must be so by virtue of the poetic faculty within him; as is the case with the loftiest poet, whose numbers flow to the harmonies of the universe. It was to the mind of Aristotle that Ethic, along with most of the separate departments of scientific investigation, first stood forth as a distinct science. Plato, the first great eclectic and the representative of all preceding philosophy, was, by reason of the poetical complexion of his intellect, averse from any such rigid classification of the sciences as Aristotle proposed to himself. He saw by instinct, what we who come after are compelled to enforce by precept, that nothing is of value when separated from its use in life; and that truth, when systematized and severed from the quivering mass of truth which we call life, becomes dead and infectious, decomposed and changed into falsehood. He therefore permitted speculative and moral truths to lie even as he found them, interpenetrant and intermingled; he neglected to classify them; but did not the less strongly embrace them in the wide circuit of his theoretic power and eloquence. What is observable in him is the inter-dependence of moral and metaphysical or speculative truth. The central source of light and heat in his ideal world is the idea of the good; speculative philosophy is united with moral philosophy in the identity of their object-matter, namely, "the good."

And yet we may discern in Plato the germ of all the systems of moral philosophy which since his day have vexed the world. For practical purposes he expresses the excellence of virtue and the foulness of vice by a number of metaphors, each of which has been reproduced by some subsequent theorist in the form of a system. Moral philosophy is therefore in origin a metaphor. And in very fact, it may be affirmed that every system and theory in the world is truly a metaphor, and nothing more: it is a mode of expressing the relation between God's truth and man's faculty; an attempt, always inadequate, to embrace and comprehend the incomprehensible infinite. Plato made his attempt more nobly than other men, inasmuch as he endeavored to grasp all things in one primary conception, with superadditions and compromises as vast as itself, careless of self-contradiction and lack of order. Aristotle's attempt is from another side: he too would comprehend every thing, but it must be by parts, and piece-meal, not as a whole. He divides and maps out the unknown field of the knowable; and by division of labor proposes to advance from boundary to boundary, until he complete his recognizance of the whole extent. The landmarks of the sciences have been left almost undisturbed where Aristotle placed them: no man has equaled his power of classification. But it is difficult to decide whether the convenience of his grouping does altogether compensate for the distortion and unreality occasioned by it in many departments of knowledge. Aristotle we have the universe subjected to the most intense human treatment; every thing is displaced and eliminated from its surroundings to suit the point of view. In the sciences concerned with things which we see and handle and use in common life, the treatment is of great value; but the higher mental and moral truths which lie together in the unity of the human soul, lose all their lifegiving qualities the instant that they are subjected to it.

To keep to the example with which we are at present concerned, the ethical treatises of Aristotle contain many noble and true things, and a vast number of facts, regarding human nature, most carefully collected and arranged; but yet they fail to comprehend in their elaborate network the infinite of moral truth which impalpa