The acceptance of this view led to the highly important inquiry, What is the equivalent relation between mechanical force and heat? or, how much heat is produced by a definite quantity of mechanical force? To Dr. Joule, of Manchester, England, is due the honor of having answered this question, and experimentally established the numerical relation. He demonstrated that a one-pound weight, falling through seven hundred and seventy-two feet and then arrested, produces sufficient heat to raise one pound of water one degree. Hence this is known as the mechanical equivalent of heat, or "Joule's Law."

The establishment of the principle of correlation between mechanical force and heat constitutes one of the most important events in the progress of science. It teaches us that the movements we see around us are not spontaneous or independent occurrences, but links in the eternal chain of forces,—that, when bodies are put in motion, it is at the expense of some previously existing energy, and that, when they come to rest, their force is not destroyed, but lives on in other forms. Every motion we see has its thermal value; and when it ceases, its equivalent of heat is an invariable result. When a cannon-ball strikes the side of an iron-plated ship, a flash of light shows that collision has converted the motion of the ball into intense heat, or when we jump from the table to the floor, the temperature of the body is slightly raised,—the degree of heat produced in both cases being ascertainable by the application of Joule's law.

The principle thus demonstrated has given a new interest and a vast impulse to the science of Thermotics. It is the fundamental and organizing conception of Professor Tyndall's work, and in his last chapter he carries out its application to the planetary system. The experiments of Herschel and Pouillet upon the amount of solar heat received upon the earth's surface form the starting-point of the computations. The total amount of heat received by the earth from the sun would be sufficient to boil three hundred cubic miles of ice-cold water per hour, and yet the earth arrests but 1/2,300,000,000 of the entire thermal force which the sun emits. The entire solar radiation each hour would accordingly be sufficient to boil 700,000,000,000 cubic miles of ice-cold water! Speculation has hardly dared venture upon the source of this stupendous amount of energy, but the mechanical equivalent of heat opens a new aspect of the question. All the celestial motions are vast potential stores of heat, and if checked or arrested, the heat would at once become manifest. Could we imagine brakes applied to the surface of the sun and planets, so as to arrest, by friction, their motions upon their axes, the heat thus produced would be sufficient to maintain the solar emission for a period of one hundred and sixteen years. As the earth is eight thousand miles in diameter, five and a half times heavier than water, and moves through its orbit at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, a sudden arrest of its motion would generate a heat equal to the combustion of fourteen globes of anthracite coal as large as itself. Should it fall into the sun, the shock would produce a heat equal to the combustion of five thousand four hundred earth-globes of solid coal,—sufficient to maintain the solar radiation nearly a hundred years. Should all the planets thus come to rest in the sun, it would cover his emission for a period of forty-five thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years. It has been maintained that the solar heat is actually produced in this way by the constant collision upon his surface of meteoric bodies, but for the particulars of this hypothesis we must refer to the book itself.

Professor Tyndall opens the question in his volume respecting the share which different investigators have had in establishing the new theory of forces, and his observations have given rise to a sharp controversy in the scientific journals. The point in dispute seems to have been the relative claims of an Englishman and a German—Dr. Joule and Dr. Mayer—to the honor of having founded the new philosophy. Tyndall accords a high place to the German as having worked out the view in an a priori way with remarkable precision and comprehensiveness, while he grants to the Englishman the credit of being the first to experimentally establish the law of the mechanical equivalent of heat. But his English critics seem to be satisfied with nothing short of an entire monopoly of the honor. The truth is, that, in this case, as in that of many others furnished us in the history of science, the discovery belongs rather to an epoch than to an individual. In the growth of scientific thought, the time had come for the evolution of this principle, and it was seized upon by several master-minds in different countries, who worked out their results contemporaneously, but in ignorance of the efforts of their fellow-laborers. But if individual claims are to be pressed, and each man accorded his aliquot share of the credit, we apprehend that America must be placed before either England or Germany, and for the explicit evidence we need look no farther than the volume of Professor Tyndall before us. The first clear connection and experimental proof of the modern theory was made by our countryman Benjamin Thompson,—afterwards knighted as Count Rumford by the Elector of Bavaria. He went to Europe in the time of the American Revolution, and, devoting himself to scientific investigations, became the founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Davy was his associate, and, so far as the new views of heat are concerned, his disciple. He exploded the notion of caloric, demonstrated experimentally the conversion of mechanical force into heat, and arrived at quantitative results, which, considering the roughness of his experiments, are remarkably near the established facts. He revolved a brass cannon against a steel borer by horse-power for two and one-half hours, thereby generating heat enough to raise eighteen and three-fourths pounds of water from sixty to two hundred and twelve degrees. Concerning the nature of heat he wrote as follows, the Italics being his own:—"What is heat? Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that with propriety can be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given off in a constant stream, or flux, in all directions, without interruption or intermission, and without any signs of diminution or exhaustion. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that most remarkable circumstance, that the source of the heat generated by friction in these experiments appeared to be inexhaustible. It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION."

In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the beautiful enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is s classic upon the subject of which it treats.

My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field. A Book for Boys. By "CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind. However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly assumed its true grandeur.

The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles, we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest. Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities, which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival.

Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures, regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short season roll fiercely after the storm.

This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the hour really came.

We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society.

The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare.

In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the baby-talk style of composition,—"mumming," as the tavern-woman proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually senile.

The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and master.

The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic begins.

The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for Foote's gunboats to cooeperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.

The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.

This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by Hawthorne,—that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor worthier chronicler.

A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.

This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land. Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction; and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,—and that scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt; but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect of the literature of the past of which he complains,—for the editions of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small, if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past.

This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of the English Language. The author's scheme of the course is, as described by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. This part of his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which has few attractions for most readers.

The volumes are printed with great beauty, and do credit to the Riverside Press, from which they come.

The Foederalist: A Collection of Essays, written in Favor of the New Constitution, as agreed upon by the Foederal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes, by HENRY DAWSON. In Two Volumes. Volume I. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.

This volume contains the entire text of "The Federalist," with the notes appended by the authors to their productions, preceded by an historical and bibliographical Introduction, and an analytical Table of Contents; in the second volume will appear the Notes prepared by Mr. Dawson, which will embrace the more important of the alterations and corruptions of the text, manuscript notes which have been found on the margins and blank leaves of copies formerly owned by eminent statesmen, and other illustrative matter, such as the author justly supposes will be useful to those who may examine the text of the work, together with a complete and carefully prepared Index. Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to the preparation of this edition of "The Federalist," and labored diligently to make it perfect, generally with success; but he is in error when he says, in the Introduction, that there does not appear to be a copy of the first edition of the work in any public library in Boston. There are two copies of it in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, both of which we have seen. This mistake is an unhappy one, as it tends to shake our faith in the accuracy of the editor's researches. Of "The Foederalist" itself it is not necessary to say more than that it has the position of an American classic, and that the political principles which it advocates are of peculiar importance at this time, when the loyal portion of the American people are engaged in a terrible struggle to maintain the existence of that government which Hamilton and Madison labored so diligently and successfully to establish. Mr. Dawson's edition is one of rare excellence in everything that relates to externals, and in this respect is beyond rivalry. An edition of "The Foederalist," edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq., son of General Hamilton, is announced to appear, and will undoubtedly be welcomed warmly by all who feel an interest in the fame of the chief author of the work, the man, next to Washington, to whom we are most indebted for the establishment of our constitutional system of government.

* * * * *

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

The Healing of the Nations. Second Series. By Charles Linton. Philadelphia. Published by the Author. 8vo. pp. 363. $1.50.

Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Pennsylvania, for the Year ending June 4, 1863. Harrisburg. Singerly & Myers, State Printers. 8vo. pp. xxxii., 287.

The Life and Services, as a Soldier, of Major-General Grant. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 16mo. paper, pp. 66. 25 cts.

Of the Imitation of Christ. Four Books. By Thomas a Kempis. Boston. E.P. Dutton & Co. 16mo. pp. 347. $1.25.

Redeemer and Redeemed. An Investigation of the Atonement and of Eternal Judgment. By Charles Beecher, Georgetown, Mass. Boston. Lee & Shepard. 12mo. pp. xii., 357. $1.50.

The Irish Sketch-Book. By W.M. Thackeray. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 179. 50 cts.

A Text-Book of Geology. Designed for Schools and Academies. By James D. Dana, LL.D., Silliman Professor of Geology and Natural History in Yale College, Author of "A Manual of Geology," etc. Illustrated by 375 Wood-Cuts. Philadelphia. Theodore Bliss & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 354. $1.75.

The Book of Praise, from the Best English Hymn-Writers. Selected and arranged by Roundell Palmer. Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. xx., 480. $1.50.

Dream-Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their Friends." Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. 241. $1.00.

Life of Edward Livingston. By Charles Havens Hunt. With an Introduction by George Bancroft. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xxiv., 448. $2.50.

Poems. By Henry Peterson. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 203. $1.00.

Miscegenation. The Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the American White Man and Negro. New York. H. Dexter, Hamilton, & Co. 12mo. paper, pp. 72. 25 cts.

Hand-Book of Calisthenics and Gymnastics. A Complete Drill-Book for Schools, Families, and Gymnasiums. With Music to accompany the Exercises. Illustrated from Original Designs. By J. Madison Watson. New York and Philadelphia. Schermerhorn, Bancroft, & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. $2.00.

Rifled Ordnance. A Practical Treatise on the Application of the Principle of the Rifle to Guns and Mortars of every Calibre. To which is added a New Theory of the Initial Action and Force of Fired Gunpowder. Read before the Royal Society, 16th December, 1858. First American, from the Fifth English Edition, revised. By Lynall Thomas, F.R.S.L. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 200. $2.00.

Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the Potomac, from its Organization to the Close of the Peninsular Campaign. By Brigadier-General J.G. Barnard, Chief Engineer, and Brigadier-General W.F. Barry, Chief of Artillery. Illustrated by Eighteen Maps, Plans, etc. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 230. $3.50.

Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. Boston. Crosby & Nichols. 16mo. pp. viii., 207. $1.00.

Faith and Fancy. By John Savage, Author of "Sibyl, a Tragedy." New York. J.B. Kirker. 16mo. pp. 114. 75 cts.

The Great Consummation. The Millennial Rest; or, The World as it Will Be. By the Rev. John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E., etc. Second Series. New York. G.W. Carleton. 16mo. pp. 295. $1.00

The Indian Chief. By Gustavo Aimard. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 164. 50 cents.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: There are three accounts as to the time of the birth of "St. Arnaud, formerly Leroy." That which makes him oldest represents him as being fifty-eight at the Battle of the Alma. The second makes him fifty-six, and the third fifty-three. In either case he was not a young man; but, though suffering from mortal illness, he showed no want of vigor on almost every occasion when its display was required.]

[Footnote B: The advocates of youth in generals have never, that we are aware, claimed Hamilcar Barcas as one of the illustrations of their argument; yet he must have been a very young man when he began his extraordinary career, if, as has been stated on good authority, he was not beyond the middle age when he lost his life in battle. He was a great man, perhaps even as great a man as his son Hannibal, who did but carry out his father's designs.]

[Footnote C: At Fontenoy the Duke of Cumberland was but half the age of the Comte de Saxe. In that battle an English soldier was taken prisoner, after fighting with heroic bravery. A French officer complimented him, saying, that, if there had been fifty thousand men like him on the other side, the victory would have been theirs. "No," said the Englishman, "it was not the fifty thousand brave men who were wanting, but a Marshal Saxe." Cumberland was ever unlucky, save at Culloden. Saxe was old beyond his years, being one of the fastest of the fast men of his time, as became the son of Augustus the Strong and Aurora von Koenigsmark.]

[Footnote D: Henry V. was present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont, fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at Crecy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not nineteen when he won the great Battle of Towton, and that was not his first battle and victory. He was always successful. Richard III., as Duke of Gloucester, was not nineteen when he showed himself to be an able soldier, at Barnet; and he proved his generalship on other fields. William I., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., Edward I., Edward III., Henry IV., and William III. were all distinguished soldiers. The last English sovereign who took part in a battle was George II., at Dettingen.]

[Footnote E: See Norfolk County Records, 1657; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, No. II. p. 192. The moral lapse of the first minister of Hampton at the age of fourscore is referred to in the third number of the same periodical. Goody Cole, the Hampton witch, was twice imprisoned for the alleged practice of her arts.]

THE END