The proficiency of the Romans in glass-making was not less remarkable than their skill and taste in the toreutic art. In one of the smaller tombs known as tomba del vaso di vetro blu, a vase was discovered, made of dark blue glass with the rich tint and lustre of a sardonyx, and decorated with figures of opaque white enamel carved in relief. It is a masterpiece of workmanship, fully equal to the famous Portland vase of the British Museum. The enamel seems to have been melted and fused into the glass, and then cut and embossed. The reliefs extend entirely around the vase, and represent vintage scenes, in which Bacchanal genii are gathering grapes and treading the wine-press to the sound "of flutes and soft recorders"; on the opposite side, a man is reclining on a couch and drinking wine, while a youth seated near him is playing the harp. The foliage and clusters with the birds in the vines, and the Bacchus masks and arabesque scrolls, are finely executed. Below, as a sort of predella to the principal picture, various animals are grazing or reposing under trees; the cheerful and animated scenes reminding us of Goethe's verse,

"Sarkophage und Urnen verzierte der Heide mit Leben."

Among the most interesting Pompeian discoveries are those relating to the trades and professions. Besides a great variety of mechanical implements, about sixty different kinds of surgical instruments have been brought to light. These are very instructive, as showing how little the world has really advanced in this department of invention. During the last century, a French surgeon, M. Petit, constructed a new catheter with a double curve, something like the letter S, which was regarded as a great improvement; but the same thing was afterwards found in the office of a Pompeian surgeon. In the year 1822, the French Academy awarded prizes to a physician for the invention of a straight probe; but since then it has been ascertained that the Pompeian doctors were quite familiar with this, too. Several eminent surgeons of Europe have adopted in their practice some of the chirurgical instruments found in the old Roman city, and pronounce them to be superior to those in ordinary use. Fortunately, also, a painting in the house of Siricus, recently exhumed, shows the application of these instruments in an actual operation. The scene is taken from the

twelfth book of the Eneid, and represents Iapis extracting from the thigh of Eneas an arrow-head which he had received in the battle with Turnus. Young Ascanius stands by his father's side weeping, and in the background Venus is hastening with a branch of dittany which she had brought from Mount Ida to heal the wound of the hero, as recorded in the poem:

"Hic Venus, indigno nati concussa dolore,

Dictamnum genetrix Cretæa carpit ab Ida,
Puberibus caulem foliis, et flore comantem

Purpureo."

In addition to these instruments, there have been disinterred innumerable articles of household furniture and domestic use, which are an almost exhaustless repertory of information relative to the home-life of the Romans. Thus the excavations reveal to us those minute details of daily existence which the grave historian thought too trivial for his pen. We walk through the narrow streets, and, entering the dwellings, seat ourselves familiarly by the fireside of antiquity. "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin "; and it is wonderful how quickly we are put en rapport with the men of the first century by the slightest vestige or suggestion of their common life and common needs. It is from this point of view that Pompeii yields the richest results. It gives us the key to one of the most significant epochs in the world's history, and opens to us the thoughts and feelings of a people whose strange nature, in which exquisite taste and extreme sensitiveness to beauty were blended with ungovernable impulses of passion and brutality, Hawthorne has so finely conceived and incarnated in that "paragon of animals," Donatello, the Marble Faun. To the eye the exhumed town may be only a few acres of dust and rubbish, but to the heart and to the intellect how intense and vital are the influences of the spot! It is a bridge that spans the gap of centuries, and holds two civilizations together. It brings us into closer kinship with men of other times and other types of character and culture, and, in spite of all distinctions, makes us recognize the spiritual and essential unity of the race, that great central truth around which the moral world revolves, and which pours bright and cheering light on the past, the present, and the future of humanity.

E. P. EVANS.

ART. IV.-1. G. W. F. HEGEL'S Werke. 2te Aufl. Berlin.

1840-1845. 15 Bde.

2. History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte. By G. H. LEWES. Vol. I. London. 1867. 2 vols.

3. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. St. Louis. 1867.

WE have been told very often of late that metaphysics is exploded, obsolete, a proved failure, and now devoid of all rational interest, except, possibly, of an historical or antiquarian kind. A writer in the Saturday Review not long since expressed, in the pointed way of that journal, a feeling which is probably not uncommon, even among scholars. "Metaphysics," he says, "have, indeed, been long sinking into merited contempt. They are cultivated only by those who are engaged, not in action, wherein the true balance of life is maintained, but in dreaming in professorial chairs. . . . . By the rest of mankind, whether men of the world or men of science, they are as little regarded as scholastic theology."

But what, after all, is metaphysics, but thinking which has not stopped at the casual impression or the momentary and personal interest, but has gone on to consider somewhat the nature of the object, apart from the effect which it may happen at any time to produce upon us? All thinking which aims at the truth for its own sake, at the real and permanent in experience, is speculative or metaphysical in its nature. The immediate intuition, whether outward or inward, whether its object be a thing or an opinion, has of itself no reference to truth, and pretends to none, but is wholly wrapped up in its own certainty. What I feel I feel, and it matters not, so long as I feel it, if you demonstrate ever so clearly that the feeling has no real foundation, that nothing is there to produce it, or something quite different from what I suppose. The intuition is deaf to all that, has no organ whereby to apprehend it; for all that is matter of inference, not of direct certainty. But this is as much as to say that we are all metaphysicians, better or worse; for it is clear that the mind never does stop absolutely at the immediate impression, and that the slightest exercise of thought or memory presupposes some theoretical NO. 219.

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consideration, some classification of the object. Whatever effect any event may produce in my mind so often as it happens, and however identical the effect may be at different times, the connection of the different instances of its occurrence, as substantially the same thing, and entitled to a common name, is a separate matter, a matter of inference, which has nothing to do with the impression made upon me, but regards the independent nature of the object producing it. All interest in that is primarily speculative, or metaphysical, and only secondarily, or in the use that is made of it, practical or immediate, and the existence of the common name is a direct testimony to such an interest in every one who uses or understands it. All curiosity is distinctly metaphysical. The child shows himself to be a metaphysician, when, instead of sitting down content with his toy, he seeks to investigate its interior, and to know not merely the What, but the Why, and the How. Even the dog has his metaphysics, and, in his dreams, hunts ideal rabbits, and skirmishes with mental cats, dealing with images which testify to a foregone exercise of this theoretical supererogatory activity in the mind.

Metaphysics, then, may be defined as the investigation of the truth of things, instead of the impressions they make upon us; or the science of realities as distinguished from mere appearances. This definition, it is true, does not accord with the popular notion that metaphysics means the attempt to discover truth by the interrogation of consciousness, instead of the interrogation of outward facts. But where are we to look for these facts, if not in consciousness? or what else are we to interrogate in order to get at the truth? The unconscious feelings, instinct, or sensation? It is not easy to see how this could be done; and if it could, the answers they would give would be of not much general use. They are of the kind which has no value except for the owner. A man may profess himself ever so ready to dispense with ideas, and to be content with "positive knowledge," that is, with formulated sensations; but this moderation is not so easy to practise, at least if he cares to make himself understood. Show us your sensation. It cannot be shown; no one can feel the sensation of another, or even his own of another time, but only in a vague way con

jecture or recollect it. What he knows is not known directly, but through analogy, that is, through reference to a mental standard, a thought that exists in his mind. To know is to classify, to recognize the particular fact as a general fact. The sweetness I taste in sugar does not prove that sugar is sweet, but only that it tastes sweet to me. Perhaps to another person it tastes sour: at any rate, the taste to another person is not given in my sensation, but is accidental as far as that is concerned. Could it be put into words, the certainty of the senses would be expressed always in identical propositions, sweet is sweet, sour is sour, &c. That my sensation has any extent beyond myself, any validity for another, or again, that other people's sensations are anything to me, implies that these separate and apparently indifferent facts are essentially identical. The meaning of every word we use rests on the assumption that this accidental coincidence of feelings is sure to happen. When I say that I feel hot or cold, I assume that I feel what other people feel, and will continue to feel, whether I happen to feel it or not. The immediate certainty, then, instead of being all in all, is unessential, only an instance, not the truth itself.

It may be said, This is only an affair of names, not of things; the name is only an abstraction, an arbitrary sign, which we learn to affix to similar impressions. I have been taught to associate the words "hot," "cold," &c., with certain sets of circumstances; but this is a mere convenience of speech, and does not touch the real nature of the thing. But although the name may be arbitrary, yet naming is not, any more than hands, feet, or the erect posture are arbitrary, and in it is implied all that is needful, namely, necessary connection. How did we come to know that the impressions were similar, or to know what similarity means? How did we ever begin to attach a meaning to any word? Sensations do not associate themselves, nor have they any part in each other; each is complete in itself, and independent; that they happen to occur in a given order is nothing to them, and can be ascertained only by going beyond them. The common name, however, implies that this apparent independence is a mistake, that the sensation is not absolute, but relative, and the truth it indicates to be ascertained from its relations, and not directly from it.