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But, indeed, we should sooner have expected such philosophy from a young Demosthenes or Cicero, just three feet high, than from a grave astronomer; from one whom we should 'scarce expect to speak in public on the stage', than from a man whose intellect has challenged and secured the admiration of the world. "Tis true, we admit, that 'tall oaks from little acorns grow', but then do not the teeming earth, and the sweet heavens too, both labor at its growth, and help to bring it from the acorn to the oak? Is not the mighty sun, with his pervading warmth, and the genial rain, as necessary to build up the oak, as is the puny seed from which it springs? And if 'large streams from little fountains flow', how many drops do they contain, which from no fountain ever flowed? Or how much larger is the largest stream, than all the little fountains which therein con

our?

The reader may be surprised, perhaps, that we should thus strive to silence the young Demosthenes or Cicero. But, in truth, this sage philosophy has more supporters than may at first appear. The French, for example, have a maxim invented on purpose to convince the world, that 'great effects from little causes flow.' 'If Helen's nose', say they, 'had been half an inch shorter, it would have changed the face of the world.' But we deny that Helen's nose, at least that Helen's nose alone, laid siege to Troy, or rooted its foundations up. Helen's nose, or Helen's beauty if you please, was but the spark to the mighty magazine of human passion that did the work.

How often are we told, too, that if an apple had not fallen once, or at a certain time, within the sight of Newton, the law of gravity, perhaps, had been forever hid from human eyes. Behold again, they cry, what great effects from little causes flow! But tell us, is the world indebted to the apple's fall, or to Newton's mind, for the sublime discovery he made? If to the apple, then was a magnificent effect, indeed, produced by a most small cause. But if to Newton's mind, then was not the cause commensurate with the effect? If accident, indeed, first led Newton's mind to think of gravity, even then, the accident was but the occasion, and not the mighty cause. The apple produced no part of the Principia. Nay, and should it rain apples,

or pumpkins either, on all the empty pates in Christendom from this until the day of doom, no such response would ever be made to all the teachings they would teach. 'Tis only to the genius of a mind like Newton's, that accidents whisper such glorious secrets of the universe.

But, in fact, this story of the apple is but a fable of the nursery. The idea that the earth's gravity might reach to the moon, had long been broached before Newton saw the light of day. Even by Plutarch, the conjecture was thrown out, that but for the velocity of the moon's motion, she would fall to the earth, just as any other body falls. But true as this conjecture was, as marvellously true, yet through what tracks of time did it remain a speculation and a dream, until the mighty thinker came to think it into light!

We have now briefly glanced at the grand results of Newton's labors. We have seen, that it was his mission, not so much to invent new hypotheses, as to verify and establish those which others had conceived. The originality, the power, and the depth of his intellect were displayed, not in the conception of new theories, so much as in the construction of new proofs. His sublime mission it was, to convert the dim hypotheses of the past, into the everlasting and radiant theories of the future.

The inconceivable energy with which he attempted the loftiest and most difficult things, combined with the unconquerable love of truth with which, for all his views, he demanded evidence; may be compared to the centrifugal and centripetal forces by which some mighty orb is moved along its course around the centre of eternal light. If the first had been weaker, he might have despaired of truth, and left the world as dark as he found it; or if the last had been less strong, he too might have been content with guesses and with dreams. But, as it was, he neither felt the dark despair which Socrates had taught; nor lost himself in the cloudy heights in which Plato loved to soar. By his inherent power and patient confidence, he is borne above the bottomless depths of doubt; and by his love of truth, no less unconquerably firm, is he kept beneath the misty heights of arrogance. Hence his majestic path lies right along the middle region of perpetual noon. The faint gleam of vague analogies,

and the unsteady rays of plausible conjecture, which, for a Kepler, a Galileo, a Hooke, and a Halley, had fallen on the dark stupendous scheme of things, were all dissolved and lost amid the grand illuminations of his path.

'God said, Let Newton be, and all was light.'

It is not true, that either nature, or nature's laws, lay hid in night; for long before his time the day had dawned,— most beautifully dawned! But then the sun, which had only cast those rays before which a Copernicus, a Galileo, and a Kepler had reflected upon the earth, rose high above the horizon, and all was light.'

ART. VIII.-The Seven Weeks' War; its Antecedents and its Incidents. In two volumes. By H. M. Hozier. Philadelphia. 1867.

The recital of events which occur in our own times, seldom rises to the dignity of History. The vision of contemporaries is often prejudiced or partial, and facts are either misrepresented or amplified beyond all due proportion. Not unfrequently both causes of error concur, and the violent conflict of party statements yields only to the mellowing influence of time, by which Reason is enabled to select fragments of truth from the crumbling ruins of falsehood and passion, and erect therefrom the stately edifice of History.

Hozier's narrative of the seven weeks' war in Germany is singularly free from these, the ordinary defects of contemporary writers; and although posterity may deem it too minute for general history, our generation can not fail to find it the well written record of events. The insidious initiation of a bold and unscru

pulous policy; a deep laid plan of treachery, long meditated, suddenly developed, and as suddenly executed; a campaign of startling rapidity, admirable combinations, and unprecedented success; and a consummation which finds its only justification in the actual fitness of things; these constitute the main traits as boldly sketched by our author, and the details of which are narrated with a pleasing grace as well as with all the intrinsic evidence of truth. Success may possibly have tinged with a somewhat too roseate hue, his appreciation of Prussian strategy. But this is natural; for in no other game does merit so hang upon the smiles of fortune as in that of war.

When the German Diet passed, in 1864, a decree of Federal execution against the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein, it was intended that the decree should be carried out by the combined forces of the confederation, and the provinces of SchleswigHolstein erected into an independent German State under the rule of the prince of Augustenburg, who stood foremost in his claims to that inheritance. But such a consummation of such a project little suited the designs of the House of Hohenzollern, whose hereditary appetite for territorial aggrandisement was more than ordinarily whetted by the many maritime advantages of these adjacent duchies. Unable as yet to appropriate them herself, Prussia proposed to Austria that they should constitute themselves the executors of the Federal Decree; and the result of their combined military efforts against the kingdom of Denmark, was the treaty of Vienna of October, 1864, by which all the rights of sovereignty to the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, and Lauenburg, were ceded to the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia. The first diplomatic paper of Count Bismark, after this event, is a document worthy of study. Utterly ignoring the title of all prior claimants, and boldly substituting therefor the right of conquest, he adroitly hints to the Austrian cabinet that the Prussian incorporation of these duchies would be greatly to the interest of his own master, and of no disadvantage to any other power; and Austria, strange to say, was weak enough to recognise tacitly this basis, by intimating that her consent could only be given as an equivalent for an increase of her own German territory.

The discordant views of joint rulers produced in this instance, as it always and every where has done, a condition of affairs at once intolerable to the governed, and dangerous to the peace of the governors. Temporary relief was sought by assigning the provisional administration of Holstein to Austria, and that of Schleswig, the most northern province, to Prussia; while Lauenburg paid the penalty of its insignificance in being sold outright by the Emperor Francis Joseph to King William, for two million five hundred thousand Danish dollars. And so the Austrian garrison lay under General Gablenz in Holstein, the kingdom of Prussia behind them, and the Prussian troops of Gen. Manteuffel commanding the Duchy of Schleswig in their front; and for a time there was peace. Indeed, in the first ardor of the entente cordiale, Austria even rebuked the resolutions of the Frankfort Diet, condemning this convention known as that of Gastein of Aug. 14, 1865, and joined Prussia in protesting against a motion introduced by Bavaria, Saxony, and Hesse, calling for an assembly of the estates of Holstein and Schleswig, to express the public wish as to their own fate. But the interests of the two great powers were too diverse to allow of the long duration of such charming amity.

Not only common honesty, but policy, counselled Austria to as speedy an execution as possible of the trust which, in conjunction with Prussia, she had assumed, and the erection of the duchies into an independent member of the German Confederation. And indeed, although Austria did evince upon more than one occasion, symptoms of frailty which indicated that her virtue might not be proof against all temptation; yet her general policy toward the subject duchies manifested a consciousness that her administration of them was merely provisional, and there can be no doubt that she would not only have been willing, but even glad, to get honorably rid of the troublesome task she had assumed, in any way which would not enure to the aggrandisement of her rival.

While in Schleswig, therefore, all manifestations of public sentiment adverse to annexation with Prussia were repressed; in Holstein, the ultimate accession of the Prince of Augustenburg was never doubted. And while the Crown lawyers of

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