which his lectures, so to call them, may have educated and improved the public mind in both 'the science and the art of government? How many statesmen may his example have formed? How many improvements may his precepts have produced? How many errors and evils may his authority have repressed? But of direct, permanent, practical ameliorations of our social and political condition, few of our statesmen-even those who had not a thousandth part of his abilities-have, we believe, left such scanty traces. Though so sagacious and so accomplished a mind could not be insensible to, and did in fact highly appreciate, the value of mental cultivation, social improvements, commercial enterprise, and all the fair and fruitful arts of peace, yet he did little for them. His genius and his voice- quo non præstantior alter-re ciere viros, Martemque accendere cantu were still for War'— a fearful lottery, in which one or two brilliant prizes are dearly purchased by the misery of individuals and the calamity of nations. We believe the world is by this time pretty well disposed to subscribe to Sir Samuel Romilly's opinion that the glories, as they are called, of Lord Chatham's administration, produced no solid advantage to his country' (Mem. II. 402):—and how short a space of his career was that epoch of doubtful glory! As to his personal qualities, it must be admitted that his temper, naturally reserved and haughty, was, as he advanced in life, soured by disease and disappointment. It is not good for man to be alone, in political, any more than in social life; but, he endeavoured to release himself from the obligations of political connexion-affected to stand alone, and to guide himself by his individual lights, feelings, and interests-he grew, at first, impatient of contradiction, and afterwards, of advice, and even of assistance-he used to shut himself up in the impenetrable solitude of an eastern despot, from which he emerged occasionally to dazzle the world with his pomp and splendour. This isolation could not fail to produce singularity and selfishness, and to foster a dictatorial habit of mind very ill fitted for a minister under our constitution. We have already mentioned with regret his indiscreet and offensive language towards George II., which had, we believe, the effect-more injurious to the interests of the country than even to his own-of keeping him out of efficient office at a time when he could have served the state with distinction, and his own mind might have been trained to habits of practical business, which he never afterwards attained. And we cannot, in truth and candour, designate his conduct towards George III. otherwise than as alike ungrateful and unconstitutional-unjust in its spirit, mischievous in its effect, and pernicious in its consequences. He He lived, too, at a time when public principle, as we now understand the term, was at a very low ebb amongst public men: and his practice brought it still lower. He thought too steadily of his own individual interests, and in pursuit of them was strangely versatile, both as to persons and principles. We do not, as the world in general does, reckon consistency as one of the first virtues of public men. Sagacity to detect, and candour to avow one's own errors, we rate much higher; besides, all is not inconsistency that at first sight seems so-circumstances change, and to be consistent in principle a statesman may be forced to inconsistencies in practice. But the inconsistencies, or at least the majority of them, which are alleged against Lord Chatham, are not of this class. There is not, we believe, to be named any one of his various adversaries who did not successively become his political associate-nor any one of his various associates who was not, on some other turn of the wheel, his decided adversary. There is not, we believe, to be found any one considerable measure which he ever advocated that he did not at some other time oppose; nor any that he ever opposed which he did not at some other period advocate. Conscious of his vast superiority to all the politicians who surrounded him, he probably had sincerely persuaded himself that his being in place was a sine quá non to the prosperity of the country, and he seems to have acted all through life as if he thought that all means were just and honourable which could lead to so desirable an end. There was some truth in that self-flattering idea. Endowed as he was with irrepressible ambition and irresistible talents, he must inevitably have either ruled or disordered the state; but the misfortune was, that an overweening self-confidence disinclined, and a haughty and capricious temper disabled him from conciliating and associating in his designs the humbler but still necessary utilities of other men. He fancied he could make a political clock which should go by the mere force of the mainspring, without the help of cog-wheel, pendulum, or balance—the consequence was, that his system, whenever it was set a-going, ran itself out in a moment. The sum of all seems to us to be, that the qualities of the orator were more transcendent than those of the statesman, and that his public character, when calmly considered, excites rather admiration than applause. The generosity of his sentiments did not always guide his practice; and the majestic stream of his declamations for the rights and liberties of mankind was always accompanied by eddies and under-currents of personal interest. He was too fine a genius for the lower, and too selfish a politician for the higher duties of a minister. • Graced 'Graced as he was with all the power of words '— his talents were neither for conducting an office nor managing a party he was neither the sun to rule the day nor the moon to rule the night-but a meteor which astonished and alarmed mankind by its supernatural splendour, but left the world, when it expired, in deeper darkness than before. ART. VIII-1. Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus. Resultate aus den Beobachtungen des Magnetischen Vereins im Jahre 1838. Herausgegeben von C. F. Gauss und W. Weber. Leipzig, 1839. 2. Intensitas Vis Magnetica Terrestris ad Mensuram absolutam revocata. Auctore Carolo Friderico Gauss. Göttingæ, 1833. 3. Lettre de M. de Humboldt à S. A. R. Mgr. le Duc de Sussex, Président de la Société Royale de Londres, sur les moyens propres à perfectionner la connaissance du Magnétisme Terrestre par l'établissement des stations magnétiques et d'observations correspondantes. 4. Report of the Committee of Physics, including Meteorology, on the objects of Scientific Inquiry in those Sciences. Approved by the President and Council of the Royal Society. London, 1840. AMONG the great branches of science which the present generation has either seen to arise as of new creation, or to spring forward by a sudden and general impulse into a fresh and more luxuriant state of development, there is none more eminently practical in its bearings and applications than that of Terrestrial Magnetism. It might naturally have been expected that the directness and importance of these applications would have secured to it, at all times, a more than ordinary share of attention, and at all events have preserved it from that state of torpor into which, during the latter years of the eighteenth century, it had begun to lapse; especially since the general subject of magnetism continued from time to time to receive large and valuable accessions both in the line of theory and experiment. But terrestrial magnetism is a science of observation, in contradistinction to one of experiment, and this character, along with some remarkable. peculiarities which it possesses as such, sufficiently explain a neglect that might otherwise appear singular, and even in some degree blameworthy. No single observer, whatever be his zeal and industry-no series of observations, however long continued and exact, made at a single place, can add much to our knowledge of the highly intricate laws and relations which prevail in it. For this purpose the assemblage and comparison of observations, made in every region of the globe and extending over long periods of time, are requisite. In order to master so large a subject multitude must be brought to contend with mass, combination and concert to predominate over extent and diffusion, and systematic registry and reduction to fix and realise the fugitive plienomena of the passing moment, and place them before the eye of reason in that orderly and methodical arrangement which brings spontaneously into notice both their correspondences and their differences. For similar reasons the progress of all sciences which are properly and purely sciences of observation, such as astronomy, meteorology, &c., has necessarily been hitherto more slow, and interrupted by longer intervals of dormancy, than those in which appeal can be made to experiment. An experiment, if it lead to any new view or striking conclusion, may be instantly followed up, while the mind is excited and alert, by others adapted to its verification or extension; while, for corroborative observations or interesting conjunctures, we must wait-a condition especially adapted to blunt the keenness of inquiry and obscure the connexions of thought. An experiment misstated or misinterpreted, may be repeated, rectified, and studied with better attention and success. An observation omitted leaves a blank which never can be filled ;-inaccurately or erroneously stated, it poisons the stream of knowledge at its source, and exercises an influence the more baleful, as it tends, in proportion to its apparent importance, to warp our theories, and thereby prevent or at least retard the detection of its faultiness. Nor does the progress of such sciences suffer less from our ignorance of what is and what is not of primary importance in the natural development of phenomena-of what ought to be diligently recorded, and what may be allowed to pass without notice. Hence it happens that great masses of knowledge are daily perishing before our eyes without the possibility of recovery, because, in fact, our eyes are not open to them, and we have nothing to awaken our attention to their transient display. It is on this account that a theory is of so much more consequence, and forms in fact so much larger a part of our knowledge in these sciences of observation than in those conducted by the way of experi ment. In the latter, facts are realities; they stand of themselves, may be reproduced, touched, and handled, and admit us, as it were, by appeal to our senses, into the most direct and intimate knowledge which we can attain of their efficient causes. To such substantial forms theories sit loosely, as an airy investiture, easily accommodating themselves to the changes of attitude and general growth growth of the body they adorn and symmetrise; while, to the incoherent particles of historical statement which make up the records of a science of observation, theories are as a framework which binds together what would otherwise have no unity. They give to a collection of fleeting impressions the power of presenting itself to our intellect as an existing whole. In these, then, it is perhaps not using too strong an expression to assert that the theory is the science. In it alone we must look for indications that we are on the safe track towards the detection of efficient causes-from it only we can receive hints to guide us in our choice both of things to be observed, and of the best and most available mode of making and recording our observations—and to it we must look for our only means of reproducing the past, and recovering the lost history of bygone time. It is when they first become capable of performing this office, that theories begin to assume their places as corner-stones in the temple of science-a building always altering, always enlarging, and combining in every age, in its several departments, every form of architecture from the rudest to the most refined that age admits. In erecting the pinnacles of this temple, the intellect of man seems quite as incapable of proceeding without a scaffolding or circumstructure foreign to their design, and destined only for temporary duration, as in the rearing of his material edifices. A philosophical theory does not shoot up like the tall and spiry pine in graceful and unencumbered natural growth, but, like a column built by men, ascends amid extraneous apparatus and shapeless masses of materials; nor is that column in its fair and harmonious proportions more different in its aspect when erect and complete from what it was when so surrounded and overborne, than such a theory, presented to us in its simplicity, from the tentative, transient and empirical conceptions which have helped to its construction. In the science of Physical Astronomy the scaffolding has been long stripped away, and its theory stands august and stately, with that air of nature which marks it as the intellectual shadowing forth of a sublime reality. In that of Terrestrial Magnetism, a science which is not without its analogous features, we are yet busied in building and pulling down, casting and recasting our design, piecing together our scaffolding, and securing our foundations for a far greater and more massive edifice than was at first contemplated. But already some portions have begun to assume a symmetry, and to convey to the experienced eye glimpses, if not of the plan and dimensions, at least of the general style and character of the future whole; glimpses, however, not obtained by viewing it from the lower ground of its first founda VOL. LXVI. NO. CXXXI. T tion, |