One of the things which strike most forcibly the American visitor in Great Britain, is the immense amount of spirits and beer offered for sale. From the time he sets foot in Liverpool, until he returns thither for embarkation after travelling all over the Continent, the pre-eminence of Britain in the consumption of strong drink is astounding, and leads him almost to wonder whether there are any sober people in a country where alcohol occupies such a place among articles of merchandise. During a somewhat extended tour on the Continent, we could not but notice that the only people we saw drinking spirits were Britons-even in Germany and Holland, supposed to be drinking countries. The difference in this respect between Britain and other countries is more striking than any one could believe without actual observation, and the fact is certainly one which demands serious consideration. The number of persons one meets in England bearing evident marks of intemperate habits shows that it is quite time the subject at tracted the attention not only of the philanthropist but the statesman.

The stranger naturally enumerates the things that strike him unpleasantly in Great Britain, because it is impossible to take the opposite course, and recount and remark upon the points that claim his admiration. He sees so much to approve-so little, comparatively, to condemn. If a certain coarseness and want of taste strike him painfully, he is none the less impressed with the substantial greatness and excellence which everywhere abound. Perhaps it is because he sees such excellence that he longs to see the outward grace added. He would not exchange the worth of England for the

It is singular that with such an assured sense of superiority over all other nations as is apparent in the English, they should at the same time be so sensitive with regard to the smallest derogation. They call the Americans sensitive, and so they are; but their sensitiveness has at least the apology of youth-of conscious deficiency-and of the most unsparing and contemptuous criticism on the part of their British neighbors. If, on the other hand, they see anything, however unimportant, which may call for animadversion in England, what wrath-what indignation-what severe recrimination falls on their defenseless heads! Speak of the Spitalfields weavers-of the starving thousands that everywhere set off the wealth of England, and how quickly will your remark be rebutted with slavery! Mention the abuses of the Church Establishment, slavery! Game-laws, slavery! and so on through the whole catalogue of ills under which Englishmen growl and grumble enough when Americans are not by. They pay us at least the compliment of implying that we have but one great evil to contend with, and we are quite willing to acknowledge that one to be a host; but we do not fancy that it ought to blind our eyes or shut our mouths. No nation in the world understands better than the English the application for its own benefit of the parable of the wheat and the tares; and the Americans, though of hastier nature, are learning the lesson too. They will have got rid of slavery at least as soon as England has reformed "the family of plagues that waste her vitals" as one even of her own poets hath said. Meanwhile let each endeavor to bear, now and then, a grain of truth from the other, without bristling, or snapping, or darting out forked venomous lightnings in return. English remarks upon America too often lack the basis of kind intention which takes the offense from severity; American remarks upon England have been too generally recriminative rather than judicious. To find fault without a good motive is mere contemptible venting of spleen and envy; to make careful and discriminating strictures is the proper office of sincere and unselfish friendship. When the English respect us, or are willing to own that they respect us, they will be able to do us good; and when we cease to be made angry by their sneers, we may perhaps do them good in return.

THIS volume is very unlike the majority of those records of astronomical observations which form an annually increasing load upon the quarto shelves of our scientific libraries. These may be, and for the most part are, of the greatest value, as containing the data upon which the future progress of one large department of astronomy is to be founded, but Sir John Herschel's work is a record of that progress itself.

Practical astronomy is naturally divided into two branches: 1st, that which depends mainly or solely upon the perfection of the Telescope as an instrument of research-in which the highest resources of optical art are expended in the examination of the heavenly bodies considered singly, or in such small groups as may be discerned at one time in the field of a telescope; 2d, that which depends more directly upon our power of measuring and subdividing time and space, whereby the relative places of the heavenly bodies are determined, the laws of their motions and the forms of their orbits: the divided circle and the clock are the characteristic implements of this branch of astronomy; telescopes of enormous power are, generally speaking, inapplicable to it. Now the bulk of the publications issuing from our national observatories belong to the latter class of inquiries; whilst the former has, with some exceptions, been left chiefly in the hands of amateurs, or at least of private individuals. The labors of Sir William Herschel, to which his son has in the present and in former works so largely added, belong in a peculiar manner to the first class. The telescope is almost the sole apparatus: fine telescopes, and the much rarer qualification of using them to the best advantage, are the requisites for success.

It will readily be apprehended that telescopic astronomy, and the records of telescopic observations, are of far more general interest than the reading of altitude and azimuth circles, the counting of pendulum beats, and the determination of a few seconds of error in the tabular places of a planet. And though, as we shall see, there is a amount of numerical work in Sir John Herschel's pages, yet the results are so numerous and varied, so striking by reason of their novelty, and so picturesque in their details, that they are fitted to interest every one who is even moderately acquainted with the general facts of astronomy, and render the work eminently readable, which is precisely what (it may be stated without any disparagement to our regular observatory publications) the others are not. The difference may be illustrated by two descriptions of a distant country which we can never hope to visit. The one is a statistical report of its extent and resources, the number of acres of arable, pasture, or wood, the latitude and longitude of its cities, the altitude of mountains, the number of inhabitants, and the sum of revenue. The other is a graphic description of its natural features and political condition; the road-book of a traveller who has explored its recesses with the eye of a naturalist and a painter, whose sketches live in our remembrance, and by an appeal to universal associations, enable us to realize scenes and manners which we shall never see for ourselves, but which we learn to compare with what has been all our life long familiar. Thus does the astronomy of the telescope lead us to understand in some degree the economy of other systems; it brings to its aid every branch of physical science in order to obtain results regarding the nature and

John Herschel devoted his nights to obser- | vation, his days to calculation and manual labor, all directed to the fulfilment of his arduous enterprise. During this time, too, he managed to keep up an extensive correspondence with men of science at home, and to exert himself energetically for the moral and intellectual improvement of the colony with which he had been thus incidentally associated. Not the least remarkable part of this expedition was that it was defrayed out of his private fortune, notwithstanding liberal offers which he received of pecuniary aid from the late Duke of Northumberland, which he thought it inconsistent with the entire independence of his plans to accept; he even declined, as was understood, the use of a government vessel to convey him to his destination. Opinions will differ as to whether he might not, without any compromise of liberty of research, have availed himself of offers most creditable to those who made them; but the reason of his refusal, and afterwards availing himself of the generous proposal of the noblemen above named, to defray the expense of publishing the results, is best stated in his own words at a public dinner given to him after his return. He then said

"Much assistance was proffered to me from many quarters, both of instruments, and others of a more general nature-offers in the highest degree honorable to all parties, and I should be sorry to have it thought that, in declining them, I was the less grateful for them. I felt that if they were accepted, they would compel me to extend my plan of operations and make a larger campaign, and that in fact it would compel me to go in some degree aside from my original plan. But that campaign being ended, the harvest gathered in, and the mass of facts accumulated, I felt that the same objections did not apply to the publication of its results; and I therefore refer with pride and pleasure to the prospect of being enabled by the princely munificence of the Duke of Northumberland, to place those results before the public in a manner every way more satisfactory, and without becoming a burden, as they other

wise must have been a very severe one, on the funds of our scientific institutions."--Athenæum, 1838, p. 425.

The generous offer thus accepted was peculiarly well-timed. The labor of extricating laws from masses of facts, great though it be, is a labor of love to the man of science; but the labor and anxiety of publication is not usually so; and is commonly attended with difficulties which, in the case of the abstruser sciences, would be insuperable to most private individuals, but for the exist

ence of those societies alluded to by Sir J. Herschel, which with all their many faults of omission and commission must ever enjoy the credit of having brought to light, or assisted in doing so, the immortal labors of many a patient student, and even the Principia of Newton. But the common mode of publication by detached memoirs, buried in a mass of heterogeneous learning, accessible. only by a research through piles of quartos, is after all but an imperfect publication. It is quite impossible to expect that any man's works, even the most celebrated, shall be fully appreciated when they can only be read or seen piecemeal, and by very many persons not at all. He who wishes to do a service to the reputation of an eminent man, living or dead, cannot do better than collect his writings in simple chronological sequence, and hand them down to posterity without note or comment. Such a specimen of fraternal piety has been shown by Dr. Davy in his collection of his brother's immortal writings: such Dr. Faraday has in part done for himself; such a high-spirited Peer has enabled Sir John Herschel to do, in the completest and fittest manner, in the publication before us; and such the scientific world hopes that Sir John himself will soon undertake with respect to the multifarious and important writings of his father, scattered over not less than thirty-seven volumes of the Philosphical Transactions, and consequently, though often talked of, in reality hardly known except by meagre and superficial abstracts.

From the late noble Chancellor of Cambridge, therefore, Sir J. Herschel received a benefit which will contribute in no slight degree to the extension and perpetuation of his fame. The whole execution of the work is worthy of the subject, the author, and the patron.

The eight years following Sir John Herschel's return to England were mainly spent in preparing the materials of this volume, nor will the time appear at all excessive when we consider, first, the vast mass of rough observations accumulated during four years of incessant work; secondly, that the reductions were all performed by the author's own hand; thirdly, that everything is worked out in the most complete and systematic manner, so as to afford in fact a model of this sort of analysis. To this may be added, that during the preparation of the work Sir John Herschel generously gave up much time to matters of general scientific interest, or for the sake of his friends. Amongst many which might be mentioned, the arrangements