therefore he renders the tuition of the ancient languages a means of exercising and evoking every noble, and healthy, and manly faculty of the juvenile mind. In the path indicated by him, the memory is strengthened and rendered independent; the ear, the eye, and the tongue are exercised and engaged; the attention is attracted and steadied, and the whole nature is quickened and invigorated.

He investigates in masterly style the various appliances and apparatus of nature for the acquirement of language, and, with eager gaze, which disdains no track or by way which may lead to some new opening in the fields of truth, how unpretending or unpromising soever it may appear, he follows the learner into the home and the nursery, thence to return with valuable and available lessons for the schoolmaster and the professor. He sees the unbounded importance of imitation, as an educational instrument of extensive and serviceable application; he perceives and appreciates the susceptibility and vivacity of the youthful imagination; he respects the healthy and natural tendency of the budding faculties; for each and all he has an unerring eye, for each and all he has some winning word, some ingenious and effectual method to enlist it in his service.

The enthusiasm with which Professor Blackie pervades his class-room breathes in these lectures; and, in their vivid, earnest, and powerful style, we recognise the voice which strikes electrically through every ardent young soul there. The whole duty of the pedagogue does not fall within the compass of these lectures; they are, save by collateral reference, confined to the treatment of linguistic education. Had it been otherwise, we should doubtless have had displayed in its due prominence the value of a personal and intimate knowledge of his students by a teacher or professor, that genial, friendly, unstilted intimacy, by which the whole soul, and not merely the logical or mnemonic faculties, is seen into. Full well does Professor Blackie know the importance of this; his whole system, indeed, is distinguished by the way he uses this friendly personal acquaintanceship, as a means of eliciting every shade and variety of talent in his class.

The remarks on university linguistic instruction are admirable; honest, manful, and worthy of our age. The dignified and professional task of painfully inserting the Greek alphabet into the minds of superannuated dunces, and drilling the same desirable and hopeful students in the inflections of the Greek verb, should, he imagines, be relinquished; at once and for ever, as a galling and disgraceful blot on our university education, he would obliterate it from college canons, and remit the aforesaid learners to the last form of the High School. The function of the professor he takes to be, to impart to the student an intelligent and sympathetic knowledge of the grand masterpieces of antiquity; to fire his eye with enthusiasm at their noble and fadeless thoughts; and to lead him to a philosophical and etymological acquaintance with their majestic language.

We make no attempt to give any excerpts; the lectures are so essentially wholes-so skilfully and compactly connected in all their parts as pieces of didactic reasoning -that we would, in extracting a sample or two, and presenting them to our readers, feel that we were offering them single and separated bricks as specimens of the edifice. We refer them to the work itself: vide et crede.

LOCH ORR.

Sir

Loch Orr is now commonly pronounced Lochore. From this, the Malcoms of Balbedie formerly took their patrimonial designation. Lochore no longer presents the appearance of a lake; but is simply the name of an estate, which was, some years ago, the property of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Walter Scott, the son of the illustrious novelist. Walter acquired it by marriage with the heiress, upwards of twenty years ago. The river Orr is a tributary stream of the Leven, in Fife; and, in conjunction with other two rivulets-the Lochtie and the Lochrie-joins the Leven a little above the bridge of Cameron.

Original Poetry.

DAISIES.

I have a little maid at home,
Whose years are scarcely seven,
And she said, in her child-innocence,
'Do daisies grow in heaven?'

"I think they must, all silvery white,
Amid the pastures fair,
Where the little lambs of Jesu's flock
Are guarded by his care!'
Such beautiful and blessed thoughts
Are folded up in flowers,
When link'd by holiest sympathies
To childhood's guileless hours:
And from the simplest things of earth.
Lessons divine are given,

To lift the soul's bright innocence
With loving hopes to heaven!

ASPIRATIONS.

What am I? Dust and yet divine!

Heir to heaven's endless day-
Breath of thy breath, Eternal God,
Illumes this mortal clay;
Aid me to keep the vessel pure

That holds the sacred ray!
This soul that plucketh angel wings
From faith and earnest will,

That, labouring 'mid earth's meanest things,
Finds mercy jewels still,

And closer to thy garment clings,
Pursued by human ill :
Undying, when this life is past,

Shall kneel before thy throne,
Veil'd in the shadow of HIS LOVE

Who suffer'd to atone

Oh cleanse from frailty, may it rise
For evermore thine own!

ELIZA CRAVEN GREEN.

ADULTERATION OF COFFEE.

Dr A. Hassall has reported to the London Botanical Society the results of thirty-four examinations of coffee of all prices. From these, it appeared that the whole of the coffees, with two exceptions only, were adulterated; that chicory was present in thirty-one instances, roasted wheat in twelve, colouring matter in twenty-two, beans and potato-flour in one only; that in ten cases the adulteration consisted of a single article, in twelve of two, and in ten of three substances; that in many instances the quantity of coffee present was very small, and in others not more than a fifth, fourth, third, half, and so on. Contrasting coffee and chicory, it was observed that, while the coffee berry contains a large quantity of essential oil, visible in small drops in the cells, and upon which the fragrance and actual properties mainly depend, not a trace of any similar oil is to be found in the chicory root. The properties of coffee are those of a stimulant and nervine tonic, with an agreeable flavour and delicious smell, not one of which properties is possessed in any degree by the chicory root, it being rather aperient. Dr Hassall regards chicory, therefore, as in every respect inferior to coffee; and observed, that, if its employment be deemed in any way desirable, it should be sold openly, and not as at present, under the names of Ceylon, Berbice, Costa Rica, Mocha coffees, &c.

TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION.

True religion, like the wounded dove, seeks the shade, and communes with herself in solitude; false religion affects the corners of streets, and sits down on the tops of pillars.

THE AGE OF PRINTED LETTERS.

Is the down-rushing and decay of all the works of human labour, are persons who take comfort in the thought, 'it will last our time.' Others, however, are not so easily satisfied. We have known people who seriously perplexed themselves with the law of population, and who, though they knew that the world would last their time, anticipated, with real uneasiness, an epoch in the far future, when the numbers of men would press hard upon the foodproducing powers of the earth. Others are disquieted at the large drafts upon the coal-fields; while another class, trained and disciplined by the civilisation of their age to look before and after, question history and philosophy, whether they can furnish a guarantee that that civilisation shall not lapse into the chaotic barbarism from which it sprung? To this last class we mean to dedicate this paper. We are not ashamed to confess that we belong to it, and have often asked its question. It is a question at once natural and interesting, and this is our excuse for treating it at some length. That it is interesting, needs no il lustration; that it is natural, must be obvious from the merest glance at history. Civilisation has often shifted its local habitation, and the fact prompts us to ask, may it not do so again? Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Greece, and Italy, have had it, and have it not now as they once had; we have it now, but what is there, inherent or accidental, in our civilisation to insure that it will never leave our sea-girt land? We cannot have absolute certainty on this or any other thing which belongs to the future of the world; but there is in our civilisation an element-not new, indeed, for the ancients had it—but an old element with a new birth, and with a vitality such as new births alone can give; and in it we trace this promise-the civilisation of the world will never retrograde, because the world has attained to the age of printed letters.

This old element, it will be seen, is letters; its new birth is the printing-press. In its old form, it was incompetent to prevent civilisation from lapsing into barbarism; may we hope with more confidence in its new birth? That is the question; and, in proceeding to give it a hopeful answer, we are quite aware that written letters were not weak in the ancient times and in the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era, because of the weakness of the thoughts committed to their keeping; for the whole canon of Scripture formed part of the literature of those ages.

Let us look first at the rise and progress of the priestbood of letters, and at the process by which the press has become the great teaching institution of our times. When we find that authors and editors, with only a few phonetic symbols, and a little noiseless engine to give them wings, wield a power greater than that of anointed kings at the head of their armies, curiosity naturally wishes to pry into the occult springs of such a power, and jealousy as naturally sets itself to watch the spirit in which it is wielded. We have here to do, in fact, with a very peculiar priesthood. Differing from all others in that it claims no divine origin or commission, it resembles them in this, that it aims at nothing less than the control and government of the mind of man, and, through it, of the world. It is bold and aggressive as any: acknowledging no pontiff, no council, synod, or other organised authority within its own sphere, its pretensions rival those of the popes when their power was highest; and no pope, council, or synod, ever addressed their respective churches with more of the cathedra than this unconsecrated, self-appointed priesthood addresses the catholic church of the whole world. Unlike other priesthoods, it has no initiatory rites, and takes on no vows of ordination. It speaks of its alma mater; but, like the fowls of the air or the wild beasts of the forest, it soon forgets the maternal care, and goes forth from its schools and colleges, enriched with their treasures and armed with their weapons; but (and yet is not charged by them with ingratitude or disloyalty) renders them no more allegiance. It makes light of formularies, and is rather a free-thinking priesthood, both in secular and sacred things. It has no written creeds or confessions;

its faith is in constant flux and reflux; and would seem, in all its shifting phases, to revolve round this one negative article-there is nothing perfect under the sun.

Here, then, in the midst of us, is an order, whose subtle influence pervades all our organisations, and laps us like an atmosphere. It insinuates itself into our domestic relations, and penetrates to the fountains of thought and feeling, of motive and action. No wonder that it excites jealousy, or that jealousy ripens into hostility and persecution; for there is an important sense in which the press is -and is from the nature and necessity of things-the natural and everlasting enemy of all human institutions. This will appear by and by. For the powers that be to persecute it is, therefore, as natural as the perennial conflict of good and evil; the censorship is, in fact, an instinct of self-preservation. For what is the press? or, rather, what is literature, of which the press, in these days, is the organ? Why, just thought, in one or other of its varieties. It is mind expressing itself to other minds, unfolding itself, laying itself open, and inviting all within the range of its voice to read the impressions which the things of the visible and invisible worlds have made upon it. All this, indeed, was anterior to letters; it must have been coeval with human life; for men were endowed with speech from the beginning, and literature is only a form of speech. Now, we may assume that there was from the earliest times a polity of life, both of the visible and the invisible. There were political organisations, and there were systems of religion. They all grew out of plastic thought, and the best that can be said for them is, that they were better adapted than better systems to the circumstances in which they had their birth. But they were necessarily incomplete, and to this original imperfection were soon added the perverting influences of individual ambition and class interests. Between thought in the concrete and thought in the abstract, there is, and must be, constant antagonism; hence the censorship of the press, which is still a characteristic of European life over the greater part of the Continent.

We see, then, how thought, expressing itself by speech or letters, and, in obedience to its own laws, aiming after ideal perfection, is the grand engine of change or revolution. Milton, even in a commonwealth, found it necessary to write a vindication of his birthright in the Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.' Human thought, in its higher phases, hardly ever finds itself in harmony with the embodiments of previous thought in the world; and it follows that there must be more or less of antagonism, latent or active, between them. But there would seem to be a tendency in these embodiments, not exactly to grow strong by age, but to change only from bad to worse, and to baffle the power and wisdom of man to improve them. It would seem as if systems of politics and religion, and not those only which were built on narrow principles of government, and on crude ideas of the invisible world, but systems which rested originally, or at some point of their history, on a broad basis of jurisprudence, and on correct ideas of the Deity, should for a time manifest a healthy and blessed strength-should pass through the phases of efflo rescence, fruit-bearing, and decay-should exhibit a civilisation ensuring to their subjects a large measure of material comfort; but, as if a superior power had said to them, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther,' be altogether unable to rise higher by virtue of any inherent strength. We find, accordingly, that the great revivals of civilisation were originated by foreign influences; and, farther, that those revivals which are destined to be, not local but universal, were brought about by influences foreign, not only to their original locality, but to this world. A brief survey of the leading facts which go to illustrate this statement, will also, we think, illustrate the rise and progress of the modern priesthood of letters, and furnish some elements of thought for a natural history of the printing-press.

We have, first, to show how, when the world was losing sight of the spiritual loadstars, and human thought was incompetent to weigh it up, or prevent it from sinking, the

Divine thought descended upon one man, with the promise that, in the fulness of the days, the light of it should fill the whole world. We have to mark the slow development of this thought, first, in the lives of the patriarchs; and to note how the light of it hardly spread beyond their families. There it remained for four ages; after which it blazed forth in the splendours of Sinai, and was embodied in the Ten Commandments, in the ceremonial and political institutions of the Jews, and in the whole history of their theocracy. We find among that people a literature, altogether pervaded by this foreign thought, and that this literature was in direct antagonism to all other embodiments of thought in the world. But we find even it growing dim -fading from the minds of men, and failing to touch their hearts or guide their conduct. We find it breathed upon, ever and anon, by seers and sages, Heaven's own commissioned messengers; and, for brief seasons, we see the nation lifting up its head and looking heavenwards. But, after all, we find that those superhuman efforts were not followed by commensurate success; and we are taught the sad and painful lesson, that the growth of humanity is the slowest of growths, and that, of all motions, the upward motion of the platform on which mankind lead their lives is the most imperceptible.

At last the line of prophets ceased, and the divine literature of the Jews was left for four hundred years to work by its own native energy among them. There were no printing-presses in those days; but it might appear to be no slight compensation that their literature pervaded all their institutions in church and state, was constantly kept before them in their gorgeous ritual, was symbolised in their magnificent Temple, and that every twelfth man among them was set apart to teach it. But all was unavailing. During those ages there was not only no progress, but a lamentable decay. The divine truth, which was written on every hill, and stream, and valley of the Promised Land-which was ever before the people in the fact that the land of promise was now the land of possession —was weighed down to the level and nature of the visible symbols through which it was administered; and the light and heat of it could not penetrate to the understanding and the heart through the hard dry dogmas in which it was incrusted. There behoved, therefore, to be another avatar. The historical literature of Judaism must needs be breathed upon as no prophet had ever breathed upon it. Accordingly it was so. Christianity was promulgated. A spiritual message was addressed immediately to the mind of It must needs be proclaimed through the medium of history; but all other signs and symbols, save the grand march of Providence in the ages, were set aside. Here, then, was the divine thought once more in contact and collision with the embodied forms of human thought in the civil and religious systems of the world.

man.

would rise no higher, and, in the course of ages, would again lapse into barbarism and disorganisation.

Twice had the divine thought descended on the world, and in both instances it was committed to the keeping of a literature. In both instances, we have seen, after comparatively brief seasons of power and splendour, it paled in the murky atmosphere of human passion, though, in the first instance, a special priesthood, stimulated ever and anon by the seers, were anointed as its ministers; and though, in the second, an order of teachers were commissioned to proclaim it to all nations. It is only in the light of these facts that we can truly appreciate what (with a duc apprehension of its inherent difference) we might be allowed to call the third avatar, in the invention of printing. It was humbler in its nature, it was different in its mode, from the other two. A new thing was not now to be communicated: an old thing was to have new life breathed into it. The highest truths had already been revealed, and now they were to have a new organ of utterance, and a new priesthood. Around every man were the great truths and facts of the universe-the invisible Deity, the invisible moral and spiritual laws of his kingdom, and the visible manifestation of his attributes in the heavens and the earth; within him were the dim but true archetypes of those visible and invisible things; and behind him lay their twofold illustration and interpretation in the sacred books and the scroll of history. The plan now was, to bring all these things before the human mind, in their individualities and relations; and this work, in the invention of printing, was largely committed to what we have called the new priesthood of letters.

We have now spread out before us the experience of three centuries of the working of this providential order in the world. Mark, in the first place, the slow but steady increase of the audience of the new priesthood. In the first generation of the art, elementary schools were projected in our own country for the initiation of the whole people in the mystery of letters. Obstacles were interposed, but the scheme was never abandoned. Let us remember it to their honour, and express a hope that the example will not be lost upon their successors, that the old priesthood showed no jealousy of the new one-that our noble reformers perceived and descried, in the invention of printing and the dissemination of general knowledge, only preparatory agencies and processes to a higher manifestation of religious life than had otherwise been possible. Accordingly, they projected an organisation for the diffusion of knowledge; and at length this poor northern land, lying on the utmost verge of civilisation, set an example to the whole world, in its parish schools, of an educational provision for the whole people. Mark, in the next place, the procedure of the writers and thinkers. They had not, as of old, received a new divine thought or message to man; and accordingly they set about to resuscitate the old thoughts, especially in the highest teaching, the religious. The sacred books were brought out from cloisters, and from the profounder gloom of the unknown tongues, and held up, a heaven-pointing beacon, in the sight of all people. The human thought of the old giants-their Titanic war with the gods-their heroic but unsuccessful struggles to take the kingdom of heaven by storm and violence-were also exhibited to the wonder and emulation of the more favoured races in the latter times. In the spiritual or religious department, as we have said, the first printed literature was the old divine thoughts-is so, indeed, up to this day, and is so, as regards the real substance of the matter, of necessity. Note, in passing, the old antagonism, not exactly between the old and the new, but between old established modes and new manifestations

natural and everlasting enemy of all human institutions. The Church of Rome launched its thunders against the Reformers. Not once or twice, but often, it stirred up bloody persecutions through the length and breadth of Christendom, and for half a century convulsed the Continental kingdoms with religious wars. In midst of these alarms, the quiet printing-press kept moving and grinding away.

Things old and new were thrown into it, and while, in the spiritual direction, the result was the multiplication of sects and wide divergence, in the other, or secular direction, the tendency was to convergence and unity. In chemistry, astronomy, geography, medicine, and in the secular sciences generally, men began to see eye to eye; and now, even in geology, which seemed in its infancy to invalidate the Mosaic cosmogony, scholars and theologians meet together in a perfect palace of concord. The divergence, in the one case, and the convergence, in the other, might not be difficult to explain; but to enter on this point would lead us far beyond the limits and scope of this

paper.

It required three hundred years of laborious alphabeting and pioneering to prepare the field of the human mind for the seed-time of the remarkable literary phenomenon of our own days-the cheap periodical literature for the people. Our imperfect educational systems have brought forth this great fact; and it, in its turn, we can well believe, is destined to bring forth other great facts, the import of which at this time we can but dimly conceive. While governments were remiss, and churches in hot dispute, the press was slowly but steadily moving on, step by step, to the supreme government of the world. Its priesthoodbold, daring, independent, and aggressive-was insinuating itself into the confidence of millions of our countrymen, was moulding their thoughts and opinions, and directing the inner currents and outward course of their life; and now, if governments and churches would-we do not say permit and sanction popular systems of education, for that is as good as settled-but if they would play a part in the guidance and control of them, they must consult with the power which has taken infeftment and possession of the field. We speak not thus in boast or bravado, but in all due humility and soberness. We utter no prophecy; we merely enunciate a fact. An educational system has grown up among us; it is going on from strength to strength, for in its very nature are the elements of indefinite expansion and power. Those millions upon millions of printed sheets which are ever issuing from the British press, are so many schoolmasters, and each of them is a ruler and controller of men. In those legions are individuals of all mental calibres, and of every moral complexion; and it is to neutralise the influence of the weak and bad, and to make it practicable and prudent for the strongest and the best to utter still higher and better things, that the intelligent and largehearted friends of a national system of school instruction urge that question on the governing powers in church and

state.

Here, then, is quantity in abundance, and we have but to ask, and it will immediately be doubled. As to the quality, much of our periodical literature is good, and the portion of it that is decidedly bad is becoming less, we believe, every day. Our newspapers have much improved their manners the last ten or twenty years; and the thought, the literature, the tone, and tendency of the cheap publications for the people are, in not a few instances, of a high order of excellence. Another feature is, that they sometimes excel themselves, and throw out 'feelers,' as if fishing for readers far in advance of the main body, to whom the larger portion of their columns are very properly devoted. The next point is, as to the effect of all this upon the national mind and character. There is much information, shrewd intelligence, and the capacity to turn it to account, among our hard-working mechanics; and if it must be admitted that, as a body, their knowledge is rather of facts than principles, of events than causes-if they are richer in the raw materials of intellectual wealth than in the capacity to turn that wealth to account in the weaving of the finer spiritual garments for the spirit's wear, we must keep in mind that the one process comes, in natural order, before the other, and that, having the one, we may expect the other in good time. We shall do well, indeed, to remember the lesson which our brief survey of the old times taught us-the sad and painful lesson, that the growth of humanity is the slowest of all growths. Comparatively, the intellectual condition of our own time is

high, the highest the world has yet seen, the broadest as well as the highest; for now, for the first time, the whole people are being gathered into the fold of the new priesthood. There is nothing in the present aspect or horoscope of the world to suggest a fear that, under the ministry of the printing-press, the divine thought will ever pale, as under the former dispensations. For now three hundred years it has been rising higher and higher in the spiritual firmament, and there would seem to be that in its nature and circumstances which will forbid it ever to decline; for it is not now in the hands of an order, as of old, but in the hands of the race; not one tribe, not the twelfth man, as of old, but every man is now, or is in process of becoming, its minister or its custodier. It can never again, as in the middle ages, be buried in cloisters or locked up in languages which the people do not understand; for books are becoming universal, schools will and must increase, and we would venture to say, that the action and motion of the press will be sure and perennial as the forces of nature. Through reformations and revolutions in church and state, through three hundred years of Protestant teaching, through parish schools, and societies for the diffusion of knowledge, and cheap publications for the people, the printing press has evolved a mental activity, if not more intense, yet certainly more extended, than in any former age. The result is, that we now meet with bold thought in market-places and byways, on hustings, at public meetings, in workshops, in the domestic circle, and in the general intercourse of men. Now, for the first time, an agency is at work calculated, as would appear, to bring together the mind of a whole people, and the everlasting facts and truths of the universe-to bring them together, to keep them together, and to draw them ever nearer in a communion of power and of love. Such union and communion on the part of the few was the sole cause of the old civilisations; barbarism succeeded upon the divorce or decay of it; but inasmuch as such divorce or decay is hardly conceivable with the existence of the printingpress, and as it is next to an absurdity to imagine an age of printed letters to give place to an age of written letters, we reach the pleasant and logical conclusion, that modern civilisation is not doomed to repeat the old cycles, but that its course is one of slow but sure increase.

SKETCHES IN SCOTLAND IN AULD LANGSYNE.' SETTLIN' FOR CRUMMIE.-PART II.

WE had just left Burnbrae in our last. Let us now go to the market, and no longer wonder how

'Sturdy chiels an' clever hizzies, Are bred in sic a way as this is.'

The market has not been a 'selling ane,' and Saunders has nearly stood it out. You may see by his countenance that he has sold Crummie at least half-a-crown below what he considers her value, and you may be sure that the luckspenny shall be but small. But what could he do more than he has done? Little practised in buying or selling, and downright honest in all his transactions, he is at the best no match for his sharp, wily, experienced customer (purchaser), who, though he detests the very name of 'couper' (horse-seller, or dealer in cattle in general), is a match for the best of them. He has been on Crummie' (priced her) in the morning, and has seen nothing like her at the money in the market. True, she is hard and lean, but what cares he for that; he wad rather mak' beef than buy beef ony day.' So he hovers about in a careless way, as it seems, but, when another customer appears, contrives to be within earshot. As it draws near the 'tail' of the market, he sticks pertinaciously in, adds a shilling to his former 'bode,' and declares that he will not give a farthing more, if a farthing more would buy her, takes out his greasy pocket-book, counts over the 'notes,' and all but throws them in the other's face. But it will not do. Saunders, unskilled as he is, sees he has hooked his customer, and sticks firm to what he 'loaffs' her at (asks). The other puts up his notes again in a seeming pet, wishes