nor are we indeed we know few sights more lamentably ludicrous than an election. Let a stranger be introduced, for the first time, to such a scene-let him be shown a multitude of men reeling about the streets of a boroughtown, fighting within an inch of their lives, smashing windows at the Black Bear, or where

"High in the street, o'erlooking all the place The Rampant Lion shows his kingly face," and yelling like those animals in Exeter 'Change at supper time; and then let him be told that these worthies are choosing the senate of England-persons to make the laws that are to bind them and their children, property, limb, and life, and he would certainly think the process unpropitious. Yet, in spite of it all, a number of individuals are thus collected, who transact the business of the nation, and represent its various interests tolerably well. The machinery is hideous, but it produces not a bad article, and with this Paley is satisfied.—The House of Lords, again, is composed, in a great degree, of officers of the army and navy, courtiers, ecclesiastics, young men of one-andtwenty, and country gentlemen, occupied in the care of their farms, and their studs, or their game. This description does not include all, but very many of the members. What should qualify such an assembly for being the court of last appeal in the gravest and most intricate causes? Paley is well aware of the apparent anomaly; the machinery looks unpromising, but still it works well; and again he is content. A standingarmy is the bye-word of every liberal politician; it is a ready instrument of oppression in the hands of an arbitrary government, and may stifle the voice of law and reason-inter arma toga silet. Paley, of course, perceives all this, but he believes that a certain quantity of military strength is necessary for the wellbeing of the commonwealth, and he thinks one good soldier and two industrious peasants better than three raw militiamen, too clownish to drill men, and too military to drill turnips. The machinery, he will allow, is dangerous, but again it works well; and again Paley is pleased. It need not be denied, that he now and then puts forth a bold dictum, which startles for a moment-but only let us hear him out. The sting of Paley's chapters is much more often in the head than the tail. He throws in qualifications, and exceptions, and restrictions so dangerous (though often inconsiderable when taken individually), that the man-mountain, which at first sight looked ready to turn and overwhelm a nation, is wholly unable to stir, and may be safely gazed at by Lilliputian naturalists, as a very curious and a very innocent monster. For instance," government is to be obeyed so long as the interest of the society requires it, and no longer." "A second Daniel !" is now

the cry set up. But every invasion of the constitution, of the liberty and rights of the subject, every stretch of power or prerogative, every breach of promise or oath, does not justify resistance. But the positive evil of the abuse, whatever it is, must outweigh the probable evil of the attempt to correct it. But the interest of the whole society must be consulted, not that of one or more of its parts so that it was the duty of an American, for instance (the case is Paley's own) (Mor. Philosoph. b. vi. c. 2), to weigh what England was likely to lose by his revolt, as well as what America was likely to gain by. it, before he could strike a blow with a clear conscience. But the case of oppression must be strongly made out; a species of necessity for opposition must arise; the advantage proposed must be, not indeed certain, yet all but certain :-nothing extravagant, nothing chimerical, nothing doubtful in any considerable degree, can be deemed a sufficient reason for putting the tranquillity of a nation to hazard, and disturbing the calm in which a good man desires to pass the days of his sojourn upon earth. (See Fast Sermon, xvi. vol. vii.) Now, with all these drawbacks, (which we have given as nearly as possible in Paley's own words,) we say the proposition in question is as harmless as the sentence against Antonio, that the Jew might exact the pound of flesh, provided he shed no blood, and did not cut off more or less by the estimation of a hair. Nay, no sooner does he find the people actually in a disposition to vote that the interest of society no longer required government to be obeyed, and that the time was come when redress was to be sought in a change of system, than he hastens to send out a judicious damper (which caused Dr. Parr, we are told, to hang his picture the wrong side upwards), in the shape of " Reasons for Contentment, addressed to the Labouring Classes;" and in one of his Fast-day Sermons (vol. vii. ser. xv.), he positively goes out of his way to remark that Nineveh was saved, not by a political change, for of that we hear nothing, but by a personal reformation among all classes of the community. The truth was, when the question became serious, and the application of principles was called for, Paley had too much common sense to be satisfied with that "enlarged view" of his subject for which Mr. Meadley commends him on an occasion that little

justified his praise. Then his "enlarged view," if he had ever entertained it in his closet, narrowed surprisingly, and well it might. We do not dispute, that in the obnoxious passages of his Moral Philosophy to which we have referred, and in others like to them, Paley may seem to treat princes and potentates with less ceremony than is their due. But in all this, we are persuaded, there was no mean jealousy of high station at work, much less anything like studied insult in

tended. It was the Sabine simplicity of Paley's mind, which quite unfitted him for being a respecter of persons. The pomp, the circumstance, the chivalry of rank were lost upon him. He had a touch in him of Peter Bell

"A primrose on the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

When the idea of a king presented itself to Paley, it was merely that of an individual invested with great substantial power, to be wielded for the benefit of his people. Crown and sceptre, beef-eaters, state-coaches and guardsmen, the trappings, in short, of royalty, did not enter in as elements. Not that he affected contempt of such matters, for he knew human nature too well to think that they were to be despised; but they were not the matters to make any impression on his mind; to use an engraver's phrase, they would not bite. He preaches before the judges and grand jury-wigs, trumpets, javelins, white wands, all vanish at once, and he sees nothing before him but a set of fallible men, called upon by their country to rule with diligence; and he suggests to them the true principle, and exhorts them faithfully with all his power. He delivers another sermon to the younger clergy:-he is nothing moved by the gowns, cassocks, and clerical apparatus which offer themselves to his eye; all he can find is an assembly of men of like passions as others, and with some temptations of their own, needing admonition; and admonition he gives them, with a hearty goodwill not to be mistaken :-" Mimic not the vices of higher life, hunt not after great acquaintance;"" be sober, be chaste;" "keep out of public-houses;" "learn to live alone;" "divide your sermons into heads-it may be dispensed with in the hands of a master; in yours, the want of it will produce a bewil1 dered rhapsody." These are very homely maxims, and conveyed in very homely phrases, yet there is no assumption of authority in it all, no desire to give offence, no acrimony, no suspicion of the character of his hearers. It was simply the plain speech of a single-hearted man, earnest in his calling, looking upon different stations as merely bringing out different types of man's nature, which was radically the same in all; and, indeed, making so little account of artificial distinctions, that whether his congregation were gentle or simple, peasants or prebends, city or village, Paley would give them the very same sermon in the very same words. Let us not make him a politician against his will, and against the general evidence of his life and pursuits. In his serious hours he was occupied, abundantly occupied, in concerns for a clergyman more appropriate, and for any man more weighty.

"He never seemed to know," says his son, "that he deserved the name of a politician,

and would probably have been equally amused at the grave attempts made to draw him into, or withdraw him from any political bias."Life, p. 191.

He would employ himself in his Natural Theology, and then gather his peas for dinner, very likely gathering some hint for his work at the same time. He would converse with his classical neighbour, Mr. Yates, or he would reply to his invitation that he could not come, for that he was busy knitting. He would station himself at his garden wall, which overhung the river, and watch the progress of a cast-iron bridge in building, asking questions of the architect, and carefully examining every pin and screw with which it was put together. He would loiter along a river, with his angle-rod, musing upon what he supposed to pass in the mind of a pike when he bit, and when he refused to bite; or he would stand by the sea-side, and speculate upon what a young shrimp could mean by jumping in the sun.

"With the handle of his stick in his mouth, he would move about his garden in a short hurried step, now stopping to contemplate a butterfly, a flower, or a snail, and now earnestly engaged in some new arrangement of his flower-pots."

He would take from his own table to his study the back-bone of a hare or a fish's head; and he would pull out of his pocket, after a walk, a plant or stone to be made tributary to an argument. His manuscripts were as motley as his occupations; the workshop of a mind ever on the alert: evidences mixed up with memorandums for his will; an interesting discussion brought to an untimely end by the hiring of servants, the letting of fields, sending his boys to school, reproving the refractory members of an hospital; here a dedication, there one of his children's exercises-in another place a receipt for cheap soup. He would amuse his fireside by family anecdotes :-how one of his ancestors (and he was praised as a pattern of perseverance) separated two pounds of white and black pepper which had been accidentally mixed-“ patiens pulveris," he might truly have added; and how, when the Paley arms were wanted, recourse was had to a family tankard which was supposed to bear them, but which he always took a malicious pleasure in insisting had been bought at a sale-

" Hæc est

Vita solutorum miserà ambitione gravique;"

the life of a man far more happily employed than in the composition of political pamphlets, or in the nurture of political discontent. Nay, when his friend Mr. Carlyle is about going out with Lord Elgin to Constantinople, the very head-quarters of despotism, we do not perceive, amongst the multitude of most characteristic hints and queries which Paley addresses to him, a single fling at the

Turk, or a single hope expressed that the day was not very far distant when the Cossacks would be permitted to erect the standard of liberty in his capital.

"I will do your visitation for you (Mr. Carlyle was chancellor of the diocese), in case of your absence, with the greatest pleasure it is neither a difficulty nor a favour.

"Observanda-1. Compare every thing with English and Cumberland scenery: e. g., rivers with Eden, groves with Corby, mountains with Skiddaw; your sensations of buildings, streets, persons, &c. &c.; e. g. whether the Mufti be like Dr. Grand Seignior, Mr.

the

"2. Give us one day at Constantinople minutely from morning to night-what you do, see, eat, and hear.

"3. Let us know what the common people have to dinner; get, if you can, a peasant's actual dinner and bottle: for instance, if you see a man working in the fields, call to him to bring the dinner he has with him, and describe it minutely.

4. The diversions of the common people; whether they seem to enjoy their amusements, and be happy, and sport, and laugh; farm-houses, or any thing answering to them, and of what kind; same of public-houses, roads.

5. Their shops; how you get your breeches mended, or things done for you, and how (i. e. well or ill done); whether you see the tailor, converse with him, &c.

"6. Get into the inside of a cottage; describe furniture, utensils, what you find actually doing.

Such was Paley. A man singularly without guile, and yet often misunderstood or misrepresented; a man who was thought to have no learning, because he had no pedantry, and who was too little of a quack to be reckoned a philosopher; who would have been infallibly praised as a useful writer on the theory of government, if he had been more visionary-and would have been esteemed a deeper divine, if he had not been always so intelligible; who has been suspected of being never serious because he was often jocular, and before those, it should seem, who were not to be trusted with a joke; who did not deal much in protestations of his faith, counting it proof enough of his sincerity (we are ashamed of noticing even thus far insinuations against it) to bring arguments for the truth of Christianity unanswered and unanswerable-to pour forth exhortations to the fulfilment of the duties enjoined by it, the most solemn and intenseand to evince his own practical sense of its influence, by crowning his labours with a work to the glory and praise of God, at a season when his hand was heaviest upon him -a work which lives, and ever will live, to testify that no pains of body could shake for a moment his firm and settled persuasion, that in every thing, and at every crisis, we are God's creatures, that life is passed in His constant presence, and that death resigns us to His merciful disposal.

LAW OF VEGETABLE LIFE.*

ture.-No. III.)

7. Describe minutely how you pass one day on ship-board; learn to take and apply lunar, or other observations, and how the midshipmen, &c. do it.

8. What sort of fish you get, and how dressed. I should think your business would be to make yourself master of the middle Greek. My compliments to Buonaparte, if you meet with him, which I think is very likely. Pick up little articles of dress, tools, furniture, especially from low life-as an actual smock, &c.

"9. What they talk about; company. "10. Describe your impression upon first seeing things; upon catching the first view of Constantinople; the novelties of the first day you pass there.

"In all countries and climates, nations and languages, carry with you the best wishes of, dear Carlyle,

"Your affectionate friend,
"W. PALEY."

IT frequently happens that the results of experience are extensively acted upon by practical men, in reference to particular operations, long before the principle concerned in the arrangement be distinctly recognised, or its application to objects under other circumstances, be deemed either possible or expedient. The theoretical naturalist frequently receives the first hint of his generalizations from those who have confined their attention to effects merely, and who have marked these even under peculiarly confined limits. Yet we must be contented to receive knowledge from every quarter, though in scanty portions, and rejoice in every contribution likely to accelerate the march of improvement.

It is well known, that, in the animal kingdom, all those circumstances which accelerate the growth of the body, exercise a proportional influence on the reproductive system, so that the period of puberty is

* Ou a remarkable law of Vegetable Life, and its influence on several operations in Horticulture and Agriculture, by the Rev. Dr. Fleming.

uniformly earlier in domesticated than in wild animals, and in those which are fed plentifully with food than in those which are scantily supplied. These effects of an abundant supply of food are exhibited throughout the whole range of the animal kingdom, as far as observation has hitherto extended. The very reverse of this arrangement seems to prevail in the vegetable kingdom. Where plants are furnished with an abundant supply of food, their reproductive energies develope themselves slowly, and flowers and fruit or seeds are late in appearing. On the other hand, when the supply of nourishment is scanty; when the plant is, as it were, starved, and when death is threatened, the reproductive energies act with readiness, flowers and seeds are produced, and the extinction of the race guarded against; or, in other words, the scantier the supply of nourishment, the earlier will a plant propagate its kind. Let us now attend to some of the exhibitions of this law, and their application to useful purposes.

In reference to SEEDS, it has been long known to gardeners, that those which are new or fresh produce plants with more luxuriant foliage, and less inclined to run into flower and fruit, than such as have been kept for some time, and are partially spoiled. In the first case, the supply of nourishment, during the early stages of its growth, being in abundance, the plant enlarges rapidly in size; while, in the latter case, the scanty supply causes the plant, in obedience to the law which we have announced, to run more directly to flower and seed. These circum stances are carefully considered in the culture of cucumbers and melons, the seeds of which are seldom employed until several years old. Such, indeed, is the attention paid to this condition, that we find in books on horticulture the following grave recommendation:-"If new seed only can be had, it should be carried a week or two in the breeches pocket, to dry away some of the more watery parts.' A similar attention to this law, in reference to the seeds of other vegetables, is productive of equal benefit. Peas, for example, are well known as apt to run to straw, where the ground is rich or moist. The employment of old is the only suitable remedy. In some newly enclosed carselands, the evil of excessive luxuriance is frequently experienced to an inconvenient degree during two or three years. The straw is great in quantity, but the grain is always deficient. In vain is recourse had to early or thin sowing, while the use of old seed is neglected. We need not here guard against misconception, by stating in detail, that, where seeds are kept too long, they either do not vegetate, or give origin to a weak, sickly, useless plant. Where luxuriance of leaf and great size are the objects aimed at in the cultivation of garden or farm produce, the influence we

have been considering must be guarded against as an evil; especially, for example, with turnips and cabbage; old seed producing plants too much disposed to run to flower.

Independent of the influence which this law exercises on the future plant, as the result of the condition of the seed, we have it in our power to witness its operation under other circumstances, in the growing plant itself. In the management of fruit-trees, there are a variety of plans pursued, which, though obviously depending on this law of the vegetable kingdom, are frequently but imperfectly understood by the practical gardener. The transplanting of fruit-trees hastens the production of flower-buds. A tree which for years has shown no tendency to produce flower-buds, but which has been exclusively occupied in the extension of its roots and branches, will, upon being shifted from its place, soon exhibit symptoms of a change. The roots, by this process, have been in part injured, the supply of sap to the tree during the following season has in consequence become diminished, and the plant ceasing in a great measure to extend its size, hastens to propagate its kind by the production of flower-buds, and the subsequent display of blossoms and fruit.

The diminished supply of sap, and the consequent hastening of the production of fruit-buds, is accomplished by several other plans equally efficacious. When a rank growing fruit-tree is engrafted on a slow growing stock, or, in other words, when a tree requiring much sap is compelled to receive its supply through a tree having but a scanty supply, the engrafted branch will come earlier into fruit than if it had been always supplied with abundant nourishment. This method of accelerating the production of fruit, and termed dwarfing, is particularly serviceable in enabling the cultivator of new varieties to become early acquainted with their respective merits.

When fruit trees are prone to run to wood, gardeners are accustomed to lay bare a portion of their roots during winter. By this exposure many of the fibres are destroyed, and the vigour of all greatly diminished; so that the sap, during the following summer, is transmitted to the branches in less quantity, and the production of fruit-buds is the consequence.

Fruit-trees, luxuriant in leaves and branches, but bad bearers, are sometimes forced into a productive state, by having portions of the bark removed by the knife, or wires twisted round the stem or the branches. In this case, the ascent of the sap is indirectly diminished, by the obstruction of the vessels containing the proper juices, the death of the plant, or portion of the plant, is threatened, and the reproductive organs speedily exercise their functions. The late Dr. Walker, Professor

of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, who had devoted much time to the investigation of vegetable physiology, intimates, that the effects here produced by barking, or the twisting of wires, have been accomplished by other means. He says, (in his Economical History of the Hebrides, ii. p. 298), “To some standard fruit-trees, honeysuckle indeed may be applied, with great advantage; these, when even of considerable age, do sometimes continue to run so much to wood, and especially towards the heart of the tree, that it remains quite unfruitful. To plant a vigorous honeysuckle at the foot of such a tree, is an easy effectual remedy, and much better than any pruning. The honeysuckle grows up, occupies the heart of the tree, checks its luxuriance, directs its vegetation towards the extremities, and renders it fruitful. A large apple-tree of the above description, above fifty years old, and which had always been barren, was rendered by this practice extremely fruitful. When this end is answered, which will happen in a few years, the honeysuckle should then be removed, before it become injurious."

In the cultivation of flowering plants, a knowledge of this law of vegetable life, and its extensive application, may prove of great importance. Sir James Edward Smith, in his Introduction to Botany, mentions, that the Solandra grandiflora, a Jamaica shrub, was for a number of years cultivated in the English stoves, and propagated extensively by cuttings, each plant growing many feet in length every season, from the abundance of moisture and nourishment, without showing any signs of fructification. At length a pot of the Solandra was accidentally left without water in the dry stove at Kew; and, in consequence of this unintentional neglect, the luxuriant growth of its branches was greatly checked, and a flower came forth at the extremity of each. By a similar mode of treatment the same effect has since been frequently produced. Indeed, when the law is once properly understood, its application to a variety of cultivated plants, which are slow in showing flower, must be obvious. We have seen it practised with effect on several species of willows.

In the cultivation of a farm, numerous examples are frequently occurring of the influence of this arrangement in the vegetable economy. The crops growing on the thinnest parts of the soil, where the nourishment is consequently in diminished quantity, are always the first to exhibit their flowers, and to be ready for the sickle. In ill-managed farms, the harvest is usually much earlier (other things being equal), than in those where the crops are under the influence of a better system. We have had an opportunity of witnessing the delay of harvest, upon the application of lime, for example, in consequence of this increased supply of nourish

ment producing luxuriance of growth rather than early flowering.

In the management of plantations, the indications of this law may often prove of great value. Wherever we see a tree, in a very young state, exhibiting its flowers and producing fruit, we may anticipate its early decay. The premature formation of fruit-buds is the consequence of a scanty supply of nourishment, arising, it may be, from the roots having been injured, but generally from the plant being placed in an untavourable soil. Fir-trees readily indicate their disagreement with the soil by the production of cones, while yet young, and this early fructification is the almost sure forerunner of death. The Balsam-Fir, for example, which thrives well on a moist soil, will, if planted on a thin dry soil, begin in a few years to produce cones-then the bark appears covered with blisters, which, when opened, pour forth a limpid resin, and the tree, after languishing a few years, dies, after, in the course of a dozen of years, having attained the height of from twelve to twenty feet. In looking at those decorated villas, near a large town, which to the citizen appear so captivating, one may frequently discover the real character of the soil, by this premature flowering of the ornamental shrubbery.

Though plants differ from animals, in reference to this singular law, which we have here ventured to establish from an extensive induction of particulars, they agree, in other respects, in the influence which an abundant supply of nourishment exercises in the increase of the number and size of the progeny.

COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF
THE SEXES.
No. III.

(From the Oriental Herald.-No. LX.)

[THE following article is a continuation of the series of discussions on this subject, which we have translated from the "Gymnase," in our preceding numbers.—ED.]

THE CONDITION OF WOMEN AT different

EPOCHS OF SOCIETY.

The farther we look back into the past, the more apparent to the eye of the observer is the inequality which exists in the division of moral and material advantages between the two sexes. We shall endeavour to prove this fact, and also to explain its causes. The less progress society has made in civilization, the less are men enabled to make up for their want of strength by artificial means; and, consequently, the more indispensable becomes the development of their physical faculties for the attainment of those