(as it were) imponderable mind of an ignorant person or a fool can resist its force. This may be very true, for anything we know to the contrary; but the wise and positive chemist will always consider and adduce the Atomic Theory as a venerable and marvellous hypothesis, indefinitely likely to be the very truth of nature, but neither recognizable as such by sense, nor demonstrable by reason, yet conceived, defined, tended, cherished, and continually eyed with hope, not only as the all-sufficient Rationale of his young though gigantic science, but also as the organ of advancing discovery. As for the idea of it, he will frankly confess that it is none of ours; it came down upon us from the oracular schools of Greece: but, as for its application to the present and practical affairs of the laboratory, he shall use it as not abusing it, being bent upon the excavation of new particulars, more than on the contemplation of old and even everlasting universals. At all events, whatever be his living thought as a man, such is bound to be his formal judgment and sentence as a methodologist, or professor and practitioner of the logic of Chemistry. The man of investigation must be as wary in his walk and conversation as a woman, in their several worlds: neither honest impulse and intention, nor yet the poetic license of eloquence and love, will suffice: the very appearance of evil must be shunned, because sinister appearances argue sinister causes of some sort, as surely as the shadow brings its sub stance. later times, under the influence of the experimental habit; and many analogous things have been added to them. For example, it is now known that a gas may be contracted by cold to the liquid state, a liquid to the solid state; and that the process may be reversed. Sulphuretted hydrogen is crushed in frigid strong tubes into a yellow liquor; fixed air is compressed into a snowball, and tossed from glove to glove in our lecturerooms: solid zinc is melted, changed into dry steam or gaseous metal, and distilled like any alchemical spirit; and so forth. Seeing it is the idea of such things, however (and not the details), that is now wanted, it is needless to particularize to any extent, under either this or the other two heads of illustration. Suffice it that the Atomic Hypothesis renders all those somatic transitions conceivable, that is to say, intelligible according to the law of the human understanding. A solid can be crushed by cold or compression into smaller dimensions: it is, by hypothesis, because it is made up of small equal and similar particles, not in mutual contact, and therefore capable of being thrust nearer one another, so as to diminish the bulk of their aggregate mass. The same solid expands when heated ;-its constituent particles being thereby driven farther asunder. The reader will generalize the application all over the ground for himself, taking in every circumstance of somatic commutation that he knows. The application is always easy, happy, unexceptionable: and, if the atomic view be rejected, there not only remains no better explanation, or no nearly so good a one, but absolutely none at all. In that case, the flowings, runnings, springings, enlargings, divisions, accumulations, and all the sensible interchanges of the face of nature, become a series of opaque and ultimate facts. Yet the scientific judgment must not be seduced by this temptation to accept the hypothesis otherwise than conditionally. Better no explanation for a thousand years to come, or even for ever and ever, than a wrong one: for no truth at all, so it be felt (like the Egyptian darkness) is less injurious than an error; and if brute ignorance is the fulsome parent of superstition, it is also true that conscious human Ignorance is the modest mother of Knowledge. A quick glace at the kinds of phenomena rendered intelligible, that is, truly conceivable by this theory, will illustrate these remarks with sufficient enlargement. They are three. There are, FIRST, all those common phenomena of the immediate sensible forms of matter which are ordinarily distinguished as being mechanical, in contradistinction to such as are chemical or vital; but, since astronomical movements are quite mechanical, the phenomena in question had better be called somatic. They are those material movements and alterations which are produced by the repulsions and attractions of cohesion, as chemical mutations are produced by those of affinity, as astronomical evolutions are produced by those of gravitation, and so forth. This class includes the obvious natural changes and The SECOND Order of things, brought into motions which have been signalized above as intellectual cohesion and harmony by our anconstituting the whole little material basis of tique, yet most modern Theory, belong to the ancient Atomic Theory: the old and the the region of Astronomy. They are one or new theories have that small segment of sen- two mechanical phenomena on the grand cesuous experience in common. The same facts, lestial scale. Wollaston has proved, by cerhowever, have received much elaboration intain optical phenomena connected with the invisibility of the fourth satellite of Jupiter when out of sight by position, that the terrestrial hemisphere is limited in extent. It ceases at a short distance from the surface. It does not reach higher than 45 to 50 miles: beyond that there is a vacuum, so far as air is concerned. Yet air is (in statu quo, at least) a self-expansive body. Remove pressure from it, and it swells to any bulk. Put an inch of air into a vacuum of a thousand inches' space, and it straightway puffs itself out so as to fill the vacuum. Hence the atmosphere grows thinner and thinner the farther from the earth, owing to the diminishing power of gravity, that is to say, owing to the diminishing pressure on it. Yet it does not extenuate and rise any higher than 50 miles! Why does it not go on thinning, and ascending, and self-expanding? Why, according to this hypothesis, it is because the atmosphere is composed of mutually repulsive particles, the force of that mutual repulsion being a very finite thing, else the hand of a boy could not squeeze a quart of it into a pintmeasure, as it can do with ease. The more expanded it is, the temperature remaining the same, the more easily is it compressed; that is to say, the mutual repulsion of its particles diminishes with their distance from one another. Hence the atmosphere ceases to swell (that is, to rise further from the earth's surface) just when the progressively diminishing mutual repulsion of its constituent particles becomes precisely so enfeebled as to be balanced and counteracted by the downdraught of gravitation. The solution is explicit if nothing more. The limitation of the terrestrial hemisphere, it should be added, was pled by Wollaston also on the fact, that the observed and the real position of Venus when only forty-five hours from the sun, as observed by Kater and himself in May, 1820, were identical,-proving that our atmosphere did not extend to those heavenly bodies, else its refractive power would have disturbed the visible position of the planet. But the argument (or fact explained) is one and indivisible; and must be taken for what it is worth. It is at all events one notable and striking new fact contributed to the original stock of Democritus. Both this and the first of our three classes of phenomena, now being represented as craving and deriving explanation from the Atomic Hypothesis, are identical in kind with those scanty and obvious appearances, known to all men in a manner, on which the Greek physiologists erected their idea. They are only greater in extent and precision, thanks to the sacred experimental rage of Christendom. But our THIRD class had no kindred in the old world. It is altogether modern, because altogether the result of humble toil. It is experimental; and that in the most elaborate and perfect degree, being experimental and numerical. It is the whole body of that vast, and altogether experimental, and literally hair-splitting science of Roger Bacon, Stahl, Lavoisier, Dalton, and Berzelius. After long and painful centuries of continuous effort, chemistry has discovered that the elements combine with one another in definite and unchanging ratios of quantity; and that, when their compounds are decomposed, they yield up those identical ratios. Every thing is accomplished by weight, measure, and number: and that with pure geometrical accuracy,— could our instruments and senses but attain to perfection. Glauber's salt never yields other than one proportion of sulphuric acid, and one of soda; else, ipso facto, it is not Glauber's Sel Mirabile at all; and that one definite proportion of acid, that one of base, attend them respectively in all their combinations, as inseparably as a shadow tracks its substance, or the moon goes with the earth. Water is always composed of 1 weight of hydrogen, and 8 weights of oxygen. When they combine in another proportion, it is in that of 1 to 16 or twice 8, and the product is no more water than aquafortis is laughing gas: it is a pungent new liquor, the deutoxyde of hydrogen. Fourteen parts by weight of nitrogen combine with eight parts (the water-ratio) of oxygen, and the product is a sweetish intoxicating gas; nitrogen 14 with oxygen 16, or two ratios, produce the second oxyde of nitrogen, a perilous air to inhale; nitrogen 14 and oxygen 24, or 3 ratios, compose the hyponitrous acid; nitrogen 14 and oxygen 32, or 4 ratios, are the ingredients of nitrous acid; 14 and 40, or 5 ratios, produce nitric acid and these five compounds, made of the same elements in such differing proportions, constitute a series of substances, so well marked and contradistinguished that no mortal sagacity could ever have conjectured them to contain the same or even similar ingredients. What is the meaning of this series of 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, in the case of oxygen, whether combined with hydrogen or with nitrogen? Why, according to the Atomic Hypothesis of Democritus, as connected with the conception of affinity by Newton, and as united to that of number by Dalton, it is not the mass, but the constituent particles mer rose like an exhalation, or rather on which it condescended like a thing come down from Olympus or the Empyrean. This has been sufficiently set forth in the enumeration, just made, of the kinds of phenomena which the Hypothesis now offers to explain, without forgetting its place or station (as nothing more than hypothetical) in the system of positive thought. of oxygen that enter into chemical combina- | the Sandemanian), offers a wondrous contion; and that with the particles, not the trast to the handful of stones, gathered tomasses, of hydrogen and nitrogen respective-gether on the highway, from which the forly. Water is a compound (let it be said provisionally) of 1 atom of hydrogenous matter with 1 of oxygenous; while the pungent deutoxyde contains, every compound particle of it, 1 atom of hydrogen and 2 of oxygen. Again the laughing gas of Davy contains, every compound particle of it, 1 atom of oxygen; the binoxide of nitrogen 2 atoms of the same; the hyponitrous acid 3 atoms; nitrous acid 4; and nitric acid 5. Hydrogen particles being subsumed as unity for the sake of comparison, an oxygen atom is 8 times, a nitrogen 14 times, heavier than a hydrogenous one. In this sort of way, the combining equivalents of all the elements. have been determined with a world of labor; and, with the help of these, also those of whole hecatombs of compound bodies, acids, bases, salts, radicals, and all sorts of proximate principles. Waiving all particular questions (such as the inquiry whether 14 stands for one or for two particles of nitrogen, and suchlike points, probably more numerous and urgent than is commonly supposed) the uninitiated or reminiscent reader must conjure before him not hundreds, but thousands of such numerical series, and millions of more isolated facts of the same tendency, as well as add the later (but corollary) discovery that the gases combine in definite volumes, before he shall approximate to a due sense of the huge amount of presumptive evidence, in favor of the theory under discussion, afforded by Positive Chemistry. Yet that theory is only a Hypothesis or ideal conception, placed by the mind like another Atlas underneath a measureless world of facts, to give them intelligible cohesion and hold them up to view. Without it, the fact of all chemical combination transpiring in definite and unchangeable proportions remains intact, and still invaluable; but it is ultimate and opaque.-But Terminus, the old god of proportion, is as inexorable as the new laws of Dalton and Berzelius; and it must suffice, for the present, to do no more than succinctly state the other two qualities which institute a broad distinction between the Greek and the Teutonic presentations of the Atomic Doctrine. I. The enormous breadth of material or sensuous foundation on which the latter has been being slowly reared (from the pseudoChristian polypharmacists of the East till these the days of John Daiton the Friend, Baron Berzelius the Lutheran, and Faraday II. The only other differential characteristic of the modern aspect of this time-honored theory, to be noticed in the present connection, is its availableness-a working chemist might well say its gracious obtrusiveness as an organ of new and nobler researches. It does not any longer dwell on high: it expatiates over the islands and wide continents of nature. Its ideal existence is no longer a kind of endless now: it lives and seeks congenial food from day to day. "Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new!" For example, the fact of isomerism (or the known existence of two (in some cases, of many) totally different substances being composed of the same elements in the self-same proportions) is truly confounding and hopeless without it; but with it, there is no difficulty in the matter. Our solar system were another unit than it is, if the planets were differently put upon it;-if our earth, say, changed places with Jupiter, Mercury with Mars, Saturn with Neptune, Saturn's rings with Jupiter's satellites, and so forth. And in like manner a compound particle, changing the relative placings of its constituent atoms, becomes thereby another particle altogether, giving rise to a new sensible form isomeric with the former one, inasmuch as it still comprises the same elemental atoms in the same proportion, but differently arranged within its complicated round. Other isomeric pairs (not to go beyond a pair) are to be explained by the second or denser members, containing exactly twice or thrice the number of the same kinds of atoms as the first, within the girths of their respective particles. Thence there is suggested the two startling ideas, that the former schematism may one day unriddle the mutual relation subsisting between such pairs of the hitherto intact elements as are represented by the same atomic weight, such as platinum and iridium; and that the latter may lead to still richer results in the same direction. Moreover our hypothesis is big with hints of experiment upon the weights, sizes, distances, gyrations, evolutions, involu tions and resultants of those orbicles of matter which are its proper subjects. It renders the application of geometry and the calculus to these invisible, but computable stars in little, a thing of hope. Organic chemistry, which is now naught as a chemistry of the living plant and animal, though most important as a chemistry of the dead, cannot be eliminated from amid the phenomena of vitality until many, if not all these questions (and more) be brought to judgment; for it is impossible to separate between the chemical and the vital, before the idea of what is chemical (and what not) be determined by exhaustion. But we must refrain. Perhaps enough has been said to suggest more. They rather believed in their sense of analogies without more ado. They knelt before the ideal creatures of their imagination. Beauty and fitness were enough to command their faith, so they were of the intellectual species of beautiful propriety. It was their proper genius to see analogies with telescopic vision, while yet a great way off, and to believe in their own conception of what they saw: for the moral attitude of the Greek populace (to speak of men as belonging to the thinking, not the social scale) was that of vanity-of the philosophers, that of pride, intellectual pride: and no wonder; for they were a marvellous people, and their sages the most intellectual men the world has yet been able to produce. Christ, Christianity, and the Christian era (surely about to be fairly inaugurated in some degree of purity ere long-Usquoque Domine!) present an aspect the reverse of all this magnificent self-exaltation; that is to say, in their real character-and their true nature has always been shaping men more or less, directly or indirectly, especially our greatest men. Now self-distrust, humility, obedience, faith in One who is mighty to bless, awe before the creation of the Word, the way of pain and sorrow, are the order of the newborn day, that sprang in Bethlehem of Judah. It is now obedience that makes men free. If they would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, they must come as little children; and Francis Bacon has finely said, the kingdom of Nature admits no other guests. Fact, the actual thing in Nature, the very text and let In conclusion: still the inquiry recurs, how the aboriginal idea or fundamental conception of this beautiful, hundred-eyed, and hundredhanded Theory came into the world; that idea, which it might never have entered into our heart to conceive; and which was, in indisputable fact, derived to us from a Hellenic and a Pre-Christian School! Was it by such revelation as is claimed for the profound ideas of Holy Writ? Was it by that inspiration which all men are fain to accord unto Homer, Dante, Shakspeare; to Praxiteles, Raphael, Turner; to old Bach, Handel, and Beethoven? Certainly not by anything like the former: and, if by aught resembling the latter, that must be better defined before it will throw any light on either its own or any other subject. The process was as follows, in our humble opinion. The Grecian intellect had an unprecedented, and still unequalled keen-ter of that great and public manuscript of ness of eye for the analogies of things. The slightest resemblance caught, charmed, and fixed its glance. The analogy of the Milky Way doubtless carried the swift imagination of Democritus to the conception of a starlike constitution for the sensible forms of nature. The Atomic Theory is just the fact of the unitary world of stars come down, and image in a dew-drop, or taking a sand-grain for its orrery. It is this analogy, in truth, which at once constitutes its clearness and perfection as a thought, and legitimates it in the presence of a positive methodology. But the earlier Greek sages were not positivists, whatever may have to be claimed for Aristotle. God, are now sacred once for all; and no pains dare be spared in their study. This is the moral clue to the new, most patient, selfdistrustful, yet always well-rewarded science of Christendom. There is also an intellectual key to its peculiar nature and destination, furnished by the intellectual character of Christianity, (and, indeed, certain secondary lights might be thrown on the subject by the consideration of race, climate, and such minor elements,) but these closing remarks, taken together with the hints of thought scattered in the course of the discussion, are sufficient to illustrate the cardinal proposition of the present article. From the Quarterly Review. THE CLOISTER LIFE OF CHARLES V.* SEVEN years have passed since the Spanish Handbook made us acquainted with Mr. Ford's visit to the convent of Yuste, where Charles V. breathed his last. Previously no Englishman of any note-Lord John Russell, we believe, excepted-had penetrated into that remote retreat, which certainly no one had described. Now that Spain is replaced in the Anglo-Saxon travelling map, a change has come over the spirit of the scene-this secluded spot, so beautiful in itself and so rich in associations, forms a popular point to our pilgrims, and the solitude of the cell ceases when the long vacation begins. In welcoming again to our pages one of these more recent tourists-the accomplished annalist of the Artists of Spain -we rejoice to see such good use made of the precious boons of leisure and fortune, and trust that the new member for Perthshire will not forswear type in disgust of bales of blue books, but continue from time to time to entertain and instruct us with tomes like this. It is not unlikely that, in the choice of his present subject, Mr. Stirling was influenced by the feeling that it would be peculiarly becoming in a Spanish student born north of the Tweed, to make the amende honorable to history, by refuting some gross errors to which two of his countrymen had given currency nearly a century ago. We cheerfully admit the merits of the Robertson school, the first to cut down the folio Rapin phalanx into reasonable proportions. They deserve lasting gratitude as the pioneers who made history accessible; and if they sacrificed too much to style, it was the French fashion of the day, when authors, relying more on rhetoric than research, trusted to mask the shallowness of the stream by the sparkle that danced on a clear surface; and graceful writing--the secret of pleasant reading-does indeed cover a multitude of sins. His * The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V. By W. Stirling, M.P. 8vo. 1852. tory thus made easy, and speaking the language of bon ton, was sufficient for our forefathers, who, provided general outlines were drawn with a free hand, neither cared for correctness in particulars, nor were displeased with touching incidents, invented by ingenious gentlemen, either contemners of real facts or too indolent to hunt for them, and who, like contemporary geographers, "placed elephants instead of towns in the open downs of guess-work description. No Niebuhr had then arisen to separate truth from fable, to fix precision of detail, and furnish a model to modern investigation and accuracy. "Oh! read me not history," exclaimed Sir Robert Walpole, "for that I know to be false"-and no writer of it ever was satisfied with more imperfect sources of information than Dr. Robertson, who, according to Walpole's son, "took everything on trust; and when he compiled his Charles V.--[the bulky biography of a great Emperor of Germany and King of Castile--was in utter ignorance of German and Spanish historians." He cited, indeed, says Mr. Stirling, "the respectable names of Sandoval Vera, and De Thou, but seems chiefly to have relied upon Leti, one of the most lively and least trustworthy of the historians of his time." This Italian like M. Thiers, Lamartine, and Co., of our day--was a glozing, gossiping, historical-romancer. His four Duos., published at Amsterdam, A. D. 1700, were much read at the time, but are now forgotten and rare. Dr. Robertson was followed by Dr. Watson, his ape. The dull Aberdeen Professor just reechoed the elegant Principal's blunders in his Philip II.-a production at once clumsy and flimsy, that will shortly receive a due quietus in the great work on which Mr. Prescott has long been occupied. When these misstatements were first pointed out in the Handbook, reference was made to a certain MS., purchased by M. Mignet, who, it was prophesied, would some day "publish it as his own." M. Gachard, a learned Belgian, next made known that |