lusk to the liberty of man, is at the same time a progress from without inward; the sun and air were the nerves of the jelly-fish, but the fish has nerves gathered in independent centres; the shell of the oyster is absorbed into the skeleton of the reptile. What else is genius but the latest workings of this law, where the mind originates ideas, whereas lower minds fasten on others as barnacles? What else is character than self-sustaining force, in contrast with servility and conventionality?

"For this reason I spoke to you of Liberty as the holy mother of all earthly good. I speak but the refrain of the chorus of all the best men who have lived; for not one great man is known in history who has not, in some form, borne witness in favor of Freedom. The early Christians had a motto, Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty; the old British bards were named, Those who are free throughout the world; the mission of America, on earth, is to realize the full glory of these words: All men are created free and equal! For of all these, Liberty has been, and is the miracle-working Genius."

A few years have passed since this night. My friend lived on and gave no sign. Recently he died; and the following is the substance of a note received from his wife: "Perhaps it would please you to know that, by his will, Philip has emancipated his slaves. I think the lesson of poor Sally, which occurred during your visit, was never lost upon him. When he was dying, he took the hands of both our little boys and mine, and said, 'Dear Margaret, teach them as I had intended to do had I lived- to live for Freedom and hate Slavery, at any cost.' These were his last words."

ments

I have concluded that I have been too often impatient of rudi-to which, in this case, I was led by personal feeling. Have you not been so also, brother? I have somewhere read a fine German epigram of the witless man, who, when fortune is near his right hand, is sure to thrust out his left. Perhaps Fogyism is not the only folly; and surely God could have created no mind without some handle, which is at the command of whatever grasp of evidence and truth is adapted to it.

AN APRIL ORPHIC.

I WALKED to-day to the mountain-ledge
Skirting a gorge where dark alders grow,
And, climbing close to the dangerous edge,
I saw a pale, sweet flower below.

There it had blossomed year by year,

Cheering the home of the newt and toad; Never had mortal step drawn near

To break its ancient solitude.

Shut from the sunlight, hid from the dew, And shunned by the winds it loves so well.

Yet its rhythm of beauty daily grew

To a wondrous golden canticle.

"O pitiful flower," at once I cried,

"Blooming where never an eye can see!"

I heard no voice, but something replied,
And this was the purport that came to me:

"Man, proud-hearted and unresigned,

Beating in vain thy spirit-bars!

Seek meanest duties, if thou wouldst find

The shining stairway that leads to the stars.

"Learn, O soul by Ambition tossed,

Content is forever to Joy the key!"

- Truth and Beauty are never lost, Teacheth the little Anemone.

CONCERNING PHRENOLOGY.*

WHAT is there of truth in phrenology? This science has been and still is laughed at by some, spurned by others, treated as materialism by great minds, considered by many as a cabalistic science, and on the other hand vaunted and extolled by its adepts; but for the greater number it is but a problema vague question about which one knows not what to think a ground on which there has been much fighting in the dark, and where the light has not yet shone. In this state of things, here is a learned and religious man, calm in his bearing, skilful in his practice, who brings a torch upon the ground and invites us to see.

I.

One first reflection presents itself in opening M. Cubi's work: Why should phrenology exist?

In all things we must begin at the beginning- that is to say, by the end; for the end of a thing is its aim, its why and wherefore, its reason of existence.

Man, they tell us, is above all a creature of education: a child, he is educated by his parents and his teachers; a man grown, he educates himself. Now all education supposes the knowledge of the capacities of the subject, and every master begins necessarily by ascertaining those of his pupil: whether for good or for evil as regards their tendency, then their energy or vivacity, in order that he may calculate his measures of encouragement, repression, or modification. So the gardener studies the nature and force of young plants, to trim the stem if it bend, to thin the branches that draw too much sap, to trim for fruit this bough which can produce it, or spare the other which appears too feeble.

To know the tendencies of the subject is the first step of education. This knowledge may be drawn from four sources hereditary transmission, circumstances, actions, and the physical constitution. Let us neglect the first three, and pause at the physical structure. This is the ground of phrenology.

The skilful phrenologist feels the head of your child, and in five

* Lessons of Scientific and Practical Phrenology, by Don Maríano Cubi I Soler, Translated from the Spanish. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris: J. B. Ballière. 1858.

minutes he informs you what can be expected of it, what vices are to be guarded against, what faculties ask for exercise. Thus you can satisfy the vow of Socrates, yvwoɩ σɛavтov, know thyself. At the end of a certain time you may renew the experience and see what you have gained upon your pupil, what you have gained upon yourself. You can follow thus step by step the progress and the delays of education.

-But the foundations of phrenology, are they true?

II.

Few persons remember now that, before the works of Doctor Gall, physiology was still localizing the passions as in the Homeric times; and, as Plato had reëdited the matter, anger was located in the liver, courage in the heart, sadness in the spleen, and so on of the others. Gall has shown in the brain the organ in which the directing faculties of animality are found, and where the passions, inaccessible in their organic fountains, reveal themselves at least through their instrumental faculties. But after having localized the animal faculties in the brain, there remained a step which Gall did not take this was, to have removed from the brain the intellectual faculties, leaving to this organ functions purely animal. In this nomenclature of the cerebral functions, he makes the metaphysical spirit and theosophy to enter. Hence the materialism into which some phrenologists have fallen, and which has injured their science. They would have thought a mere function of the brain, reason and will organic phenomena of the cerebral tissue.

Spurzheim, who was to Gall what theory is to experience, did not depart from his master on this point. He draws no distinction between the intellectual faculties and the animal faculties.

M. Cubi is of another school, and forms the third stage in this science. With him, Materialism dethroned, Reason is disengaged from the organic function, and human liberty resumes its legitimate empire. With Gall, phrenology was empirical; with Spurzheim, it became philosophical; with M. Cubi, it becomes reasonable, ethical and religious. In his grouping he seems to change but little in Spurzheim's system, but in spirit he is quite different: there is a gulf between them.

Gall and Spurzheim, in localizing the intellectual and moral faculties in the antero-superior lobes, made of them neither more nor less than organic functions, equal in value of position to the genera

tive faculty or to combativeness: thus the intellectual faculties were materialized. If, instead of this view, you state the antero-posterior faculties as only secondary, as are, moreover, all the cranial faculties, governed by one superior principle, whence each derives at once its intelligence and its impulse-the superior principle, not localized, directing and harmonizing them,-then you issue from materialism. Such is the system of M. Cubi.

The defect of this work is its labyrinthine maze of explanations that need in turn to be explained, and which might have been avoided by acquaintance with certain great works of scholastic philosophy, whose statement may thus be resumed: The brain is the central organ of the animal faculties. Its functions are complex because the animal faculties serve at once the vegetative and the intellectual faculties: the first, in aiding nutrition and generation by sensibility and motion; the second, in permitting the abstract idea by the sensible idea and in translating abstract conceptions by sensible acts. Thus the brain serves at once the vegetative and the intellectual faculties, without containing either class, and fulfils only acts of the sensible order. Thus is the point of departure clearly defined for phrenology, and its fundamental basis squarely laid.

III.

All Phrenologists start from the principle that the containing indicates the contained, and for them every cranial development corresponds to an encephalic development. Is this an axiom? It has been contested, and objections have abounded. For phrenologists, however, the exception has seemed to confirm the rule, and even in the exception they find signs that warn them against deception.

In M. Cubi's work long answers are given to his adversaries, with the relation of curious facts wherein he has proved his ability. He maintains that malconformations of the skull can be discerned, as well as their particular nature. A far more serious objection lies in the neglect by phrenology of the deep-lying parts of the brain at its base.

Again while it places amativeness and philoprogenitiveness in the cerebellum, physiological experiments prove that the function of this organ is to coördinate movements. The ground taken by Flourens has been substantiated, as any one may see by reference to Mr. Carpenter's Physiology. One of the ablest phrenologists of