His voice was clear and sweet, and could be heard at an immense distance, and yet, to be all like Demosthenes, he had a perceptible impediment in his speech. As a reader he had no superior. His narration was clear and unadorned, proper sentences were subduedly humorous, but the impressive parts were delivered with an effect that reminded me of the elder Kean.

His imagination was unsurpassed, and the rich stores of his mind supplied him with never-ending material, quoted and original. The slightest allusion to anything gave him the key to all its peculiarities if he had occasion to allude to the diamond, its bed in the Golconda, its discovery by some poor native, its being associated with commerce, its polish by the lapidary, its adorning the neck of beauty, its rays brilliant and serene, its birth, its life, its history, all flashed upon him. So with every idea in the vast storehouse of his mind. He seemed to know all things, in mass and in particulars, never confused, never at a loss—the hearer listened, wondered, and dreamed. Thoughts of moment came forth as demanded, but ten thousand other thoughts rare and beautiful, continued to bubble up, after all effort ceased.

No man had a more delicate or subtle wit than Prentiss, or a more Falstaffian humor when it suited his purpose. Who will ever forget the spending of a social dinner hour with him, when his health was high and his mind at ease? Who so lovely?—who so refined? What delight was exhibited by sweet ladies who listened to his words! Who could so eloquently discourse of roses and buds, of lilies and pearls, of eyes and graces, of robes and angels, and yet never offend the most sensitive of the sex, or call other than the blush of pleasure and joy to the cheek? Who could, on the "public day," ascend so gracefully from the associations of tariffs, and banks, and cotton, and sugar, to greet the fair ladies that honored him with their presence? How he would lean toward them, as he dwelt upon "the blessed of all God's handiwork," compared their bright eyes to "day-stars" that lit up the dark recesses of his own clouded imagination; and how he would revel, like another Puck, among the rays and beams of smiles called forth by his own happy compliments—and how he would change from all this, and in an instant seemingly arm himself with the thunderbolts of Jove, which he would dash with appalling sound among his antagonists, or at principles he opposed, and yet with such a charm, with such a manner, that these very daughters of the sunny South who had listened to his syren-song so admiringly, would now stare, and wonder, and pallor, and yet listen, even as one gazes over the precipice, and is fascinated at the very nearness to destruction.

Prentiss had originally a constitution of iron; his frame was so perfect in its organization, that, in spite of the most extraordinary negligence of health, his muscles had all the compactness, glossiness, and distinctiveness of one who had specially trained by diet and exercise. It was this constitution that enabled him to accomplish so much in so short a time. He could almost wholly discard sleep for weeks, with apparent impunity; he could eat or starve; do anything that would kill ordinary men, yet never feel a twinge of pain. I saw him once amidst a tremendous political excitement; he had been talking, arguing, dining, visiting, and traveling, without rest for three whole days. His companions would steal away at times for sleep, but Prentiss was like an ever-busy spirit, here, and there, and everywhere. The morning of the fourth day came, and he was to appear before an audience familiar with his fame, but one that had never heard him speak; an audience critical in the last degree, he desired to succeed, for more was depending than he had ever before had cause to stake upon such an occasion. Many felt a fear that he would be unprepared. I mingled in the expecting crowd: I saw ladies who had never honored the stump with their presence struggling for seats, counselors, statesmen, and professional men, the elite of a great city, were gathered together. An hour before I had seen Prentiss, still apparently ignorant of his engagement.

The time of trial came, and the remarkable man presented himself, the very picture of buoyant health, of unbroken rest. All this had been done by the unyielding resolve of his will—his triumph was complete; high-wrought expectations were more than realized, prejudice was demolished, professional jealousy silenced, and he descended from the rostrum, freely accorded his proper place among the orators and statesmen of the "Southern Metropolis."

Mr. Clay visited the South in the fall of '44, and, as he was then candidate for the Presidency, he attracted in New Orleans, if possible, more than usual notice. His hotel was the St. Charles; toward noon he reached that magnificent palace. The streets presented a vast ocean of heads, and every building commanding a view was literally covered with human beings. The great "Statesman of the West" presented himself to the multitude between the tall columns of the finest portico in the world. The scene was beyond description, and of vast interest. As the crowd swayed to and fro, a universal shout was raised for Mr. Clay to speak; he uttered a sentence or two, waved his hand in adieu, and escaped amidst the prevailing confusion. Prentiss meanwhile was at a side window, evidently unconscious of being himself noticed, gazing upon what was passing with all the delight of the humblest spectator. Suddenly his name was announced. He attempted to withdraw from public gaze, but his friends pushed him forward. Again his name was shouted, hats and caps were thrown in the air, and he was finally compelled to show himself on the portico. With remarkable delicacy, he chose a less prominent place than that previously occupied by Mr. Clay, although perfectly visible. He thanked his friends for their kindness by repeated bows, and by such smiles as he alone could give. "A speech! A speech!" thundered a thousand voices. Prentiss lifted his hand; in an instant everything was still—then pointing to the group that surrounded Mr. Clay, he said, "Fellow-citizens, when the eagle is soaring in the sky, the owls and the bats retire to their holes." And long before the shout that followed this remark had ceased, Prentiss had disappeared amid the multitude.

But the most extraordinary exhibition of Prentiss' powers of mind and endurance of body, was shown while he was running for Congress. He had the whole State to canvass, and the magnitude of the work was just what he desired. From what I have learned from anecdotes, that canvass must have presented some scenes combining the highest mental and physical exertion that was ever witnessed in the world. Prentiss was in perfect health, and in the first blush of success, and it cannot be doubted but that his best efforts of oratory were then made, and now live recorded only in the fading memories of his hearers. An incident illustrative of the time is remembered, that may hear repeating.

The whole state of Mississippi was alive with excitement; for the moment, she felt that her sovereign dignity had been trifled with, and that her reputation demanded the return of Prentiss to Congress. Crowds followed him from place to place, making a gala time of weeks together. Among the shrewd worldlings who take advantage of such times "to coin money," was the proprietor of a traveling menagerie, and he soon found out that the multitude followed Prentiss. Getting the list of that remarkable man's "appointments," he filled up his own, and it was soon noticed as a remarkable coincidence, that the orator always "arrived along with the other 'lions.'" The reason of this meeting was discovered, and the "boys" decided that Prentiss should "next time" speak from the top of the lion's cage. Never was the menagerie more crowded. At the proper time, the candidate gratified his constituents, and mounted his singular rostrum. I was told by a person, who professed to be an eye witness, that the whole affair presented a singular mixture of the terrible and the comical. Prentiss was, as usual, eloquent, and, as if ignorant of the novel circumstances with which he was surrounded, went deeply into the matter in hand, his election. For a while the audience and the animals were quiet, the former listening, the latter eyeing the speaker with grave intensity. The first burst of applause electrified the menagerie; the elephant threw his trunk into the air and echoed back the noise, while the tigers and bears significantly growled. On went Prentiss, and as each peculiar animal vented his rage or approbation, he most ingeniously wrought in its habits, as a facsimile of some man or passion. In the meanwhile, the stately king of beasts, who had been quietly treading the mazes of his prison, became alarmed at the footsteps over his head, and placing his mouth upon the floor of his cage, made everything shake by his terrible roar. This, joined with the already excited feelings of the audience, caused the ladies to shriek, and a fearful commotion for a moment followed. Prentiss, equal to every occasion, changed his tone and manner; he commenced a playful strain, and introduced the fox, the jackal, and hyena, and capped the climax by likening some well known political opponent to a grave baboon that presided over the "cage with monkeys"; the resemblance was instantly recognized, and bursts of laughter followed, that literally set many into convulsions. The baboon, all unconscious of the attention he was attracting, suddenly assumed a grimace, and then a serious face, when Prentiss exclaimed—"I see, my fine fellow, that your feelings are hurt by my unjust comparison, and I humbly beg your pardon." The effect of all this may be vaguely imagined, but it cannot be described.

Of Prentiss' power before a jury too much cannot be said. Innumerable illustrations might be gathered up, showing that he far surpassed any living advocate. "The trial of the Wilkinsons" might be cited, although it was far from being one of his best efforts. Two young men, only sons, and deeply attached as friends, quarreled, and in the mad excitement of the moment, one of them was killed. Upon the trial, the testimony of the mother of the deceased was so direct, that it seemed to render "the clearing of the prisoner" hopeless. Prentiss spoke to the witness in the blandest manner and most courtly style. The mother, arrayed in weeds, and bowed down with sorrow, turned toward Prentiss, and answered his inquiries with all the dignity of a perfectly accomplished lady—she calmly uttered the truth, and every word she spoke rendered the defense apparently more hopeless.

"Would you punish that young man with death?" said Prentiss, pointing to the prisoner.

The questioned looked, and answered—"He has made me childless, let the law take its course."

"And would wringing his mother's heart and hurrying her gray hairs with sorrow into the grave, by rendering her childless, assuage your grief?"

All present were dissolved in tears—even convulsive sobbing was heard in the courtroom.

"No!" said the witness, with all the gushing tenderness of a mother—"No! I would not add a sorrow to her heart, nor that of her son!"

Admissions in the evidence followed, and hopes were uttered for the prisoner's acquittal, that changed the whole character of the testimony. What was a few moments before so dark, grew light, and without the slightest act that might be construed into an unfair advantage, in the hands of Prentiss, the witness pleaded for the accused.

Soon after Mr. Prentiss settled in New Orleans, a meeting was held to raise funds for the erection of a suitable monument to Franklin. On that occasion, the lamented Wilde and the accomplished McCaleb delivered ornate and chaste addresses upon the value of art, and the policy of enriching New Orleans with its exhibition. At the close of the meeting, as the audience rose to depart, some one discovered Prentiss, and calling his name, it was echoed from all sides—he tried to escape, but was literally carried on the stand.

As a rich specimen of off-hand eloquence, I think the address he delivered on that occasion was unequaled. Unlike any other speech, he had the arts to deal with, and of course the associations were of surpassing splendor. I knew that he was ignorant of the technicalities of art, and had paid but little attention to their study, and my surprise was unbounded to see him, thus unexpectedly called upon, instantly arrange in his mind ideas, and expressing facts and illustrations that would have done honor to Burke, when dwelling upon the sublime and beautiful. Had he been bred to the easel, or confined to the sculptor's room, he could not have been more familiar with the details of the studio—he painted with all the brilliancy of Titian, and with the correctness of Raphael, while his images in marble combined the softness of Praxiteles, and the nervous energy of Michael Angelo. All this with Prentiss was intuition—I believe that the whole was the spontaneous thought of the moment, the crude outlines that floated through his mind being filled up by the intuitive teachings of his surpassing genius. His conclusion was gorgeous—he passed Napoleon to the summit of the Alps—his hearers saw him and his steel clad warriors threading the snows of Mount St. Bernard, and having gained the dizzy height, Prentiss represented "the man of destiny" looking down upon the sunny plains of Italy, and then with a mighty swoop, descending from the clouds and making the grasp of Empire secondary to that of Art.

I had the melancholy pleasure of hearing his last, and, it would seem to me, his greatest speech. Toward the close of the last Presidential campaign, I found him in the interior of the State, endeavoring to recruit his declining health. He had been obliged to avoid all public speaking, and had gone far into the country to get away from excitement. But there was a "gathering" near by his temporary home, and he consented to be present. It was late in the evening when he ascended the "stand," which was supported by the trunks of two magnificent forest trees, through which the setting sun poured with picturesque effect. The ravages of ill health were apparent upon his face, and his high massive forehead was paler, and seemingly more transparent than usual. His audience, some three or four hundred, was composed in a large degree of his old and early friends. He seemed to feel deeply, and as there was nothing to oppose, he assumed the style of the mild and beautiful—he casually alluded to the days of his early coming among his Southern friends—of hours of pleasure he had massed, and of the hopes of the future. In a few moments the bustle and confusion natural to a fatiguing day of political wrangling ceased—one straggler after another suspended his noisy demonstration, and gathered near the speaker. Soon a mass of silent but heart-heaving humanity was crowded compactly before him. Had Prentiss, on that occasion, held the very heart-strings of his auditors in his hand, he could not have had them more in his power. For an hour he continued, rising from one important subject to another, until the breath was fairly suspended in the excitement. An uninterested spectator would have supposed that he had used sorcery in thus transfixing his auditors. While all others forgot, he noticed the day was drawing to a close, he turned and looked toward the setting sun, and apostrophized its fading glory—then in his most touching voice and manner, concluded as follows:—

"Friends—That glorious orb reminds me that the day is spent, and that I too must close. Ere we part, let me hope that it may be our good fortune to end our days in the same splendor, and that when the evening of life comes, we may sink to rest with the clouds that close in on our departure, gold-tipped with the glorious effulgence of a well-spent life!"

In conclusion, I would ask, will some historian, who can sympathize with the noble dead, gather up the now fleeting memorials that still live in memory, and combine them together, that future generations may know something of the mighty mind of Prentiss.

The remains of the orator must ever be imperfect—the tone of voice—the flashing eye—the occasion, and the mighty shout of the multitude, cannot be impressed; but still Prentiss has left enough in his brilliant career, if treasured up, to show posterity that he was every inch a man. Let his fragmentary printed speeches—let the reminiscences of his friends that treat of his power as an orator, be brought together, and unsatisfactory as they may be, there will be found left intrinsic value enough to accomplish the object. There will be in the fluted column, though shattered and defaced, an Ionian beauty that will tell unerringly of the magnificent temple that it once adorned.

BATON ROUGE, July 9, 1850.

* * * * *

[FROM HOUSEHOLD WORDS.]

THE CHEMISTRY OF A CANDLE.

The Wilkinsons were having a small party,—it consisted of themselves and Uncle Bagges—at which the younger members of the family, home for the holidays, had been just admitted to assist after dinner. Uncle Bagges was a gentleman from whom his affectionate relatives cherished expectations of a testamentary nature. Hence the greatest attention was paid by them to the wishes of Mr. Bagges, as well as to every observation which he might be pleased to make.

"Eh! what? you sir," said Mr. Bagges, facetiously addressing himself to his eldest nephew, Harry,—"Eh! what? I am glad to hear, sir, that you are doing well at school. Now—eh? now, are you clever enough to tell where was Moses when he put the candle out?"

"That depends, uncle," said the young gentleman, "on whether he had lighted the candle to see with at night, or by daylight, to seal a letter."

"Eh! Very good, now! 'Pon my word, very good," exclaimed Uncle Bagges. "You must be Lord Chancellor, sir—Lord Chancellor, one of these days."

"And now, uncle," asked Harry, who was a favorite with his uncle, "can you tell me what you do when you put a candle out?"

"Clap an extinguisher on it, you young rogue, to be sure."

"Oh! but I mean, you cut off its supply of oxygen," said Master Harry.

"Cut off its ox's—eh? what? I shall cut off your nose, you young dog, one of these fine days."

"He means something he heard at the Royal Institution," observed Mrs. Wilkinson. "He reads a great deal about chemistry, and he attended Professor Faraday's lectures there on the chemical history of a candle, and has been full of it ever since."

"Now, you sir," said Uncle Bagges, "come you here to me, and tell me what you have to say about this chemical, eh?—or comical: which?—this comical chemical history of a candle."

"He'll bore you, Bagges," said Mr. Wilkinson. "Harry, don't be troublesome to your uncle."

"Troublesome! Oh, not at all. He amuses me. I like to hear him. So let him teach his old uncle the comicality and chemicality of a farthing rushlight."

"A wax candle will be nicer and cleaner, uncle, and answer the same purpose. There's one on the mantel-shelf. Let me light it.

"Take care you don't burn your fingers, Or set anything on fire," said Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Now, uncle," commenced Harry, having drawn his chair to the side of Mr. Bagges, "we have got our candle burning. What do you see?"

"Let me put on my spectacles," answered the uncle.

"Look down on the top of the candle around the wick. See, it is a little cup full of melted wax. The heat of the flame has melted the wax just round the wick. The cold air keeps the outside of it hard, so as to make the rim of it. The melted wax in the little cup goes up through the wick to be burnt, just as oil does in the wick of a lamp. What do you think makes it go up, uncle?"

"Why—why, the flame draws it up, doesn't it?"

"Not exactly, uncle. It goes up through little tiny passages in the cotton wick, because very, very small channels, or pipes, or pores, have the power in themselves of sucking up liquids. What they do it by is called cap—something."

"Capillary attraction, Harry," suggested Mr. Wilkinson.

"Yes, that's it; just as a sponge sucks up water, or a bit of lump-sugar the little drop of tea or coffee left in the bottom of a cup. But I mustn't say much more about this, or else you will tell me I am doing something very much like teaching my grandmother to—you know what."

"Your grandmother, eh, young sharp-shins?"

"No—I mean my uncle. Now, I'll blow the candle out, like Moses; not to be in the dark, though, but to see into what it is. Look at the smoke rising from the wick. I'll hold a bit of lighted paper in the smoke, so as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle lights again. So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through the wick is turned into vapor; and the vapor burns. The heat of the burning vapor keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame, and turned into vapor, and burnt, and so on till the was is all used up, and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see, is the last of the candle, and the candle seems to go through the flame into nothing—although it doesn't, but goes into several things, and isn't it curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so splendid and glorious in going away?"

"How well he remembers, doesn't he?" observed Mrs. Wilkinson.

"I dare say," proceeded Harry, "that the flame of the candle looks flat to you; but if we were to put a lamp glass over it, so as to shelter it from the draught, you would see it is round,—round sideways and running up to a peak. It is drawn up by the hot air; you know that hot air always rises, and that is the way smoke is taken up the chimney. What should you think was in the middle of the flame?"

"I should say fire," replied Uncle Bagges.

"Oh, no! The flame is hollow. The bright flame we see is something no thicker than a thin peel, or skin; and it doesn't touch the wick. Inside of it is the vapor I told you of just now. If you put one end of a bent pipe into the middle of the flame, and let the other end of the pipe dip into a bottle, the vapor or gas from the candle will mix with the air there; and if you set fire to the mixture of gas from the candle and air in the bottle, it would go off with a bang."

"I wish you'd do that, Harry," said Master Tom, the younger brother of the juvenile lecturer.

"I want the proper things," answered Harry. "Well, uncle, the flame of the candle is a little shining case, with gas in the inside of it, and air on the outside, so that the case of flame is between the air and the gas. The gas keeps going into the flame to burn, and when the candle burns properly, none of it ever passes out through the flame; and none of the air ever gets in through the flame to the gas. The greatest heat of the candle is in this skin, or peel, or case of flame."

"Case of flame!" repeated Mr. Bagges. "Live and learn. I should have thought a candle-flame was as thick as my poor old noddle."

"I can show you the contrary," said Harry. "I take this piece of white paper, look, and hold it a second or two down upon the candle-flame, keeping the flame very steady. Now I'll rub off the black of the smoke, and—there—you find that the paper is scorched in the shape of a ring; but inside the ring it is only dirtied, and not singed at all."

"Seeing is believing," remarked the uncle.

"But," proceeded Harry, "there is more in the candle-flame than the gas that comes out of the candle. You know a candle won't burn without air. There must be always air around the gas, and touching it like, to make it burn. If a candle hasn't got enough air, it goes out, or burns badly, so that some of the vapor inside of the flame comes out through it in the form of smoke, and this is the reason of a candle smoking. So now you know why a great clumsy dip smokes more than a neat wax candle; it is because the thick wick of the dip makes too much fuel in proportion to the air that can get to it."

"Dear me! Well, I suppose there is a reason for everything," exclaimed the young philosopher's mamma.

"What should you say now," continued Harry, "if I told you that the smoke that comes out of a candle is the very thing that makes a candle light? Yes; a candle shines by consuming its own smoke. The smoke of a candle is a cloud of small dust, and the little grains of the dust are bits of charcoal, or carbon, as chemists call it. They are made in the flame, and burnt in the flame, and, while burning, make the flame bright. They are burnt the moment they are made; but the flame goes on making more of them as fast as it burns them: and that is how it keeps bright. The place they are made in, is in the ease of flame itself, where the strong heat is. The great heat separates them from the gas which conies from the melted wax, and, as soon as they touch the air on the outside of the thin case of flame, they burn."

"Can you tell how it is that the little bits of carbon came the brightness of the flame?" asked Mr. Wilkinson.

"Because they are pieces of solid matter," answered Harry. "To make a flame shine, there must always be some solid—or at least liquid-matter in it."

"Very good." said Mr. Bagges,—"solid stuff necessary to brightness."

"Some gases and other things," resumed Harry, "that burn with a flame you can hardly see, burn splendidly when something solid is put into them. Oxygen and hydrogen—tell me if I use too hard words, uncle—oxygen and hydrogen gases, if mixed together and blown through a pipe, burn with plenty of heat but with very little light. But if their flame is blown upon a piece of quick-lime, it gets so bright as to be quite dazzling, Make the smoke of oil of turpentine pass through the same flame, and it gives the flame a beautiful brightness directly."

"I wonder," observed Uncle Bagges, "what has made you such a bright youth."

"Taking after uncle, perhaps," retorted his nephew. "Don't put my candle and me out. Well, carbon, or charcoal is what causes the brightness of all lamps, and candles, and other common lights; so, of course, there is carbon in what they are all made of."

"So carbon is smoke, eh? and light is owing to your carbon. Giving light out of smoke, eh? as they say in the classics," observed Mr. Bagges.

"But what becomes of the candle," pursued Harry, "as it burns away? where does it go?"

"Nowhere," said his mamma, "I should think. It burns to nothing."

"Oh, dear, no!" said Harry, "everything—everybody goes somewhere."

"Eh!—rather an important consideration, that," Mr. Bagges moralized.

"You can see it goes into smoke, which makes soot, for one thing," pursued Harry. "There are other things it goes into, not to be seen by only looking, but you can get to see them by taking the right means,—just put your hand over the candle, uncle."

"Thank you, young gentleman, I had rather be excused."

"Not close enough down to burn you, uncle; higher up. There—you feel a stream of hot air; so something seems to rise from the candle. Suppose you were to put a very long slender gas-burner over the flame, and let the flame burn just within the end of it, as if it were a chimney,—some of the hot steam would go up and come out at the top, but a sort of dew would be left behind in the glass chimney, if the chimney was cold enough when you put it on. There are ways of collecting this sort of dew, and when it is collected it turns out to be really water. I am not joking, uncle. Water is one of the things which the candle turns into in burning,—water coming out of fire. A jet of oil gives above a pint of water in burning. In some lighthouses they burn, Professor Faraday says, up to two gallons of oil in a night, and if the windows are cold the steam from the oil clouds the inside of the windows, and, in frosty weather, freezes into ice."

"Water out of a candle, eh?" exclaimed Mr. Bagges. "As hard to get, I should have thought, as blood out of a post. Where does it come from?"

"Part from the wax, and part from the air, and yet not a drop of it comes either from the air or the wax. What do you make of that, uncle?"

"Eh? Oh! I'm no hand at riddles. Give it up."

"No riddle at all, uncle. The part that comes from the wax isn't water, and the part that comes from the air isn't water, but when put together they become water. Water is a mixture of two things then. This can be shown. Put some iron wire or turnings into a gun barrel open at both ends. Heat the middle of the barrel red-hot in a little furnace. Keep the heat up, and send the steam of boiling water through the red-hot gun barrel. What will come out at the other end of the barrel won't be steam; it will be gas, which doesn't turn to water again when it gets cold, and which burns if you put a light to it. Take the turnings out of the gun-barrel, and you will find them changed to rust, and heavier than when they were put in. Part of the water is the gas that comes out of the barrel, the other part is what mixes with the iron turnings, and changes them to rust, and makes them heavier. You can fill a Wadder with the gas that comes out of the gun-barrel, or you can pass bubbles of it up into a jar of water turned upside down in a trough, and, as I said, you can make this part of the water burn."

"Eh?" cried Mr. Bagges. "Upon my word! One of these day, we shall have you setting the Thames on fire."

"Nothing more easy," said Harry, "than to burn part of the Thames, or of any other water; I mean the gas that I have just told you about, which is called hydrogen. In burning, hydrogen produces water again, like the flame of a candle. Indeed, hydrogen is that part of the water formed by a candle burning, that comes from the wax. All things that have hydrogen in them produce water in burning, and the more there is in them the more they produce. When pure hydrogen burns, nothing comes from it but water, no smoke or soot at all. If you were to burn one ounce of it, the water you would get would be just nine ounces. There are many ways of making hydrogen besides out of steam by the hot gun-barrel. I could show it you in a moment by pouring a little sulphuric acid mixed with water into a bottle upon a few zinc or steel filings, and putting a cork in the bottle with a little pipe through it, and setting fire to the gas that would come from the mouth of the pipe. We should find the flame very hot, but having scarcely any brightness. I should like you to see the curious qualities of hydrogen, particularly how light it is, so as to carry things up in the air; and I wish I had a small balloon to fill with it, and make go up to the ceiling, or a bag-pipe full of it to blow soap-bubbles with, and show how much faster they rise than common ones, blown with the breath."

"So do I," interposed Master Tom.

"And so," resumed Harry, "hydrogen, you know, uncle, is part of water, and just one-ninth part."

"As hydrogen is to water, so is a tailor to an ordinary individual, eh?" Mr. Bagges remarked.

"Well, now then, uncle, if hydrogen is the tailor's part of the water, what are the other eight parts? The iron turnings used to make hydrogen in the gun-barrel, and rusted, take just those eight parts from the water in the shape of steam, and are so much the heavier. Burn iron turnings in the air, and they make the same rust, and gain just the same in weight. So the other eight parts must be found in the air for one thing, and in the rusted iron turnings for another, and they must also be in the water; and now the question is, how to get at them?"

"Out of the water? Fish for them, I should say," suggested Mr. Bagges.

"Why, so we can," said Harry. "Only, instead of hooks and lines, we must use wires—two wires, one from one end, the other from the other, of a galvanic battery. Put the points of these wires into water, a little distance apart, and they instantly take the water to pieces. If they are of copper, or a metal that will rust easily, one of them begins to rust, and air-bubbles come up from the other. These bubbles are hydrogen. The other part of the water mixes with the end of the wire and makes rust. But if the wires are of gold, or a metal that does not rust easily, air-bubbles rise from the ends of both wires. Collect the bubbles from both wires in a tube, and fire them, and they turn to water again; and this water is exactly the same weight as the quantity that has been changed into the two gases. Now then, uncle, what should you think water was composed of?"

"Eh? well—I suppose of those very identical two gases, young gentleman."

"Right, uncle. Recollect that the gas from one of the wires was hydrogen, the one-ninth of water. What should you guess the gas from the other wire to be?"

"Stop—eh?—wait a bit—eh?—oh! why, the other eight-ninths, to be sure."

"Good again, uncle. Now this gas that is eight-ninths of water is the gas called oxygen that I mentioned just now. This is a very curious gas. It won't burn in air at all itself, like gas from a lamp, but it has a wonderful power of making things burn that are lighted and put into it. If you fill a jar with it—"

"How do you manage that?" Mr. Bagges inquired.

"You fill the jar with water," answered Harry, "and you stand it upside down in a vessel full of water too. Then you let bubbles of the gas up into the jar, and they turn out the water and take its place. Put a stopper in the neck of the jar, or hold a glass plate against the mouth of it, and you can take it out of the water and so have bottled oxygen. A lighted candle put into a jar of oxygen blazes up directly, and is consumed before you can say Jack Robinson. Charcoal burns away in it as fast, with beautiful bright sparks—phosphorus with a light that dazzles you to look at—and a piece of iron or steel just made red-hot at the end first, is burnt in oxygen quicker than a stick would be in common air. The experiment of burning things in oxygen beats any fire-works."

"Oh, how jolly!" exclaimed Tom.

"Now we see, uncle," Harry continued, "that water is hydrogen and oxygen united together, that water is got wherever hydrogen is burnt in common air, that a candle won't burn without air, and that when a candle burns there is hydrogen in it burning, and forming water. Now, then, where does the hydrogen of the candle get the oxygen from, to turn into water with it?"

"From the air, eh?"

"Just so. I can't stop to tell you of the other things which there is oxygen in, and the many beautiful and amusing ways of getting it. But as there is oxygen in the air, and as oxygen makes things burn at such a rate, perhaps you wonder why air does not make things burn as fast as oxygen. The reason is, that there is something else in the air that mixes with the oxygen and weakens it."

"Makes a sort of gaseous grog of it, eh?" said Mr. Bagges. "But how is that proved?"

"Why, there is a gas, called nitrous gas, which, if you mix it with oxygen, takes all the oxygen into itself, and the mixture of the nitrous gas and oxygen, if you put water with it, goes into the water. Mix nitrous gas and air together in a jar over water, and the nitrous gas takes away the oxygen, and then the water sucks up the mixed oxygen and nitrous gas, and that part of the air which weakens the oxygen is left behind. Burning phosphorus in confined air will also take all the oxygen from it, and there are other ways of doing the same thing. The portion of the air left behind is called nitrogen. You wouldn't know it from common air by the look; it has no color, taste, nor smell, and it won't burn. But things won't burn in it, either; and anything on fire put into it goes out directly. It isn't fit to breathe, and a mouse, or any animal, shut up in it, dies. It isn't poisonous, though; creatures only die in it for want of oxygen. We breathe it with oxygen, and then it does no harm, but good: for if we breathed pure oxygen, we should breathe away so violently, that we should soon breathe our life out. In the same way, if the air were nothing but oxygen, a candle would not last above a minute.

"What a tallow-chandler's bill we should have!" remarked Mrs. Wilkinson.

"'If a house were on fire in oxygen,' as Professor Faraday said, 'every iron bar, or rafter, or pillar, every nail and iron tool, and the fire-place itself; all the zinc and copper roofs, and leaden coverings, and gutters, and pipes, would consume and burn, increasing the combustion.'"

"That would be, indeed, burning 'like a house on fire,'" observed Mr. Bagges.

"'Think,'" said Harry, continuing his quotation, "'of the Houses of Parliament, or a steam-engine manufactory. Think of an iron proof-chest no proof against oxygen. Think of a locomotive and its train,—every engine, every carriage, and even every rail would be set on fire and burnt up.' So now, uncle, I think you see what the use of nitrogen is, and especially how it prevents a candle from burning out too fast."

"Eh?" said Mr. Bagges. "Well, I will say I do think we are under considerable obligations to nitrogen."

"I have explained to you, uncle," pursued Harry, "how a candle, in burning, turns into water. But it turns into something else. besides that. There is a stream of hot air going up from it that won't condense into dew; some of that is the nitrogen of the air which the candle has taken all the oxygen from. But there is more in it than nitrogen. Hold a long glass tube over a candle, so that the stream of hot air from it may go up through the tube. Hold a jar over the end of the tube to collect some of the stream of hot air. Put some lime-water, which looks quite clear, into the jar; stop the jar, and shake it up. The lime-water, which was quite clear before, turns milky. Then there is something made by the burning of the candle that changes the color of the lime-water. That is a gas, too, and you can collect it, and examine it. It is to be got from several things, and is a part of all chalk, marble, and the shells of eggs or of shell-fish. The easiest way to make it is by pouring muriatic or sulphuric acid on chalk or marble. The marble or chalk begins to hiss or bubble, and you can collect the bubbles in the same way that you can oxygen. The gas made by the candle in burning, and which also is got out of the chalk and marble, is called carbonic acid. It puts out a light in a moment; it kills any animal that breathes it, and it is really poisonous to breathe, because it destroys life even when mixed with a pretty large quantity of common air. The bubbles made by beer when it ferments, are carbonic acid, so is the air that fizzes out of soda-water, and it is good to swallow though it is deadly to breathe. It is got from chalk by burning the chalk as well as by putting acid to it, and burning the carbonic acid out of chalk makes the chalk lime. This is why people are killed sometimes by getting in the way of the wind that blows from lime-kilns."

"Of which it is advisable carefully to keep to the windward." Mr. Wilkinson observed.

"The most curious thing about carbonic acid gas," proceeded Harry, "is its weight. Although it is only a sort of air, it is so heavy that you can pour it from one vessel into another. You may dip a cup of it and pour it down upon a candle, and it will put the candle out, which would astonish an ignorant person; because carbonic acid gas is as invisible as the air, and the candle seems to be put out by nothing. A soap-bubble or common air floats on it like wood on water. Its weight is what makes it collect in brewers' vats; and also in wells, where it is produced naturally; and owing to its collecting in such places it causes the deaths we so often hear about of those who go down into them without proper care. It is found in many springs of water, more or less; and a great deal of it comes out of the earth in some places. Carbonic acid gas is what stupefies the dogs in the Grotto del Cane. Well, but how is carbonic acid gas made by the candle?"

"I hope with your candle you'll throw some light upon the subject," said Uncle Bagges.

"I hope so," answered Harry. "Recollect it is the burning of the smoke, or soot, or carbon of the candle, that makes the candle-flame bright. Also that the candle won't burn without air. Likewise that it will not burn in nitrogen, or air that has been deprived of oxygen. So the carbon of the candle mingles with oxygen, in burning, to make carbonic acid gas; just as the hydrogen does to form water. Carbonic acid gas, then, is carbon or charcoal dissolved in oxygen. Here is black soot getting invisible and changing into air; and this seems strange, uncle, doesn't it?"

"Ahem! Strange, if true," answered Mr. Bagges. "Eh? Well! I suppose it's all right."

"Quite so, uncle. Burn carbon or charcoal either in the air or in oxygen, and it is sure always to make carbonic acid, and nothing else, if it is dry. No dew or mist gathers in a cold glass jar if you burn dry charcoal in it. The charcoal goes entirely into carbonic acid gas, and leaves nothing behind but ashes, which are only earthy stuff that was in the charcoal, but not part of the charcoal itself. And now, shall I tell you something about carbon?"

"With all my heart," assented Mr. Bagges.

"I said that there was carbon or charcoal in all common lights, so there is in every common kind of fuel. If you heat coal or wood away from the air, some gas comes away, and leaves behind coke from coal, and charcoal from wood; both carbon, though not pure. Heat carbon as much as you will in a close vessel, and it does not change in the least; but let the air get to it, and then it burns and flies off in carbonic acid gas. This makes carbon so convenient for fuel. But it is ornamental as well as useful, uncle. The diamond is nothing else than carbon."

"The diamond, eh! You mean the black diamond."

"No: the diamond, really and truly. The diamond is only carbon in the shape of a crystal."

"Eh? and can't some of your clever chemists crystalize a little bit of carbon, and make a Koh-i-noor?"

"Ah, uncle, perhaps we shall, some day. In the mean time I suppose we must be content with making carbon so brilliant as it is in the flame of a candle. Well; now you see that a candle-flame is vapor burning, and the vapor, in burning, turns into water and carbonic acid gas. The oxygen of both the carbonic acid gas and the water comes from the air, and the hydrogen and carbon together are the vapor. They are distilled out of the melted was by the heat. But, you know, carbon alone can't be distilled by any heat. It can be distilled, though, when it is joined with hydrogen, as it is in the wax, and then the mixed hydrogen and carbon rise in gas of the same kind as the gas in the streets, and that also is distilled by heat from coal. So a candle is a little gas manufactory in itself, that burns the gas as fast as it makes it."

"Haven't you pretty nearly come to your candle's end'!" said Mr. Wilkinson.

"Nearly. I only want to tell uncle, that the burning of a candle is almost exactly like our breathing. Breathing is consuming oxygen, only not so fast as burning. In breathing we throw out water in vapor and carbonic acid from our lungs, and take oxygen in. Oxygen is as necessary to support the life of the body, as it is to keep up the flame of a candle."

"So," said Mr. Bagges, "man is a candle, eh? and Shakspeare knew that, I suppose, (as he did most things,) when he wrote

'Out, out, brief candle!'

"Well, well; we old ones are moulds, and you young squires are dips and rushlights, eh? Any more to tell us about the candle?"

"I could tell you a great deal more about oxygen, and hydrogen, and carbon, and water, and breathing, that Professor Faraday said, if I had time; but you should go and hear him yourself, uncle."

"Eh? well! I think I will. Some of us seniors may learn something from a juvenile lecture, at any rate, if given by a Faraday. And now, my boy. I will tell you what," added Mr. Bagges, "I am very glad to find you so fond of study and science; and you deserve to be encouraged: and so I'll give you a what-d'ye-call-it'?—a Galvanic Battery, on your next birth-day; and so much for your teaching your old uncle the chemistry of a candle."

* * * * *

[FROM A REVIEW OF GRISWOLD'S PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA, IN THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.]

DANIEL WEBSTER,

AS A STATESMAN, AND AS A MAN OF LETTERS.

Mr. Webster is properly selected as the representative of the best sense, and highest wisdom, and most consummate dignity, of the politics and oratory of the present times, because his great intelligence has continued to be so finely sensitive to all the influences that stir the action and speculation of the country.

With elements of reason, definite, absolute, and emphatic; with principles settled, strenuous, deep and unchangeable as his being; his wisdom is yet exquisitely practical: with subtlest sagacity it apprehends every change in the circumstances in which it is to act, and can accommodate its action without loss of vigor, or alteration of its general purpose. Its theories always "lean and hearken" to the actual. By a sympathy of the mind, almost transcendental in its delicacy, its speculations are attracted into a parallelism with the logic of life and nature. In most men, that intellectual susceptibility by which they are capable of being reacted upon by the outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, modified or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life; from that time they remain fixed and rigid in their policy, temper and characteristics; if a new phase of society is developed, it must find its exponent in other men. But in Webster this fresh suggestive sensibility of the judgment has been carried on into the matured and determined wisdom of manhood. His perceptions, feelings, reasonings, tone, are always up to the level of the hour, or in advance of it; sometimes far, very far in advance, as in the views thrown out in his speech at Baltimore, on an international commercial system, in which he showed that he then foresaw both the fate of the tariff and the fallacy of free-trade. No man has ever been able to say, or now can say, that he is before Webster. The youngest men in the nation look to him, not as representing the past, but as leading in the future.

This practicalness and readiness of adaptation are instinctive, not voluntary and designed. They are united with the most decided preference for certain opinions and the most earnest averseness to others. Nothing can be less like Talleyrand's system of waiting for events. He has never, in view of a change which he saw to be inevitable, held himself in reserve and uncommitted. What Webster is at any time, that he is strenuously, entirely, openly. He has first opposed, with every energy of his mind and temper, that which, when it has actually come, he is ready to accept, and make the best of. He never surrenders in advance a position which knows will be carried; he takes his place, and delivers battle; he fights as one who is fighting the last battle of his country's hopes; he fires the last shot. When the smoke and tumult are cleared off, where is Webster! Look around for the nearest rallying point which the view presents; there he stands, with his hand upon his heart, in grim composure; calm, dignified, resolute; neither disheartened nor surprised by defeat. "Leaving the things that are behind," is now the trumpet-sound by which he rallies his friends to a new confidence, and stimulates them to fresh efforts. It is obvious that Webster, when contending with all his force for or against some particular measure, has not been contemplating the probability of being compelled to oppose or defend a different policy, and, so, choosing his words warily, in reference to future possibilities of a personal kind: yet when the time has come that he has been obliged to fight with his face in another direction, it has always been found that no one principle had been asserted, no one sentiment displayed, incompatible with his new positions. This union of consistency with practicability has arisen naturally from the extent and comprehensiveness of his views, from the breadth and generality with which the analytical power of his understanding has always led him to state his principles and define his position. From the particular scheme or special maxim which his party was insisting upon, his mind rose to a higher and more general formula of truth.

Owing to the same superior penetration and reach of thought, the gloom of successive repulses has never been able to paralyze the power which it has saddened. The constitution has been so often invaded and trampled upon, that to a common eye it might well seem to have lost all the resentments of vitality. But Webster has distinguished between the constitution and its administration. He has seen that the constitution, though in bondage, is not killed; that the channels of its life-giving wisdom are stuffed up with rubbish, but not obliterated. He has been determined that if the rulers of the country will deny the truth, they shall not debauch it; if they depart from the constitution, they shall not deprave it. He has been resolved, that when this tyranny of corruption shall be overpast, and the constitution draws again its own free breath of virtue, truth and wisdom, it shall be found perfect of limb and feature, prepared to rise like a giant refreshed by sleep.

Mr. Griswold, we suppose, is quite right in suggesting that the only name in modern times to which reference can with any fitness be made for purposes of analogy or comparison with Webster is that of Burke. In many respects there is a correspondence between their characters; in some others they differ widely. As a prophet of the truth of political morals, as a revealer of those essential elements in the constitution of life, upon which, or of which, society is constructed and government evolved, Burke had no peer. In that department he rises into the distance and grandeur of inspiration; nil mortote sonans. Nor do we doubt that the Providence of God had raised him up for the purposes of public safety and guidance, any more than we doubt the mission of Jeremiah or Elisha, or any other of the school of the Lord's prophets. But leaving Burke unapproached in this region of the nature and philosophy of government, and looking at him, in his general career, as a man of intellect and action, we might indicate an analogy of this kind, that the character, temper and reason of Burke seem to be almost an image of the English constitution, and Webster's of the American. To get the key to Burke's somewhat irregular and startling career, it is necessary, to study the idea of the old whig constitution of the English monarchy: viewing his course from that point of view, we comprehend his almost countenancing and encouraging rebellion in the case of the American colonies; his intense hostility to Warren Hastings' imperial system; his unchastised earnestness in opposition to French maxims in the decline of his life. The constitution of the United States, that most wonderful of the emanations of providential wisdom, seems to be not only the home of Webster's affections and seat of his proudest hopes, but the very type of his understanding and fountain of his intellectual strength:

——"hic illius arma;—— Hic currus."

The genius of Burke, like the one, was inexhaustible in resources, so composite and so averse from theory as to appear incongruous, but justified in the result; not formal, not always entirely perspicuous. Webster's mind, like the other, is eminently logical, reduced into principles, orderly, distinct, reconciling abstraction with convenience, various in manifestation, yet pervaded by an unity of character.

Mr. Webster has not merely illustrated a great range of mental powers and accomplishments, but has filled, in the eye of the nation, on a great scale, and to the farthest reach of their exigency, a diversity of intellectual characters; while the manner in which Burke's wisdom displayed itself was usually the same. We cannot suppose that Burke could have been a great lawyer. Webster possesses a consummate legal judgment and prodigious powers of legal logic, and is felt to be the highest authority on a great question of law in this country. The demonstrative faculty; the capacity to analyze and open any proposition so as to identify its separate elements with the very consciousness of the reader's or hearer's mind; this, which is the lawyer's peculiar power, had not been particularly developed in Burke, but exists in Webster in greater expansion and force than in any one since Doctor Johnson, who, it always appeared to us, had he been educated for the bar, would have made the greatest lawyer that ever led the decisions of Westminster-Hall. We should hardly be justified in saying that Burke would have made a great First Lord of the Treasury. Mr. Webster, as Secretary of State, proved himself to be a practical statesman of the highest; finest, promptest sagacity and foresight that this or any nation ever witnessed. Who now doubts the surpassing wisdom, who now but reverences the exalted patriotism, of the advice and the example which he gave, but gave in vain, to the Whig party at the beginning of Mr. Tyler's administration? His official correspondence would be lowered by a comparison with any state papers since the secretaryship of John Marshall. Does the public generally know what has become of that portentous difficulty about the Right of Search, upon which England and America, five years ago, were on the point of being "lento collisae duello." Mr. Webster settled it by mere force of mind: he dissipated the Question, by seeing through it, and by compelling others to see a fallacy in its terms which before had imposed upon the understanding of two nations. In the essential and universal philosophy of politics, Webster is second only to Burke. After Burke, there is no statesman whose writings might be read with greater advantage by foreign nations, or would have been studied with so much respect by antiquity, as Webster's.

In a merely literary point of view, this perhaps may be said of Mr. Webster, that he is the only powerful and fervid orator, since the glorious days of Greece, whose style is so disciplined that any of his great public harangues might be used as models of composition. His language is beautifully pure, and his combinations of it exhibit more knowledge of the genius, spirit, and classic vigor of the English tongue, than it has entered the mind of any professor of rhetoric to apprehend. As the most impetuous sweeps of passion in him are pervaded and informed and guided by intellect, so the most earnest struggles of intellect seem to be calmed and made gentle in their vehemence, by a more essential rationality of taste. That imperious mind, which seems fit to defy the universe, is ever subordinate, by a kind of fascination, to the perfect law of grace. In the highest of his intellectual flights—and who can follow the winged rush of that eagle mind?—in the widest of his mental ranges-and who shall measure their extent?—he is ever moving within the severest line of beauty. No one would think of saying that Mr. Webster's speeches are thrown off with ease, and cost him but little effort; they are clearly the result of the intensest stress of mental energy; yet the manner is never discomposed; the decency and propriety of the display never interfered with; he is always greater than his genius; you see "the depth out not the tumult" of the mind. Whether, with extended arm, he strangles the "reluctantes dracones" of democracy, or with every faculty called home, concentrates the light and heat of his being in developing into principles those great sentiments and great instincts which are his inspiration; in all, the orator stands forth with the majesty and chastened grace of Pericles himself. In the fiercest of encounters with the deadliest of foes, the mind, which is enraged, is never perturbed; the style, which leaps like the fire of heaven, is never disordered. As in Guido's picture of St. Michael piercing the dragon, while the gnarled muscles of the arms and hands attest the utmost strain of the strength, the countenance remains placid, serene, and undisturbed. In this great quality of mental dignity, Mr. Webster's speeches have become more and more eminent. The glow and luster which set his earlier speeches a-blaze with splendor, is in his later discourses rarely let forth; but they have gained more, in the increase of dignity, than they have parted with in the diminution of brilliancy. We regard his speech before the shop-keepers, calling themselves merchants, of Philadelphia, as one of the most weighty and admirable of the intellectual efforts of his life. The range of profound and piercing wisdom; the exquisite and faultless taste; but above all, the august and indefectible dignity, that are illustrated from the beginning to the end of that great display of matured and finished strength, leave us in mingled wonder and reverence. There is one sentence there which seems to us almost to reach the intellectual sublime; and while it stirs within us the depths of sympathy and admiration, we could heartily wish that the young men of America would inhale the almost supra-mortal spirit which it breathes: "I would not with any idolatrous admiration regard the Constitution of the United States, nor any other work of man; but this side of idolatry, I hold it in profound respect. I believe that no human working on such a subject, no human ability exerted for such an end, has ever produced so much happiness, or holds out now to so many millions of people the prospect, through such a succession of ages and ages, of so much happiness, as the Constitution of the United States. We who are here for one generation, for a single life, and yet in our several stations and relations in society intrusted in some degree with its protection and support, what duty does it devolve, what duty does it not devolve, upon us!" In the name of distant ages, and a remote posterity, we hail the author of this and similar orations, as Webster the Olympian.

But we leave a subject which we have incidentally touched, sincerely disclaiming any attempt to estimate the character or define the greatness of Webster. In reference to him we feel, as Cicero said to Caesar, "Nil vulgare te dignum videri possit."

* * * * *

[FROM THE ATHENAEUM.]

THE NEW PROPHET IN THE EAST.[5]

The vicissitudes of the war in the Caucasus of late have been surprising enough to awaken the interest of Western Europe, even amidst her own nearer anxieties. Last year it was said that the conquest of Achulgo, the stronghold of the redoubtable Schamyl, had effectually broken the power of that daring leader. In direct contradiction to such reports, later accounts from Daghestan tell of the reappearance of the notable partisan amidst the lines of the Russians, and of a defeat of the latter, the most severe, if the details of the event be true, that they have yet suffered in the Caucasus. In any case, these exciting changes of fortune would be in favor of a book professing to describe this interesting region, and to add to our knowledge of its brave inhabitants. The main interest of Herr Bodenstedt's work will now be enhanced by its undertaking to give a more precise account than had previously appeared of the priest-warrior of Daghestan. and of the new sect as the prophet of which he succeeded in arraying the independent mountain clans against their common enemy with a kind of combination unknown in earlier periods of the struggle.

[Footnote 5: The people of the Caucasus, and their Struggle for Liberty with the Russians—(Die Volker des Caucasus, &c.) By Friedrich Bodenstedt. Second Edition. Frankfurt am Main, Lizius; London, Nutt.]

The author has evidently lived for some time in the region which he describes, or in the bordering districts along the Caspian, both in Georgia and in North Daghestan, His acquaintance with Asiatic and Russian languages and customs appears to have been gained both by study and from intercourse with the natives of the south-eastern frontier. He is not ignorant of Oriental writings that refer to his subject; and his Russian statistics prove an access to official authorities which are not to be found in print. These, however obtained, can scarcely have been imparted to him as one of those writers whom the Court of St. Petersburg hires to promote its views through the press of Western Europe. His sympathies are declared against Russian usurpation; and the tendency of his essay is to prove how little real progress it has yet made in subduing the Caucasus, the enormous waste of money and life with which its fluctuating successes have been bought, and the fallacy of expecting a better result hereafter.

What it has cost in life on the Russian side to attack-hitherto with no lasting effect—the handful of Caucasian mountaineers, may be guessed from a single note, dated 1847: "The present Russian force in the Caucasus"—including of course, the armed Cossacks of the Kuban and Terek—"amounts to two hundred thousand." Taking into account the numbers yearly cut off by disease, more fatal even than the mountain war, every step of which must be won by the most reckless waste of life,—the "Russian Officer" may perhaps truly affirm that the annual expenditure of life by Russia, in her warfare with Schamyl, has for many years past exceeded the whole number of the population at any one time directly under the rule of that chieftain.

We have said that the most instructive part of Herr Bodenstedt's essay is his sketch of that politico-religious scheme which made Schamyl formidable to the Russians. This system, it is to be observed, arose and has since been fully developed only in the Eastern Caucasus, where of late the main stress of the war has been. The western tribes (our "Circassians") who took the lead at an earlier stage of the contest, were not then, nor have they since been, inspired by the fanatic zeal which united the tribes of Daghestan. They fought from a mere love of independence, each little republic by itself; and their efforts, however heroic, being without concert, gradually declined before the vast force of the invader. In the region looking westward from the Georgian frontier on the Euxine, on the one side of the Caucasian range, and along the lower Kuban on the other, the Russian posts are now seldom threatened but by small predatory bands; the natives, retired to their mountain villages, have for some time made but few more formidable incursions. The war is transferred to the region spreading eastward from the Elbrus to the Caspian; where the strife for free existence is animated not less by the hatred of Russian slavery than by a fresh outbreak of Mohammedan zeal against infidel invasion,—a revival, in fact, of that war-like fanaticism which made the Moslem name terrible from the eighth to the sixteenth century.

It dates from the years 1823-4; at which period a "new doctrine" began to be preached, secretly at first, to the select Ulema, afterward to greater numbers, in word and writing, by one Mullah Mohammed, a famous teacher and a judge (or kadi) of Jarach, in the Kurin district of Daghestan. He professed to have learnt it from Hadis-Ismail, an Alim of Kurdomir, highly famed for wisdom and sanctity. It laid bare the degradation into which his countrymen had sunk by irreligion and by the jealousy of sect; their danger, in consequence, from enemies of the true faith; and urged the necessity of reform in creed and practice, in order to regain the invincible character promised by the Prophet to believers. The theoretical part of the reformed doctrine seems to be a kind of Sufism,—the general character of which mode of Islam, long prevalent in the adjacent kingdom of Persia, has been described by our own orientalists. Disputed questions as to its origin, whether in Brahmin philosophy or in the reveries of Moslem mystics, cannot be discussed here; it must suffice to indicate those points which appear to connect it with the hieratic policy that has given a new aspect to the war in the Caucasus.

Proceeding nominally on the basis of the Koran, it inculcates or expounds a kind of spiritual transcendentalism; in which the adept is raised above the necessity of formal laws, which are only requisite for those who are not capable of rising to a full intelligence of the supreme power. To gain this height, by devout contemplation, must be the personal work and endeavor of each individual. The revelation of divine truth, once attained, supersedes specific moral injunctions; ceremonies and systems, even, of religion, become indifferent to the mind illuminated by the sacred idea. A higher degree is the perfect conception or ecstatic vision of the Deity;—the highest-reserved only for the prophetic few—a real immediate union with his essence. Here, it will be seen, are four steps or stages, each of which has its sacred manual or appropriate system of teaching. In the hieratic system, of which Schamyl is the head, the divisions seem to correspond pretty nearly with this arrangement, as follows:—

The first includes the mass of the armed people; whose zeal it promotes by strict religious and moral injunctions enjoining purity of life, exact regard to the ritual of the Koran, teaching pilgrimages, fasting, ablutions; the duty of implacable war against the Infidel, the sin of enduring his tyranny.

The second is composed of those, who, in virtue of striving upward to a higher Divine intelligence, are elevated above ceremonial religion. Of these the Murids (seekers or strugglers,) are formed: a body of religious warriors attached to the Imam, whose courage in battle, raised to a kind of frenzy, despises numbers and laughs at death. To accept quarter, or to fly from the Infidel, is forbidden to this class.

The third includes the more perfect acolytes, who are presumed to have risen to the ecstatic view of the Deity. These are the elect, whom the Imam makes Naibs or vice-regents,—invested with nearly absolute power in his absence.

The fourth, or highest, implying entire union with the Divine essence, is held by Schamyl alone. In virtue of this elevation and spiritual endowment, the Imam, as an immediate organ of the Supreme Will, is himself the source of all law to his followers, unerring, impeccable; to question or disobey his behests is a sin against religion, as well as a political crime. It may be seen what advantage this system must have given to Schamyl in his conflict with the Russians. The doctrine of the indifference of sects and forms enabled him to unite the divided followers of Omar and of Ali, in a region where both abound, and where the schism had formerly been one of the most effectual instruments of the enemy. The belief in a Divine mission and spiritual powers sustains his adherents in all reverses; while it invites to defection from the Russian side those of the Mohammedan tribes who have submitted to the invader. Among these, however, Schamyl, like his predecessors in the same priestly office, by no means confides the progress of his sect to spiritual influences only. The work of conversion, where exhortation fails, is carried on remorselessly by fire and sword; and the Imam is as terrible to those of his countrymen whom fear or interest retains in alliance with Russia, as to the soldiers of the Czar. With a character in which extreme daring is allied with coolness, cunning, and military genius, with a good fortune which has hitherto preserved his life in many circumstances where escape seemed impossible,—it may be seen that the belief in his supernatural gifts and privileges, once created, must always tend to increase in intensity and effect among the imaginative and credulous Mohammedans of the Caucasus; and that this apt combination of the warrior with the politician and prophet accounts for his success in combining against the Russians a force of the once discordant tribes of Daghestan, possessing more of the character of a national resistance than had been ever known before in the Caucasus,—and compelling the invaders to purchase every one of their few, trifling, and dubious advances by the terrible sacrifice of life already noticed.

In this formidable movement the highlander's natural freedom is fanned into a blaze by a religious zeal like that which once led the armies of Islam over one half of Asia and Europe. Although it reached its highest energy and a more consummate development under Schamyl, it was begun by his predecessors. Of the Mullah Mohammed, who first preached the duty of casting off the yoke of the Giaour, and the necessity of a religious reform and union of rival sects, as a means to that end, we have already spoken. This founder of the new system, an aged man, untrained in arms, never himself drew the sword in the cause; but was active in diffusing its principles and preparing a warlike rising by exhortations and letters circulated through all Daghestan. Suspected of these designs, he was seized, in 1826, by the orders of Jermoloff; and although be escaped,—by the connivance, it is said, of the native prince employed to capture him,—he afterward lived, in a kind of concealment, for some years. The post of Imam was thereupon assumed by a priest who was able to fight for the new doctrine as well as to preach it. The first armed outbreak took place under Kasi-Mullah, about the year 1829; from which time, until his death in a battle at Himry, in 1831, he waged a terrible, and, although often defeated, a virtually successful warfare, against the Russians, while he prosecuted the work of conversion among the tribes of Islam who delayed to acknowledge his mission, and to join in his enmity to the Russians, by the extremities of bloodshed and rapine. His death, after an heroic resistance, was hailed as a triumph by the Russians. They counted on the extinction of the new sect in the defeat of its leader, whose dead body they carried about the country to prove the imposture of his pretensions. This piece of barbarism produced an effect the reverse of what they expected. The venerable face of the Imam, the attitude in which he had expired, with one hand pointed as if to heaven, was more impressive to those who crowded round the body than his fearless enthusiasm had been,—and thousands who till then had held aloof, now joined his followers in venerating him as a prophet. Of this first warrior-priest of Daghestan, Schamyl was the favorite disciple and the most trusted soldier. Kasi-Mullah was not killed until Schamyl had already fallen as it seemed, under several deadly wounds:—his reappearance after this bloody scene was but the first of many similar escapes, the report of which sounds like a fable. He did not, however, at once succeed to the dignity of Imam: the office was usurped for more than a year by Hamsad Beg (Bey), whose rapacious and savage treatment of some of the princely families of Daghestan nearly caused a fatal reaction against the new sect, and the destruction of its main support, the Murids. Hamsad Beg performed no action of consequence against the Russians; but expended his rage upon the natives allied with them, or reluctant to obey his mandates. He was assassinated in 1834, by some kinsmen of a princely house whose territories he had usurped after a massacre of its princes. In the affray which took place on this occasion, there perished with him many of the fanatic Murids, who had become odious as instruments of the cruelties of their Imam. On his death, Schamyl was raised to the dignity,—but it was some time before the mischief done by his predecessor was so far repaired as to allow him to act with energy as the prophet of the new doctrine. One of the ill effects of Hamsad Beg's iniquities had been the defection to the Russians of n notable partisan—Hadjii Murad—for many years a fatal thorn in the side of the independent party.[6] This and other difficulties, among which was the unpopularity of the Murids under Hamsad Beg, were removed by new alliances and precautions, while all that eloquence and skill could perform was applied to restore the credit of the religious system, before Schamyl could hazard a direct attack of the Russian enemy, who meanwhile had taken advantage of the delay and disunion to gain ground in many parts of Daghestan. From the year 1839, however, the tide rapidly turned; and the result, from that date until the period at which the account closes (1845)—when Woronzow was appointed to command in the Caucasus, with nearly unlimited powers,—has been, that the Russians, in spite of tremendous sacrifices, were constantly losing ground and influence, while Schamyl gained both in equal proportion. The details of the campaigns during this interval are highly interesting; and we regret that conditions of space forbid us to translate some of the exciting episodes recorded by Herr Bodenstedt. We may, however, extract the following account of the Caucasian hero,—whose portrait, we believe, has never before been so fully exhibited to European readers;—

[Footnote 6: It is worth noting—as a characteristic of Russian misrule and of its consequences—that this chieftain, after having been a devoted soldier of the Emperor for seven years, was goaded by the ill treatment of his officers into abjuring the service; make the offer of his sword to Schamyl, against whom he had fought with the utmost animosity; was heartily welcomed by that prudent leader, and became one of his principal lieutenants.]

"Schamyl is of middle stature; he has light hair, gray eyes, shaded by bushy and well-arched eyebrows,—a nose finely moulded, and a small mouth. His features are distinguished from those of his race by a peculiar fairness of complexion and delicacy of skin: the elegant form of his hands and feet is not less remarkable. The apparent stiffness of his arms, when he walks, is a sign of his stern and impenetrable character. His address is thoroughly noble and dignified. Of himself he is completely master; and he exerts a tacit supremacy over all who approach him. An immovable stony calmness, which never forsakes him, even in moments of the utmost danger, broods over his countenance. He passes a sentence of death with the same composure with which he distributes "the sabre of honor" to his bravest Murids, after a bloody encounter. With traitors or criminals whom he has resolved to destroy, he will converse without betraying the least sign of anger or vengeance. He regards himself as a mere instrument in the hands of a higher Being; and holds, according to the Sufi doctrine, that all his thoughts and determinations are immediate inspirations from God. The flow of his speech is as animating and irresistible as his outward appearance is awful and commanding. "He shoots flames from his eyes, and scatters flowers from his lips,"—said Bersek Bey, who sheltered him for some days after the fall of Achulgo,—when Schamyl dwelt for some time among the princes of the Djighetes and Ubiches, for the purpose of inciting the tribes on the Black Sea to rise against the Russians. Schamyl is now (circa 1847?) fifty years old, but still full of vigor and strength: it is however said, that he has for some years past suffered from an obstinate disease of the eyes, which is constantly growing worse. He fills the intervals of leisure which his public charges allow him, in reading the Koran, fasting, and prayer. Of late years he has but seldom, and then only on critical occasions, taken a personal share in warlike encounters. In spite of his almost supernatural activity, Schamyl is excessively severe and temperate in his habits. A few hours of sleep are enough for him: at times he will watch for the whole night, without Showing the least trace of fatigue on the following day. He eats little, and water is his only beverage. According to Mohammedan custom, he keeps several wives—[this contradicts Wagner, who affirms that Schamyl always confined himself to one]; in 1844 he had three, of which his favorite, Dur Heremen, (Pearl of the Harem) as she was called, was an Armenian, of exquisite beauty."

Will Russian arms prevail in the end? The following is Herr Bodenstedt's answer; after noticing the arrival of Woronzow, and the expectations raised by his talents, by the immense resources at his command, as well as by such events as the storm of Schamyl's stronghold of Cargo:—

"He who believes that the issue of this contest hangs on the destruction of stone fortresses, on the devastation of tracts of forest, has not yet conceived the essential nature of the war in the Caucasus. This is not merely a war of men against men—it is a strife between the mountain and the steppe. The population of the Caucasus may be changed; the air of liberty wafted from its heights will ever remain the same. Invigorated by this atmosphere, even Russian hirelings would grow into men eager for freedom: and among their descendants a new race of heroes would arise, to point their weapons against that servile constitution, to extend which their fathers had once fought, as blind, unquestioning slaves."

To this answer of Herr Bodenstedt's we will add nothing of our own. We are weary with waiting for the events of history such as we would have them.

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COOLING A BURNING SPIRIT.

An incident which occurred soon after the accession of the present Sultan, shows that, in some respects, at least, he is not indisposed to follow up the strong traditions of his race. At the beginning of his reign, the Ulema was resolved, if possible, to prevent the new Sultan from carrying on those reforms which had ever been so distasteful to the Turks, grating at once against their religious associations and their pride of race, and which recent events had certainly proved not to be productive of those good results anticipated by Sultan Mamoud. To attain this object, the Muftis adopted the expedient of working on the religious fears of the youthful prince. One day as he was praying, according to his custom, at his father's tomb, he heard a voice from beneath reiterating, in a stifled tone, the words, "I burn." The next time that he prayed there the same words assailed his ears. "I burn" was repeated again and again, and no word beside. He applied to the chief of the Imams to know what this prodigy might mean; and was informed in reply, that his father, though a great man, had also been, unfortunately, a great reformer, and that as such it was too much to be feared that he had a terrible penance to undergo in the other world. The Sultan sent for his brother-in-law to pray at the same place, and afterward several others of his household; and on each occasion the same portentous words were heard. One day he announced his intention of going in state to his father's tomb, and was attended thither by a splendid retinue, including the chief doctors of the Mahometan law. Again, during his devotions, were heard the words, "I burn," and all except the Sultan trembled. Rising from his prayer-carpet, he called in his guards, and commanded them to dig up the pavement and remove the tomb. It was in vain that the Muftis interposed, reprobating so great a profanation, and uttering warnings as to its consequences. The Sultan persisted, the foundations of the tomb were laid bare, and in a cavity skillfully left among them was found—not a burning Sultan, but a Dervise. The young monarch regarded him for a time fixedly and in silence, and then said, without any further remark or the slightest expression of anger, "You burn?—We must cool you in the Bosphorus." In a few minutes more the dervise was in a bag, and the bag immediately after was in the Bosphorus.—De Vere's Sketches.

* * * * *

[FROM HOUSEHOLD WORDS.]

AN OLD HAUNT.

The rippling water, with its drowsy tone,— The tall elms, tow 'ring in their stately pride,— And—sorrow's type—the willow sad and lone, Kissing in graceful woe the murmuring tide;—

The grey church-tower,—and dimly seen beyond, The faint hills gilded by the parting sun,— All were the same, and seem'd with greeting fond To welcome me as they of old had done.

And for a while I stood as in a trance, On that loved spot, forgetting toil and pain;— Buoyant my limbs, and keen and bright my glance, For that brief space I was a boy again!

Again with giddy mates I careless play'd, Or plied the quiv'ring oar, on conquest bent:— Again, beneath the tall elms' silent shade, I woo'd the fair, and won the sweet consent.

But brief, alas! the spell,—for suddenly Peal'd from the tower the old familiar chimes, And with their clear, heart-thrilling melody, Awaked the spectral forms of darker times

And I remember'd all that years had wrought— How bow'd my care-worn frame, how dimm'd my eye, How poor the gauds by Youth so keenly sought, How quench'd and dull Youth's aspirations high!

And in half mournful, half upbraiding host, Duties neglected—high resolves unkept— And many a heart by death or falsehood lost, In lightning current o'er my bosom swept.

Then bow'd the stubborn knees, as backward sped The self-accusing thoughts in dread array, And, slowly, from their long-congealed bed, Forced the remorseful tears their silent way.

Bitter yet healing drops in mercy sent, Like soft dews tailing on a thirsty plain,— And ere those chimes their last faint notes had spent, Strengthen'd and calm'd, I stood erect again.

Strengthen'd, the tasks allotted to fulfill;— Calm'd the thick-coming sorrows to endure; Fearful of nought but of my own frail will,— In His Almighty strength and aid secure.

For a sweet voice had whisper'd hope to me,— Had through my darkness shed a kindly ray;— It said: "The past is fix'd immutably, Yet is there comfort in the coming day!"

* * * * *

KILLING A GIRAFFE.

At every stride I gained upon the giraffes, and, after a short burst at a swingeing gallop, I was in the middle of them, and turned the finest cow out of the herd. On finding herself driven from her comrades and hotly pursued, she increased her pace, and cantered along with tremendous strides, clearing an amazing extent of ground at every bound; while her neck and breast, coming in contact with the dead old branches of the trees, were continually strewing them in my path. In a few minutes I was riding within five yards of her stern, and, firing at a gallop, I sent a bullet into her back. Increasing my pace, I next rode alongside, and, placing the muzzle of my rifle within a few feet of her, I fired my second shot behind the shoulder; the ball, however, seemed to have little effect. I then placed myself directly in front, when she came to a walk. Dismounting, I hastily loaded both barrels, putting in double charges of powder. Before this was accomplished, she was off at a canter. In a short time I brought her to a stand in the dry bed of a watercourse, where I fired at fifteen yards, aiming where I thought the heart lay, upon which she again made off. Having loaded, I followed, and had very nearly lost her; she had turned abruptly to the left, and was far out of sight among the trees. Once more I brought her to a stand, and dismounted from my horse. There we stood together alone in the wild wood. I gazed in wonder at her extreme beauty, while her soft dark eye, with its silky fringe, looked down imploringly at me, and I really felt a pang of sorrow in this moment of triumph for the blood I was shedding. Pointing my rifle toward the skies, I sent a bullet through her neck. On receiving it she reared high on her hind legs and fell back with a heavy crash, making the earth shake around her. A thick stream of dark blood spouted out from the wound, her colossal limbs quivered for a moment, and she expired.—Cummings' Adventures.

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THE VETERAN KOLOMBESKI.

Several journals have spoken of the entry into the Hotel des Invalides of a soldier, stated to be 126 years of age. This is not quite correct. The following are some precise details respecting this extraordinary man, who arrived at the Hotel on the 21st inst.:—Jean Kolombeski, born at Astrona (Poland), on the 1st of March, 1730, entered the service of France, as a volunteer in the Bourbon regiment of infantry, in 1774, at the age of forty-four. He was made corporal in 1790, at the age of sixty. He made all the campaigns of the Revolution and of the Empire, in different regiments of infantry, and was incorporated, in 1808, in the 3d regiment of the Vistula. He was wounded in 1814, and entered the hospital at Poitiers, which he soon afterward left to be placed en subsistence in the 2d regiment of light infantry. On the 11th of October of the same year he was admitted into the 1st company of sous-officiers sedentaires, and, in 1846, into the 5th company of Veteran Sub-Officers. The last three of these companies having just been suppressed by the Minister of War, Kolombeski was placed en subsistence in the 61st regiment of the line, received a retiring pension by decree of May 17, 1850, and the Minister authorized his admission into the Invalides. Kolombeski is, therefore, more than 120 years of age; he reckons seventy-five and a half years of service, and twenty-nine campaigns. He enjoys good health, is strong and well made, and does not appear to be more than seventy or eighty. He performed every duty with big comrades of the 5th company of Veterans, When King Louis Philippe visited Dreus, Kolombeski was presented to him, who, taking the decoration from his breast, presented it to the veteran soldier. This is the most astonishing instance of longevity that has, perhaps, been ever known in the army. The Marshal Governor of the Invalides ordered that Kolombeski should be brought to him on his arrival; but, as the old soldier was fatigued, he was taken to the infirmary, and the Governor, informed of it, went to his bedside with General Petit, the commandant of the hotel, and addressed the veteran in the kindest manner. The Governor has issued an order that, for the future, all centenarian soldiers admitted into the hospital shall mess with the officers, in order to show his respect for their age, and for the long services they have rendered to the state.—Galignani's Messenger.

* * * * *

ANECDOTE OF LORD BROUGHAM.

The "Life of the Rev. Dr. Hugh Heugh" has a description of an interview which a deputation of Scotch dissenters had some years ago with Lord Brougham. The Scotsman adds, from its private knowledge, some odd incidents of the affair.

His lordship, on coming out of the court to meet the deputation, immediately on being informed of their object, burst out in a volley of exclamations to the effect that, but for dissent, there would be "No vital religion—no vital religion, gentlemen, no vital religion." While pouring forth this in a most solemn tone, he was all the while shaking violently the locked doors of a lobby full of committee rooms, into one of which he wished to find entrance, and calling for an absent official not only in passionate tones, but in phraseology which the reverend deputation, at first unwilling to trust their own ears, were at last forced to believe was nothing better than profane swearing. At last, he suddenly drew himself up to the wall opposite a locked door, and with a tremendous kick, smashed the lock, and entered (exclaiming, first in a vehement and then in a solemn tone, but without pause) "—that fellow! where the —— does he always go to! No vital religion, gentlemen, no vital religion—no, no, no."

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THE END