that the finest opportunities occur for observation. [parative obscurity. But here we have a star fitfully The state of the air in these months, as regards variable to an astonishing extent, and whose fluctudefinition, is habitually good, and imperfect vision ations are spread over centuries, apparently in no is rather the exception than the rule. The best settled period, and with no regularity of progression. nights occur after the heavy rains, which fall at this What origin can we ascribe to these sudden flashes season, have ceased for a day or two: and on these and relapses? What conclusions are we to draw occasions the tranquillity of the images and sharp- as to the comfort or habitability of a system dependness of vision is such, that hardly any limit is set to ing for its supply of light and heat on so uncertain magnifying power, but what the aberrations of the a source?" specula necessitate.” A singular phenomenon was frequently observed, "a nebulous haze," which came on suddenly, and disappeared as rapidly; making the stars appear, while it lasted, as though surrounded by a "nebulous photosphere of greater or less extent," while to the naked eye the sky was perfectly clear. Similar phenomena occur in the atmosphere of England, but not with the frequency or suddenness of those at the cape. The clouds, too, as seen from the southern extremity of Africa, are more opaque than in our latitudes: in England, astronomers not unfrequently observe the stars while veiled by a thin stratum of cloud; but at the cape, the clouds are too opaque for the rays of light to pass through them. Of the nebula in connection with Argus, we read that, “It would manifestly be impossible, by verbal description, to give any just idea of the capricious forms and irregular gradations of light affected by the different branches and appendages of this nebula. Nor is it easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle it offers when viewed in a sweep, ushered in as it is by so glorious and innumerable a procession of stars, to which it forms a sort of climax, justifying expressions which, though I find them written in my journal in the excitement of the moment, would be thought extravagant if transferred to these pages. In fact, it is impossible for any one with the least spark of astronomical enthusiasm about him to pass soberly in review, with a powerful telescope, and in a fine night, that portion of the southern sky which is comprised between the sixth and thirteenth hours of right ascension, and from 146 to 149 degrees of north polar distance; such are the variety and interest of the objects he will encounter, and such the dazzling richness of the starry ground on which they are represented to his gaze. Of the star marked n, in the constellation Argus, and the great nebula surrounding it, we are informed that "there is perhaps no other sidereal object which unites more points of interest than this. Its situation is very remarkable, being in the midst of one of those rich and brilliant masses—a succession of which, curiously contrasted with dark adjacent spaces, (called by the old navigators' coal-sacks,') Instances of variability in some of the stars of the constitute the milky way in that portion of its course Little Bear have been detected of late years, on which which lies between the Centaur and the main body Sir John Herschel writes, in a profound and sugof Argo." The number of stars in this region is gestive strain of reasoning, "Future observation will immense, as many as 250 being in the field of the decide whether the change which is thus proved to telescope at one time. But the great point of in- have taken place be of periodical recurrence. terest is the star n, which, in Halley's catalogue, Ignorant as we are, however, both of the cause of 1677, is marked as of the fourth magnitude, and in solar and stellar light, and of the conditions which later catalogues as of the second magnitude. "It may influence its amount at different times, the law was on the 16th December, 1837," writes Sir John of regular periodicity is one which ought not to be Herschel," that resuming the photometrical com- too hastily generalized; and, at all events, there is parisons, in which, according to regular practice, evidence enough of slow and gradual change of lusthe brightest stars in sight, in whatever part of the tre in many stars, since the earlier ages of astronheavens, were first noticed, and arranged on a list, omy, to refute all a priori assumption as to the my astonishment was excited by the appearance of possible length of the cycle of variation of any para new candidate for distinction among the very ticular star. The subject is one of the utmost brightest stars of the first magnitude, in a part of physical interest. The grand phenomena of gethe heavens with which, being perfectly familiar, I ology afford, as it appears to me, the highest prewas certain that no such brilliant object had before sumptive evidence of changes in the general climate been seen. After a momentary hesitation, the of our globe. I cannot otherwise understand alternatural consequence of a phenomenon so utterly un- nations of heat and cold, so extensive, as at one expected, and referring to a map for its configur- epoch to have clothed high northern latitudes with ations with the other conspicuous stars in the neigh- a more than tropical luxuriance of vegetation; at borhood, I became satisfied of its identity with my another, to have buried vast tracts of middle Europe, old acquaintance n Argus. Its light was, however, now enjoying a genial climate, and smiling with nearly tripled." The star attained its maximum fertility, under a glacier crust of enormous thickof brightness, when it was nearly equal to a of the ness. Such changes seem to point to some cause Centaur, on the 2d of January, 1838, after which more powerful than the mere local distribution of it faded into its former appearance. But since that land and water (according to Mr. Lyell's views) can period, it has again brightened so as "to have sur- be well supposed to have been. In the slow secupassed Canopus, and even to have approached Sirius lar variations of our supply of light and heat from in lustre." This was in 1843, and was noticed by the sun, which, in the immensity of time past, may observers in different parts of the world; and again, have gone to any extent, and succeeded each other in 1845, the star passed through a similar state of in any order, without violating the analogy of fluctuating brilliance. As Sir John Herschel ob- sidereal phenomena which we know to have taken serves-"A strange field of speculation is opened place, we have a cause, not indeed established as a by this phenomenon. The temporary stars hereto- fact, but readily admissible as something beyond a fore recorded have all become totally extinct. Va- bare possibility, fully adequate to the utmost reriable stars, so far as they have been carefully quirements of geology. A change of half a magattended to, have exhibited periodical alterations, in nitude in the lustre of the sun, regarded as a fixed some degree at least regular, of splendor and com- star, spread over successive geological epochs-now progressive, now receding, now stationary, accord- | give rise to such enormous dynamical phenomena, ing to the evidence of warmer or colder general tem- for such they undoubtedly are. The efficient cause perature which geological research has disclosed, or of fluctuations in our atmosphere, in terrestrial may hereafter reveal-is what no astronomer would meteorology, is apparent enough; namely, external now hesitate to admit as in itself a perfectly reason-agency-the heating power of the sun. Without able and not improbable supposition. Such a sup- this, all would be tranquil enough; but in the solar position has assuredly far less of extravagance about meteorology we have no such extraneous source of it than the idea that the sun, by its own proper mo- alternate elevations and depressions of temperature, tion, may, in indefinite ages past, have traversed altering the specific gravity, and disturbing the regions so crowded with stars, as to affect the cli-equilibrium, of its atmospheric strata. The cause mate of our planet by the influence of their radiation. of such movements as we observe, and upon so imNor can it be objected that the character of a vera mense a scale, must therefore reside within the sun causa is wanting in such a hypothesis. Of the ex- itself; and it is there we must seek it." Sir John citing cause of the radiant emanations from the sun proceeds to show that the rotation of the sun upon and stars, we know nothing. It may consist, for its own axis may be the chief cause, by producing aught we can tell, in vast currents of electricity currents of air in opposite directions, similar to our traversing space, (according to cosmical laws,) and trade-winds, and with a density at the equator difwhich, meeting in the higher regions of their atmos- ferent from that at the poles. "The spots, in this pheres with matter properly attenuated, and other-view of the subject," he then pursues, "would wise disposed to electric phosphorescence, may come to be assimilated to those regions on the earth's render such matter radiant, after the manner of our surface in which, for the moment, hurricanes and own aurora borealis, under the influence of terres- tornadoes prevail. The upper strata being temtrial electric streams. Or it may result from actual porarily carried downwards, displacing, by its imcombustion going on in the higher regions of their petus, the two strata of luminous matter beneath, atmospheres, the elements of which, so united, may (which may be conceived as forming a habitually be in a constant course of separation and restoration tranquil limit between the opposite, upper, and unto their active state of mutual combustibility, by der currents,) the upper of course to a greater exvital processes of extreme activity going on at their tent than the lower; and thus wholly or partially habitable surfaces, analogous to that by which vege- denuding the opaque surface of the sun below. tation on our earth separates carbonic acid (a pro- Such processes cannot be unaccompanied with vorduct of combustion) into its elements, and so restores ticose motions, which, left to themselves, die away their combustibility. With specific hypothesis as by degrees, and dissipate; with this peculiarity, to the cause of solar and sidereal light and heat, we that their lower portions come to rest more speedily have, however, no concern. It suffices that they than their upper, by reason of the greater resistance must have a cause, and that this cause, inscrutable below, as well as the remoteness from the point as it may be, does in several cases, and therefore of action, which lies in a higher region, so that may in one more, determine the production of phe- their centre (as seen in our water-spouts, which are nomena of the kind in question.' nothing but small tornadoes) appears to retreat upwards. Now, this agrees perfectly with what is observed during the obliteration of the solar spots, which appear as if filled in by the collapse of their sides, the penumbra closing in upon the spot, and disappearing after it. The spots are black; the penumbra a nearly uniform half-shadow, with, however, here and there undefinable definite spaces of a second depth of shade. There is no gradual melting of the one shade into the otherspot into penumbra, penumbra into full light. The idea conveyed is more that of the successive withdrawal of veils, the partial removal of definite films, than the melting away of a mist, or the mutual dilution of gaseous media. Films of immiscible liquids having a certain cohesion, floating on a dark or transparent ocean, and liable to temporary removal by winds, would rather seem suggested by the general tenor of the appearances, though they are far from being wholly explicable by this conception, at least if any considerable degree of transparency be allowed to the luminous matter. Turning to that portion of the volume in which the observations of the solar spots are contained, we read that, during a part of 1836-7, a more than usual accumulation and disturbance took place in the spots on the surface of the great luminary. One of the spots, on measurement, was found to occupy a space "of nearly five square minutes. Now, a minute in linear dimension on the sun being 27,500 miles, and a square minute 756,000,000, we have here an area of 3,780,000,000 square miles included in one vast region of disturbance, and this requires to be increased for the effect of foreshortening. The black centre of the spot of May 25 would have allowed the globe of the earth to drop through it, leaving a thousand miles clear of contact on all sides of that tremendous gulf." From January to March of 1837, numerous spots of most complex structure and character were formed in copious succession. During April and May the spots were fewer in number, and assumed generally a rounded appearance; in June and July they again increased; while we read that "in August and October, so far as observed, the sun seemed to have passed into a quiescent state, the spots being few, small, and irreg-written. ularly disposed." Sir John Herschel insists strongly upon a continuous and systematic observation of the solar spots, as the only means by which to explain the phenomena they present. "We are naturally led to inquire for an efficient cause-for a vis matrix-to * The sagacity of these views is only equalled by the earnest philosophical spirit in which they are Such works as that just passed in review become landmarks for science, by which present and future discoverers may direct their steps. We feel much pleasure in making it known to a large circle of readers, who otherwise would never hear of its publication. 558 From Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. - THOMAS MACAULAY BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. To attempt a new appraisement of the intellectual character of Thomas Macaulay, we are impelled by various motives. Our former notice of him was short, hurried and imperfect. Since it was written, too, we have had an opportunity of seeing and hearing the man, which, as often happens in such cases, has given a more distinct and tangible shape to our views, as well as considerably modified them. Above all, the public attention has of late, owing to circumstances, been so strongly turned upon him, that we are tolerably sure of carrying it along with us in our present discussion. The two most popular of British authors are, at present, Charles Dickens and Thomas Macaulay. The supremacy of the former is verily one of the signs of the times. He has no massive or profound intellect-no lore superior to a schoolboy's-no vast or creative imagination-little philosophical insight, little power of serious writing, and little sympathy with either the subtler and profounder parts of man, or with the grander features of nature; (witness his description of Niagara-he would have painted the next pump better!) And yet, through his simplicity and sincerity, his boundless bon hommie, his fantastic humor, his sympathy with every-day life, and his absolute and unique dominion over every region of the odd, he has obtained a popularity which Shakspeare nor hardly Scott in their lifetime enjoyed. He is ruling over us like a fairy king, or Prince Prettyman-strong men as well as weak yielding to the glamour of his tiny rod. Louis the 14th walked so erect, and was so perfect in the management of his person, that people mistook his very size, and it was not discovered till after his death, that he was a little and not a large man. So many of the admirers of Dickens have been so dazzled by the elegance of his proportions, the fairy beauty of his features, the minute grace of his motions, and the small sweet smile which plays about his mouth, that they have imagined him to be a Scott, or even a Shakspeare. To do him justice, he himself has never fallen into such an egregious mistake. He has seldom, if ever, sought to alter, by one octave, the note nature gave him, and which is not that of an eagle nor of a nightingale, nor of a lark, but of a happy, homely gleesome "Cricket on the Hearth." Small almost as his own Tiny Tim, dressed in as dandified a style as his own Lord Frederick Verisoft, he is as full of the milk of human kindness as his own Brother Cheeryble; and we cannot but love the man who has first loved all human beings, who can own Newman Noggs as a brother, and can find something to respect in a Bob Sawyers, and something to pity in a Ralph Nickleby Never was a monarch of popular literature less envied or more loved; and while rather wondering at the length of his reign over such a capricious * In a "Gallery of Portraits." domain as that of letters, and while fearlessly expressing our doubts as to his greatness or perthat of gentleness of a good, wide-minded, and manent dominion, we own that his sway has been kindly man; and take this opportunity of wishing long life and prosperity to "Bonnie Prince Charlie." In In a different region, and on a higher and haughtier seat, is Thomas Macaulay exalted. general literature, as Dickens in fiction, is he held to be facile princeps. He is, besides, esteemed a rhetorician of a high class—a statesman of no ordinary calibre-a lyrical poet of much mark and on this high pedestal, he "has purposed in his likelihood—a scholar ripe and good-and, mounted the hand of the Historic Muse one of her richest heart to take another step," and to snatch from laurels. To one so gifted in the prodigality of Heaven, can we approach in any other attitude but that of prostration? or dare we hope for symof free and fearless criticism? pathy, while we proceed to make him the subject Before proceeding to consider his separate claims upon public admiration, we will sum up, in a few He is a gifted but not, in a high sense, a great sentences, our impressions of his general character. man. He is a rhetorician without being an orator. He is endowed with great powers of perception He has deep sympathies with genius, without and acquisition, but with no power of origination. possessing genius of the highest order itself. He He is not more destitute of original genius than is strong and broad, but not subtle or profound. he is of high principle and purpose. and cultivated to an intense degree. What he common faculties developed in a large measure, wants is the gift that cannot be given-the power that cannot be counterfeited-the wind that bloweth where it listeth-the vision, the joy, and the sorrow with which no stranger intermeddleth-the "light which never was on sea or shore-the consecration and the poet's dream." He has all To such gifts, indeed, he does not pretend, and never has pretended. To roll the raptures of poetry, without emulating its speciosa miraculato write worthily of heroes, without aspiring to the furnish to the utmost degree his own mind, without heroic to write history without enacting it-to leading the minds of others one point further than to the admiration of himself and of his idols, seems, after all, to have been the main object of He has played the finite game of talent, and not his ambition, and has already been nearly satisfied. the infinite game of genius. the top of the mountain, and not the blue profound His goal has been beyond; and on the point he has sought he may speedily be seen, relieved against the heights which he cannot reach-a marble fixture, exalted attain the attitudes and exaltation of genius is a and motionless. Talent stretching itself out to pitiable and painful position, but it is not that of Macaulay. With piercing sagacity he has, from the first, discerned his proper intellectual powers, and sought, with his whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, to cultivate them. With a rare combination of the arts of age and the fire of youth, the sagacity of the worldling and the enthusiasm of the scholar, he has sought self-development as his principal, if not only end. He is a gifted but not, in a high sense, a great man. He possesses all those ornaments, accomplishments, and even natural endowments, which the great man requires for the full emphasis and effect of his power, (and which the greatest alone can entirely dispense with ;) but the power does not fill, possess, and shake the drapery. The lamps are lit in gorgeous effulgence; the shrine is modestly, yet magnificently, adorned; there is everything to tempt a god to descend; but the god descends not—or if he does, it is only Maia's son, the eloquent, and not Jupiter, the thunderer. The distinction between the merely gifted and the great is, we think, this-the gifted adore greatness and the great; the great worship the infinite, the eternal, and the god-like. The gifted gaze at the moon like reflections of the Divinethe great, with open face, look at its naked sun, and each look is the principle and prophecy of an action. "Mac- or in Voltaire shedding its withering smile across Mac natural circle of thought-no momentary splendors, like flashes of midnight lightning, revealing how much-no thoughts beckoning us away with silent finger, like ghosts, into dim and viewless regions and he never even nears that divine darkness which ever edges the widest and loftiest excursions of imagination and of reason. His style and manner may be compared to crystal, but not to the "terrible crystal" of the prophets and apostles of literature. There is the sea of glass, but it is not mingled with fire, or at least the fire has not been heated seven times, nor has it descended from the seventh heaven. He has profound sympathies with genius, without possessing genius of the highest order itself. Genius, indeed, is his intellectual god. It is (contrary to a common opinion) not genius that Thomas Carlyle worships. The word genius he seldom uses, in writing or in conversation, except in derision. We can conceive a savage cachinna-meaning-broken, but broken off from some supertion at the question, if he thought Cromwell or Danton a great genius. It is energy in a certain state of powerful precipitation that he so much admires. With genius, as existing almost undiluted in the person of such men as Keats, he cannot away. It seems to him only a long swoon or St. Vitus' dance. It is otherwise with Macaulay. If we trace him throughout all his writings, we will find him watching for genius with as much care and fondness as a lover uses in following the footsteps of his mistress. This, like a golden ray, has conducted him across all the wastes and wildernesses of history. It has brightened to his eye each musty page and wormcaten volume. Each morning has he risen exulting to renew the search; and he is never half so eloquent as when dwelling on the achievements of genius, as sincerely and rapturously as if he were reciting his own. His sympathies are as wide as they are seen. Genius, whether thundering with Chatham in the House of Lords, or mending kettles and dreaming dreams with Bun-adorn; thus, in borrowing from Hall the antithesis yan in Elstowe—whether reclining in the saloons of Holland House with De Stael and Byron, or driven from men as on a new Nebuchadnezzar whirlwind, in the person of poor wandering Shelly -whether in Coleridge, "With soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty giver;" Consequently, he has no power of origination. We despise the charge of plagiarism, in its low and base sense, which has sometimes been advanced against him. He never commits conscious theft, though sometimes he gives all a father's welcome to thoughts to which he has not a father's claim. But the rose which he appropriates is seldom more than worthy of the breast which it is to applied by the one to the men of the French revolution, and by the other to the restored Royalists in the time of Charles the Second, "dwarfish virtues and gigantic crimes," he has taken what he might have lent, and, in its application, has changed it from a party calumny into a striking truth. The men of the revolution were not men of dwarfish virtues and gigantic vices; both were stupendous when either were possessed; it was themes, but it requires no more a wizard to deotherwise with the minions of Charles. When termine from your writings whether you have our hero lights his torch, it is not at the chariot adequately thought on them, than to tell from a of the sun; he ascends seldom higher than Hazlitt man's eye whether he is or is not looking at the or Hall-Coleridge, Schiller, and Goethe are un-sun. touched. But without reärguing the question of We charge Macaulay, as well as Dickens, with a originality, that quality is manifestly not his. It systematic shrinking from meeting in a manful style were as true that he originated Milton, Dryden, those dread topics and relations at which we have Bacon, or Byron, as that he originated the views hinted, and this, whether it springs, as Humboldt which his articles develop of their lives or genius. says in his own case, from a want of subjective A search after originality is never successful. understanding, or whether it springs from a regard Novelty is even shyer than truth, for if you search for, or fear of, popular opinion, or whether it springs after the true, you will often, if not always, find from moral indifference, argues, on the first supthe new; but if you search after the new, you position, a deep mental deficiency—on the second, will, in all probability, find neither the new nor a cowardice unworthy of their position or on the true. In seeking for paradoxes, Macaulay the third, a state of spirit which the age, in its sometimes stumbles on, but more frequently stum-professed teachers, will not much longer endure. bles over, truth. His essays are masterly treatises, An earnest period, bent on basing its future prowritten learnedly, carefully conned, and pronounced gress upon fixed principles, fairly and irrevocably in a tone of perfect assurance; the Pythian pant-set down, to solve the problem of its happiness and ings, the abrupt and stammering utterances of the destiny, will not long refrain from bestowing the seer, are awanting. name of brilliant trifler on the man, however gifted and favored, who so slenderly sympathizes with it, in this high, though late and difficult calling. so profound an interest to the writings of Arnold, and invests his very fragments with a certain air of greatness; each sentence seems given in on oath. It is this which glorifies even D'Aubigne's Romance of the Reformation, for he seeks at least to show God in history, like a golden thread, pervading, uniting, explaining, and purifying it all. No such passion for truth as Arnold's, no such steady vision of those great, outshining laws of justice, In connection with this defect, we find in him little metaphysical gift or tendency. There is no "speculation in his eye." If the mysterious It follows almost as a necessity from these reregions of thought, which are at present attracting marks, that Macaulay exhibits no high purpose. so many thinkers, have ever possessed any charm Seldom so much energy and eloquence have been for him, that charm has long since passed away. more entirely divorced from a great uniting and If the "weight, the burden, and the mystery, of all consecrating object; and in his forthcoming histhis unintelligible world," have ever pressed him tory we fear that this deficiency will be glaringly to anguish, that anguish seems now forgotten as a manifest. History, without the presence of high nightmare of his youth. The serpents which purpose, is but a series of dissolving views—as strangle other Laocoons, or else keep them bat-brilliant it may be, but as disconnected, and not so tling all their life before high heaven, have long impressive. It is this, on the contrary, that gives ago left, if indeed they had ever approached, him. His joys and sorrows, sympathies and inquiries, are entirely of the "earth, earthy," though it is an earth beautified by the smile of genius, and by the midnight sun of the past. It may appear presumptuous to criticize his creed, where not an article has been by himself indicated, except perhaps the poetical first principle that "beauty is truth and truth beauty;" but we see about him neither the firm grasp of one who holds a dog-mercy, and retribution, which pervade all human matic certainty, nor the vast and vacant stretch of story, as D'Aubigne's, and in a far higher degree one who has failed after much effort to find the as Carlyle's, do we expect realized in Macaulay. object, and who says, I clasp-what is it that I His history, in all likelihood, will be the splendid clasp ?" Toward the silent and twilight lands of cenotaph of his party. It will be brilliant in thought, where reside, half in glimmer and half in parts, tedious as a whole-curiously and minutely gloom, the dread questions of the origin of evil, the learned-written now with elaborate pomp, and destiny of man, our relation to the lower animals, now with elaborate negligence-heated by party and to the spirit world, he never seems to have spirit whenever the fires of enthusiasm begin to been powerfully or for any length of time im-pale-it will abound in striking literary and perpelled. We might ask with much more propri-sonal sketches, and will easily rise to and above ety at him the question which a reviewer asked the level of the scenes it describes, just because at Carlyle, "Can you tell us, quite in confidence, few of those scenes, from the character of the your private opinion as to the place where wicked period, are of the highest moral interest or granpeople go?" And, besides, what think you of deur. But a history forming a transcript, as if in God? or of that most profound and awful Mystery the short-hand of a superior being, of the leading of Godliness? Have you ever thought deeply on events of the age, solemn in spirit, subdued in such subjects at all? Or if so, why does the lan-tone, grave and testamentary in language, proguage of a cold conventionalism, or of an unmean- found in insight, judicial in impartiality, and final ing fervor, distinguish all your allusions to them? as a Median law in effect, we might have perhaps It was not, indeed, your business to write on such expected from Mackintosh, but not from Macaulay. 66 |