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He cares not, like Diogenes, a fig for his fatherland; every country where an acorn can be found is his native country. On being reminded that pigs must die, he wishes to know if men are immortal?

The Circe of Gelli was written after Macchiavelli's work. It was often reprinted in the 16th century, and is remarkable for its natural simplicity of style. It is composed of ten dialogues, in every one of which Ulysses endeavours to persuade some animal to accept of Circe's offer of restoration to a human shape. In the first dialogue he engages with an oyster and a mole, in the next with a serpent ; then with a hare, a goat, a hind, a bear, a horse, a dog, a calf, and an elephant. He is only successful in his last encounter. Only the elephant consents to become again a man. As for the oyster, the proposal disgusts him. His great pride is in his house. He can move it at pleasure, it needs no repair, and he pays no rent. He speaks with some terror lest the sea-crabs, seeing his shell open, should seize the opportunity to throw in a small stone, and thus prevent it shutting, for certain nefarious ends of their own. When Ulysses reproaches him with his little power of locomotion, he inquires why he should wish to move, when he has nothing to move for? In short, he would sooner die than change his state. Ulysses determines to let him remain in his misery as a just reward for his folly, and turns to the mole, to whom he sets forth the advantages of sight. "I," answers the mole, "for my part, have no need nor desire to see." Then, says the wisest of the Greeks in a pet, you ought to have, and turns to the serpent. Finding him equally ungrateful, and stopping his ears to his kind offers, Ulysses accuses Circe of having given the beast a voice indeed, but no brains. The women are no whit better than the men. The graceful hind is delighted at the notion of being able to talk again, but deems even that delight too dearly bought by the ills of human existence. She laments the injustice with which her sex is treated, and, beginning with Milton's assertion that women were "intended first, not after made occasionally," utters more metaphysics than ladies happily are wont to utter. Much of Gelli's matter is derived from Plutarch, but his introduction of the feminine element is original and peculiar. Spenser may have seen this work. The reader will remember how Sir Guyon's Palmer in the "Fairy Queen," after the overthrow of the Bower of Bliss and the defeat of Acrasia, is roundly abused by Gryll for his retransformation. Nor can the present age of scientific wonders, advanced civilisation, and moral, political, and educational reform produce any alteration in Gryll's mind, who, in Peacock's "Gryll Grange," regards all these as so many changes for the worse, and is still in no mood to feel conviction of our superior greatness.

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We have a proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. This proverb, with an unimportant variation, dates at least from the days of Macchiavelli. Speaking of the obstinacy of his satire, he excuses it in the beginning of his poem with his imagined form of an ass, of which kind of brutes, he says, one was brought by all the folk of Siena to its fountain Branda to make him drink, and after much difficulty they managed to get half a drop into his mouth. This fountain of Branda is apparently taken from Dante, who represents Master Adam, the coiner, parched with the thirst of dropsy, and yet wishing rather to see in hell as partners of his pain the sad souls of those that had urged him to his crime than to drink of its clear and abundant waters. There are, it has been already affirmed, passages in the "Ass" which are verbal transcripts of passages in the Divine Comedy. Dante, in his eloquent apostrophe in the "Purgatorio," occasioned by the meeting of Virgil with his compatriot Sordello, says, in detestation of the unnatural quarrels of his people, that one man gnaws another among those who are enclosed by the same moat and the same walls. Macchiavelli introduces this very expression when he attributes the quarrels of people so situated to that necessary mutation and revolution in the nature of things which makes the heavens now dark, now clear. For such a coincidence as this the reader is prepared by the opening lines of the poem, wherein Macchiavelli's entry into the rough rank forest in fear and darkness of course recalls the commencement of the "Inferno." How he got into the wood neither poet is able to tell :

I' non so ben ridir com' io v' entrai,

says Dante, and says Macchiavelli

Io non vi so ben dir com' io v' entrai.

There is, however, this difference in the time, that though both singers sang in the darkness, the darkness of Nicolo is that which precedes the night, but the darkness of the Alighieri that which prevents the dawn.

The "Golden Ass" is not without many beauties. It is philosophical in its observations on man's misfortunes and the ruin of states; it is poetical in its description of Circe's handmaiden; it is not seldom moral, and on two occasions distinctly religious; it is replete with common sense. We are always, Macchiavelli says, most inclined to believe those who promise us good; hence the credit of physicians, though we often deprive ourselves of good by believing them. When he adds, however, that this, out of the seven liberal professions, is the only one which feeds and lives on the ill of others, his opinions seem not so correct. The ill of others is certainly also

the support of the soldier and the lawyer. The advice given him in his calamity deserves attention. When evil comes-and come it will so long as the world lasts-gulp it down at once like a dose of medicine; he who rolls it on his tongue to taste it is a fool. Some of the religious turns surprise the reader who has been taught to look at the author as little less than an Atheist. My opinion is, he says in the fifth chapter, that the causes of the greatness of states, and what maintains them exalted and powerful, are fastings, alms, and prayers. And a little further on he tells us that prayers are certainly necessary; that he who denies the people their ceremonies and devotions is more than half a fool; that from these is the harvest of union and good order, and that on good order depends our good and happy fortune. Nor is this merely a poetical flourish. In his "Discourses on the First Decade of Livy" he devotes a whole chapter to the importance of religious practices in the preservation of a state, and instances the near ruin of Italy as the result of their neglect. He has similarly supported his poetry and his prose by a chapter in "The Prince," in which he considers Fortune to have given only one half of our actions to our own management, reserving the direction of the other half for herself. Those who assert that Macchiavelli was the inventor and exponent of the maxim that language was given us to conceal our thoughts, can receive nothing in earnest from that author. But was this maxim, which has ever been urged against him, any of his? Robert South, preaching in Westminster Abbey, in 1676, on the text, "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God," takes occasion to cast his stone at the "great patron and corypheus of politic sages, Nicolas Machiavel," as one of those declaring that speech was given to the ordinary sort. of men whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it. The turn of phrase has been attributed to Talleyrand, and may be found in many authors. Dr. Young, in one of his "Satires on the Love of Fame," speaks of the noontide masquerade of court and town,

Where nature's end of language is declined,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.

Goldsmith made a backbone for one of his "Essays on the Bee" out of the similar thesis, which he held supported by reason, that the true use of speech was not so much to express our wants as to conceal them. Finally, Voltaire, in his Dialogue between "La Poularde et le Chapon," makes the unhappy capon speak of mankind generally as using their thoughts to authorise their injustice, and their words to disguise their thoughts.

JAMES MEW.

SCIENCE NOTES.

SENSATIONAL. ELECTRICITY.

HE giant gooseberries and petroleum explosions of the silly

THE

marvels. One of our daily papers lately informed us that by means of "a small objective lens fixed up in a position commanding the stage of no matter what theatre, and connected by an electric wire with a diminutive white glass plate," which may be set up in any drawing-room at any distance from the playhouse, "a perfect picture of the stage, its scenery, actors, and so forth, faithful in colour and absolutely reproducing the whole performance, will become visible on the glass plate." This with the aid of a telephone will "enable its owner to spend his evenings at the opera in dressing-gown and slippers." The writer, whose ideas of social existence are all superfine and exclusively derived from Park Lane, May Fair, and tenthousand-a-year experiences, remarks that "to those-and their name is legion-who detest premature dinner, hurried dressing, and a couple of hours cabbing there and back," this sort of thing, this-ah— this enjoyment of the opera "within hail of his lait de poule et bonnet de nuit" will-ah-be quite too utterly charming.

The instrument which is to convey all this felicity to the luxurious legions is called a " dioscope." I have been looking for the prospectus of a Joint-Stock Dioscope Company, Limited, capital £800,000, in five-shilling shares, but the postman has not yet delivered one here.

A

A SIMPLE ELECTRICAL MACHINE.

S a domestic electrical experiment, few are simpler or more demonstrative than that of first drying and warming a piece of paper, then smartly stroking it with india-rubber and placing it against a wall, to which it electrically adheres. Electric sparks may thus be obtained in the dark, and a variety of other experiments performed. When the wind is from the east and dry, a small Leyden jar may be charged by using a long strip of paper, equal in width to

the outer coating, and drawing this repeatedly, when excited, along the outside of the jar.

An improvement on this simple electrical material has recently. been made by Wiedemann. He takes Swedish filtering-paper (procurable wherever chemical apparatus is sold), steeps it in a mixture. of equal volumes of nitric and sulphuric acid, then washes with abundance of water, and dries it-the same process as making gun-cotton, into which the fibres of the paper are thus converted.

It is stated that with this gun-cotton paper nearly all the stock experiments of the static electrical machine may be performed by laying a sheet of it on waxed paper for insulation and rubbing it briskly.

This was announced in the Comptes rendus of the French Aca lemy about the beginning of the year, but I have heard no more of it since. As Christmas holidays are coming, I recommend it to my juvenile readers, who may possibly be able to improve upon the original suggestion by coating a fig-box, or other wooden cylinder, with a non-conducting surface of gutta-percha varnish, or shellac, or wax, then covering this with the prepared paper, and mounting it like an ordinary old-fashioned electrical machine; or by making an electrophorus of this material.

M

16
COUNT RUMFORD ON FIRED GUNPOWDER."

OST people assume, as a matter of course, that an explosionis an instantaneous action. This, however, is by no means the case. We all know well enough that the explosion of a long train of gunpowder is a work of time, as we can easily see that it is due to a succession of small explosions; one grain firing the next, and so on progressively. But we are apt to regard the firing of a gun as an instantaneous action. This is also a mistake. If it were instantaneous, our gun-barrels would have what the American improvers of English call "a bad time." If the charge of powder exploded instantaneously, and its whole expansive force were exerted all at once before the ball commenced moving, the bursting of the barrel would be almost inevitable. As it is, the grain of powder nearest to the touch-hole is fired first, the flaming gases ejected by that explosion fire the next, then others and others, and so on with the whole charge. This travelling of the action must, of course, take some time, though very little; but there is another element of duration of greater magnitude, and of more practical importance, inasmuch as it is capable of regulation.

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