are of course higher, less universal laws, in obedience to which matter takes that shape which may fit it to serve as the organ of a living being, and a formative power which may be contrasted with that of crystallization in the mineral kingdom, whereby different kinds of matter are built in together into the structure; but organization is not chemical combination. There are, moreover, chemical products resulting from the action of these organs such as art has not been able to produce, but the living beings can only be regarded as instruments in producing them, subject to the very same laws as regulate the processes of the laboratory. There is not the least ground for supposing that they can make any interchange of matter; on the contrary, they can only organize matter when it is presented to them already in particular states of combination, their operations are in fact more limited. Plants require nitrogen to be presented to them in the form of ammonia, and cannot take it up from the free state in which it exists in the atmosphere. In animal life, wonderful as is the power by which each requisite is selected and placed where it is needed, certain transformations only of more complex to simpler compounds can take place, and the products of decomposition are always given back to the earth in the same states. Animals cannot live without food already completely organized, they cannot form their parts from the simpler combinations of elements from which plants draw their nourishment; far less can they produce changes in the chemical constitution of matter. The occurrence of some things in animals which is at first sight puzzling, is fully accounted for on closer investigation. Thus, the presence of the phosphoric acid which enters so largely into the bones, and otherwise plays so important a part in the economy of the higher animals, is readily explained, now that it is known to be equally necessary to many vegetables, at least, that in corn and the grasses, as well as other plants, it is found to be uniformly present in considerable proportions. And with regard to some other things, such as fluorine, found constantly in animals, and thought difficult to account for, the quantity in which they occur is so exceedingly minute that they may easily be overlooked in the large quantity of food taken into the system. The supposition that arsenic can be formed in the human body from things which do not yield it to analysis is simply groundless.

One thing will be manifest to all who have taken the trouble to read thus far, namely, that our ignorance of the exact nature of the action of heat in particular leaves us in a state of great perplexity as to all chemical processes, and the exact influence which any one of the forces which

come into play have upon the final result. At present it would be quite useless to speculate upon the effects of the ether which is presumed to be the medium whereby light and heat are diffused. It is much to be hoped that the further development of the theory of heat may at least help to distinguish the part which is immediately due to it, so as to allow of some classification of the effects of chemical forces, and leave the way a little more clear to a rational theory of chemical action. It can hardly be anything more than this perplexity which gives scope for entertaining the question of transmutation at all.

In conclusion, it must be owned that as to the existence of but one substance of material things, the much noised discoveries of modern times leave us very much where we were. There may be some reasons for expecting a slight diminution in the number of elements; but the facts do not at all warrant the conclusions which some chemists have drawn from them as to the transmutation of metals, they afford no rational ground for thinking it possible. The differences between the metals seem so deeply seated that there cannot be said to be any probability that they are alterable in the ordinary course of nature; and if the chemist hope to find a golden end to his labour at the fire, he must rather look for it in the modern alchemy by conversion. The reward of services rendered to the arts will be that due to a benefit done to his fellowmen, which is perhaps more than the alchemists of old were conscious of. Nor need the chemist, who loves natural science for its own sake, who finds in the operation of physical laws directed to the grandest ends, while they descend to the most minute particulars, that perfection which is sought in vain in any human works or plans, despise this application of science; for it has already led, and is likely to lead, in the hands of those who have a love for truth, to greater advancement than any purely speculative philosophy, or the search after the philosopher's stone, has ever done.

G. D. L.

THE RELATION OF NOVELS TO LIFE.

WE

E have discarded many of the amusements of our forefathers. Out-of-door Out-of-door games are almost inaccessible to the inhabitants of cities; and if they were not, people are too much tired, both in nerve and muscle, to care for them. Theatres and spectacles are less frequented than they used to be; whilst the habit of reading has become universal. These causes increase the popularity and the influence of novels, and, measured by these standards, their importance must be considered very great.

The majority of those who read for amusement, read novels. The number of young people who take from them nearly all their notions of life is very considerable. They are widely used for the diffusion of opinions. In one shape or another, they enter into the education of us all. They constitute very nearly the whole of the book-education of the unenergetic and listless.

Familiar as the word 'novel' may be, it is almost the last word in the language to suggest any formal definition; but it is impossible to estimate the influence of this species of literature, or to understand how its character is determined, unless we have some clear notion as to what is, and what is not, included in the word.

The first requisite of a novel is, that it should be a biography, an account of the life, or part of the life, of a person. When this principle is neglected or violated, the novel becomes tiresome; after a certain point it ceases to be a novel at all, and becomes a mere string of descriptions.

The Arabian Nights, perhaps, contain as slight a biographical substratum as is consistent with anything like romance. The extravagance of the incidents and scenery is their principal charm, and the different characters might be interchanged amongst the different stories, almost without notice. Who would relish the Diamond Valley and the Roc's

Novels are fictitious Biographies.

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Egg the less, if they were introduced in the History of the three Calendars, or in the Adventures of Prince Caramalzaman? and who would notice the change if either of those personages were to be substituted for Sinbad the Sailor? Who, on the other hand, could interchange the incidents, or the personages, of the Memoirs of a Cavalier, and Robinson Crusoe?

Perhaps the essentially biographical character of novels will be more fully displayed by comparing less extreme cases. In what does the superiority of Fielding over Mr. Dickens consist? Is it not in the fact that Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews are bona fide histories of those persons; whilst Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist are a series of sketches, of all sorts of things and people, united by various grotesque incidents, and interspersed with projects for setting the world to rights?

There is a class of books which wants only a biographical substratum to become novels. In so far as it is an account of Sir Roger de Coverley, and the Club, the Spectator is one of the best novels in the language; and if the original conception had been more fully carried out, that fact would have been universally recognised. It employs fictitious personages to describe manners and characters, and it sustains the interest which they excite by fictitious incidents. Yet no one would call those parts of the Spectator which are not biographical a novel.

Novels must also be expressly and intentionally fictitious. No amount of carelessness or dishonesty would convert into a novel what was meant for a real history. It would, for example, be an unjustifiable stretch of charity to consider the Histoire des Girondins, or the Histoire de la Restauration, as romances. On the other hand, a very small amount of intentional fiction, artistically introduced, will make a history into a novel. All the events related may be substantially true, and the fictitious characters may play a very subordinate part, and yet the result may be a novel, in the fullest sense of the word. In the Memoirs of a Cavalier, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles, and Fairfax occupy the most prominent places. The scenes in which they take part are generally represented with great historical fidelity. The cavalier himself, and his adventures, are only introduced as a medium for the display of the events through which he passes; but they are introduced so naturally as incidents in his life, and the gaps between them are filled with such probable and appropriate domestic occurrences, that the result is the most perfect of all historical novels.

We understand, then, by the word novel, a fictitious bio. {

graphy. Books written primarily for purposes of instruction, or for the sake of illustrating a theory, do not fall within this definition, because they are not, properly speaking, biographies. If we suppose the hero to have been a real person, and then consider whether the object of the book was to deduce some moral, or to illustrate some theory, by his life, or to describe the man as he was, we shall be able to say whether the book is, or is not, a novel.

Thus, we should not call Plato's Dialogues novels, though they resemble them more nearly than any other ancient books.* Nor should we call the 'Vision,' in Tucker's Light of Nature, a novel, although it would fall expressly within the terms of our definitions, if it were not written merely to illustrate a theory. The miraculous separation of Search's body from his vehicle-the inconvenience which he sustained from the rays of light-his conversation with Locke-his interview with his wife-his absorption into the mundane soul—and his re-introduction into his body, form an imaginary posthumous biography, with a beginning, middle, and end; but it cannot be called a novel, inasmuch as Search and his adventures are introduced solely in order to give life to a philosophical specu-. lation, which is never for an instant lost sight of.

Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War come nearer to the character of novels. The artistic bias of Bunyan's mind was so strong, that we should be inclined to think that he sacrificed the allegory to the story more frequently than the story to the allegory. The death of Faithful, for example, is an incident which, if the book is a novel, is as well conceived as executed; but it is inconsistent with the allegory, which would have required that Faithful should go to Heaven in the sense of travelling along the actual highroad till he got there. So, too, the Siege of Mansoul is much more like the Siege of Leicester than the temptations of the Devil.

There is another class of books which would be excluded from our definition by the word 'fictitious.' As fiction is sometimes used as a mere vehicle for opinions, so it is sometimes a mere embellishment of facts. There is a class of books in which the life of a real person is made to illustrate some particular time or country, and in which just so many fictitious circumstances are introduced as may be necessary give a certain unity to the scenes described. The most perfect instance of this form of writing with which we are acquainted is M. Bungener's Trois Sermons sous Louis XV., which is partly

to

* Apuleius' Ass is, no doubt, strictly a novel, and Lucian's Dialogues have much of the same character.