The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858

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It is true, Dr. Whewell does not give these discoveries, in the
spirit of an alchemist, as marvels,--but in the spirit of a
philosopher, as intellectual triumphs. Few men of our times have
shown a more active and powerful mind, a more earnest love of truth
for truth's sake, than the author of this History,--and few men have
had a wider or more thorough knowledge of the achievements of other
scientific men. Yet we are surprised, in reading this improved
edition, written scarce a twelvemonth ago, to find how ignorant
Dr. Whewell appears to have been of the existence or value of the
contributions to knowledge made on this side the Atlantic. The
chapter on Electro-Magnetism does not allude to the discoveries of
Joseph Henry, in regard to induced currents, and the adaptation of
varying batteries to varying circuits,--discoveries second in
importance only to those of Faraday,--and which were among the direct
means of leading Morse to the invention of the telegraph. The
chapters on Geology do not mention Professor Hall, and only allude in
a patronizing way to the labors of American geologists, and to the
ease of "reducing their classification to its synonymes and
equivalents in the Old World," as though the historian were not
aware that Hall's nomenclature is adopted on the continent of Europe
by the most eminent men in that department of science. In Geological
Dynamics Dr. Whewell speaks slightingly of glacial action, and
approves of Forbes's semifluid theory, in utter ignorance, it would
seem, of the labors of the Swiss geologists who now honor America
with their presence. The chapters on Zoology, and on Classifications
of Animals, make no allusion to Agassiz's introduction of Embryology
as an element in classification, which was published several years
before the "close of 1856." The history of Neptune gives no hint of
the fact, that its orbit was first determined through the labors of
American astronomers, with all the accuracy that fifty years of
observation might otherwise have been required to secure. Nor does
Dr. Whewell allude to the fact, that Peirce alone has demonstrated
the accuracy of Le Verrier's and Adams's computations, and shown
that a planet in the place which they erroneously assigned to
Neptune would produce the same perturbations of Uranus as those
which Neptune produced. Much less does he allude to that wonderful
demonstration by Peirce of the younger Bond's hypothesis, that the
rings of Saturn are fluid; or to Peirce's remark, that the belt of
the asteroids lies in the region in which the sun could most nearly
sustain a ring. Yet all these points are more important than many of
those which he introduces, and more to the purpose of his chapters.

Notwithstanding these deficiencies in Whewell's scholarship and in
his philosophy, his History is a valuable addition to our modern
literature, and gives a better sketch of the whole ground than can be
found in any other single work. It is particularly valuable to those
whose ordinary pursuits lead them into other fields than those of
science, and we have known such to acknowledge their great
obligations to these clearly written and most suggestive volumes.

_The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer_.
By SAMUEL SMILES. From the
Fourth London Edition. Boston: Ticknor
& Fields.

There is something sublime about railway engineers. But what shall
we say of the pioneer of this almost superhuman profession? The
world would give much to know what Vulcan, Hercules, Theseus, and
other celebrities of that sort, really did in their mortal lives to
win the places they now occupy in our classical dictionaries, and
what sort of people they really were. But whatever they did,
manifestly somebody, within a generation or two, has done something
quite as memorable. Whether the world is quite awake to the fact or
not, it has lately entered on a new order of ages. Formerly it
hovered about shores, and built its Tyres, Venices, Amsterdams, and
London only near navigable waters, because it was easier to traverse
a thousand miles of fluid than a hundred miles of solid surface. Now
the case is nearly reversed. The iron rail is making the continent
all coast, anywhere near neighbor to everywhere, and central cities
as populous as seaports. Not only is all the fertility of the earth
made available, but fertility itself can be made by our new power of
transportation.

Who more than other man or men has done this? Is there any chance
for a new mythology? Can we make a Saturn of Solomon de Caus, who
caught a prophetic glimpse of the locomotive two hundred years ago,
and went to a mad-house, without going mad, because a cardinal had
the instinct to see that the hierarchy would get into hot water by
allowing the French monarch to encourage steam? Can we make a
Jupiter of Mr. Hudson, one bull having been plainly sacrificed to him?
and shall Robert Schuyler serve us for Pluto? Shall we find Neptune,
with his sleeves rolled up, on the North River, commanding the first
practical steamboat, under the name of Robert Fulton? However this
may be, we think Mr. Smiles has made out a quite available demigod
in his well-sketched Railway Engineer. George Stephenson did not
invent the railway or the locomotive, but he did first put the
breath of its life into the latter. He built the first locomotive
that could work more economically than a horse, and by so doing
became the actual father of the railroad system. In 1814, he found
out and applied the steam-blast, whereby the waste steam from the
cylinders is used to increase the combustion, so that the harder the
machine works, the greater is its power to work. From that moment he
foresaw what has since happened, and fought like a Titan against the
world--the men of land, the men of science, and the men of law--to
bring it about.

But before we go farther, who was this George Stephenson? A
collier-boy,--his father fireman to an old pumping-engine which
drained a Northumbrian coal-mine,--his highest ambition of boyhood to
be "taken on" to have something to do about the mine. And he was
taken on to pick over the coal, and finally to groom the engine,
which he did with the utmost care and veneration, learning how to
keep it well and doctor it when ill. He took wonderfully to
steam-engines, and finally, for their sake, to his letters, at the
age of seventeen! He became steam-engineer to large mines. Of his
own genius and humanity, he studied the nature of fire-damp
explosions, and, what is not more wonderful than well proven,
invented a miner's safety-lamp, on the same principle as Sir
Humphrey Davy's, and tested it at the risk of his life, a month or
two before Sir Humphrey invented his, or published a syllable about
it to the world! He engineered the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
He was thereupon appointed engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway. Though the means of transportation between those cities,
some thirty miles, were so inadequate that it took longer to get
cotton conveyed from Liverpool to Manchester than from New York to
Liverpool, yet it was with the utmost difficulty that a grant of the
right to build a railway could be obtained from Parliament. There
was little faith in such roads, and still less in steam-traction.
The land-owners were opposed to its passage through their domains,
and obliged Mr. Stephenson to survey by stealth or at the risk of a
broken head. So great was this opposition, that the projectors were
fain to lay out their road for four miles across a remarkable Slough
of Despond, called Chat Moss, where a scientific civil-engineer
testified before Parliament that he did not think it practicable to
make a railway, or, if practicable, at not less cost than L270,000
for cutting and embankment. George Stephenson, after being almost
hooted out of the witness-box for testifying that it could be done,
and that locomotives could draw trains over it and elsewhere at the
rate of twelve miles an hour,--for which last extravagance his own
friends rebuked him,--carried the road over Chat Moss for L28,000,
and his friends over that at the rate of thirty miles an hour. Thus
he broke the back of the war, and lived to fill England with
railroads as the fruits of his victory; all which, and a great deal
more of the same sort, the reader will find admirably told by
Mr. Smiles,--albeit we cannot but smile too, that, when addressing the
universal English people, he expects them to understand such
provincialisms as _wage_ for wages, _leading coals_ for carrying coal,
and the like. But, nevertheless, his freedom from literary pretence
is really refreshing, and his thoroughness in matters of fact is
worthy of almost unlimited commendation. On the important question,
Who invented the locomotive steam-blast? had Mr. Smiles made in his
book as good use of his materials as he has since elsewhere, he
would have saved some engineers and one or two mechanical editors
from putting their feet into unpleasant places. Our Railroad Manuals,
that have adopted the error of attributing this great invention to
"Timothy Hackworth, in 1827," should be made to read, "George
Stephenson, in 1814." Their authors, and all others, should read
Samuel Smiles, the uppermost, by a whole sky, of all railway
biographers.

_A Volume of Vocabularies, illustrating the Condition and Manners
of our Forefathers, as well as the History of the Forms of
Elementary Education and of the Languages spoken in this Island,
from the Tenth Century to the Fifteenth_. Edited, from MSS. in
Public and Private Collections, by THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., etc.
Privately printed. [London.] 1857. 8vo. pp. 291.

Mr. Wright, in editing this handsome volume, has done another
service to the lovers and students of English glossology. Their
thanks are also due to Mr. Joseph Mayer, who generously bore the
expense of printing the book.

A great deal that is interesting to the student of general history
lies imbedded in language, and Mr. Wright, in a very agreeable
Introduction, has summarized the chief matters of value in the
collection before us, which comprises the printed copies of sixteen
ancient MSS. of various dates. As far as we have had time to examine
it, the book seems to have been edited with care and discretion, and
Mr. Wright has added much to its value by timely and judicious notes.

Most of the vocabularies here printed (many of them for the first
time) were intended for the use of schoolmasters, and throw great
light on the means and methods of teaching during the periods at
which they were compiled. Mr. Wright tells us that there exist very
few MSS. of educational treatises of the fourteenth century, (during
which teaching would accordingly seem to have been neglected,) in
comparison with the thirteenth and fifteenth, when such works were
abundant. To all who would trace the history of education in England
and follow up our common-school system to its source, the editor's
Introduction will afford valuable hints.

The following extracts from Mr. Wright's Introduction will give some
notion of the archaeological and philological value of the volume.

"It is this circumstance of grouping the
words under different heads which gives these
vocabularies their value as illustrations of the
conditions and manners of society. It is evident
that the compiler gave, in each case, the
names of all such things as habitually presented
themselves to his view, or, in other
words, that he presents us with an exact list
and description of all the objects which were
in use at the time he wrote, and no more.
We have, therefore, in each a sort of measure
of the fashions and comforts and utilities of
contemporary life, as well as, in some cases, of
its sentiments. Thus, to begin with a man's
habitation, his house,--the words which describe
the parts of the Anglo-Saxon house are
few in number, a _heal_ or hall, a _bur_ or bedroom,
and in some cases a _cicen_ or kitchen,
and the materials are chiefly beams of wood,
laths, and plaster. But when we come to
the vocabularies of the Anglo-Norman period,
we soon find traces of that ostentation in domestic
buildings which William of Malmsbury
assures us that the Normans introduced
into this island; the house becomes more
massive, and the rooms more numerous, and
more diversified in their purposes. When we
look at the furniture of the house, the difference
is still more apparent. The description
given by Alexander Neckam of the hall, the
chambers, the kitchen, and the other departments
of the ordinary domestic establishment,
in the twelfth century, and the furniture
of each, almost brings them before our
eyes, and nothing could be more curious than
the account which the same writer gives us
of the process of building and storing a castle."
p. xv.

"The philologist will appreciate the tracts printed in the following
pages as a continuous series of very valuable monuments of the
languages spoken in our island during the Middle Ages. It is these
vocabularies alone which have preserved from oblivion a very
considerable and interesting portion of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and
without their assistance our Anglo-Saxon dictionaries would be far
more imperfect than they are. I have endeavored to collect together
in the present volume all the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies that are
known to exist, not only on account of their diversity, but because
I believe that their individual utility will be increased by thus
presenting them in a collective form. They represent the Anglo-Saxon
language as it existed in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and, as
written no doubt in different places, they may possibly present some
traces of the local dialects of that period. The curious semi-Saxon
vocabulary is chiefly interesting as representing the Anglo-Saxon in
its period of transition, when it was in a state of rapid decadence.
The interlinear gloss to Alexander Neckam, and the commentary on
John de Garlande, are most important monuments of the language
which for a while usurped among our forefathers the place of the
Anglo-Saxon, and which we know by the name of the Anglo-Norman. In
the partial vocabulary of the names of plants, which follows them, we
have the two languages in juxtaposition, the Anglo-Saxon having then
emerged from that state which has been termed semi-Saxon, and become
early English. We are again introduced to the English language more
generally by Walter de Biblesworth, the interlinear gloss to whose
treatise represents, no doubt, the English of the beginning of the
fourteenth century. All the subsequent vocabularies given here belong,
as far as the language is concerned, to the fifteenth century. As
written in different parts of the country, they bear evident marks
of dialect; one of them--the vocabulary in Latin verse--is a very
curious relic of the dialect of the West of England at a period of
which such remains are extremely rare."--p. xix.

_Sermons, preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton_. By the late REV.
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M. A., the Incumbent. Second Series. From
the Fourth London Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

The biography of Robertson, prefixed to this volume, will gratify
the curiosity which every sympathetic reader of the first series of
his sermons must have felt regarding the incidents of his career. It
was evident to a close observer that the peculiar charm and power of
the preacher came from peculiarities of character and individual
experience, as well as from peculiarities of mind. There was
something so close and searching in his pathos, so natural in his
statements of doctrine, so winning in his appeals,--his simplest
words of consolation or rebuke touched with such subtile certainty
the feelings they addressed,--and his faith in heavenly things was
so clear, deep, intense, and calm,--that the reader could hardly
fail to feel that the earnestness of the preacher had its source in
the experience of the man, and that his belief in the facts of the
spiritual world came from insight, and not from hearsay. His
biography confirms this impression. We now learn that he was tried
in many ways, and built up a noble character through intense inward
struggle with suffering and calamity,--a character sensitive, tender,
magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing, though not thoroughly
cheerful. The heroism evinced in his life and in his sermons is a
sad heroism, a heroism that has on it the trace of tears. Always at
work, and dying in harness, the spur of duty made him insensible to
the decay of strength and the need of repose. He had no time to be
happy.

The most striking mental characteristic of his sermons is the
originality of his perceptions of religious truth. He takes up the
themes and doctrines of the Church, the discussion of which has
filled libraries with books of divinity which stand as an almost
impregnable wall around the simple facts and teachings of the
Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight,
and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and
heart of the subjects. This felicity comes partly from his being a
man gifted with spiritual discernment as well as spiritual feeling,
and partly from the instinct of his nature to look at doctrines in
their connection with life. He excels equally in interpreting the
truth which may be hidden in a dogma, and in overturning dogmas in
which no truth is to be found. In a single sermon, he often tells us
more of the essentials of a subject, and exhibits more clearly the
religious significance of a doctrine, than other writers have done in
labored volumes of exposition and controversy. This power of
simplifying spiritual truth without parting with any of its depth
accounts for the interest with which his sermons are read by persons
of all degrees of age and culture. His method of arrangement is also
admirable; his thoughts are not only separately excellent, but are
all in their right places, so that each is an efficient agent in
deepening the general impression left by the whole. The singular
refinement and beauty of his mind lend a peculiar charm to its
boldness; we have the soul of courage without the rough outside
which so often accompanies it; and his diction, being on a level
with his themes, never offends that fine detecting spiritual taste
which instinctively takes offence when spiritual things are viewed
through unspiritual moods and clothed in words which smack of the
senses. Combine all his characteristics, his intrepidity of
disposition and intellect, his deep experience of religious truth,
the sad earnestness of his faith, his penetration of thought, his
direct, executive expression, and the beauty which pervades and
harmonizes all,--and it is hazarding little to say, that his volumes
will take the rank of classics in the department of theology to
which they belong.

_The Church and the Congregation_. A Plea
for their Unity. By C. A. BARTOL.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

As church-membership is in some respects the aristocracy of
Congregationalism, and as it is considered by many minds to be as
necessary for the safety of theology as the old distinction of
_esoteric_ and _exoteric_ was for the safety of philosophy, the
publication by a clergyman of such a volume as this, with its purpose
clearly indicated by its title, will excite some surprise, and
certainly should excite discussion. Mr. Bartol contends for open
communion, as most consonant with Scripture, with the spirit of
Christianity, with the practice of the early Church, with the
meaning and purpose of the rite. He denies that the ordinance of the
Lord's Supper has any sacredness above prayer, or any of the other
ordinances of religion; and while he appreciates and perhaps
exaggerates its importance, he thinks that its most beneficent
effects will be seen when it is the symbol of unity, and not of
division. The usual distinction between Church and Congregation he
considers invidious and mischievous, as not indicating a
corresponding distinction in religious character, and as separating
the body of Christian worshippers into two parts by a mechanical
rather than spiritual process. Though he meets objections with
abundant controversial ability, the strength of his position is due
not so much to his negative arguments as to his affirmative
statements; for his statements have in them the peculiar vitality of
that mood of meditation in which spiritual things are directly
beheld rather than logically inferred, and, being thus the
expression of spiritual perceptions, they feel their way at once to
the spiritual perceptions of the reader, to be judged by the common
sense of the soul instead of the common sense of the understanding.
This is the highest quality of the book, and indicates not only that
the author has religion, but religious genius; but there is also
much homely sagacity evinced in viewing what may be called the
practical aspects of the subject, and answering from experience the
objections which experience may raise. The writer is so deeply in
earnest, has meditated so intensely on the subject, and is so free
from the repellent qualities which are apt to embitter theological
controversies, that even when his ideas come into conflict with the
most obstinate prejudices and rooted convictions, there is nothing
in his mode of stating or enforcing them to give offence. The book
will win its way by the natural force of what truth there is in it,
and the most that an opponent can say is, that the author is in error;
it cannot be said that he is arrogant, contemptuous, self-asserting,
or that he needlessly shocks the opinions he aims to change.

Mr. Bartol's style is bold, fervid, and figurative, exhibiting a
wide command of language and illustration, and at times rising into
passages of singular beauty and eloquence. The fertility of his mind
in analogies enables him to strengthen his leading conception with a
large number of related thoughts, and the whole subject of vital
Christianity is thus continually in view, and connected with the
special theme he discusses. This characteristic will make his volume
interesting and attractive to many readers who are either opposed to
his views of the Lord's Supper, or are unable to agree with him in
regard to the importance of the change he proposes.

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