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Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire. July,

There is a striking contrast between the principles of government defended by M. Thiers in this work, and the professions of his own political life. We have hitherto known him as the uncompromising advocate of constitutional monarchy; he here transforms himself into the indiscriminate panegyrist of a military autocracy. This inconsistency in the political philosophy of the author represents no conflict between an exoteric theory of parliamentary government, and an esoteric theory of pure despotism. For the truth is, that no other living statesman has clung with equal tenacity to his original professions in the most adverse fortune. During the later years of the reign of LouisPhilippe, as well as at its commencement, he was the representative of liberal government. When the revolution of 1848 had threatened to ostracise the advocates of kingly power, he remained the champion of constitutional monarchy. And when that system had given way in turn, he stood aloof from the restoration of the Empire as firmly as he had opposed the irruption of the Republic. Yet it is the preeminent tendency of this work to uphold the principles of administration and government which M. Thiers, in his political career, has consistently opposed, and to which his ambition has been honourably sacrificed. His historical great work is a direct contradiction of his public conduct. His political influence in defending constitutional liberty has probably been more than cancelled by his literary influence in the restoration of the Empire. His tongue has been consistently employed in opposing despotism; his pen has laboured as consistently to show that any other than a despotic government is impossible. While M. Thiers has drawn in brilliant colours his picture of the glories and the triumphs of the reign of Napoleon I., the events which have extinguished the freedom of the French nation, and still cast a deep shade over its future, spring from the same source as those which he applauds.*

At the time at which we are writing, sixteen volumes of this history have been published; the seventeenth volume, containing the Campaign of 1814, and the Abdication of Fontainebleau, is understood to be ready for publication, and the original intention of the author was to terminate his labours at that point. We have recently learnt, however, that M. Thiers has resolved to narrate the closing scene of this eventful history on the field of Waterloo, and that an eighteenth volume of the work is in preparation, to which we may hereafter have occasion to direct our attention.

ART. III. 1. Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Creation. By the Rev. BADEN POWELL, M.A., F.R.S., &c., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford. London: 1855.

2. The Correlation of Physical Forces. By W. R. GROVE, Q.C., M.A., F.R.S., &c. Third Edition. London: 1855. 3. On the Conservation of Force. By Professor FARADAY, D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. &c.

4. Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces. By Sir JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, Bart., K.H. London: 1857.

5. The Soul in Nature. By the late Professor OERSTED. Translated by the Misses HORNER. London: 1852.

6. Nomos. An Attempt to demonstrate a Central Physical Law in Nature. London: 1856.

ALMOST every age of human history has either given to itself,

or received from posterity, some epithet, marking, whether truly or fancifully, its distinctive place in the records of the world. It would be easy to find and to apply many such epithets to the remarkable period in which our own lot is cast; abounding, as it does, in characteristics which distinguish it from any that have ever gone before. One, which we cannot doubt that our own posterity will adopt, inasmuch as it affirms a fact equally obvious and certain, is, that we are living in an age of transition; a period when changes, deeply and permanently affecting the whole condition of mankind, are occurring more rapidly, as well as extensively, than at any prior time in human history. The fact is one which lies on the very surface of all that we see in the world around us. No man of common understanding, even in the narrowest circle of observation, but must mark the continual shifting of things before him; reversing, in many cases, the maxims and usages which are the inheritance of centuries, and altering, in a thousand ways, the present conditions of material and social life. The philosopher who looks from a higher level, and upon a more distant horizon, discerns in these changes a wider and more lasting influence. He sees that they involve the relations of races and communities of men over the whole face of the globe; and that they are destined, sooner or later, to obliterate many of those diversities and lines of demarcation, which, however originally produced,

seemed almost to dissever the species, in the contrasts of human existence they afford. He takes further note of what is the great agent in this and other changes, that wonderful progress in physical philosophy, which has placed new powers in the hands of man-powers transcending in their strangeness and grandeur the wildest fables and dreams of antiquity; and the effects of which are already felt in every part of the habitable earth. He sees the march of discovery continually going on; new paths opened; new instruments and methods of research brought into action; and new laws evolved, giving connexion and combination to the facts and phenomena which unceasingly accumulate around us.

Closely, or even necessarily, connected with the changes last denoted, is the topic to which, as suggested by the works before us, we would especially invite the attention of our readers. We allude to the concurrent changes taking place in the spirit and scope of physical philosophy at large; scarcely less remarkable in their nature and influence than the discoveries in which they originate, and by which they are sanctioned. Modern science, in its dealings with the great physical powers or elementary forces which pervade and govern the material world, has been led, or even forced, into a bolder form and method of inquiry. Inductions of a higher class have been reached, and generalisations attained, going far beyond those subordinate laws in which science was formerly satisfied to rest. Experiment and observation, as the agents in acquiring knowledge, must always to a certain extent be alike in their objects and methods of pursuit. But the precision and refinements of modern experimental research-partly due to greater perfection of instruments, partly to the higher principles of inquiry pursued-strikingly distinguish it from that of any anterior time. With every allowance for illustrious exceptions, it is impossible to make the comparison, and not to see that the physical researches of our own day have a larger scope and more connected aim that experiment is no longer tentative merely, but suggested by views which stretch beyond the immediate result, and hold in constant prospect those general laws which work in the universe at large. Nor is the power so gained ever now permitted to be dormant or inert. If thought suggests experiment, experiment ministers fresh materials to thought; and the philosopher working boldly with the new forces at his command, and under the guidance of hypotheses, which extend to the very confines of human intelligence, obtains results which almost startle the imagination by the inroads they seem to make on the mysteries beyond. When flying along the railroad at forty or fifty miles an hour, with a slender wire

beside us, conveying with speed scarcely measurable, the news of nations, the demands of commerce, or the fates of war, we have an example (though few care to estimate it fully) of those mighty attainments which bind, to do our bidding, elements before unknown or uncontrolled by man; and which give certainty of other and similar attainments in time yet to come.

Admitting that hypothesis, and this often of very adventurous kind-the animi jactus liber'-blends itself largely with the recent progress of physical science, we would in no way impugn this powerful instrument and aid of research; the use of which, under due limitation, is justified equally by reason and experience. In all inquiries of this nature, except those of strictly mathematical kind, certainty and conjecture necessarily and closely commingle. The speculation or bare analogy of one day becomes the scientific induction of the next; and even where hypothesis is not thus happily fated, it still has often high value as a partial interpreter and provisional guide to the truths sought for. All sciences, and very especially those of optics, of chemistry, of electricity, furnish notable instances to this effect; and have rescued hypothesis, in the philosophical sense of the term, from the vague reproach which it was once the fashion to cast upon it. Such vindication, however, affords no sanction to that spirit, which pushes mere speculation far in advance of experiment and observation, and adventures rashly into fields not prepared for human culture, if indeed ever accessible to it. Eccentric theories of this kind, the produce of imperfect knowledge or illogical understanding, will ever be found in the path of science; perplexing, it may be, to those who loosely follow it; but disappearing one after another, as truth pursues its steady course amidst them. The mysteries of organic life, approached with caution by the true philosopher, are an especial seduction to these framers of new systems,-systems which it becomes easy to coin, under shelter of a vague phraseology, and aided by the very obscurity of the subject.

While speaking thus generally on the spirit and methods of modern science, we may notice the fact, that there is scarcely one of the legitimate hypotheses of our own time, or even any great law founded on the soundest inductions from experiment, which is not prefigured in some way, more or less distinctly, in the philosophy of former ages. We might, had we space for it, give many curious instances of these anticipations; and assign reasons why they should especially be found in the more recondite parts of philosophy, such as the origin of matter, the qualities and combinations of atoms, the theories of space, ether, forces, &c., transcendental questions which press themselves

upon the thought of the metaphysician, as well as of the naturalist and mathematician, in contemplating the phenomena of the universe. Through these avenues of thought and speculation, little aided by experiment or systematic observation, the subtlety of a few rare spirits in each early age came upon the traces of physical truths, which modern science has approached by more certain roads, and made the lawful prize of inductive research. What were then hasty and transient glances into these profound parts of philosophy, have now become a steady insight into the great physical laws under which are embodied all the phenomena of the natural world.

We have placed at the head of this article the titles of several recent works, well fitted, by their various merits and by the eminence of their authors, to illustrate the view we have briefly given of the present aspects of physical philosophy, as well as to indicate those future prospects of science, which may fairly be inferred from the spirit in which it is now pursuedthe attainments still possible to human reason or human power. These are the points to which we now seek especially to direct attention. We might easily double or treble the number of the volumes thus referred to, were we to include even a small proportion of the systematic or elementary works; the lectures, memoirs, or addresses to scientific bodies; or the articles in reviews and other periodicals, which, under the influence of this new vigour of inquiry, and the practical popularity of many of its topics, have opened their pages to meet the demand for more familiar information than scientific treatises can afford. These topics, in fact, include not only the sciences treating of the simpler inorganic conditions of matter, and the elementary forces, heat, light, electricity, gravitation, chemical affinity, which act upon the material world, but also animal and vegetable physiology in their whole extent, and those wonderful laws of organic life, connecting matter with vitality, instincts and intellect, under the numberless forms and species which are placed before us for our contemplation. In surveying this vast field of natural knowledge, for the purposes just indicated, we must of necessity limit ourselves to a broad outline; thereby forfeiting in some part the interest which belongs to the familiar details and illustrations of each particular science; but gaining in compensation a more connected and comprehensive view of the relation between the different sciences; and of those great discoveries in all, which are ever tending to bring them into closer approximation and subjection to common laws. We need scarcely dwell on the importance of such general views, and