that ever adorned the contemporaneous annals of any country. All of them had been Foreign Associates of the Institute of France; all of them secretaries to the Royal Society; all of them were national benefactors; all of them were carried off by a premature death; all of them died without issue; and all of them have been allowed to moulder in their tombs without any monumental tribute from a grateful country. It is not merely to honour the dead, or to gratify the vanity of friends, that we crave a becoming memorial from the sympathies of an intellectual community. It is that the living may lay it to heart-that the pure flame of virtue may be kindled in the breasts of our youth, and that our children may learn from the time-crushed obelisk, and the crumbling statue, that the genius of their fathers will survive even the massive granite and the perennial

brass.

France, even in the days of her despotism, surrounded her throne with the peaceful ægis of Minerva; and in the very throes of her revolutionary crisis, she erected to her illustrious men, and in the name of a grateful country, a magnificent temple to enshrine their dust: And when she shone in the blaze of her military glory, the claims of her philosophers were never in abeyance. The fleur de lys in her royal scutcheon rose gracefully amid the united wreaths of wisdom and of war, and the proudest of her sovereigns, and the greatest of her Ministers, still derive a portion of their glory, from their encouragement of science and the arts. The autocrats, too, of other nations have equally recognised the rights of genius; and England now remains a dissentient from the intellectual unanimity of Europe,-an outlaw from the republic of letters,-alike insensible to the birth, the life, and the death of genius.

If we have appealed in vain to the sentiment of national honour, to which statesmen are supposed to be alive, we would If you now urge the higher claims of justice and of feeling. are the minister of the Crown-the dispenser of its honours, and the almoner of its bounty, are you not bound by the trust which you hold to place the genius of knowledge on the same level with the genius of legislation and of war, to raise it to the offices. which it can fill, and reward it with the honours which it has achieved? If the inventor swells the national treasury, adds to the national resources, strengthens the national defences, and saves the national life,-is he not entitled to the same position as those who speak or who fight in the nation's cause? If mercy is the brightest jewel in the royal diadem, justice is the next; not the justice that condemns, but the justice that recognises national benefits, and rewards national benefactors. If the charge against England, that "she is a nation of shopkeepers," is justified, as

Appeal to the Legislature.

287

has been alleged, by her disregard of intellectual pre-eminence, we would counsel the ministerial head of the firm to use just weights, and keep accurate measures.

If in the exercise of our fallible judgment we are oftener guided by feeling than by reason, we would appeal from the justice of the minister to the better feelings of his nature. Has he read the history of men who have pursued knowledge under difficulties-now the inmates of a Prison, now of an Asylum? Does he know that the gigantic mind of Newton reeled under the neglect and poverty of his lot? Does he recollect the names of poets who have starved, and the fate of sages who have rushed to the repose of the grave? and does he believe that he shall escape the arraign of posterity should he spurn the claims of genius neglected and dishonoured? If his sensitive appreciation of military adventure, and his passion for giving it the monopoly of honours and rewards is founded on its acts of self-devotion and personal danger, let him remember that a similar claim may be urged in behalf of the philosopher militant. We ask not the dispensers of the nation's gifts to assay the fine gold of intellectual commerce, or to compare it with the weights against which it is balanced; but we demand of those who practise at midnight the doctrine of chances, or whose science is limited to the turf or the prize ring, if there are no personal hazards or wasted frames in the prosecution of that species of knowledge which they cultivate? Has science no strongholds to storm-no mines to spring-no nightly bivouac to endure-no casualties in her bills of mortality-no forlorn hope to array for the combat? Do her ranks exhibit no emaciated frames-no shattered limbs -no mutilated senses-no over-wrought and distracted mindsno scanty commissariat-no widows and orphans? The biography of science, were it necessary, would enable us to answer these questions with numerous and distressing details.

Our last, and briefest, appeal we make to the Legislature of England. Is there no commoner within its halls-no Burke or Sheridan to plead with burning eloquence the cause of the order which they adorned? Is there no senator, who has risen to the Peerage by his industry and talent, to demand for his fellows that which he has himself attained. If the tongue of the statesman is silent, we appeal to that illustrious Prince-the natural guardian of the honour and interests of the Crown, who has already exhibited his knowledge and his love of science, and who from his acquaintance with foreign institutions cannot fail to believe, that England will never take its just place among civilized nations till she has organized a National Institute, with its three Academies of Science, Literature, and Art.

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

FEBRUARY, 1851.

ART. I.-1. Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy. By the Right Hon. Sir J. MACKINTOSH, LL.D. F.A.S. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh.

2. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. By WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. London, 1785.

3. Sketches of Moral and Mental Philosophy. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. LL.D. Constable, Edinburgh.

4. Prelections on Butler's Analogy, &c. By the late THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. LL.D. Constable, Edinburgh, 1849.

5. Christian Ethics. By RALPH WARDLAW, D.D. London,

1834.

6. Introduction à L'Ethique. Par M. THEODORE JOUFFROY, Membre de l'Institut. Translated by W. H. CHANNING. Boston, 1840.

7. Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre. Von F. SCHLEIERMACHER. Berlin, 1803.

8. Entwurf eines Systems der Sittenlehre, aus Schleiermachers handschriftlichem Nachlasse. Herausgegeben von ALEX. SCHWEITZER. Berlin, 1835.

9. Die Christliche Sitte nach den Grundsätzen der Evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt von Dr. F. Schleiermacher. Herausgegeben von J. JONAS. Berlin, 1843. 10. Theologische Ethik. Von DR. RICHARD ROTHE, Ordentlichen Professor der Theologie zu Heidelberg. 1, 2, Bände. Wittenberg, 1845. 3ter Band. 1848.

THE Sciences which are contained in the intellectual or speculative department of Philosophy are beginning to shew some symptoms of revival in this country. The vigorous impulse given to formal logic by Sir William Hamilton at Edinburgh, is

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spreading among the younger men of that university; and has even propagated a sympathetic tremor to Oxford. Whewell has sought to elaborate the logic of induction at Cambridge; while Mill and De Morgan in London are revolving in very different orbits around kindred theories. Psychology, too, has received a large accession to its materials, if not to its scientific form, at the hands of its great northern cultivator, in his recent edition of Reid. The history of philosophy is being re-written by Maurice with depth and graceful simplicity; and the philosophy of religion has been exhibited by Morell in lights which, if sometimes borrowed, are at least new in this country, and tend, with all their imperfections, to direct general attention to this great and as yet unexhausted subject.

While the tread of new inquiry is thus heard all around, the region of Ethics seems profoundly tranquil. The re-awakened mental sciences have not as yet come down upon this field with their generalities from above: the reviving religious speculation has not carried up its concrete facts into it from below. And thus this venerable science slumbers on with its ancient solitary reign unmolested, and its somewhat chilly silence unbroken. We would lament this fact as at once discreditable to our intellectual activity and to our religious feelings, if we had not for it a better solution, and could not draw from it a more pleasing augury. We hope, and would fain believe, that Ethics will never revive in this country in the same form and dress in which they have been laid to rest. We expect for them a resurrection with a new constitution that will better suit the new atmosphere in which they must henceforth live. This science resembles at the present day the seven sleepers of Ephesus that lay down in their cave in the times of the Decian persecution, and awaked in the reign of Theodosius. The world is becoming Christian around it, and doing homage to the Cross, without its being aware of the change, or acknowledging the rising empire. It must consent to be baptized in the swelling tide, and thus rise in newness of life; otherwise the waters will overflow its hidingplace, and sweep away this long preserved relic of Paganism.

The science of Ethics, we verily believe, is now unproductive because it will not consent to be Christian; and even were it resuscitated, we should expect for it no escape from its old dilemmas and barren disputations, except on condition of an entire change of its relations to Christianity. What these relations are at present, none of our readers likely to take an interest in the matter need to be informed. It is not necessary that we should refer to the lengthened and heavy charges preferred in the interest of Christianity by Dr. Chalmers or Dr. Wardlaw. Any one who will recall the systems, or even the names of some of the most distinguished