"Or, brooding o'er some forest rill, And quivering maiden-hair, "And thence, as by its murmur call'd, And there beheld the checker'd shade "'Twas I to these the magic gave, And taught thee how, with tree and flower, As with an early friend; "That made thy heart, like His above, For every living thing. And, oh, if I, with ray divine, Thus tempering, did thy soul refine, Then let thy gentle heart be mine, And bless the Sylph of Spring." Of Mr. Allston's fugitive poems, that which has been most praised is his ode entitled AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.1 All hail thou noble land, Our fathers' native soil! Oh, stretch thy mighty hand, Gigantic grown by toil, O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore! Canst reach to where the light The world o'er. The Genius of our clime, From his pine-embattled steep, While the Tritons of the deep Written in America, in the year 1810, and in 1817 inserted by Coleridge in the first edition of his "Sibylline Leaves," with the following note:-"This poem, written by an American gentleman, a valued and dear friend, I communicate to the reader for its moral no less than its poetic spirit."-Editor. With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim. O'er the main our naval line Though ages long have pass'd Since our fathers left their home, O'er untravell'd seas to roam, Yet lives the blood of England in our veins! That blood of honest fame While the language free and bold How the vault of heaven rung When Satan, blasted, fell with his host;- Round our coast; While the manners, while the arts, Still cling around our hearts,— Between let ocean roll, Our joint communion breaking with the Sun: The voice of blood shall reach, Allston's Lectures on Art are very beautiful and instructive; but to be appreciated they must be read as a whole. Of his prose, therefore, I select the following few aphorisms from many that were written on the walls of his studio : BENEVOLENCE. No right judgment can ever be formed on any subject having a moral or intellectual bearing without benevolence; for so strong is man's natural self-bias, that, without this restraining principle, he insensibly becomes a competitor in all such cases presented to his mind; and, when the comparison is thus made personal, unless the odds be immeasurably against him, his decision will rarely be 1 Note by the Author.This alludes merely to the moral union of the two countries. The author would not have it supposed that the tribute of respect offered in these stanzas to the land of his ancestors would be paid by him if at the expense of the independence of that which gave him birth. impartial. In other words, no one can see any thing as it really is through the misty spectacles of self-love. We must wish well to another in order to do him justice. Now, the virtue in this good will is not to blind us to his faults, but to our own rival and interposing merits. TRUTH. like If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, so many spiders, now weave about each other! But the contest between Truth and Falsehood is now pretty well balanced. Were it not so, and had the latter the mastery, even language would soon become extinct, from its very uselessness. The present superfluity of words is the result of the warfare. HUMILITY. The only true independence is in humility; for the humble man exacts nothing, and cannot be mortified, expects nothing, and cannot be disappointed. Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open. But humility is not the virtue of a fool; since it is not consequent upon any comparison between ourselves and others, but between what we are and what we ought to be, which no man ever was. BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. PROFESSOR BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, the son of G. S. Silliman, Esq., a lawyer of distinction, and a Revolutionary patriot and soldier, was born in North Stratford, now Trumbull, Connecticut, on the 8th of August, 1779. In 1792, he entered Yale College, with which from that time he has been almost uninterruptedly connected. In 1799, he was appointed a tutor in the college, and, at the suggestion of its President, Dr. Dwight, he resolved, in 1801, to devote himself to chemistry, and the associated sciences, mineralogy and geology. After studying for some time at New Haven, he spent two seasons in Philadelphia; and in 1805 he visited Europe, both to purchase books and apparatus, and to attend the lectures of the distinguished Professors in Edinburgh and London. He had given a partial preliminary course before he went abroad; and, after his return, he delivered, in 1806 and 1807, his first full course of lectures in Yale College. In 1810, he published an account of his travels, which was received with great favor, and passed through several editions. In 1818, Professor Silliman founded the "American Journal of Science and Arts," a work which has done more than any other to raise the reputation of our country for science, and to make her known and honored abroad; while it has placed the learned editor in the very front rank of scientific men, and will ever remain a permanent monument to his zeal and perseverance in his favorite studies. Besides communicating with the public on scientific subjects through the press, he has frequently given courses of scientific lectures to popular audiences in our cities and towns, and always with great acceptance. His easy and dignified manners bespeak the gentleman born and bred; while his happy talent at illustration, and tact in communicating knowledge, always render his lectures as pleasing as they are instructive. In 1853, Prof. Silliman resigned his office as a Professor in Yale College, and was complimented with the title of "Professor Emeritus." He was succeeded in the department of Geology by Prof. James D. Dana, and in that of Chemistry by his son, Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. Notwithstanding his advanced years and laborious life, his vigor of mind and body remains unimpaired, (January, 1859;) and, since his retirement from active duties in college, he has continued to take a deep interest in the progress of science at home and abroad. He has also become conspicuous among American citizens for the earnestness with which he united with others in the recent movements for opposing the further extension of slavery, and showing his warm sympathies with the free settlers of Kansas. Professor Silliman has fitly been called the "Father of American Periodical Science;" and, although others of his countrymen preceded him in the study of nature, no man probably has done so much as he to awaken and encourage students of science, to collect and diffuse the researches of American naturalists, and to arouse in all classes of the community a respect for learning and a desire for its advancement.2 NATURE OF GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. Geological Evidence is the same which is readily admitted as satisfactory in the case of historical antiquities. When, in 1738, the workmen, in excavating a well, struck upon the theatre of Herculaneum, which had reposed for more than sixteen centuries beneath the lava of Vesuvius; when, in 1748, Pompeii was disencumbered of its volcanic ashes and cinders, and thus two buried cities were brought to light,-had history been quite silent respecting their existence, would not observers say, and have they not all actually said, here are the 1 Prof. Silliman, Jr. has already shown his ability to fill the Professorship his father so long honored, by the two works recently published,-First Principles of Chemistry, and First Principles of Physics or Natural Philosophy,—both admirable text-books for our schools and colleges. 2 The following are the titles of most of Professor Silliman's publications: American Journal of Science, 50 vols., 1818-45: Second Series, by Silliman and Dana, still in progress; 25 vols. down to 1858: Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, in 1805-06, 2 vols.: Travels in Canada in 1819: Henry's Elements of Chemistry, edited with notes, 3 editions: Bakewell's Geology, 3 editions, edited with notes and appendixes: Elements of Chemistry, in the order of Lectures given in Yale College, 2 vols.: Visit to Europe in 1851, 2 vols., six editions. works of man, his temples, his forums, his amphitheatres, his tombs, his shops of traffic and of arts, his houses, furniture, pictures, and personal ornaments; here are his streets, with their pavements and wheel-ruts worn in the solid stone, his coins, his grinding-mills, his wine, food, and medicines; here are his dungeons and stocks, with the skeletons of the prisoners chained in their awful solitudes; and here and there are the bones of a victim who, although at liberty, was overtaken by the fiery storm, while others were quietly buried in their domestic retreats. falling cinders and ashes copied, as they fell, even the delicate outline of female forms, as well as the head and helmet of a sentinel; and, having concreted, they thus remain true volcanic casts, to be seen by remote generations, as now in the Museum of Naples. The Because the soil had formed, and grass and trees had grown, and successive generations of men had unconsciously walked, tilled the ground, or built their houses, over the entombed cities, and because they were covered by volcanic cinders, ashes, and projected stones, does any one hesitate to admit that they were once real cities; that at the time of their destruction they stood upon what was then the upper surface; that their streets once rang with the noise of business, their halls and theatres with the voice of pleasure; that in an evil time they were overwhelmed by a volcanic tempest from Vesuvius, and their name and place for more than seventeen centuries blotted out from the earth and forgotten? The tragical story is legibly perused by every observer, and all alike, whether learned or unlearned, agree in the conclusions to be drawn. To establish all this, it is of no decisive importance that scholars have gleaned here and there a fragment from the Roman classics to show that such cities once existed, and that they were overthrown by an eruption in the year A.D. 79, which gave occasion for the letter of the younger Pliny, describing the death of his uncle, the great naturalist, while observing the volcanic phenomena. In such cases, the coincidences of historical and other writings, and the gleanings of tradition, are indeed valuable and gratifying: they are even of great utility, not in proving the events,-for of them there is a physical record that cannot deceive, but in fixing the order and the time of the occurrences. The nature of the catastrophe is, however, perfectly intelligible from the appearances themselves, and needs no historical confirmation. No man ever imagined that Herculaneum and Pompeii were created where we now find their ruins; no one hazards the absurd conjecture that they are a lusus naturæ; but all unite in giving an explanation consistent alike with geology, history, and common sense. |