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From Tait's Magazine.

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH IN 1849.

IF Asmodeus possessed the power to unroof every house in Edinburgh, we doubt if he would bring to light any great amount of hidden talent. All our little celebrities put together are hardly fit to sustain the literary credit of the Modern Athens. As for our great ones-Jeffrey himself is, not to speak evil of dignities, un peu passé. The honorable lord still dresses well, adjusts himself admirably to the niche in which he stands enshrined, and recognizes on all occasions the homage naturally offered at the altar of his literary fame. He frankly and courteously discharges all the duties of his position, and, with equal facility, extends his hospitality to the illustrious literary stranger, and expostulation to the unfledged aspirant after literary renown. Dickens, when last in the Scottish metropolis, was Lord Jeffrey's guest. And we have repeatedly seen instances in which Lord Jeffrey generously and humanely took the trouble to consider and criticise volumes of youthful poetry not the most promising. But, save on the judicial bench, his lordship seldom makes public appearances. Once a year, perhaps, he presides over the distribution of prizes at the Association for Promotion of the Fine Arts. But we hear of little, if anything, from his pen beyond his full and frequent notes on an advising in præsentia dominorum. The Judex damnatur of the blue and brimstone cover of the Edinburgh Review has become with Lord Jeffrey something more than a figurative, and has proved itself a prophetical, expression. On the bench of the First Division of the Court of Session, Lord Jeffrey occupies the extreme left of the Lord President Boyle; Lord Mackenzie, the son of " the Man of Feeling," and probably the most esteemed of the Scottish judges, intervening; whilst Lord Fullerton is seated on the President's right hand. Lord Jeffrey incessantly takes notes and asks questions. The habits of the critic have accompanied him to the bench, and admirably serve to tease the ingenuity of the learned counsel at the bar.

We have never given much for Wilson,

since first the Professor, a few years back, took shelter within the panoply of a Mackintosh; for though our contemporary has since renewed his youth, and, in his mood of venerable eld, now no longer fictitious, is still as good for a jest or witticism as ever, still the original induing of such defensive habiliments was all unworthy of the wild spirit of Ellerlay; and Christopher has never been himself again.

What! the man who was wont to face the fiercest elements that ever encountered sage or sophist, struggling up the Earthen Mound in the direction of Alma Mater, buttoned only in his invulnerable dress-coat of black; the low flat surface of his shovel hat standing up against the gusty wind, like the dark point of a rock amidst a furious sea-he, encased in the veritable manufacture of Cross-basket-tell it not in Gath! Wilson is by nature a lion, and will be to the end of the chapter. His stalwart figure, unbent by age, passes along our streets the image of Triton amongst the Minnows. The long flowing hair, slightly grizzled by the enemy, escapes from beneath the brood eaves of his beaver, and descends like the snake-wreathed locks of an antique Jupiter over the snowy petals of shirt collar that flank the breadths of his ambrosial visage-giving altogether a peculiar and picturesque aspect to the head and its arrangements. This massive capital, elevated on Atlantean shoulders, and the almost gigantic bulk, borne along with speed and firmness of step, bespeaking dauntlessness and decision of character, sufficiently mark the man. Excepting conversationally, we do not know that the Professor has lately made much exertion of his powers. In his class, he goes through the old routine of the moral philosophy lectures; and, as a member of the Faculty, may sometimes be seen-occasionally sine toga-pacing the boards amongst his brethren of the long robe. Some conversational criticisms, which have been repeated, harmless, though personal, would do for verbal repetition, but not to print-so that we are fain to refresh ourselves with the collect

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ed scrap-work of the "Recreations" of North -or the scattered poems, amongst which are mainly to be had in remembrance the two leading pieces, so unlike, yet so characteristic of the poet, "The City of the Plague," and "The Isle of Palms"- or the exquisite prose of the "Lights and Shadows," and Margaret Lyndsay," the grave fictions on which the author founded his title of philosopher. Professor Wilson's philosophy, his learning, his genius, have lately taken a new direction, and merged into a practical philanthropy, annually illustrated by his exordium to the popular session of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. His admirers and flatterers-for, like all lions, he has his jackals-indeed we should say that his "lion's providers" rather superabound-may hold that the Professor's career as a philanthropist could be antedated. We, however, think fot. We know of no phase in which the advocate of that aristocracy which, under the guise of good-old-English-gentlemanism, erected its jovial barriers of class and caste upon the necks of a dependent peasantry little elevated above agrarian serfdom, could be regarded as a man of the people, prior to his appearance on the platform of this popular institute. We have heard it whispered, however, that in adopting this conspicuous step, the Professor nobly set at nought the conventional restraints imposed on themselves and their brethren by the haughtier members of the Senatus Academicus, by whom the delivery of a popular lecture is deemed equivalent to "such an act as blurs the modesty and grace of nature" in Brahminical eyes, when a member of any of the rigid sects of oriental superstition, forgetting their rules and observances, lose caste. The Professor of Botany, it is said, however, anxious to give a popular course of that beautiful and interesting study, has not the courage to brave the papal ban of his exclusive brethren. But Wilson has not only come forward in aid of the popular "march of intellect;" he has come forward as its ostensible head and front. His introductory discourses, each session, tend more and more to a discovery of the latent philosophy lurking in the popular mind-to illustrate the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties and disadvantages-to prove the onward tendency and ultimate triumph of self-culture among the middle and lower classes in the country-and to show (ultimately, but not yet,) by what title the power of a million of intellects is to assert its supremacy over the long-endured domination of a few more for

tunate or more privileged, by whom has so long been preached the spurious doctrine of poor stupid "Noll Goldsmith," that "they who think must govern those who toil;" as if there were anything to prevent those that toil thinking as well as, or better than, those that idle! In his future initial discourses in Queen Street Hall, Wilson has promised some further developments of the intellectual phenomena of the social mind, which may be looked for with interest, because the inquiry derives not its curiosity from the inquest, but the inquirer.

Favorers of popular movement, from the opposite extremes of "the electric chain that binds" the strange mixture of intellectual elements in the society of Modern Athens, the brothers Chambers, Mr. James Simpson, the Advocate, and Mr. George Combe, emerge on our notice in a group. By a series of successful adventures in the literature of popular progress, which have been selfrewarding, the former have elevated themselves, unaided, save by the tide of public approbation, to eminence so considerable, that a vacancy for the chief magistracy of the Scottish metropolis can scarcely occur, or be talked of, without one or other of the brothers being brought forward as eligible to the office. The merit of the publications of these gentlemen is mediocrity. But mediocrity, when once it wins its way, retains its hold. Addressed to comparative ignorance, or the unexcitable temperaments of impassive intellects, it never recedes. The literature of mediocrity, never bad enough to merit condemnation, carefully weeded even of the shadow of reproach, tolerably faultless in its construction, calculated just to impart the semblance without the severity of essential information, loses nothing that may be forfeited by time, chance, or change. Unlike the rash scintillations of superior genius, it incurs no risk of elevating and exciting the minds of its votaries, to give force and contrast to the dash of disappointment where its brilliancy flags or fails. The steady, equable quality of this kind of writing-imitating the dull proprieties of accurate prose, sparingly indulging in any vein of poetry, recording only facts with zest, and drawing fictions from the memory-forms the excellence of Chambers' Journals, Miscellanies, Informations, Histories, Educational and Juvenile Series.

Irreconcilable as these in their variety may seem, a family likeness pervades the whole, and soothes them down into their regular monotony. The wise man prayed that he might neither be visited with poverty

nor riches. If he seek for his children the same happy medium of intelligence as of circumstances, he will have them educated upon "Chambers' Educational Course." Their minds will not fare sumptuously; neither will they starve. With doctrinal questions, and alleged objections to the matter of these cheap, and, for the most part, useful productions, we have nothing at present to do. Enough for us that their manner-generally easy, and always agreeable-more than anything, stamps their value. The price of knowledge reduced, by works like these, the commodity becomes palatable as well as accessible; and thus the great secret of their success is twofold-knowledge is cheapened and stimulated at once. The head of the firm, though seldom committed to any popular movement, has long professed liberal principles. The "ragged schools" have been greatly indebted to his philanthropy; and the "faggot votes" have recently recoiled beneath his assault. The one cause he has advocated in "the Journal," and personally promoted in various parts of Scotland; the other enormity he has attacked from the platform-but with the disadvantage, less applicable to him than to others, of doing so as the partisan of a faction as deeply implicated in the evil as any other. Let that pass. William Chambers, without any great distinguishing marks as a man of letters, as a popular leader, or a party debater, is a man of energy and action, of perpetual movement and indomitable courage, and has had, unquestionably, the spirit to carve out his own fortunes. As a litterateur, and latterly as a savant, Robert Chambers has been the more distinguished. Less a man of business and more a man of letters, the author of the "Rebellions" and the "Picture of Scotland" has dedicated the few last years of his life to scientific researches connected with absorbing questions of physical science, and particularly the phenomena exhibited on the earth's varied surface. He seldom draws conclusions. He states facts. He is a mere reader of the book of nature; and a clever as well as careful translator of its obvious passages. Take his recent work on "Ancient Sea Margins." Here is a work in which the eye, as from a pinnacle, scans with new ideas the great map of nature, and sees not features, but facts traced out over hill and valleymargins of seas stretched up towards the Alpine summits, and traces of a flooded world recorded imperishably upon the monumental mountain pyramids, amidst the crumbling and decay of the things of time. What

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strange ideas that book delineates beyond the scope of imagination, and literally chiseled out in granite heaps as hard, immutable truths! From the low coast lands and carses, the lower ancient sea margins emanate step by step to the sublimest altitudes. Oscillations in the shift of relative level betwixt sea and land-the last of them, perhaps, within the human period-unfold such a tale of time and change, tangibly portrayed before the wondering eye, as geology in all its quaint discoveries or strange imaginings has never before disclosed. In these there may be illusion where conjecture supplies the form of monstrosities extinct and incompatible with present conditions of existence. In those there can be none. We have local researches and descriptions undertaken with persevering and painstaking exertion-scenes in the vale of Tay, in Fife, Strathspey, Glenmore, Lochaber, the Basin of the Forth, the Vale of Tweed, and Basin of the Tay-all conjured up and strikingly arrested in diagrams of strange fidelity, though cast with the help of some excusable freedoms into the theoretical form of the supposed sea margins. The author has traversed all these scenes, and many more. His mind has dwelt upon their terraced aspect, and become imbued with the convictions of their character and origin; till the resistless reader, forced to yield to the endless multiplicity of facts, surrenders his convictions also to an author who avowedly has no theory to propound. In this way we are led to inspect visibly the Delta of the Ribble, the Mersey, Chester, Bristol, Bath, London, Sussex and Hampshire, Devonshire, France and Ireland, and even the terraces and markings in Switzerland, Scandinavia and North America. The contemplative power and sagacity of observation, conspicuous throughout these researches, tend not only to amass a collection of facts and materials for speculation, but facts and materials already sifted and prepared for an inevitable deduction. Mr. Chambers has carefully elicited in every instance the attendant circumstances of the natural appearances presented to his gaze, and so discriminated betwixt them as nearly to arrive at a chronology of the ancient beach-markings. He has traced out even the recession, accession, and second recession of waters, and furnished quite a new light in which to read the mighty page outspread upon the surface of a country. Some people, who would dispute the originality of anything, have doubted the originality of these researches. There is intrinsic evidence, however, of the author hav

ing visited in person, and observed for him- | self, the majority of the appearances he details. The magnitude of his labors is well characterized by the boundless inference with which he sums up their induction, viz: that "he must believe that very great lapses of time have passed since the sea stood at our highest terrace."

who shall charge them much; and on the author of so much real good in his day and generation?

Next comes George Combe, the most remarkable of a sect which, though now less ostensibly than at one time, still exercises considerable influence over the press and the people of Edinburgh. To the opinions of the author of "The Constitution of Man con"In several places of Scotland," he continues, sidered," we all know what tendency has "I have found the points or promontories of ter- been imputed. And we must say, that the races bearing the faint markings of forts which had been erected by our savage forefathers for sect of which we recognize him for the leadtheir protection. History scarcely hints at the er cannot, in any acceptation of the term, be of these remains, so lost is it in the long night called a religious sect. Whatever may be age of antiquity. But great as is the time that has Mr. Combe's opinions on these and other elapsed since these rude defenses were erected, it subjects, "uttered or unexpressed," it is with is nothing to what seems requisite for producing pleasure that we acknowledge, on occasion the phenomena now under our attention. When, of his last appearance at the Glasgow Athemoreover, it appears that the species of shell-fish have not changed in this immense series of milnæum soirée, a disposition to resist the imlenniums, a new and highly interesting considera-putations that are frequently cast at the distion arises. Species had in earlier times undergone repeated changes. If each change were attained in a lapse of time equal to a greater than that here shown to have passed without any change, what a vast multiple of this part must be the entire cosmical chronology!"

Such is the summary of the last-published researches of Robert Chambers. The concluding observation, by the way, reminds us that he has obtained 66 vestiges" of a reputation beyond what he aspires to in this treatise on "Ancient Sea Margins;" but if the secrets of the cloister are impenetrable, those of the bureau, to us, at least, shall be sacred. James Simpson, as an educational theorist, had once a name which, though we seldom hear it now, is still adequately and eloquently represented in the private life of our northern metropolis by an eloquent, warm-hearted old gentleman, of more than average candor and cordiality of manner. Superseded by systems, we rejoice to think, more in accordance with the spirit of the age, a tolerant but pious spirit of religion void of fanaticism, Mr. Simpson has yet lived to see some triumph granted to his educational views, in the general adoption of what the Presbyterial Reports-when there were Presbyterial reports on education-termed "the intellectual systems of instruction-a system addressed to the understanding and even to the heart." The practical schemes of David Stow, of Glasgow, and the general improvements on education, in combination with religious culture, introduced by the active zeal of the Free Church of Scotland, have outstripped as well as outbidden Mr. Simpson's plan. Yet he was the apostle of a cause which, when at its ebb, owed him for negative evils,

ciples of phrenology. Though mingled with local reminiscences of personal triumph in the cause so many had prejudged, there was an intelligible assertion of the great leading truths of faith put forth on that occasion by the master, which ought to form a striking lesson to all his followers. But it is ever the case that leaders are transcended in their most extreme notions by the zealots in their train.

Dr. Moir, of Musselburgh, and De Quincey, of Lasswade, may be grouped together as occasional accessions to Edingburgh literary society. Everybody knows the literary calibre of "Delta," and most people that of

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The English Opium Eater." The one is a living illustration of the poetry of the domestic affections. His exquisite "Casa Wappy," the lament of a father for a lisping darlingis no less pleasing than true. The other also illustrates his career by his compositions. A calm, sedate, and sensible mind is "Delta's." The best appearances at the Glasgow Athenæum were decidedly his and Combe's; his unpremeditated--Combe's elaborated. "Delta" spoke with so much genial sympathy for the good sense of his audience, that he laid for himself, at that single stroke, a lasting regard in the popular mind. A volume of his collected poems, just announced, will be treasured for many a sparkling gem that, if taste and justice are exercised, must inevitably stud his pages. The muse of the author of "Mansie Waugh" is as staid and sober as his humor is broad and pungent. Some illnatured critic lately accused him of nonsense -a serious charge against a poet of any reputation-and quoted the following lines in proof of the assertion; which, however, we

may premise, are, in our estimation, pretty and pictorial, besides being perfectly intelligible to any one who will take the trouble of glancing at the glorious panorama of the southern shore of our Forth, as seen from its pure and placid bosom-not now-but in high summer--or, better still, can pause to study it while having a quiet pop at the rabbits of Inchkeith warren, or the Divers on the water, watching the lazy things emerge:

"Traced like a map the landscape lies,

In cultured beauty stretching wideThere Pentland's green acclivities;

There ocean with its azure tide;
There Arthur's Seat; and, gleaming through
Thy southern wing, Dunedin blue!

White in the orient, Lammer's daughters,
A distant giant range, are seen;
North Berwick Law, with cone of green,
And Bass, amid the waters."

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Perhaps ten years ago, Dr. Moir edited a work, or collection, in two volumes, the first of which he occupied with a memoir of the late Dr. Macnish, of Glasgow. There is quite as much of "Delta" in this book as of Macnish, and yet it is without egotism. the exuberance of the writer's heart, he has inscribed on the title-page what no impartial biographer would care to do, viz: that the life is by a "friend"--and he has felt bound, in the course of executing his task to authenticate his acquaintance with the facts, as the lawyers do with witnesses--" Causa scientia patet; and all which is truth," &c. We are reminded of this revelation by-what does the reader think-the cholera, which, in its former visitation, seems to have approximated the stars of Moir and Macnish. It may not be amiss, at the present juncture, to quote what then passed betwixt these medico-philosophic poets:

"With the concluding months of this year," says Delta," and the commencement of 1832, the health of Mr. Macnish continued to improve; his body strengthened, his mind lightened up, he went through his professional duties with cheerful alacrity, and his inherent love for intellectual exertion again exhibited itself in several pleasant as well as powerful compositions.

"It was about the middle of January that the Asiatic Cholera, which had been imported into Sunderland, made its progressive way from Berwick to Musselburgh, and there seemed to take up its head-quarters-raging with pestilential violence, and prostrating alike the young and the old. So sudden and fearful was the mortality, that the burials within three weeks exceeded the average annual number of deaths, and this out of a population approaching to 9,000. I had formed no preconceived theory regarding the mode in which

the disease was propagated. I knew that the great majority of the Indian practitioners reckoned it simply epidemic-but a week's narrow and scrupulous investigation of its mode of attack concharacter. To this belief I adhere as confidently vinced me thoroughly of its purely contagious as to my own existence; and until it is universally acted upon (which I never expect to see) by the medical profession, Europe must from time to time be laid waste by the ravages of this terrible and soul-subduing pestilence.

"From the numerous inquiries made at this period from all parts of the United Kingdom, regarding the nature and treatment of this new and fearful scourge of our race, I was induced, in my capacity of Medical Secretary to the Board of Health, at Musselburgh, to publish, on the spur of the moment, a pamphlet entitled 'Practical Observations on Malignant Cholera'-of which, from the then absorbing nature of the subject, a second edition was demanded by the public in the course of a few days. These circumstances are mentioned here in reference to several things shortly to be alluded to. After a thorough investigation of the subject, I was glad to find that Mr. Macnish strongly entrenched himself on the side of the contagionists; and from a careful scrutiny of the disease as it wandered apparently at its own dire will' from place to place, he furnished me with a variety of facts and reasonings undisputed and conclusive. In writing to him at this time I find the following passage: The medical men here and at Edinburgh are all at loggerheads about contagion and non-contagion; but the success of my pamphlet has been a sore thorn in the side of the latter doctrinists. I do not know what may be its merits, but it ought not to have many, having been written within the week, and in the midst of scenes of misery, as I bustled from one death-bed to another, the like of which I never saw before, and trust will never see again. The eve after a battle-field may be a sad thing; but here all excitement was absent, and death was literally cold and repulsive. I am sure I am within the mark of half-an-hour at a time, by day or by night.'" when I say that the pamphlet never had a sitting

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Although it is disgressing, we cannot redisease in Glasgow, by Macnish (15th Febsist giving the account of the outbreak of the ruary 1832):

"Cholera has now fairly appeared among us. I saw a case yesterday, and one the day before, both of which proved fatal in a few hours. Every case hitherto has died. They were probably not seen till the stage of collapse had come on; and it is possible that the removal to the hospital has been injurious. The people have a dreadful antipathy to any person being sent to the hospitals: they stupidly imagine that they are murdered (burked!) by the doctors; and last night, when they were conveying a patient there, they were attacked by the mob. It is truly a dreadful disease. I have been compelled to give over visiting any of the cases, in consequence of the clamor of my own patients, who will not hear of it, so great

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