one of those delicious letters to Manning a very kindly picture of Godwin, with whom he says he was much pleased, and goes on to say:

"He is a very well behaved, decent man,

nothing very brilliant about him or imposing, as you may suppose; quite another guess sort of gentleman from what your Anti-Jacobin Christians imagine him. I was well pleased to find he has neither horns nor claws; quite a tame creature I assure you. A middle-sized man both in stature and in understanding: whereas from his noisy fame, you would expect to find a Briareus Centimanus, or a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens."

Here we have a portrait of this calm, gentle, passionless man, this sort of abstract being, this shadowy, speculative creature, who from his study sent forth his explosive ideas without any idea that they could wound, or offend prejudices which he could not sympathize with, because he could not understand them.

It was something to prove the gentle nature of Lamb who dearly loved a prejudice, and the kindly one of Godwin, who did not comprehend one, that in spite of many trivial quarrels, these opposite characters never desisted from friendship.

Barry Cornwall speaks of the coldness and precision of Godwin's manner; and Lamb himself contrasts Rickman with Godwin, saying of the former, "He does not want explanation, translations, limitations, as Godwin does, when you make an assertion." What could have tortured Lamb more cruelly than this unreadiness to catch the thistledown of his wit, and to ask to have his quaint allusions diluted by expansion, or explained away?

Whilst on the subject of Lamb, we may express a hope that all his letters will some day be brought together and chronologically arranged. He hardly ever wrote a letter without a flash of wit, or an original observation, or a quaint conceit. His riotous merriment dwells closely beside his pathos, his smile very near the tear. We cannot afford to lose a particle of his writing. In some respects he is the most beautiful character in English literature. There have been very many stronger men intellectually, men who have done much more work, men who have bulked out a bigger fame, but Lamb has carved his own nook in our hearts. He is as unique in literature as Barham; he has the genialty,

humanity, and spontaneity of Barham; but beyond this he has a world of tenderness and sympathy all his own; he is lightning in his comprehension, though work, Coleridge, who truly loved him, his verbal delivery halted. In this very

says:

"Lamb is worth a hundred men of mere talents. Conversation with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells. One warms by exercise, Lamb every now and then irradiates, and the beam, though single and fine as a hair, is yet rich with colors, and I both see and feel it."

Here is a beautiful letter of Lamb's, after some quarrel with Godwin :

"I repent. Can that God whom thy votaries say that thou hast demolished expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the black Hypochondria never grip thy heart, till thou hast taken a friend for an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four inched bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything written from this domicile as serious.

"I rank thee with Alves, Latinè, Helvetius, or any of his cursed crew? Thou art my friend, and henceforth my philosopher-thou shall teach Distinction to the junior branches of my household, and Deception to the greyhaired Janitress at my door.

"What Are these atonements? Can Ar

cadias be brought upon knees, creeping and crouching?

"Come, as Macbeth's drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock-seven times in a day shalt thou batter at my peace, and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may Briareus, with his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker,

lead me such a life.

C. LAMB."

Godwin from author became bookseller and publisher, and had an opportunity of seeing all sides of the literary profession. No man could better judge the difficulties which beset the publisher than Godwin, because no man more truly smarted under them. He came to see that all wares are not necessarily profitable. That capital had to be sunk, time to be allowed, patience to be exercised, and that even then the harvest was not in proportion to the crop sown. Publishers, as distinct from booksellers, as a rule are not rich men; a single wholesale draper in Cannon Street or St. Paul's Churchyard probably makes in one year the combined profits of all the London publishers over a similar period; but these latter enjoy, and are wise if they appre

ciate it, the privilege of association with intellect, and to any but the coarsest minds this is a delightful and an ample equivalent for mere riches.

Godwin, however, a man of contemplation rather than of action, was unsuccessful, and had to pass through great trials, including, what to an honorable mind was perhaps the bitterest, bankruptcy. One feels for him very keenly in all these troubles. He goes through them with a certain sort of dignity. He appeals to his rich friends to start him again with the confidence begotten of his integrity. He expects the political world not to forget his Political Justice,' and is not surprised that he is helped. There may be a little of the old self-complacency in this, a little of the self-same feeling which made him surprised as a boy that his person was not sacred from the rod, but it supported him under trial, and made him rather feel that there was something rotten in the state when the author of 'Caleb Williams' was suffered to want, than that he himself had been wanting in prudence and foresight.

When Fox died Godwin wrote a sketch of him for the Morning Chronicle. It is much too long to give, but we do not know anything that has been said of Fox more worthy of that great man. It takes the view which we may call the HollandRussell view of Fox-natural to a Whig. The genius of Fox is no longer in dispute; but his policy, supposing he believed in it and had carried it out in office, would probably have ruined his country. Godwin claims for Fox, and perhaps justly, that he "is the most illustrious model of a Parliamentary leader on the side of liberty that this country has produced. This character is the appropriate glory of England, and Fox is the proper example of this character."

Godwin's comparison of the eloquence of the two statesmen is worth quoting. He had heard both speak, and been able to compare their eloquence. If he is unable even here to forget the partisan, we can take this into account in the narration:

"The eloquence of Pitt was cold and artificial. The complicated, yet harmonious, structure of his periods bespoke the man of contrivance and study. No man knew so well as Pitt how to envelope his meaning in a cloud of words, whenever he thought obscurity

best adapted to his purpose. No man was so skilful as Pitt to answer the questions of his information. He was never taken off his adversary without communicating the smallest guard. If Pitt ever appeared in some eyes to grow warm as he proceeded, it was with a measured warmth; there were no starts and he seemed to be as much under the minutest sallies, and sudden emanations of the soul; regulation in the most vehement swellings and apostrophes of his speech, as in his coldest calculations.

mediately from the forming hand of nature. He spoke well, because he felt strongly and earnestly. His oratory was impetuous as the

"Fox, as an orator, appeared to come im

current of the river Rhone; nothing could arrest its course. His voice would insensibly rise to too high a key; he would run himself out of breath. Everything showed how little artifice there was in his eloquence. Though on all great occasions he was throughou energetic, yet it was by sudden flashes and emanations that he electrified the heart, and shot through the blood of his hearer. I have seen his countenance lighted up with more than mortal ardor and goodness; I have been present when his voice has become suffocated with the sudden bursting forth of a torrent of

tears."

Printers sometimes commit odd blunders. One printer we know of never by any chance ever set anything up, however short, without one blunder, that being his trade mark. Godwin had much to endure in this, as in other things, and in a letter we have now before us, he says:

"Such a printer as Mr.

I never heard of. One gains at least this by living long, that it makes one acquainted with strange and incredible phenomena."

and again :

"What is the sense of proofs, if this is to be the result! It would have been better so far as this matter is concerned, that I had died

two-and-thirty years ago."

This is one of the last growls of the old lion. He had come to write 'Cloudsley' and 'Deloraine" books forgotten, but which showed literary skill and careful writing. He desired to polish, and refine, and take as much care with these as ever Cellini cared to excel in his exquisite art. He was a genuine man of letters to the end, and did honor to the calling.

It is gratifying to find that, as years close in upon the veteran, a sinecure is found for him; and though he is troubled with anxiety as to its permanency, the sinecure lasts his time. At eighty he passes away tranquilly, after a long and

stormy life, a life of a student from boyhood to the grave, of a writer of fiction of power and originality, and of a thinker, who had the courage to avow and stand by his opinions in an age which this gene

ration can scarcely realize, an age in which social disrepute, at the least, awaited a Reformer, and not improbably the jail.-Temple Bar.

PART II.

It is curious to observe how little able is even exact science to preserve its habitual precision, when pressed backward past its processes to their point of commencement, and brought to bay in the statement of their "first truth." The proposition which supplies the initiative is sure to contain some term of indistinct margin or contents: and usually it will be the term least suspected because most familiar. The student of nature takes as his principle that all phenomena arise from a fixed total of force in a given quantity of matter; and assumes that, in his explanations, he must never resort to any supposed addition or subtraction of either element. In adopting this rule he must know, you would say, what he means by" matter," and what by " force," and that he means two things by the two words. Ask him whence this principle has its authority. If he pronounces it a metaphysical axiom, you may let him go till he can tell you how there can be not simply an à priori notion of matter and notion of force, but also an à priori measure of each, which can guarantee you against increase or diminution of either. As standards of quantity are found only in experience, he will come back with a new answer, fetched from the text-books of science that his principle is inductively gathered; in one half of its scope -viz., that neither matter nor force is ever destroyed-proved by positive evidence of persistence;-in the other half -viz., that neither is ever created proved by negative evidence, of nonappearance. If now you beg him to exhibit his proof that matter is indestructible, he will in some shape reproduce the old experiment of weighing the ashes and the smoke, and re-finding in them the fuel's mass: his appeal will be to the balance, his witnesses the equal weights.

Weight, however, is force: and thus, to establish the perseverance of matter, he resorts to equality of force. Again, when invited to make good the corresponding position of the conservation of force, he will show you how, eg., the chemical union of carbon and oxygen in the furnace is followed by the undulations of heat, succeeded in their turn by the molecular separation of water into steam, the expansion of which lifts a piston, and institutes mechanical performances: i.e., he traces a series of movements, each replacing its predecessor, and leaving no link in the chain detached. Movements, however, are material phenomena: so that to establish the persistence of force he steps over to take counsel of matter. He makes assertions about each term, as if it were an independent subject: but if his assertion respecting either is challenged, he invokes aid from the other : and he holds, logically, the precarious position of a man riding two horses with a foot on each, hiding his danger by a cloth over both, and saved from a fall by dexterous shifting and exchange.

Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than a scientific proposition, the terms of which stand in this variable relation to each other. The first of them has been sufficiently fixed in discussing the Atomic conception. It remains to give distinctness to the second. In order to do so, it will be simplest to follow into their last retreats of meaning the parallel doctrines of the "Indestructibility of Matter" and of the "Conservation of Energy." If our perceptions were so heightened and refined that nothing escaped them by its minuteness or its velocity, what should we see, answering to those doctrines, during a course of perpetual observation?

1. We should see the ultimate atoms; and if we singled out any one of them, and kept it ever in view, we should find it, in spite of "change of form,"

ways the same." "A simple elementary atom," says Professor Balfour Stewart, "is a truly immortal being, and enjoys the privilege of remaining unaltered and essentially unaffected by the powerful blows that can be dealt against it.' Here, then, we have alighted upon the "Matter" which is "indestructible."

2. These atoms might have been stationary; and we should still have seen them in their "immortality." But they are never at rest. They fly along innumerable paths: they collide and modify their speed and their direction: they unite they separate. However long we look, there is no pause in this eternal dance: if one figure ceases, another claims its place. As in the atoms, so in the molecules which are their first clusters, there is a "state of continual agitation," "vibration, rotation, or any other kind of relative motion;""an uninterrupted warfare going on a constant clashing together of these minute. bodies." In this unceasing movement among the "immortal" atoms we alight upon the phenomenon, or series of phenomena, described by the phrase "Conservation of Energy." So far as the law thus designated claims to be an observed law, gathered by induction from experience, this is its last and whole meaning. We have only to scrutinize its evidence with a little care, in order to see that it simply traces a few transmutations of the perpetual motions attributed to atoms and molecules.

If we chose to shape it thus: "For every cancelled movement or element of movement there arises another, which is equivalent;" everything would be expressed to which the evidence applies. Had we to look out for a proof of such a proposition, we should first consider what it is that makes two movements equivalent: and, in the simplest case,-of homogeneous elements, -we should find it in equal numbers with the same velocity; so that the direct demonstration would require that we should count the atoms and estimate their speed. As we cannot count them, one by one, we weigh them in their masses;—an operation which has

the advantage of reckoning at one stroke along with their relative numbers, also the most important of their velocities. The atoms being all equal, the greater mass expresses the larger number. And weight is only the arrested velocity with which, in free space, they move to one another; it is prevented motion, in the shape of pressure. In order to measure it, i.e., to express it in terms of space and time, we might withdraw the prevention, and address ourselves to the path that would then be described. But it is more convenient to test it by taking it in reverse, and trying what other prevented motion will avail to stop it and hold it ready to turn back. Thus even statical estimates of equilibrium are but a translation of motion into more compendious terms.

If this is a true account of common weights, it still more evidently applies to the process which gives us the foot-pound, or "unit of work :" for this is found by the actual lifting of one pound through one vertical foot, i.e., by moving it through a space in a time. And as in this, which is the standard, so in all the changes which it is employed to measure, the fundamental quantity is simply movement, performed, prevented, or reversed.

This fact is easily traced through the proofs usually offered of the Conservation of Energy. The essence of them ail is the same:-for each extinguished "unit of work" they find a substituted equivalent movement, molar or molecular. Dr. Joule, for instance, establishes for us a common measure of heat and mechanical work. How does he accomplish this? By applying the descent of a weight to create in moving water friction enough to raise the temperature 1° Fahrenheit; and finding that this result corresponds with a fall of the water through 772 feet. Here, on one side of the equation, we have the movement of the mass through its vertical path; on the other, the molecular movement that constitutes heat; measured by a third movement of an expanding liquid in the thermometer. Where the first is arrested, the second takes its place: and to double one would be to double both.

If heat is made to do chemical work, its undulations are similarly expended in setting up a fresh order of movements;

of atomic combination, when burning coal unites with oxygen; of separation, when the fire of a lime-kiln drives its carbonic acid from the chalk. The friction which parts the electricities, the spark which attends their reunion; the crystallization of liquids by loss of temperature, and their vaporization by its increase; the waste of animal tissue by action, and its replacement by food; all reduce themselves to the same ultimate rule, the exchange of one set of movements or resistances (which are stopped movements) for another, which, wherever calculable, is found to be an equivalent.

To a perfect observer, then, able to follow the changes of external bodies, in themselves and among one another, to their last haunts, nothing would present itself but consecutions and assortments of phenomena, and arrests of phenomena. And if he had noticed, and could name, what on the subsidence of each group would emerge to replace it, he would be master of the law of Conservation. The sciences would distinguish themselves for him by taking cognizance each of its special set of phenomena; as acoustics tell the story of one kind of undulations, optics of another, thermotics of a third. And the law in question would only carry his glance, as it chased the flight of change, across the lines of this divided work, and show him, on the desertion of this field, a new stir in that.

Though the whole objective world has thus been laid bare before him, and he has read and registered its order through and through, he has not yet, it will be observed, alighted on a single dynamic idea all that he has seen (and nothing has been hid from him) may be stated without resort to any term that goes beyond the relations of co-existence and sequence. The whole vocabulary of causality may absent itself from the language of such an observer. Were it even given to him, it would carry no new meaning, but only tell over again in fresh words the old story of regular time succession. He might, as Comte and Mill and Bain truly contend, command the whole body of science, including its latest law, without ever asking for the origin (other than the phenomenal predecessor) of any change.

By no such ideal interpreter of nature, however, have our actual books of science

been written. Never more than now have they abounded in the language which, we have seen, would be superfluous for him. The formula of the new law contains it: for it is the conservation of "Energy," or the correlation of "Forces," which it announces. Are these then some new-comers that we have got to know? or, have we encountered them before under other names, and only found out some new thing about them? Energy," says Professor Balfour Stewart, is the "power of overcoming obstacles or of doing work."* I see a flash of lightning pierce a roof and kill a man, and plunge into the earth: the obstacles overcome, the work done, are visible enough; but where is the "power"? what does it add to the phenomenon, over and above these elements? Besides the flash of lightning first, and then the changes in the roof and the man, is there something else to be searched for, and entered, as an object of knowledge, under a separate name? If there be such a thing, by what sense am I to apprehend it? through what aids of art can I penetrate to it. It is obvious that it has no perceptible presence at all: and that its name stands in the definition and in every inductive equation, as an x, an unknown quantity, which itself has to be found before it can add any new relation to the known. Force," says Professor Clerk Maxwell," is whatever changes or tends to change the motion of a body, by altering either its direction or its magnitude." The shot fired from a gun at a moderate elevation is scarcely out of the muzzle before it quits the straight line for the parabola, and slackens its initial velocity, and soon alights upon the ground. We say the deflection is due to

66

gravitation." But, if so, this is an invisible part of the fact: no more is observable than the first direction and subsequent curvature of the ball's path, the changing speed, and the final fall, in presence of the earth. The "force" which we superadd in thought is not given in the phenomenon as perceived: and if we know the movements accomplished, prevented, modified, we know everything that is there.

One interpretation, indeed, may be

* Conservation of Energy, p. 13. Theory of Heat, p. 83.