Nor would the assertion of Sir Humphrey Davy be sufficient to convince us that all the properties of matter have been catalogued in his report. By what statute of limitations are we forbidden to indulge the same hope of indefinite progress in every other direction, which remains to us in these?

MATTHEW F. MAURY.

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY, a descendant of the Rev. James Fontaine, an eminent Huguenot preacher (the founder of a large and influential American family, and author of an autobiography which has recently for the second time been republished in connexion with a highly interesting sketch of the worthy and his descendants, by one of their number, Miss Ann Maury of New York), was born in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, January 14, 1806. His parents removed to Tennessee in his fourth year. One of a family of nine children, in a newly settled country, he would have received few of the advantages of education had it not been for the care of the bishop of the diocese, the Rev. James H. Otey, who, forming a high opinion of his intellectual promise, did much to fit him for a life of future usefulness. In 1824 he obtained a midshipman's commission, was placed on board the Brandywine, and sailed with General Lafayette to France. On his return he accompanied the frigate to the Pacific, was transferred to the Vincennes, and in that vessel completed the circumnavigation of the globe. He again sailed, as passed-midshipman, to the Pacific, where he was transferred as lieutenant to the Potomac. While at sea he devoted his leisure time to the study of mathematics, a branch of knowledge in which he at first found himself unequal to the requirements of his profession. For the of extending at the same time his knowpurpose ledge of modern languages he made use of Spanish mathematical works. As he pursued his investigations he became greatly inconvenienced by the necessity of referring to a number of different volumes, and with a view to save others a like difculty prepared, amid the annoyances and interruptions of life at sea, a work on navigation. It was commenced in the steerage of the Vincennes, concluded in the Potomac, and published about the year 1835, when it met with general acceptance. In the same year he was appointed astronomer to the South Sea Exploring Expedition, but, on the withdrawal of Commodore Jones from the chief command, declined the appointment.

In 1839 he contributed an article to the Southern Literary Messenger, entitled A Scheme for rebuilding Southern Commerce, containing observations on the Gulf Stream and Great Circle Sailing, which were afterwards more fully developed.

A few months later, in October, 1839, while on his way from Tennessee to join a surveying vessel in the harbor of New York, the stage-coach in which he was passing through Ohio was overturned, and the traveller broke a leg, dislocated a knee, and suffered other injuries, which, after several months' weary confinement, resulted in a permanent lameness, which disabled him for the active pursuit of his profession. He amused himself by writing, during the long period of imprisonment in a wretched wayside tavern to which his bandaged limb subjected him, a series of articles on various abuses in the Navy, which were

published in the Southern Literary Messenger, under the pleasant title of Scraps from the Lucky Bag, by Harry Bluff.

On his retirement from the Exploring Expedition, Lieutenant Maury was placed in charge of the collection of books and charts belonging to the government, which has since expanded into the National Observatory and Hydrographical office, now known as the Naval Observatory, the change of title having been made in 1855. Lieutenant Maury is at the head of both of these institutions, which owe their extent and efficiency mainly to his efforts. In 1842 he first proposed the plan for a system of uniform observations of winds and currents, which form the basis of his celebrated and valuable charts and sailing-directions.

In 1853 he attended a convention of maritime

nations at Brussels to carry out his suggestions for a conference to determine upon a uniform system of observations at sea. Plans were adopted by which ships, under all the great flags of Christendom, are engaged in adding to the resources of science, mapping out roads on the ocean with the precision of engineers on terra firma, and striving to obtain with equal exactness the laws of the clouds above and the depths below.

*

In 1855 he published The Physical Geography of the Sea, a work in which he has embodied the results of his varied investigations in a narrative of remarkable clearness and interest. His descriptions of natural phenomena, and of the voyages of rival vessels, sailing at the same dates to the same ports, along his sea lines, possess dramatic interest. A pleasant vein of humor shows itself now and then as he speaks of the rummaging of garrets and sea chests for old log-books which his investigations, naturally exciting the enthusiasm of others as well as himself, called forth. This quality of humor finds a wider scope in the magazine papers of the writer, and is a pleasant characteristic of his correspondence and conver

sation.

8vo. pp. 274. A second edition, revised and enlarged, immediately appeared.

In addition to this volume and the letter-press accompanying his various charts, Lieutenant Maury is the author of several addresses delivered in various parts of the country, among which we may mention those before the Geological and Mineralogical Society of Fredericksburg, May, 1836; before the Southern Scientific Convention at Memphis in 1849 on the Pacific railway, and at most of the other meetings of the same body; and at the first anniversary of the American Geographical and Statistical Society in the city of New York, 1854.

LAW OF COMPENSATION IN THE ATMOSPHERE.*

Whenever I turn to contemplate the works of nature, I am struck with the admirable system of compensation, with the beauty and nicety with which every department is poised by the others; things and principles are meted out in directions the most opposite, but in proportions so exactly balanced and nicely adjusted, that results the most harmonious are produced.

It is by the action of opposite and compensating forces that the earth is kept in its orbit, and the stars are held suspended in the azure vault of heaven; and these forces are so exquisitely a usted, that, at the end of a thousand years, the earth, the sun, and moon, and every star in the firmament, is found to come to its proper place at the proper moment.

Nay, philosophy teaches us, when the little snowdrop, which in our garden walks we see raising its beautiful head to remind us that spring is at hand, was created, that the whole mass of the earth, from pole to pole, and from circumference to centre, must have been taken into account and weighed, in order that the proper degree of strength might be given to the fibres of even this little plant.

Botanists tell us that the constitution of this plant is such as to require that, at a certain stage of its growth, the stalk should bend, and the flower should bow its head, that an operation may take place which is necessary in order that the herb should produce seed after its kind; and that, after this, its vegetable health requires that it should lift its head again and stand erect. Now, if the mass of the earth had been greater or less, the force of gravity would have been different; in that case, the strength of fibre in the snow-drop, as it is, would have been too much or too little; the plant could not bow or raise its head at the right time, fecundation could not take place, and its family would have become extinct with the first individual that was planted, because its "seed" would not have been in "itself," and therefore it could not reproduce itself.

Now, if we see such perfect adaptation, such exquisite adjustment, in the case of one of the smallest flowers of the field, how much more may we not expect "compensation" in the atmosphere and the ocean, upon the right adjustment and due performance of which depends not only the life of that plant, but the well-being of every individual that is found in the entire vegetable and animal kingdoms of the world?

When the east winds blow along the Atlantic coast for a little while, they bring us air saturated with moisture from the Gulf Stream, and we complain of the sultry, oppressive, heavy atmosphere; the invalid grows worse, and the well man feels ill, because, when he takes this atmosphere into his lungs, it is already so charged with moisture that it cannot take up and carry off that which encumbers his lungs,

From the Physical Geography of the Sea.

and which nature has caused his blood to bring and leave there, that respiration may take up and carry off. At other times the air is dry and hot; he feels that it is conveying off matter from the lungs too fast; he realizes the idea that it is consuming him, and he calls the sensation parching.

Therefore, in considering the general laws which govern the physical agents of the universe, and regulate them in the due performance of their offices, I have felt myself constrained to set out with the assumption that, if the atmosphere had had a greater or less capacity for moisture, or if the proportion of land and water had been different-if the earth, air, and water had not been in exact counterpoise-the whole arrangement of the animal and vegetable kingdoms would have varied from their present state. But God chose to make those kingdoms what they are; for this purpose it was necessary, in his judgment, to establish the proportions between the land and water, and the desert, just as they are, and to make the capacity of the air to circulate heat and moisture just what it is, and to have it do all its work in obedience to law and in subservience to order. If it were not so, why was power given to the winds to lift up and transport moisture, or the property given to the sea by which its waters may become first vapor, and then fruitful showers or gentle dews? If the proportions and properties of land, sea, and air were not adjusted according to the reciprocal capacities of all to perform the functions required by each, why should we be told that he "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and comprehended the dust in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" Why did he span the heavens, but that he might mete out the atmosphere in exact proportion to all the rest, and impart to it those properties and powers which it was necessary for it to have, in order that it might perform all those offices and duties for which he designed it?

Harmonious in their action, the air and sea are obedient to law and subject to order in all their movements; when we consult them in the performance of their offices, they teach us lessons concerning the wonders of the deep, the mysteries of the sky, the greatness, and the wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. The investigations into the broad-spreading circle of phenomena connected with the winds of heaven and the waves of the sea are second to none for the good which they do and the lessons which they teach. The astronomer is said to see the hand of God in the sky; but does not the rightminded mariner, who looks aloft as he ponders over these things, hear his voice in every wave of the sea that "claps its hands," and feel his presence in every breeze that blows?

HERMAN HOOKER,

A BOOKSELLER of Philadelphia, who began life as a student of divinity at Princeton, and subsequently became a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the active duties of which he was compelled to relinquish by ill health, was born at Poultney, Vermont, about the year 1806. He is the author of several works esteemed for their Christian philosophy; of these the chief are The Portion of the Soul, or Thoughts on its Attributes and Tendencies as Indications of its Destiny, published in 1835; Popular Infidelity, entitled in a late edition, The Philosophy of Unbelief in Morals and Religion, as Discernible in the Faith and Character of Men; The Uses of Adversity and the Procisions of Consolation; a vo

lume of Maxims; and The Christian Life, a Fight of Faith.

As a characteristic specimen of Dr. Hooker's skilful evolution of his topic, we cite a passage of a practical character from the "Philosophy of Unbelief:"

GRATITUDE TO GOD.

It requires no great insight into human nature, to discover the remnants of a now fallen, but once glorious structure; and, what is most remarkable, to see that the remains of this ancient greatness are more apt to be quickened and drawn out by their semblances and qualities, found in creatures, than by the bright and full perfection of them which is in the Creator; that the heart puts on its most benign face, and sends forth prompt returns of gratitude and Jove to creatures who have bestowed on us favor and displayed other amiable qualities, while He, whose goodness is so great, so complete, so pervading, that there is none besides it, is unrequited, unheeded, unseen, though hanging out his glory from the heavens, and coming down to us in streams of compassion and love, which have made an ocean on earth that is to overflow and fill it. How strange it is, that all this love, so wonderful in itself, so undeserved, so diffused, that we see it in every beauty, and taste it in every enjoyment,-should be lost on creatures whose love for the gentler and worthier qualities of each other, runs so often into rapture and devotion? How strange that they should be so delighted with streams which have gathered such admixtures of earth, which cast up such "mire and dirt," and have such shallows and falls that we often wreck our hopes in them,-as not to be reminded by them of the great and unmixed fountain whence they have flowed, or of the great ocean, to whose dark and unbottomed depths they will at last settle, as too earthy to rise to its pure and glorious surface! There are many mysteries in human nature, but none greater than this: for while it shows man is so much a creature of sense and so devoid of faith, that objects, to gain his attention and affection, must not only be present to him, but have something of sense and self in them, we are still left to wonder how he could, with such manifestations of divine goodness in him, around him, and for him, have failed to see and

ddore them, and become so like a brute, as not to think of God, the original of all that is lovely, when thinking of those his qualities which so please and affect him in creatures; and this, though they be so soiled and defaced by sin, that his unmixed fondness for any the most agreeable of them, instead of being an accomplishment, is a sure indication of a mind sunk greatly below the standard allotted to it by the Creator.

Our wonder will be raised higher still, if we consider that our nature, when most corrupt and perverse, is not wholly lost to all sense of gratitude, but may be wrought upon by human kindness, when all the amazing compassion and love of God fail to affect it; if we consider that the very worst of men who set their faces against the heavens, affronting the mercy and defying the majesty thereof, are sometimes so softened with a sense of singular and undeserved favors, that their hearts swell with grateful sentiments towards their benefactors, and something akin to virtue is kindled up where nothing of the kind was seen before; we might think it incredible, if there was any doubting of what we see and know. When we see such men so ready to acknowledge their obligations to their fellows, and to return service for service; so impatient of being thought ungrateful, when they have any character or interest

to promote by it, and sometimes when they have not; so strongly affected with the goodness of him who has interposed between them and temporal danger or death, and yet so little moved by the love of God in Christ, which has undertaken their rescue from eternal and deserved woes, and not merely their rescue, but their exaltation to fellowship with himself, and to the pleasures for evermore at his right hand,—a love compared with which the greatest love of creatures is as a ray of light to the sun, and that ray mixed and darkened, while this is so disinterested and free in the grounds and motives of it, that it is exercised towards those who have neither merit to invite, nor disposition to receive it; when we see this, and find that this love, so worthy in itself, so incomprehensible in its degree and in the benefits it would confer, is the only love to which they make no returns of thankfulness or regard, we may ascribe as much of it as we please to the hardness and corruption of their hearts, but that will not account for such conduct. Depravity, considered by itself, will not enable us fully to understand it. Depraved, sensual, and perverse as they are, they have something in them that is kindled by human kindness, and why should it not be kindled by the greater "kindness of God our Saviour?" It is not because it is a divine kindness; not that it is less needed-not that it is bestowed in less measure, or at less expense. And if it is because they do not apprehend this kindness, do not feel their need of it, do not see anything affecting in the measure and expense of it, this is infidelity; and it grows out of an entire misconception of their own character, and of the character and law of God. It is a total blindness to distant and invisible good and evil. It is a venturing of everything most important to themselves on an uncertainty, which they would not and could not do, if they had any understanding of the value of the interests at stake. They really see nothing important but the gratifications of sense and time: still they have the remains of a capacity for something higher. These may be contemplated with profit, if not with admiration. They resemble the motions in the limbs and heart of animals, when the head is severed from the body. They are symptoms of a life that of itself must come to nothing, a life that is solely pouring itself out on the ground. But as this is all the life they have, an image of life, and that only of life in death; and as the motions of it are only excited by the creature's kindness, we discover in their best virtues, or rather, in their only breathings and indications of virtue, the evidence of a faithless heart.

WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS.

A HIGHLY esteemed clergyman of the Baptist denomination, who has for many years past been minister of the Amity street congregation in New York. He is the son of a former clergyman, of Welsh origin, much respected in the city.

Though a quiet and retired student, fond of books and skilled in their various lore, and more given to discourse of his favorite topics at home than abroad, Dr. Williams has on several occasions afforded the public, beyond his attached congregation, proof of his ability.

His occasional addresses and lectures, chiefly in the direct course of his ministry, show a mind of fine order, exhibiting delicacy of taste, devotional earnestness, and the reading of the cultivated scholar. They are mostly included in a volume of Miscellanies, published in 1850,

which contains A Discourse on Ministerial Responsibility, delivered before the Hudson River Baptist Association in 1835; An Address, The Conservative Principle in our Literature, delivered in 1843, before the literary societies of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, Madison County, N. Y.; several eloquent occasional Sermons; and among other papers, one on The Life and Times of Baxter, which indicates the happy manner in which Dr. Williams employs the resources of his library. Another illustration of his copious stores of reading was afforded to the public in the hitherto unpublished Address pronounced in 1854 before the Alumni of Columbia College, New York, on occasion of the completion of a century in the career of that institution. It was a retrospective review of the literature and other liberal influences of the year of the college foundation, 1754.

Dr. Williams is also the author of two volumes of a practical devotional character, entitled Religious Progress, and Lectures on the Lord's Prayer.

Though the utterance of Dr. Williams is feeble, and his health apparently infirm, few clergymen of the day have a firmer hold upon their hearers. His delivery is in low measured tone; the main topic of the discourse flowing easily on, while occasional illustrations from history or biography fall like leaves from the trees, refreshing its banks, into the unconscious current of his style.

AN AGE OF PASSION.

Our age is eminently, in some of its leading minds, an age of passion. It is seen in the character of much of the most popular literature, and especially the poetry of our day. Much of this has been the poetry of intense passion, it mattered little how unprincipled that passion might be. An English scholar lately gone from this world (it is to Southey that we refer), branded this school of modern literature, in the person of its great and titled leader, as the Satanic school. It has talent and genius, high powers of imagination and language, and boiling energy; but it is, much of it, the energy of a fallen and revolted angel, with no regard for the right, no vision into eternity, and no hold on Heaven. We would not declaim against passion when employed in the service of literature. Informed by strong feelings, truth becomes more awful and more lovely; and some of the ages which unfettered the passions of a nation, have given birth to master-pieces of genius. But Passion divorced from Virtue is ultimately among the fellest enemies to literary excellence. When yoked to the car of duty, and reined in by principle, passion is in its appropriate place, and may accomplish a mighty service. But when, in domestic life, or political, or in the walks of literature, passion throws off these restraints and exults in its own uncontrolled power, it is as useless for purposes of good, and as formidable from its powers of evil, as a car whose fiery coursers have shaken off bit and rein, and trampled under foot their charioteer. The Maker of man made conscience to rule his other faculties, and when it is dethroned, the result is ruin. Far as the literature to which we have alluded spreads, it cherishes an insane admiration for mere talent or mental power. It substitutes as a guide in morals, sentiment for conscience; and makes blind feeling the irresistible fate, whose will none may dispute, and whose doings are beyond the jurisdiction of casuists or lawgivers. It has much of occa

sional tenderness, and can melt at times into floods of sympathy; but this softness is found strangely blended with a savage violence. Such things often co-exist. As in the case of the French hangman, who in the time of their great revolution was found, fresh from his gory work of the guillotine, sobbing over the sorrows of Werther, it contrives to ally the sanguinary to the sentimental. It seems, at first sight, much such an ill-assorted match as if the family of Mr. Wet-eyes in one of Bunyan's matchless allegories, were wedded to that of Giant Bloody-man in the other. But it is easily explained. It has been found so in all times when passion has been made to take the place of reason as the guide of a people, and conscience has been thrust from the throne to be succeeded by sentiment. The luxurious and the cruel, the fierce and the voluptuous, the licentious and the relentless readily coalesce; and we soon are made to perceive the fitness of the classic fable by which, in the old Greek mythology, Venus was seen knitting her hands with Mais, the goddess of sensuality allying herself with the god of slaughter. We say, much of the literature of the present and the last generation is thus the caterer of passionlawless, fierce, and vindictive passion. And if a retired student may "through the loop-holes of retreat” read aright the world of fashion, passion seems at times acquiring an unwonted ascendency in the popular amusements of the age. The lewd pantoinime and dance, from which the less refined fashion of other times would have turned her blushing and indignant face, the gorgeous spectacle and the shows of wild beasts, and even the sanguinary pugilistic combat, that sometimes recals the gladiatorial shows of old Rome, have become, in our day, the favorite recreations of some classes among the lovers of pleaThese are, it should be remembered, nearly the same with the favorite entertainments of the later Greek empire, when, plethorie by its wealth, and enervated by its luxury, that power was about to be trodden down by the barbarian invasions of

sure.

the north.

Wil

It is possible that the same dangerous ascendency of passion may be fostered, where we should have been slow to suspect it, by the ultraism of some good men among the social reformers of our time. berforce was, in the judgment of Mackintosh, the very model of a reformer, because he united an earnestness that never flagged with a sweetness that never failed. There are good men that have nothing of this last trait. Amid the best intentions there is occasionally, in the benevolent projects even of this day, a species of Jack Cadeism, if we may be allowed the expression, enlisted in the service of reform. It seems the very opposite of the character of Wilberforce, nourishes an acridity and violence of temper that appears to delight in repelling, and seeks to enkindle feeling by wild exaggeration and personal denunciation; raves in behalf of good with the very spirit of evil, and where it cannot convince assent, would extort submission. Even truth itself, when administered at a scalding heat, cannot benefit the recipient; and the process is not safe for the hands of the administrator himself.

Far be it from us to decry earnestness when shown in the cause of truth and justice, or to forget how the passion awakened in some revolutionary crisis of a people's history, has often infused into the productions of genius an unwonted energy, and clothed them as with an immortal vigor. But it is passion yoked to the chariot of reason, and curbed by the strong hand of principle; laboring in the traces, but not grasping the reins. But set aside argument and truth, and give to passion its unchecked course, and the effect is fatal. It may at first seem to clothe a

literature with new energy, but it is the mere energy of intoxication, soon spent, and for which there speedily comes a sure and bitter reckoning. The bonds of principle are loosened, the tastes and habits of society corrupted; and the effects are soon seen extending themselves to the very form and style of a literature as well as to the morality of its productions. The intense is substituted for the natural and true. What is effective is sought for rather than what is exact. Our literature therefore has little, in such portions of it, of the high finish and serene repose of the master-pieces of classic antiquity, where passion in its highest flights is seen wearing gracefully all the restraining rules of art: and power toils ever as under the severe eye of order.

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS,

ONE of the most consistent and accomplished authors by profession the country has produced, is a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He was born April 17, 1806. His father, who bore the same name, was of Scoto-Irish descent, and his mother, Harriet Ann Augusta Singleton, was of a Virginia family, which came early to the state, and was found in the Revolutionary times on the Whig side. William Gilmore Simms, the elder, having failed in Charleston as a merchant, removed to Tennessee, where he held a commission in Coffee's brigade of mounted men, under the command of Jackson, employed in the Indian war against the Creeks and Seminoles. His wife died while our author, the second son, was in his infancy, and he was left in the absence of his father to the care of his grandmother. Though his early education derived little aid from the pecuniary means of his family, which were limited, and though he had not the benefit of early classical training, yet the associations of this part of his life were neither unhappy nor unproductive, while his energy of character and richly endowed intellect were marking out an immediate path of mental activity and honor. Choosing the law for a profession, he was admitted to the bar at Charleston at the age of twenty-one. He did not long practise the profession, but turned its peculiar training to the uses of a literary life. His first active engagement was in the editorship of a daily newspaper, the Charleston City Gazette, in which he opposed the prevailing doctrines of nullification, he wrote with industry and spirit, but being interested in the paper as its proprietor, and the enterprise proving unsuccessful, he was stripped by its failure of the limited patrimony he had embarked in it.

The commencement of his career as an author had preceded this. He wrote verses at eight years of age, and first appeared before the public as a poet, in the publication, about 1825, of a Monody on Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. A volume, Lyrical and other Poems, appeared fron his pen, in 1827, at Charleston, followed by Early Lays the same year. Another volume, The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and other Poems, appeared in 1829, and the next year a celebration, in verse, of the French Revolution of 1830, The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris.

Shortly after this date, in 1832, Mr. Simms visited New York, where his imaginative poem, Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, published by the Harpers in that year, introduced him to the literary circles of the city, in which he was warmly

welcomed. Atalantis was a successful poem with the publishers, a rarity at any time, and more noticeable in this case as the work of an unheralded, unknown author. It is written with easy elegance, in smooth blank verse, interspersed with frequent lyrics. Atalantis, a beautiful and virtuous princess of the Nereids, is alternately flattered and threatened by a monster into whose power she has fallen, by straying on the ocean beyond her domain, and becoming subject to his magical spells. She recovers her freedom by the aid of a shipwrecked Spanish knight, whose earthly nature enables him to penetrate the gross atmosphere of the island which the demon had extemporized for her habitation. The prison disappears, and the happy pair descend to the caves of ocean.

The next year the Harpers published Mr. Simms's first tale, Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, written in the intense passionate style. It secured at once public attention.

The author had now fairly entered upon the active literary life which he has since pursued without interruption; and so uniform has been his career, that a few words will sum up the incidents of his history. A second marriage to the daughter of Mr. Roach, a wealthy planter of the Barnwell district, his first wife having died soon after their union before his visit to New York; a seat in the state legislature, and the reception of the Doctorate of Laws from the University of Alabama: his summer residence at Charleston and his home winter life on the plantation Woodlands

at Midway, with frequent visits to the northern cities; these are the few external incidents of a career, the events of which must be sought for in the achievements of the author. The latter are sufficiently numerous and important.

To proceed with their production in some classified order, the author's poems may be first enumerated. The publication, next to those already mentioned, was a volume in New York in 1839, Southern Passages and Pictures, lyrical, sentimental, and descriptive; Donna Florida, a Tale, in the Don Juan style with a Spanish heroine, published at Charleston in 1843; Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, a collection of sonnets; Areytos, or Songs of the South, 1846; Lays of the