to concentrate himself on perfecting his own particular sort of sea; and to a certain extent this is the case also with landscape. The danger is, that while intensity is thus gained, breadth and sentiment may be lost, and landscape painting become a mere expression of the idiosyncrasies of the painter's feeling in regard to one aspect of nature. On this account it is satisfactory to see such works as those of Mr. Fisher and Mr. Farquharson; the latter especially shows something of the real poetry of landscape in his beautiful painting, When Snow the Pasture sheets. Mr. A. Hunt is probably the only English landscape painter since Turner who has in the same kind of way (we do not say to the same degree) combined intensity of effect with truth to nature, and with a total absence of mannerism or of devotion to one set of effects. We have tried to read between the lines of the Academy exhibition a little, to take note of what is coming and going, to consider what is the meaning behind the mass of pictures here displayed. What is it all for? Well, we feel that those works answer the query most satisfactorily which aim at something beyond the reproduction, however brilliantly, of the physical facts of nature. “Why do you make the oak," said a country fellow to M. Rousseau, as he was painting from nature, "when it is there and made already?" And the clown, like Touchstone, spoke more wisely than he was aware of. The question is a pregnant one. We want to have what is behind the oak, what it means to us, in the kind of sense expressed in the words of Drummond (which may stand here with a double application), in the fine sonnet wherein he comments on our neglect of the inner meaning "of this fair volume which we World do call," which has such deep truths for us if we would only read it aright "But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with coloured bindings, leaves of gold, On the great writer's sense ne'er taking hold; Or if perhaps we stay our minds on ought, Yet the grave and serious text of life may have its coloured margins too, its decorative frame-work, nor lose thereby any of its loftier meaning. H. HEATHCOTE STATHAM. VIRGIL IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. ECLOGUE VIII.-PHARMACEUTRIA. SING We the song of the shepherds—of Damon and Alphesibous— Pollio, whether you scale the crags of the mighty Timavus, Scarcely the night's cold shade had fled from the face of the heavens Wake, my flute, and, with me, give forth Mænalian numbers! Mænalus, home of the murmuring woods and the whispering pinetrees! Mænalus, ever awake to the lovelorn songs of the shepherds- Scatter the nuts! 'Tis for you that Hesperus Eta is leaving! than all men, Hating my pipe and my goats and my long beard and rough shaggy eyebrows, Think you that none of the gods give heed to the sorrows of mortals? Wake, my flute, and, with me, give forth Manalian numbers! Gathering the dew-gemmed apples, a child by the side of your mother, (I was your guide at the time) I saw you first in our orchardScarce, I remember, the second year of my teens I had entered, Scarce could I reach the frail boughs from the ground with the tips of my fingers- Saw you-and seeing I fell-oh what dire illusion held me! Wake, my flute, and, with me, give forth Manalian numbers! Golden apples bring forth and the daffodil flower on the alder, Screech owls with cygnets' compete and Tityrus turn into Orpheus, Wake, my flute, and, with me, give forth Mænalian numbers! So sang Damon; and now what answer made Alphesibous? Richest of vervein and strongest of frankincense burn on the altar. Charms have power to draw down the truant moon from the heavens; Crushed by the force of charms, the cold snake lies dead in the meadow. Back to his home from the city, my charms, draw the wandering Daphnis ! These three threads round your head with triple colours resplendent First I will twine, and then three several times round the altar Carry your image; the god delights in numbers unequal. Back to his home from the city, my charms, draw the wandering Daphnis ! Bind, Amaryllis, three true lover's knots of three several colours, Bind, Amaryllis, and say, "I bind the fetters of Venus." Back to his home from the city, my charms, draw the wandering Like as this image of clay grows hard and the waxen one liquid, Sprinkle the cakes and light up the crackling laurel with sulphur, Daphnis, be such thy desire, as when weary with seeking the bullock, Far through the distant groves and the mountain forests the heifer Lost near the water's edge falls flat on the verdurous rushes, Falls and forgets that the night is far spent and 'tis time to hie homeward. Daphnis, be such thy desire, while I lift not a finger to heal thee. These are the garments he left of old-the faithless one-with me,' These are the herbs and these are the poisons gathered in Pontus, Or to some far distant land transport the obedient harvest. Bring, Amaryllis, the ashes and into the swift flowing river, Cast them over your head, but be sure you look not behind you, So will I Daphnis assail, though of gods and of charms he be heedless. Back to his home from the city, my charms, draw the wandering Daphnis ! See how the quivering flame has laid hold of the horns of the altar. Now, while I dally, it burst forth unbid-be the sign of good omen! Something is certainly there and Hylax barks on the thresholdShall we believe it ?—Or is it a dream from the brain of a lover? Stay my charms! From the city he comes-the wandering Daphnis. GEORGE OSBORNE MORGAN. EVOLUTION AND POSITIVISM.1 DURING the two centuries that followed Des Cartes' death, the impossibility of his enterprise became more and more apparent. He had tried, as we have seen, to deduce the Evolution of the universe from the axioms of geometry. Postulating the facts of magnitude, figure, and motion, he undertook with algebra for his sole instrument to explain the activities of matter; those of inorganic matter lying, as he thought, completely within his grasp; the organic world already in great part accessible, and the rest to be won, if not altogether by himself, yet surely by the following generation. He had proved the potency of the new mathematics. He had shown that the inexhaustible combinations of the algebraists were capable of interpretation as the abstract expression for distinct lines, that is to say, for distinct motions-in other words, for distinct activities of matter. The complexities of motion, molar or molecular, he well knew to be endless. But to each of those complexities it was now, as he conceived, possible to adjust an equation soluble by the methods discovered by previous algebraists, especially by the great Vieta, and largely extended by Des Cartes himself. A road was opened into the inmost recesses of nature. Had he lived to see the growth of the transcendental calculus during the half century that succeeded his death, under the hands of Wallis and Huyghens, followed by Leibnitz, Newton, and the Bernouillis, his hopes of being able to follow the complexities of physical phenomena by algebraic formulæ would possibly have been strengthened. The higher calculus enormously increased man's powers of indirect measurement. No curve could be found, it was thought, so subtle as to evade analysis. The contour of every human countenance, so it was said, could be expressed by an equation. And yet the lapse of time, which brought accessions of strength to the calculus, brought also such new revelations of the complexities in the workings of nature, that even so audacious a geometer as Des Cartes, supposing him to have survived into the eighteenth century, might well have despaired of grasping them in any algebraic synthesis. Let us examine some of these. By an amazing effort of scientific abstraction, Des Cartes had denuded his primary matter, from which he evolved his universe, of all properties except magnitude, figure, and motion. The notions of mass, and of density, that is of the quantity of matter in a given (1) Concluded from the Fortnightly Review of June, 1877. |