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strange question. He replied that in the preceding winter of 1841 he had seen the ice, in spite of the tide, which ran at the rate of 10 miles an hour, extending in one uninterrupted mass from the shore where we stood to the opposite coast at Parrsborough, and that the icy blocks, heaped on each other, and frozen together or 'packed,' at the foot of Cape Blomidon, were often fifteen feet thick, and were pushed along when the tide rose, over the sandstone ledges. He also stated that fragments of the black stone' which fell from the summit of the cliff, a pile of which lay at its base, were often frozen into the ice, and moved along with it. I then examined these fallen blocks of amygdaloid scattered round me, and observed in them numerous geodes coated with quartz crystals. I have no doubt that the hardness of these gravers, firmly fixed in masses of ice, which, although only fifteen feet thick, are often of considerable horizontal extent, have furnished sufficient pressure and mechanical power to groove the ledge of soft sandstone."-Vol. II., pp. 144-146.

We have touched only upon some of the simpler of the geological matters which make up the greater part of Mr. Lyell's book; we have explored the mere shallows, taking some care not to venture beyond our depth, lest we should be swept out to sea with only a slippery geological hypothesis to cling to. All the deeper questions, "in which are some things hard to be understood," and harder to believe, we must leave our scientific friends to manage by themselves.

We were pleased to meet with frequent evidences of that harmonious intercourse which generally does and always ought to prevail among the votaries of the same science, without distinction of country or name. Whenever a scholar or scientific man of this country visits the Old World, nothing so much gladdens his heart as the cordial welcome he is sure to receive from his transatlantic brethren, and the readiness with which all the stores of information, whether public or private, and every thing calculated to facilitate his inquiries, are laid open to him. On this account we are glad to find that Mr. Lyell's pages abound with acknowledgments for information received from, and facilities courteously rendered by, our numerous geologists, especially those who have conducted State surveys, and whose official publications and other works do so much credit to themselves and to the country. Without such assistance, indeed, Mr. Lyell could by no means have turned his limited time to such good acOn the other hand, our own geologists must have

count.

deemed it no small advantage thus to compare notes, directly upon the field, with one so deeply versed in European geology as Mr. Lyell. It is this freedom from sectional jealousies and local interests which makes the commonwealth of science "one and indivisible." It is this spirit which ever distinguishes the naturalist who is worthy of the name. We do, indeed, remember something of an anonymous newspaper article, in which the engagement of an eminent foreign geologist to lecture before a popular audience was seriously complained of, as a positive wrong and discouragement to native talent, and our own geologists were warned against allowing foreigners to poach on their preserves. But this narrow spirit, peculiarly ungenerous under the circumstances, is, we trust, entirely dispelled.

There is a single paragraph in Mr. Lyell's book which we strongly desire to see erased. We cannot pass by this blemish in silence, and we have no desire to render it more prominent by quotation. Yet we cannot open that page without wondering how such a piece of bad taste could have found admission. The sentence to which we refer is to be found on page 163 of the first volume. The gratuitous sneer at the "young ladies, filled with an exceeding sense of their own wickedness," is bad enough in itself; but it is unfortunately aggravated, surely without Mr. Lyell being aware of it, by the context, which almost irresistibly points its application to the families of his own friends and acquaintance.

ART. IX.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. The True Grandeur of Nations: an Oration delivered before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1845. BY CHARLES SUMNER. Second Edition. Boston: Published by the American Peace Society. 1845. 8vo. pp. 96.

THE real subject of this discourse is more clearly indicated by the advertisement, "Published by the American Peace Society," than by its more formal and comprehensive title. It is a Peace tract, in the rhetorical dress of a popular oration. In

deed, the choice of the title is in some measure significant of the character of the whole performance. The orator is so thoroughly absorbed by his theme, that it seems to him to embrace the entire sphere of national grandeur. It is enough to make a nation great, that it systematically avoids all war, offensive or defensive, with other powers. We grant that this may be the highest proof of national grandeur; yet it is possible that without this a nation may be great, or with it, contemptible.

It is gratifying to see, that the tone of our anniversary harangues is undergoing a radical change. From the vapid commonplaces of self-adulation, varied chiefly by the praises of ancestors, every eulogy of whom was only a more delicate compliment to the hearer who claimed the merit of their blood, we are beginning to ascend to higher and more edifying themes, - to the discussion of our duties and our dangers. Our festival of thanksgiving wears in part the garb of a fast. Many a bold and earnest call has been sounded from the rostrum, where before was heard only the voice of party hate or self-complacent patriotism. In this class of addresses the one before us deserves a high place. It is full of honest, manly, and Christian sentiment, uttered with a frank disdain of concealment or compromise. Even where our judgment halts a little, it takes our sympathies captive. After exposing in strong terms the savage character of war, its horrible consequences and its fruitlessness, the discourse passes to an examination of the influences and prejudices which have kept up so monstrous and absurd a system. It denies the necessity of war; makes no account of the practice of nations; condemns the tolerant or temporizing tone of the Church; explodes the vulgar ideas of honor; subordinates patriotism to philanthropy; and, after displaying with a most imposing and insuperable array of statistics the enormous expensiveness of a military establishment, and insisting on the utter uselessness of all national defences, advises us at once to turn our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into pruninghooks, and not to learn war any more. We are not aware that the treatment of the subject of this oration is distinguished by great originality; nor do we suppose that the orator was ambitious of such distinction. The strength of his positions lies in their plainness. The horrors, the follies, the sacrifices of war are near the surface, and need no diviningrod to detect them. They are, however, set forth with a vigor which must leave a fresh and abiding impression on the mind of the reader. We are persuaded, that the only way to extirpate war is never to let the subject rest, but again and again to bring home to the public mind new proofs and illustrations of the great principles of universal peace, and to ring in the ears of

our rulers the solemn proclamation of their responsibility. There can be no exaggerated picture of the dark side of war, —and it has no bright side. We care not how sharply the spirit of Christ is set in contrast with the spirit of the world. Neither war, nor slavery, nor party spirit can be extinguished, till the breath of Christian life is breathed into the hearts of the people. To persuade them fully of the unchristian spirit of war is the surest way to convince them of the possibility of its extinction. Where there is a will there is a way, and war must eventually cease in the more perfect day of Christian civilization.

So far we go with the orator. But when from the symptoms of the disease he passes to the cure, and proposes at one sweep to put an end to war by abolishing its ways and means, we are somewhat startled. To bring about a radical revolution in national ethics, and digest anew the law of nations, a system which has been the work of many centuries, must be the work at least of many years. By a just law of retribution, the rubbish of old abuses remains long after the main structure has fallen down. We are not suffered to bask to our liking in the sunshine of our sins, without shivering in the night that follows. "Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus," might be the lamentation of many a sorrowing philanthropist of our own day.

The orator rejects the phrase "defensive wars," as absurd, on the ground, that, in the present advanced state of civilization, no nation would dare to disgrace itself by an attack on a defenceless neighbour. We hope this is true. But when we have before our eyes the invasion of Turkey by Russia, the bombardment of Acre, the expedition against Affghanistan, and the occupation of Scinde, to say nothing of the opium war in China, a little skepticism as to the probable forbearance of the same civilized powers, in the absence of all resistance, may be borne with. Nor are these cases which can be summarily dismissed with the sentence, "Let the dead Past bury its dead." How near extinction the war spirit in France is, the events of the last few years amply demonstrate. And when we see, on the least rumor of a declaration of war, thousands of volunteers crowding to our western frontier, eager less to defend their country than to have a fight, and read the pugnacious exhortations of our patriotic newspaper press, we may doubt of the safety of those nations who, content with the panoply of meekness, should throw away the more vulgar harness of brass and steel. We question if the celebrated example of William Penn, backed even by the grave authority of Mrs. Child, will be sufficient to divest of a certain paradoxical air the assertion, that "every new fortification and every additional gun in our harbour is not a

safeguard, but a source of danger to our city," because, if national defences do not exist, "there can be no aliment, no fuel for the flame" of war. We must say, we wait for more proof. The doctrine of this address does not even make an exception in the case of a conflict between a savage and a civilized state. The case is possible, and the barbarian, who is incapable of understanding the more refined expedients of negotiation, mediation, &c., may be the aggressor. How shall he be dealt with ? Nor are we quite clear, that no violation of national right short of an armed assault can be so flagrant as to justify a resort to immediate force by the injured party. Whether such a war shall or shall not be styled defensive is a question of terms only. In the efficacy of a congress of nations, arbitration, or negotiation, the orator has great faith. Our hope is stronger than our faith. The nations, as yet, are far from forming a brotherhood, and we have some apprehension of an active centrifugal force. Should a single nation prove recreant, we must come to arms at last. To say that the issue of war is of all things the most doubtful, and that justice cannot be established by an appeal to brute force, disposes of the difficulty only when you have shown some better resort. The very ingenious and striking parallel drawn by the orator between national wars and the old wager of battle is the most original and effective portion of the address. But public opinion had been won over to the side of order and justice before that ancient practice was abolished; and till the public opinion of nations has become also imbued, by successful experiment and the interchange of national courtesies, with the fraternal sentiment and the love of peace, we can hardly expect a single nation to demolish its forts and arsenals. But every thing now makes for peace, and the hope of the philanthropist becomes every day more reasonable.

These few remarks have left us little room for any observations on the literary execution of Mr. Sumner's Oration. We could wish there were even less; so difficult is it to apply to this whole genus of anniversary addresses the ordinary canons of criticism. Our Fourth of July rhetoric is one of the most indubitable tokens of our national independence. Borrowing from the mother country the homely Anglo-Saxon phrase, and from our Gallic ally the swell and pomp of Parisian declamation, we have seasoned the mixture with enough of patriotic truculence to establish our title to the compound. According to the varying proportions of these elements, we have every shade of style from the florid to the tawdry, and from the pedestrian to the bombastic. The Juvenal of our day might forget the "Augusti recitantes mense poetas," though we are not quite sinless in VOL. LXI.- - No. 129.

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