seated on the top of the lofty paddlebox, a little world of moving humanity and machinery below, a heaven of repose and quiet above, a sea black and terrible in its dark vastness around. To me, so seated, so musing, it appears as if I were surveying the future from the minute resting point of the present. The steamer, with its noisy freight, ever moving on, never at rest, is the present; the illimitable heavens, with their dark mysteries, unfathomable and inconceivable perhaps, the fu

ture.

Many twinkling stars shine in that heaven, to make the surrounding gloom only the more impenetrable, giving no light by which we can discern its mysteries.

"I turn from such a scene with all its grand magnificence and suggestive beauty to enter the saloon. There little atoms like myself, tricked out externally in fantastic fashions by tailors and milliners, are making noise with loud laughter and inane conversation, as if there were no awful immensity around them, into which each, by himself or herself, must one day plunge. They exhibit a thousand littlenesses- a thousand follies as if the sublimity of the stars, the heavens, and the ocean were not without to check their absurdities. The ocean and the sky are equally silent in their vast grandeur, whilst Mrs. Rumble,Captain Rumble's wife, in her littleness, complains to me that the captain of the steamer offered his arm, a few moments ago, to Mrs. Humble, the lieutenant's 'lady', in preference-in her presence too; she does not mean to stand the indignity;' the very next time the captain offers his arm to her, she means 'to cut him dead,' to pass him with a majestic sweep, as if he were not seen, and take some one else's arm!' 'Revenge complete.' Mr. Jolly, too, tells me how he and his partner had four by honors twice running whilst playing a rubber with the cranky old general,' and how terribly 'the cranky old general' swore in consequence. Mr. Jolly has not yet done laughing at the incident, it strikes him as being so excessively ludicrous. Such is the scene within! Is it not truly the passage from the infinite to the finite, from the unbounded to the narrow, that short journey from my station on the paddle-box to the saloon?

Sublimest nature,in all her majesty and glory, deserted for little humanity.

"But to leave the contemplation of my fellow-passengers, who are many of them pleasant companions, though for the most part not congenial to me, let me return to myself on the paddlebox and to my own feelings. With this majesty of nature around, and the immensity of the sky and sea pressing upon me like a weight, I feel intense longing to penetrate the mystery of the future life. One plunge in the black waters, and the deed were done, the Gordian knot cut, the mystery a mystery no more. To me who believe in a truly benevolent Deity, but not in the vindictive Deity of your English philosophy, such a plunge has little in it of the horrible. I could resign myself at any moment calmly into the hands of the All-knowing, for, as I have often told you, the tales of infancy have lost their hold on me, and I see nothing in the future but a spiritual life to be earnestly sought by all who have at all cultivated their souls here. You do not agree with me; you are ready now to tell me so, and to point out benevolently my errors; but bear with me, my friend; let me have my convictions if you have yours. It is the sense only that I am in my present position for a good purpose-that I have work to do which ought to be done it is such a conviction as this alone that restrains me. The coward flies from evils he knows to those he knows not of, the brave man encounters them. My isolation in the world, my unhappy fate, lead me to such thoughts; mental cultivation and rational religion yield the antidote. My mental condition since I left Calcutta has indeed been the most striking evidence of that grand truth, that the soul in her essence is a principle of volition, and that it is this fundamental law, this grand reality, that enables man to make the step from æsthetics to ethics-a step otherwise impossible, if not absolutely inconceivable.

"You do not want me, I am sure, to describe to you the taking in of coal at Aden; the passage up the Red Sea; the landing at Suez with all its inconvenience and discomfort; the journey through the desert; the Turkish bath at Cairo, or the sail down the Nile and through the Mahamoody canal to Alexandria. All

these are things that every account of the overland trip dilates upon. For the majority of travellers and the majority of readers, the objective will ever be more interesting than the subjective-the history of the body and its senses more desired than that of the soul and its innate powers. There was the usual amount of bustle and annoyance; the usual noise, shouting, scolding, abusing, and commanding; the usual number of patient, silent, unhappy-looking camels awaiting us at Suez, and ready to take our luggage to Cairo. All these things are such as one expects to see who has heard or read anything on the subject. For my part I heeded them little, for my mind was too much taken up with the reveries produced by the countries and their histories through which we passed. Sailing up the Red Sea, one is passing through the very birthplace of religions. Egypt on the left, whence issued Judaism and the classical mythology; Arabia on the right, whence issued the fiery followers of the prophet of Mecca, to thrust their faith down the throats of their fellow-creatures with the sword. Syria right in front of us, whence, most wonderful of all, a few enthusiasts rushed forth to give that faith to the Gentile which the Jew would not have, which has been rejected as a loathsomething by the people to whom it was first offered, but has since been received greedily by other nations as the very whisperings of heaven,-until at length kings and pontiffs were equally anxious to prove themselves its orthodox upholders and the zealous persecutors of all who thought otherwise. Most wonderful of all, truly!

"I feel a strange sympathy for Egypt. Like myself, it has had its day-a day of prosperity, or what was fancied such, and of happiness, surrounded by a long night of gloom, sorrow, repining, destruction, almost of despair. Its various conquerors sweeping over it like devouring flames, feebly opposed by an energy almost dead, a strength not trusted and used, and therefore not forthcoming, believed rather to be nonexisting. Even so is it with the soul that has been struck down by adversity and sorrow, after long years of peace and contentment. It becomes

a prey to feelings and emotions that had no power over it before, which indeed it entirely contemned and despised. Believing itself still the same powerful thing it was or appeared to be, it finds itself crushed, ill-used, trodden under foot by paltry assailants, of all feeble things one of the feeblest, finding no resource from within, and therefore anxious to escape the inner, selfdirective life and fly to an outer life foreign to it, impressed by others, not its own. For nations such as Egypt, long trodden on by a variety of masters, there is no hope in these days. It may become independent for a time, propped up by foreign bayonets, or its independence resting like that of Greece on a compromise between mightier powers. But of the nobler life of independence it can know nothing. Even so is it with the crushed soul. It dreads retiring into itself to find life there. It flies from its own inner life, as if a mental plague rendered it diseased and offensive. It seeks an outer life, outer stays and supports, forms of thought impressed externally, not its own. Of all miserable objects on a miserable earth, one of the most wretched and forlorn!

"You will not wonder then that I sympathize with Egypt and countries of the Egyptian type generally, regarding them as material counterparts of what exists spiritually within myself. You will not wonder that I looked with interest on the monuments of dead antiquity-the evidences of past prosperity— with which it abounds. Its gigantic pyramids and time-honoured catacombs

its vast uncouth statuary and oldworld architecture had for me a high and holy significance, acutely felt but not so easily described. The past is what it lives upon, not the present; the monuments of its mighty dead are the grandest things about it; there is a sublimity in its dreary desolation and hoary ruins which the grandest monuments of the present cannot have. You see then the sympathy which it awakes in such a mind as mine, with a past standing ever vividly forward as its true life, and demanding to be questioned and thought of; with a sickly present, endured but not enjoyed, and no future on this earth, The liveliest emotions

of to-day give me not a tithe of the pleasure yielded by the reveries of the past; the recollections of past happiness and an ended prosperity are dearer and holier than the most glowing pictures of fancy or the brightest anticipations of hope. You may not fully understand my feelings, but you can conceive them. You may not wholly approve, but you can sympathize. To you the world is full of bright things in the future; of triumphs, successes, joys to come. The past is little, the present but little more, the future everything; reverse the proposition and you have my case. To you memory brings only the recollection of joys to be equalled and surpassed in the future, the present is but the threshold of that future which hope has gilt in her brightest colors. To me it is not so. The future can never bring me the joys I have lost, nor any comparable to them. The future can never bring me a wife who believed in me as an oracle, whose faith was of my faith, whose intellect honored mine, who was to me a sharer in every joy, a participator in every triumph, a sympathizer in every sorrow. future can never give me an idolized daughter, whose sweet songs made our house a joyful one; whose grace and purity were things for angels to admire. The present can only offer sublunary enjoyments, excellent companions or suggestive books, but no deep-seated soul-felt joys, such as the inner world craves for, and must some way find or become gloomy or morose. Can you wonder then that I sympathize with Egypt ?"

The

Enough, perhaps too much, of these extracts. In such a strain did the doctor moralize his journey. Malta, Gibraltar, and Lisbon were similarly idealized. To me his moralizing was very dear. I perused and reperused his voluminous letters with everfresh pleasure, but to the reader they would probably prove tedious.

The

man must have been known, to enable one to sympathize properly with his individual idiosyncracy.

His intention had been to remain in England six months, and at the conclusion of that period to return. But once settled in London, he found so much congenial society, so much variety, so much that interested him,

that he gave up the idea of returning to Calcutta.

"I have returned to Europe," he wrote to me, "and I have wondered ever since I returned, that I could ever have left it. I fled from Hamburg to China to escape my thoughts-vain flight! I might have remained. The flames, in which all I loved perished, rose as vividly before my imagination in Canton and Calcutta as they could have done here-the outward was changed, the inward remained unchangeable when the seas were crossed.

"Cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.

"I sought a relief in Asia which London would have much more effectually supplied. Amid its bustling work-shops, its crowded highways, its thronged assemblies, its scientific celebrities, the man of cultivated mind may find a relief denied to him elsewhere. To myself it is inconceivable why I should ever have left a scene so peculiar and so interesting, so admirably adapted to heal the wounds of the wounded in soul, the bruises of the bruised. The identitysustaining and identity-restoring power of the mind has been called the first benefit the soul derives from

its relationship with God. To the miserable this identity-sustaining power is the very action which the soul longs most to put an end to, but cannot. In purely psychical natures, however, external impressions will produce feelings and trains of thought that for a moment tempt the gloomy giant from his cave and tend to wreathe his face with smiles. Wherever such impressions are most constantly to be met with is the proper place for the mourner whose heart is well-nigh seared.

"I shall regret the loss of your society, but I shall regret little else in Calcutta, uncongenial as it was to me. One feels here that, for the most part, we have to do with men with some intelligent ardour in them, with much native energy, with truly anxious desire to advance in the battle of life. In Calcutta, the tailor is the great maker of men and women ; the upholsterer their indispensable sorrow-lightener; good cooking their

one thing needful. The tailor furnishes their bodies externally; the upholsterer gives them easy chairs and couches to alleviate the woes of soul and body; the cook savory, stimulating food- and they are content. They think such a life worth living for. Fatal mistake, from which in another world they will probably awake amazed! Here it is not so.

The men I have been fortunate enough to become acquainted with are, at all events, not such. Doubtless there are in London thousands of tailor-led, upholstery-loving, cook-worshipping men, but my lot has not fallen amongst them, and I am satisfied. The ardour with which physical science is pursued here delights me. I begin to think there is

food for an active soul in such science; a fact doubted before. I attend scientific soirées, and listen to scientific lectures, and pore over scientific bottles and saucepans, finding much food for thought in all this -healthy, digestible food too. And so Calcutta shall see me no more--a loss that neither Calcutta nor I will much mourn over.

"I have written to you lately, my friend, only of the soul; but alas! the body asserts loudly its right to be heard and to be thought of too. My constitution is no longer what it has been; profound physicians, peering through pebble spectacles, have shaken theirheads ominously as they have examined the condition of my frame. 'Shattered-oriental climate-variable country this-dangerous- Calcutta safer again.' So they have hinted in broken sentences, disliking to send a patient away, disliking more to note a death on their books. I have laughed at them as they have talked thus. 'Before God, sir,' said I to the last who so hinted,' you can tell me nothing that will give me more pleasure than the fact that death is drawing near. I have long ceased to live, for hope is life's essence, and I have no hope.' 'Must not despond-gloomy thoughts bad

trying climate-great changes of temperature-death scarcely nearshall consult with Doctor Scammony.' And so I am left alone again, laughing much at my well-meaning doctor, who evidently cannot understand that any man should really and truly wish to die. Wish to die! when he all his life has been trying to keep people from dying! Impossible, he thinks!

"Nevertheless in my case it is quite true. They have urged me to return to Calcutta, expatiating much on these November fogs and their catarrhal and bronchital consequences. At all which I have pished and pshawed as a man might who cared little for death himself, and was not therefore to be frightened by his paltry forerunners. They suggested Nice, and I hinted London; they extolled Madeira, and I praised London; they told me Marseilles was salubrious, and I assured them London was more so. They wiped their hands of the consequences, and I called the servant to give them a towel for the purpose. They shook their heads sagely, and I smiled at them.

"The conviction, however, stares me in the face that I cannot live long. I shall be sorry if we do not meet again, but am glad to find from your last letter that there is a chance of your return. I should welcome you heartily to London, where our noctes ambrosiana' should be restored to us."

IT is a remark of Mr. Lewes's, in his interesting life of Goethe, that that man ought to be considered the originator of any new discovery, who applies and makes practically available the thought, whatever it be, that has not been previously brought publicly before men's cognizance in this manner. Thus, although Mr. Keith Johnston candidly informs us, in the very outset, that the idea of his great work was primarily suggested to him by Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, he must not be allowed to strip himself of the honour so justly his, of being, for all useful purposes, the originator of the Physical Atlas. Of the magnificent work thus designated a new edition having been recently called for, the author has been given an opportunity of making an extension of the original plan, large and important enough to justify an exposition at our hands of the whole system which has given to Mr. Johnston the right to claim the title of a benefactor to science.

An advance, analogous to that which has taken place in the domain of History, has of late years invaded the department of Geography. In the former, from the earliest times to the era immediately preceding the present, the chronicles of the human race exclusively represented a political society, over sections of which certain conspicuous characters ruled, and upon the surface of which certain conspicuous events were from time to time enacted. In the latter, in like manner, the earth, from the days

of Herodotus to our own, was mapped into kingdoms, divided by artificial boundaries seldom coincident with the natural ones, dotted with cities, towns and villages, and marked every here and there by the red dye of some disastrous defeat or signal victory; seas, forests, deserts, mountains, being left blank as unworthy of notice. The earth, as it was man's, was made to supersede the earth, as it was Nature's and God's. It remained for the vast philosophical revolution of the century we live in to bring both these branches of human research into view in their true light; in the one by substituting, as the object of study, communities for individuals, and physical and moral progress for political details; in the other, by adding to the demarcations of man's making those of physical influences and events,-by supplanting, in short, the arbitrary, the artificial, and the transitory, by the true, the natural, and the permanent. It seems, indeed, extraordinary to us, with the magnificent reality before us, that for so protracted a period nature should have been ousted by such contemptible fictions in the delineation of the orb of the earth-that over that vast surface the only designations should have been those traced by man, the only marks the plantings of his foot. We can scarcely understand how we were so long satisfied with a simple projection, which ignored literally and metaphorically everything not lying on the surface. But the fact is that, in this as in other branches, man found his way late;

By Alexander Keith Johnston. A new 1856.

and Sons.

and Sons.

Blackwood

Blackwood

VOL. XLIX.-NO. CCLXXXIX.

D