have resulted to all the outward interests of human life from the philosophy of Bacon, we cannot but join with Mr. Macaulay in applauding its aims and its achievements. He represents this philosophy as proposing to itself a different end from that of all former systems, and that end he designates, in Bacon's own language, "fruit,”—“ the multiplication of human enjoyments and the alleviation of human sufferings" among all the ranks and conditions of men. How far the view of our author is correct, when he asserts that Bacon alone aimed at "fruit," as the end of philosophy, is a question we hope, at some future time, more fully to consider. It is evidently one of his favorite opinions; and he here sets it forth with the full power of that brilliant declamation of which he is so able à master. We have space at present only for the following passages, in which he contrasts the influence of the "philosophy of fruit" upon the advancement of the race, with that of the spiritual dreams of Plato and the stern teachings of the Stoics. They are admirable illustrations of his manner in the article now before us:

"Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the Portico, and lingered round the ancient plane-trees, to show their title to public veneration: suppose that he had said, 'A thousand years have elapsed since, in this city, Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias; during those thousand years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation has been employed in constant efforts to bring to perfection the philosophy which you teach; that philosophy has been munificently patronized by the powerful; its professors have been held in the highest esteem by the public; it has drawn to itself almost all the sap and vigor of the human intellect, and what has it effected? What profitable truth has it taught us, which we should not equally have known without it? What has it enabled us to do, which we should not have been equally able to do without it? Such questions, we suspect, would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower of Bacon what the new philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready: 'It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunder-bolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar

into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land on cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained it, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible, is its goal today, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.""-Vol. II, pp. 465, 466. Again:

"We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might be written, in which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be introduced as fellow-travellers. They come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage; and find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, mothers weeping in terror over their children. The Stoic assures the dismayed population that there is nothing bad in the small-pox, and that to a wise man diseases, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dismay. An explosion of noisome vapors has just killed many of those who were at work; and the survivors are afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an accident is nothing but a mere άлолооÝуμενоν. The Baconian, who has no such fine word at his command, contents himself with devising a safety-lamp. They find a shipwrecked merchant wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from opulence to beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things which lie without himself, and repeats the whole chapter of Epictetus, Πρὸς τοὺς τὴν ἀπορίαν δεδοικότας. The Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the difference between the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruit-the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works."—Vol. II, p. 468.

Such are specimens of the views which Mr. Macaulay presents of the relative merits of the different philosophies which have swayed the ancient and the modern world. That the end which Bacon proposed to himself is the only or even the highest end of philosophical inquiry we are by no means prepared to say. But we conceive that from the common-sense direction which he gave to the mind of the world, have resulted the greater part of the comforts and conveniences that mark the aspect of modern society. We look into antiquity, and behold every where among its civilized nations the most perfect forms of the fine arts rising amidst the most indifferent contrivances of mechanics and the most unskilful arrangements for utility. Side by side with the genius that reared the solemn temples, that carved the living statues and uttered the undying

eloquence and poetry of Greece, we behold philosophy directing the ancient mind to sublime but fruitless speculations, developing no practical truth, creating no useful science, expending infinite labor, but doing almost nothing to alleviate the common miseries of life, or advance the real interests of society. And as we turn to survey the aspect of our recent civilization, we recognize, in the multiplying conveniences that surround us, in the improvements of agriculture and the mechanic arts, in the development of the resources of nature, in the wonderful facilities of travel and commerce, in the institutions of popular education and universal philanthropy, so many triumphs of the "philosophy of fruit," and so many proofs of the debt which humanity owes to the genius of Bacon.

ARTICLE X.

LITERARY NOTICES.

1. Mr. Young's Discourse on the Life and Character of President Kirkland. pp. 104. Little & Brown. Boston. 1840.

THIS Discourse is calculated, in every way, to make a pleasing impression upon the mind of the reader. Whether we regard it as a history of the life and public services of an amiable and cultivated man, who for many years occupied a post of high importance to the interests of the community, or as a sketch of the ascending career which in the atmosphere of our free institutions talent is always invited to pursue, or in a still more pleasing character, as a tribute of the author's affectionate respect to the memory of one who, in early life, had been his "guide, philosopher and friend,” we cannot but be deeply interested in the records it contains.

President Kirkland was the son of an humble and pious minister who devoted a large part of his life to a mission among the Oneida Indians in the western part of the State of New York. He was born in 1770, at Little Falls, on the banks of the Mohawk, in the neighborhood of the Indian town at which the mission of his father was established. He pursued his preparatory studies at Phillips' Academy in Andover, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1789. After passing a year in the capacity of assistant instructer in the academy at Andover, and for two subsequent years filling the office of tutor in logic and metaphysics at Cambridge, he accepted the call of the church on Church Green in Boston, and became their pastor, February 5, 1794. Of this church he continued the minister, till the summer of 1810, when he was called to

the office of President of Harvard University, which had then just been made vacant by the death of Dr. Webber. This station of honor and usefulness he continued to occupy for nearly eighteen years, imparting, more especially during the earlier years of his administration, new energy to the discipline and new attractiveness and efficiency to all the departments of instruction in the university. The period during which Dr. Kirkland presided over its interests is usually regarded as the most brilliant portion of its history, and much of the reputation which the college gained during this period is ascribed by his biographer to the influence exerted both within and without its walls by its courteous and amiable president. He retired from Cambridge in the autumn of 1828, and after spending a considerable period in a course of extensive foreign travel, he passed the evening of his days in the retirement of domestic life. He died in Boston on the 26th of April last, at the age of 69 years.

Mr. Young does not claim for President Kirkland a character either for great original powers or profound learning. He was rather a man of amiable disposition, of unassuming manners, of sound sense, and withal learning enough to be interesting and instructive in the circles of cultivated society, and to fill with dignity the presidency of a seminary which demands of its head rather the general superintendence of its interests than the instruction of its pupils in the principles of any particular science.

We present from the pages of Mr. Young a single passage at the close of the Discourse, in which he sums up the sketch he has before given of the virtues of his private and official character. Of the accuracy of this delineation we are not in a situation to judge.

"Death, which harmonizes the pictures of human character, found little in his to spiritualize or to soften. But if it has not enhanced the feeling of his excellences in the minds of those who felt their influence, it has enabled them to express that feeling without the semblance of flattery. It has left them free, not only to expatiate on those welldirected labors which facilitated the access of the young to the treasures of learning; and on the solemn and persuasive style of his pulpit services; but also to revert to that remarkable kindness of disposition which was the secret but active law of his moral being. His nature was not meliorated, nor even characterized, but wholly moulded of Christian love, to a degree of entireness of which there are few examples. He had no sense of injury but as something to be forgiven. The liberal allowance which he extended to all human frailties grew more active when they affected his own interests, and interfered with his own hopes; so that however he might reprobate evil at a distance, as soon as it came within his sphere, he desired only to overcome it by good. Envy, hatred and malice, were to him mere names,-like the figures of speech in a schoolboy's theme, or the giants in a fairy tale,— phantoms, which never touched him with a sense of reality. His guileless simplicity of heart was not preserved in learned seclusion, or by a constant watchfulness over the development of youthful powers (for he found time to mingle frequently in the blameless gayeties and stirring business of life), but by the happy constitution of his own nature, which passion could rarely disturb, and evil had no power to stain. His sys

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tem of education was animated by a portion of his own spirit; it was framed to enkindle and to quicken the best affections, and to render emulation itself subservient to the generous friendships which it promoted. His charity, in its comprehensiveness, resembled nothing less than the imagination of the greatest of our poets,-embracing every thing human; shedding its light upon the just and the unjust; detecting the soul of goodness in things evil, and stealing rigidity from virtue; bringing into gentle relief those truths which are of aspect the most benign, and those suggestions and hopes which are most full of consolation; and attaching itself, in all the various departments of life to individuals whose youth it had fostered, in whose merits its own images were multiplied, or whose errors and sorrows supplied the materials of its most quick and genial action. The hold which the Cambridge student had upon it could not be forfeited even by slights, the worst of injuries; and when he who had presided there for eighteen years left the scene of his generous labors, it was to diffuse the serenity of a good conscience and the warmth of unchilled affections through a community filled with pupils, who were made proud as well as happy by his presence, and to whom his very countenance was a benediction."

2. Algic Researches; comprising Inquiries respecting the mental characteristics of the North American Indians. First Series: Indian tales and legends. By H. R. SCHOOLCRAFT. New York.

Unless the title-page had conveyed the information, the reader might have been puzzled to know to what part of the world Algic researches referred. It is a word coined by our author, however, to represent a large family of Indian tribes; and its derivation,-which could not easily have been guessed at, and which rivals some of Lord Coke's derivations in its profundity, is from the two long words Alleghany and Atlantic, which, combined, form the short word Algic! The extent of application of the term may best be learned from our author's own words. "The term ALGIC," says he, "is introduced, in a generic sense, for all that family of tribes who, about A. D. 1600, were found spread out, with local exceptions, along the Atlantic, between Pamlico Sound and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, extending northwest to Hudson's Bay, and west to the Mississippi." (p. 13.) "The territory formerly occupied by the Algic nations comprehended by far the largest portion of the United States east of the Mississippi, together with a large area of the British possessions. They occupied the Atlantic coast as far south as the river Savannah in Georgia, if Shawnee tradition is entitled to respect, and as high north as the coast of Labrador, where the tribes of this stock are succeeded by the Esquimaux. It was into the limits of these people [Algics], that the Northmen, according to appearances, pushed their daring voyages previous to the discovery by Columbus; and it was also among these far-spreading and independent hordes that the earliest European colonies were planted." (p. 15.) "It is proper to remark of the Algic tribes that they were marked by peculiarities and shades of language and customs deemed to be quite striking among themselves. They were separated by large areas of territory, differing considerably in their climate and productions. They had forgotten the