rustics with whom he played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so much ambition. The very plowmen observed, and long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book. When he was eight years old, he went up to London, and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but ill fed. He always attributed the smallness of his stature to the hardness and scanty fare of this seminary. At ten he was removed to Westminster School. Vining Bourne was one of the masters. Churchill, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students. Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer, boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the examination for the foundation. His name, in gilded letters, on the walls of the dormitory, still attests his victory over many elder compeers. He staid two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christchurch, when he was removed from Westminster to fill a writership obtained for him in the service of the East-India Company. He passed a few months at a commercial academy, to study arithmetic and book-keeping, and in January, 1750, a few days after he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his destination in the October following."

And that boy rose to be the governor of fifty millions of Asiatics; "but," says Lord Macaulay, "when his long public life, so singularly checkered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylsford

he retired to die."

Pages might be filled with the names of those statesmen who have carved out a distinguished position for themselves. Men of noble birth have occupied the same; but to the credit of the former, it must be remembered, that rank and wealth are wonderful stepping stones to the approbation of the world; and that, using them with tact, any man of common parts may win the smile of society, while genius and mental superiority, of a high degree, are required to push through poverty and

disadvantages of every kind, to the position which the great in birth hold naturally.

It is one thing to look at these struggles with the sentimental eye of fiction, but quite another to have them brought tangibly before us. There is a crushing effect in poverty. In the train of evils it brings with it; the meannesses, the anxieties, the cares; the irritating effect on the mind, is apt to nip genius- to freeze the tender plant. In the well-furnished, well-lit room of him whose pecuniary means are certain, whose position in life is as certain, who has all the blessings of life around him, it were easy, one would fancy, for the mind to attain that equability and calm repose which should be so favorable to the growth of genius. Turn to the abode of him who has to work his own way in life. His room is uncomfortable, his mind in the same state as his room; bills accumulate, while a remittance becomes an apocryphal idea; perhaps his dinner is a matter of uncertainty, and the threadbare condition of his coat a source of deep disquietude-for he must keep a decent exterior-must not sink in appearance below the respectability of the middle classes. He may be married; so much the worse if that be the case; there are more backs to clothe, more mouths to feed, more anxious beating hearts to soothe. And that, more or less, is just the picture of the early struggle of hundreds whose names have become finger-posts in the world's history. Yet, such a state appears inimical to the growth of excellence. However, it is sometimes only in appearance; for poverty (not penury) gives the stimulus to genius, and bids it rear its noble head, and look proudly at the world, while the golden weight of affluence may enervate, crush, and destroy the glorious germ.

GERMANY. By Madame the BARONESS DE STAELHOLSTEIN. With Notes and Appendices. By O. W. WIGHT, A.M. In two volumes. Pages 408 and 437. New York: Derby & Jackson, 119 Nassau street. 1859.

Volume I. contains twenty-four chapters. Volume II. contains forty chapters with Appendices. The authoress of these volumes was one of the most remarkable women of the age in which she lived. Her talents, her genius, her learning, and her masculine endowments, were unsurpassed by any female writer. She was almost the only woman whose talents and influence Napoleon I. feared and hated, and hence she was an exile from France by his order. This work on Germany is a great achievement of a great mind. It may be regarded as Madame de Staël's most elaborate performance. The first volume presents Germany and the manners of the Germans, with their literature and arts. The language is rich in thought, and abounds with sentiments of sterling good sense. It is a book to be read, to be studied, and digested. Its perusal will add mental wealth to the reader's mind.

Volume II. proceeds with the subject of Literature and the Arts, and then enters the domain of Philosophy and Ethics, passing on into the regions of Religion and Enthusiasm. All along these avenues the gifted authoress gathers up gems and treasures of thought with which to enrich her work. Great value is added to the work by the Notes and Appendices of the Editor, Mr. Wight. The enterprising publishers present the volumes in a neat and tasteful dress, attractive to the eye. We commend this valuable work to the lovers of choice reading.

SHELLEY MEMORIALS: From authentic sources. Edited by Lady SHELLEY. To which is added an Essay on Christianity, by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: Now first printed. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

THE lady editor of these Memorials justly claims for her book greater accuracy, fidelity and justice to the memory, character, and talents of the gifted poet. His life, and the checkered incidents which are scattered along his track, partake a good deal of the romantic, made up of light and shade, and not a little of the emotional. The friends and admirers of Shelley will be gratified to find in this volume a better portraiture of the character and writings of this gifted man, than has appeared in previous books concerning him. The publishers, as usual, have performed their part, in so tastefully laying it before the public.

RHYMES OF TWENTY YEARS. A Collection of Poems. By HENRY MORFORD, Associate-Editor of the New-York Leader. Forming a handsome 12mo volume of 220 pages, with a portrait on steel, will be ready about the 15th of August. H. Dexter & Co., Publishers, No. 113 Nassau street.

C. JULIUS CAESAR'S COMMENTARIES ON THE GALLIC WAR: Elucidated by English notes, critical and explanatory. And illustrated by maps, plans of the battles, views, and a Lexicon of all the words contained in the text. By N. C. BROOKS, A.M., President of the Baltimore College. First edition. NewYork: Published by A. S. Barnes & Burr. 1859.

THIS is the neatest and best edition illustrated of The notes,

Cæsar's Commentaries we have seen. maps, and battle-plans add immensely to the value and interest of the student of this old Roman classic. The books of this publishing-house of A. S. Barnes & Co. are always valuable and well got up in a neat and tasteful dress. The student of Latin will learn that foundation language a great deal easier out of such a book as this than from one got up after the old fashion.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL: with a Biographical Sketch. In two vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

THIS is a beautiful cabinet edition, so neatly robed in blue and gold, in the characteristic style of the publishers, which will almost make one in love with poetry to examine them. We are gratified to see the poetic gems of this man of genius, whom we long knew personally, presented to the lovers of poetry in a form so neat and attractive. But beautiful as the outside is, the inside is better. Percival was a genuine poet. He was born a poet. Let all lovers of poetry buy these volumes, and drink luxuriously at their crystal fountains.

CASTLEREAGH, Talleyrand, Matternich, and Nesselrode once upon a time organized a Holy Alliance, and a Bonaparte died on an island rock! France was then the victim.

Now a Bonaparte, some fifty years later, step by step, is organizing another Holy Alliance. Stuttgardt first, Villafranca next; possibly follows, demurely, Berlin. Who is now the victim? The cloud in the sky already is bigger than the hand! Smiles succeed frowns, and a typhoon is born in an hour! The same impenetrable mystery surrounds the Emperor. The same implacable silence. The same fascinating, melancholy smile.

For twelve long years, with Catholic devotion, he has kept a terrible secret. He has gathered a world's audience to hear him think. Philip and the first Bonaparte disposed of courts, crowns, cabinets, camps, and churches as of the titular dignitaries of a chessboard. Another people's Emperor is making similar plans. No one individual since Adam's schoolboy days has elevated himself so far above other Emperors; so exalted by created fortune as to arouse the jealousy of sleeping nations into fear! Never on world's record was such moderationsuch judgment—such unheard of proceedings. When the world said peace, Napoleon made war. When the world said war, Napoleon made peace. The Emperor's almost supernatural genius has galvanized me into a Bonapartist; yet he must pardon me for writing what I think.

PORTRAIT OF HUMBOLDT.-The "Memoriam" of this renowned man, in this number of the ECLECTIC, will furnish the reader with a brief outline sketch of his eventful and very useful life. In connection

with this "Memoriam" we are desirous of gratifying our readers with a well-executed and accurate por trait of this great man, whose name and fame as a Traveler, as a Philosopher, as a man of Science and vast mental acquirements, are known in all civilized lands. We have had his portrait reëngraved in a good degree, to accompany his " 'Memoriam," to embellish further this number of the ECLECTIC, and add interest to the mind of the reader as he gazes upon the features of the venerable man now no longer a denizen of time.

CURIOUS WAY OF RECEIVING A FORTUNE.—A worthy gentleman of Rouen is at present receiving a fortune which came to him by the drawing of a cork, in the following curious manner: Obliged by the state of his health, last summer, to change the air, he went to the sea shore at Villiers-sur-Mor, near Tronville, and walking on the beach he noticed that a lad, who was also promenading there with his father, had found a sealed bottle among the seaweed. The father bade the child "throw away the dirty thing, and not to be soiling his fingers;" upon which the invalid picked up the cast-away bottle and took it with him to his lodgings. The cork drawn, the bottle was found to contain a written document, properly signed, and dated on board a versel which had sprung a leak and was about to sink. It ran thus: "About to perish, I commend my soul to God. I hereby constitute the finder of this will, inclosed in a bottle, my sole heir. My fortune, most laboriously acquired, amounts to nearly 350,000 francs and the small house in which I have resided at Valparaiso. This tenement I wish converted into a chapel, and that a mass may be said there once a month for the repose of my soul. The fortune will be found deposited with Mnotary, of Paris, to whom, from time to time, it has been transmitted me. Pray for me. Signed

ACCELERATION OF THE MOON'S MEAN MOTION.In the last number of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society appears an able account of the present state of the controversy on this suberation of the moon's mean motion was known to ject by the Rev. R. Main, the President. The accelthe celebrated Dr. Halley in 1695; was written upon by Dunthorne in 1749; and during the last fifty years has occupied the attention of Laplace, Airy, Adams, and other great astronomers. The present controversy relates to the amount of the coefficient of the acceleration. The old coëfficient is supported by Plana, Pantecoulant, and Hansen, and impugued by Adams and Delaunay. Mr. Main refers to many papers on the subject in the Comptes Rendus, Philo will be found exceedingly useful to persons interestsophical Transactions, and elsewhere. ed in this profound question.

His resumé

diture for the past year amounted to £73,500, including an item of £496 for publishing "cuneiform inscriptions," and there was a balance in hand ou the 31st of March of £25,241. Salaries figure for £35,004, house-expenses for £3253, purchases and acquisitions for £19,830, bookbinding, cabinets, etc, for £13,116, and printing catalogues, making casts, etc., for £1717. The net amount of the estimated expenditure for the year 1859-60 is £77,425. Last year 519,565 persons were admitted to view the general collections, against 621,034 in 1857, 361,714 in 1855.

INTELLIGENCE from St. Petersburg gives details of the solemn inauguration of a monument to the Emperor Nicholas, on the 25th ult. The monument consists of an equestrian statue in bronze, from the studio of Baron Klodt.

It is not a little remarkable that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy, which, until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowledge aiding the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And in our own universities and schools at the present moment the like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that in his shop or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire; so little, that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen without it; so, a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them that he may have "the education of a gentleman" the badge marking a certain social position, and bringing a consequent respect.

This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case of the other sex. In the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has continued to predominate in a greater degree among women than among men. Originally, personal adornment occupied the attention of both sexes equally. In these latter days of civilization, however, we see that in the dress of men the regard for appearance has in a considerable degree yielded

to the regard for comfort; while in their education the useful has of late been trenching on the ornamental. In neither direction has this change gone so far with women. The wearing of ear-rings, fingerrings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of paint; the immense labor bestowed in making habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the desire of approbation overrides the desire for warmth and convenience. And similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing, drawing-what a large space do these occupy? If you ask why Italian and German are learnt, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given, the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought lady-like. It is not that the books written in them may be utilized, which they scarcely ever are; but that Italian and German songs may be sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any benefits that can possibly result from knowing them; but because society considers them parts of a good education-because the absence of such knowledge may bring the contempt of others. When we have named reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sewing, we have named about all the things a girl is taught with a positive view to their direct uses in life; and even some of these have more reference to the good opinion of others than to immediate personal welfare.

Thoroughly to realize the truth that with the mind as with the body the ornamental precedes the useful, it is needful to glance at its rationale. This lies in the facts that, from the far past down even to the present, social needs have subordinate individual needs, and that the chief social need has been the control of individuals. It is not, as we commonly suppose, that there are no governments but those of monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives