1830.

XXI. August 7.-The new Charter under the Orleans dynasty.

1848.

XXII. February 24.-Proclamation of the Republic.

Two-and-twenty revolutions and constitutions in about fiftynine years!—and if we subtract the three monarchical periods of Buonaparte, the Restoration, and Louis Philippe, amounting altogether to near fifty of those years, we shall appreciate still more justly the degree of agitation, distress, and terror which filled the other nine years of political experiment. There was not one of those changes which was not celebrated as a national triumph-not one, even the earliest and the shortest, that did not proclaim itself as the happy and eternal close of the revolution. May we not be forgiven if the promises of permanence and pros perity which the new revolution makes to itself and to the world find less credit with us than the long line of precedents which we have quoted-if we augur for the new Republic a shorter and we hope a less guilty career than the former-and if we feel more and more strengthened in our opinion that, if left to itself, the total failure of this experiment will tend to confirm the sober principle of constitutional monarchy, and awaken amongst our own people a stronger gratitude for the blessings we enjoy, and in our own Government a wiser and firmer resolution to maintain it?

Since the foregoing sheets were printed, and as this page is going to press, we receive the accounts of the melancholy events of the 23rd of June and two following days, on which we have neither time nor space to say much more than that they appear to us to be, as far as they have gone, a confirmation of all the opinions we have advanced and a fulfilment of all our worst apprehensions. They announce the Pentarch Executive cashiered -a military dictator-15,000 soldiers and citizens killed and wounded; probably a much exaggerated number, even though the slaughter may have been the greatest that the blood-stained city had ever before witnessed-the law-courts suspended and merged in courts-martial-twenty journals, even the most moderate and respectable, suppressed; their editors imprisoned and threatened (surely it can only be a threat) with deportation to the South Seas and a similar sentence actually passed by a general decree of the Assembly on many thousands of the insurgents. In short, scenes of blood and acts of despotism such as the civilized world had never before seen, except-if it be an exception -in the Old Revolution. And all this mischief and misery has

been

been brought on, first, by the precedent and example of the February revolt, and, immediately, because the ouvriers, the real founders of the Republic, insisted on the performance of the programme of the Provisional Government, and refused to resign the benefits of the ateliers nationaux, which had been solemnly pledged to them as a fundamental institution of the Republic. Under what superior advice-under whose guilty connivance at least, the vast preparations were organised-it is as yet too soon for us to ask. The hour for treason displayed will come. We cannot but pity the sufferers on both sides; but what shall we say of the leaders, as to whose case there is no doubt-of the men who made the unhappy ouvriers the tools of their ambition in February and its victims in June? We are forced to write before the struggle is entirely over; but the issue is not doubtful. The insurgents are defeated, as they would have been-and with not a tithe of the suffering-if Louis Philippe had consented, on the 23rd of February. It is perhaps, after all, as well that he did not. The world would never have believed the enormous reality of the peril; and the lives then lost, however few in comparison with the massacres of the last week, would have been reproached to him as wanton and cruel sacrifice. What has happened was perhaps necessary to convince the world of the extent of the danger of popular insurrections and the real mercy of early and vigorous repression. We are struck with a singular rapprochement. After the insurrection at Warsaw some years since, the Russian proclamation announced 'L'ordre règne à Varsovie.'-This phrase excited the mingled ridicule and indignation of the whole French press, and the shop-windows were filled with prints of streets strewn with dead bodies, over which the Cossacks were supposed to exclaim L'ordre règne dans Varsovie.' In the Paris papers of the 26th of June, which are full of the details of this unparalleled massacre, and which describe it as not yet quite over, we find the President of the National Assembly opening the sitting of that morning with a declaration that l'état de la capitale est SATISFAISANT; L'ORDRE RÈGNE DANS PARIS.' And the Assembly answers, Vive la République !'

NOTE. There were in the last article of our last number two inaccuracies copied from the works before us. General Lamoricière is not the brother-in-law of M. Thiers, and the King did not retire from the Tuileries through the subterranean passage, but through the great avenue of the garden.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Physical Geography. By Mary Somerville, Author of The Connexion of the Physical Sciences,' and 'Mechanism of the Heavens.' 2 vols. post 8vo. London, 1848.

2. Physikalische Geographie. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universität zu Berlin in den Jahren 1834 und 1835. Von Friedrich Hoffmann. Berlin, 1837.

3. The Physical Atlas: a Series of Maps and Illustrations of the Geographical Distribution of Natural Phenomena; embracing Geology, Hydrography, Meteorology, and Natural History. By A. Keith Johnston, F.R.G.S. Edinburgh, 1848. Folio.

THE

HE growth of the Physical Sciences brings with it the same demands as the progress of civilization in the arts of life. New methods and divisions of labour are required to satisfy the call for higher advancement and a more consummate perfection: new names are needed to express and classify these divisions. We find practical illustration of this in the numerous Societies which have grown up of late years, professing the separate and especial culture of branches of Natural Knowledge which, half a century ago, were barely recognised or imperfectly deciphered on the great page of Nature. More remarkably still is this principle of subdivision exemplified in the labours and collections of individuals in the field of science, where we find men seeking and earning fame by a devotion to objects which appear utterly trivial to those unused to such researches. The Fauna and Flora of natural history are striking examples. We may smile at the phrase of illustrious arachnologist' applied to an indefatigable spider-collector of our own day, and marvel at the laborious zeal of M. Robineau in gathering up 1800 species of the genus Musca in the single Department of the Yonne. But when we come to regard the completeness which this great branch of science has attained through such particular researches, and the curious and unexpected results derived from minute inquest into the subdivisions of the organic world-the fungi, the algæ, the heaths, the lichens, the mollusks of different seas and depths, the zoophytes, infusoria, &c.-we cannot fail to recognise the value of these insulated labours, and to applaud the happy diligence to which we owe such exact and abundant knowledge.

VOL. LXXXIII, NO. CLXVI.

X

It

It is in nowise inconsistent with the circumstances just stated, that changes should be simultaneously going on, which blend all sciences and all parts of science more closely together; giving unity to seeming disseverment, and carrying the mind forward to future connexions hitherto unexplored and unseen. Such high generalizations can only be reached by minute and precise knowledge of subordinate parts; and this exactness cannot be attained otherwise than by the division of labour we have indicated. divide, to obtain supremacy over the whole.*

We

Physical Geography-that branch of science which embraces all matter, in all its forms of existence, organized or inorganic, forming the great globe on which we dwell-may rightly take place as one of the highest departments of human knowledge. Spacious, however, though its domain and objects be, and familiar in their connexion with other parts of science, it is only lately that its boundary has been defined, and its subjects and subordinate branches, heretofore pursued under these separate connexions, been associated under one comprehensive name. So recent, in truth, is their association in any explicit form, that Mrs. Somerville's volumes come before us as the first English work bearing the title, and distinctly comprehending what belongs to this great subject. We possess, indeed, the valuable Physical Atlas of Mr. Keith Johnston, which may well be associated with Mrs. Somerville's book for their mutual illustration. But this Atlas is itself a recent undertaking; and by no means yet known, or studied, commensurately with its merits.

It is welcome to us to receive from the pen of Mrs. Somerville this introduction to Physical Geography as an independent branch of science. This lady, as all our readers know, has earned for herself no common reputation by her earlier scientific writings— to which we have given our tribute of praise in former volumes of this Review (Nos. 94 and 101). She brought to the Mécanique Céleste' of Laplace a mathematical capacity and cultivation, which enabled her to present to English readers an admirable

The only practical doubt to be entertained on this subject regards the recent multiplication of Societies professedly devoted to single departments of Science. We cannot now object to this as an over-early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods;' but we firmly believe that the result of this division has often been to starve rather than foster the objects of pursuit, thus detached from their former connexions. That private patronage which, by a proud peculiarity of England, gives basis to these institutions, is hampered by the multiplicity of demands upon it; their government becomes feeble or partial from the same cause; and the labours of individuals, admirable in themselves, often lose their due weight and circulation by being parcelled out among various subordinate receptacles. It is simply a question of degree; but we repeat our own conviction that the division has been carried to an injurious extent, and believe that the same judgment might be extended to other public institutions, with which our actual state of society is crowded and perplexed.

summary

6

summary of the spirit, methods, and results of this great work. To the Mechanism of the Heavens' succeeded her volume on the Connexion of the Physical Sciences;' unassuming in form and pretensions, but so original in design, and perfect in execution, as well to merit the success of eight editions, each carefully embodying all of augmentation that science had intermediately received. Though rich in works on particular sciences, and richer still in those eminent discoveries which establish the relations amongst them, yet had we not before in English a book professedly undertaking to expound these connexions, which form the greatest attainment of present science, and the most assured augury of higher knowledge beyond. Mrs. Somerville held this conception steadily before her; and admirably fulfilled it. Her work indeed, though small in size, is a true Kosmos in the nature of its design, and in the multitude of materials collected and condensed into the history it affords of the physical phenomena of the universe. In some respects her scheme of treating these topics so far resembles that since adopted by Humboldt, that we may give Mrs. Somerville credit for partial priority of design, while believing that she would be the last person to assert it for herself.

We may briefly notice here her style in treating scientific subjects, inasmuch as our comments will apply equally to the volume just mentioned and to those now before us. Few writers have shown so remarkable a continence as to all superfluous words and phrases. Not upon any formal principle, but from that native simplicity which is a quality of genius, Mrs. Somerville never indulges in those covenanted passages of preface or peroration in which authors often labour only to ostentation.' She goes at once to the work in hand; fully prepared and informed; clear and exact in her methods; and always preferring perspicuity to ornament. In treating of the mutual relations of the physical sciences she conducts her reader to the generalizations of which we have spoken, not with any pomp of announcement, but by those clear and certain steps of induction which, better than any artifices of language, raise the mind to the height of the subject, and engage the imagination with visions of higher knowledge yet to come. When writing on astronomy she allows the stars to speak for themselves, in all their sublimities of number, space, and time; not defacing the history of the heavens by those gorgeous epithets which we find in some modern treatises-words of earthy origin, and which rather debase than elevate the grandeur of the theme. Such is the character of her works throughout-a character perfectly compatible with great merits of style, and passages of much natural eloquence.