daily, we can only reply by stating our total inability to answer the inquiries put to us; indeed to attempt to do so would occupy our whole time, to the neglect of our duties to the public. On the subject of emigration, which is a fertile theme of inquiry, we beg to state here once for all, that we decline offering any private or special advice. With the most anxious desire to befriend those who stand in need of information, we shrink from the responsibility of inducing any man to leave his home, whatever may be the general chances in his favour.

The next class of correspondents deserving notice are those who think they have cause to find fault with blunders into which we unhappily fall. The following is a specimen :

'I have read the Journal from its commencement, sixteen years ago, and must do you the justice to say that I have discovered fewer errors in it than in any other miscellaneous work. This, however, is the very reason why your friends should be watchful, and never fail to rap you over the knuckles when you do go astray. You have lately committed two egregious blunders, which I take the liberty of pointing out, in the hope that for the future you will pay more attention to what you are about.

'A certain number of years ago you printed a translation called "Life's Value," and now we have another called "The Value of Life"-both from the same original! This is unpardonable. Do you expect the public to pay twice over even the sixth or seventh part of three-halfpence? Or have you perpetrated this blunder intentionally, for the sake of a miserable pun-that you might reply to the complaint of your readers, that you had done nothing worse than double to them the Value of Life? Have done with this trash! Your true excuse is inadvertence. You may plead in mitigation that this is the sole error of the kind in sixteen years-the only instance of twins among the many thousand articles that have seen the light within the space. That's your ticket.

The second blunder is still more nauseous. In an article on "Mottoes," you not only misquote Lord Eldon's famous motto, but you mistranslate your own misquotation! As it is obvious that you cannot plead ignorance of the learned languages, what is it you do plead? I know that in almost every volume that is printed, we see a list of errata quite as incomprehensible; but where is your confession? I observe no acknowledgment of error in subsequent numbers, and the fault, therefore, is aggravated by impenitence.'

who indulge in these maunderings are not aware of what they are asking. At the commencement of our Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts,' a purchaser complained that the sheets were not clipped in the edges. The idea of trimming them had occurred to ourselves, but had been abandoned as impracticable. Such was the vast mass to be cut, that the trimming of each number would have required the work of two men for four weeks, and cost L.7, 4s. To add but a quarter of an inch to the margin of our Journal, would cost L.188 per annum. This is one of the penalties of a large circulation; and we shall mention another, for it will answer several inquiries. We cannot introduce and benefit by advertising sheets in our monthly parts like other magazine proprietors, because a single sheet inserted into our fifty thousand Parts would require 104 reams of paper; and by no possibility could we realise the cost of such a mass from advertisements. Hence Chambers's Journal,' with a circulation many times that of any review or magazine, is the only periodical which does not invite advertisements. All we can do is to employ the coloured wrappers for our own or the announcements of others.

The next class we may take up are the mysterious correspondents, of whom in all probability we have not more than our proper share. All editors of periodicals can tell that they frequently receive letters conceived in a strain of meaning so deep, as to be quite unintelligible. It may perhaps be faintly gathered that they refer to some new view of the planetary system, something connected with man's immòrtal destiny, or some perfectly original project for sailing vessels with stem or stern indifferently foremost. These letters are not a sham-their writers are in earnest; and as an evidence of their sincerity, they occasionally accompany their epistles with pamphlets, which they have gone to the expense of printing. It is well known that a large number of books and pamphlets are printed annually in London on subjects incomprehensible to any one but their writers-a jumble of incoherent nonsense - the works, in short, of men who are mad on one idea. The following is a communication from a queer genius of this character:

'Mankind may be divided into two classes-the good and the bad; and again into two other classes-the happy and unhappy; and yet again into two more-the black and the white: and over all these there is a heaven above, to use the words of an author that shall be nameless. You no doubt already perceive what is the object of this communication; but whether your feelings Our correspondent states nothing but the truth when thereupon are of an enviable or an unenviable nature, I he thus points out the errors in question. The only shall not determine. In a certain number of the Ething on which we would remonstrate is his want of J (I shall decline specifying of what date), there temper. A very little consideration might have shown appeared an article more or less connected with science, that we could have had no motive in committing these whether moral or physical, containing a sentence, near blunders. As to the tale, 'The Value of Life,' it is a the middle of the said article, being the one to which different translation from 'Life's Value;' and was ac- you observe I wish to draw your serious attention. Now cepted, paid for, and inserted, without recollecting that although this sentence involves no offence to religion, another translation, by a different writer, had appeared morality, or good government, still it has, in my humble seven years previously; and we can only now express opinion, a deficiency-I will not say of what imour regret that such an unfortunate duplication should portance. But observe, I speak hypothetically. We have occurred. How little does any one know of our are all walking in the dark, and he who affects to see, anxiety to present varied and original matter, who im-adds folly to blindness. You alone can give the explaputes to us the miserable expedient of voluntarily offer- nation I demand; and I consider it only just, and ing the same articles twice! Our difficulty consists not proper, and rational, and I may add philosophical (within finding material, but in choosing from the accumu- out meaning any reference whatever to particular syslation before us, which usually amounts to as much as tems), to await the said explanation, before fulminating would make up half-a-dozen numbers. As to the the rebuke I have in store for you. Leaving you in the second of the errors referred to (the work of a contri- meantime to your own reflections, your own conscience, butor on whose accuracy we had an over-confidence), your own terrors, as it may be, I send this communicait was noticed in time for correction only in our second tion by a circuitous route, which it will be impossible edition. for you to trace, subscribing to it the following initialswhich are not my own-A. B.'

Along with this class of correspondents may be included those who find fault with our paper and printing, and the binding of our volumes. A gentleman in Glasgow is much displeased because we do not give more margin, though we are not aware that there is any solid ground for complaint in this respect. Persons

We may now proceed to the juvenile correspondent, of whose communications the following is an average specimen :

DEAR SIR-I take the liberty of sending you a poem, which I hope you will be glad to insert in Mr

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, when you know it is written by a young lady. I am only thirteen on the 10th of next month. I know there are some errors both in the subject and in the spelling; but as it is my very first poetical production, I am sure you will look over all faults, and consider it worthy of insertion. The gentleman enclosed is my uncle, and a distinguished D.D.'

The gentleman enclosed' certifies that the young lady is really only thirteen; that her friends, who move in the first circles, will be delighted to see her poetical works in print; and that in his (the D.D.'s) opinion, the editors can have no possible objection to give them a place.' In plain English, Chambers's Journal is to

task of rejecting services, sometimes eagerly offered, and often by apparently amiable and accomplished persons. The circumstance, however, although productive of trouble, and occasionally of painful feeling to us individually, is one of good promise. It is obvious that in this country we are rapidly establishing an intellectual intercommunion with the two most literary nations of the continent; with whom we may thus be said to be exchanging hostages for the preservation of peace and mutual respect and good-will.

'I AM IN THE WORLD ALONE.'

be a receptacle for nursery rhymes, in order to please LITTLE child!-I once was fondled as tenderly as you: those who move in the first circles.'

We would pass from requests of this nature to another class of correspondents equally unselfish in their demands. These we may call correspondents-mendicatory. They compose a genera of three species. The first are musical composers in London, who request permission to set verses to music which they see in the Journal. As the request is usually accompanied with some terrible tale of family distress, it is rarely refused. The second cannot be treated so indulgently. They are persons who have taken a fancy to some of the treatises in Chambers's Educational Course' these treatises they admire very much-so much, that they ask permission to turn them into books of question and answer for their own behoof; assuring us at the same time that they are quite certain the transformation into catechisms will not in any respect injure the sale of our productions. Leaving the public to guess at our answer to these civil requests, we come to the third species, of whose communications the following is a sample:

to

My silken ringlets tended, and mine eyes called lovely blue;
And sweet old songs were chanted at eve beside my bed,
Where angel guardians hovering their blessed influence shed.
I heard the sheep-bell tinkle around the lonely sheiling,
As the solemn shades of night o'er heather hills were stealing:
The music of the waterfall, in drowsy murmurs flowing,
Lulled me in half-waking dreams-bright fantasies bestowing.
My nursing ones to Heaven are gone-
'And I am in the world alone.'

Fair girl!-I had companions, and playmates kind and good,
And on the mossy knolls we played, where ivied ruins stood;
The mountain-ash adorned us oft, with coral berries rare,
While clear rejoicing streams we sought, to make our tiring there;
And on the turret's mouldering edge, as dames of high degree,
We sat enthroned in mimic state of bygone chivalry;
Or at the mystic twilight hour, within those arches gray,
We told each other wild sad tales of times long past away.
My early playmates all are flown-

And I am in the world alone.'

Gentle woman!--I was deemed as beautiful as you;

My silken ringlets fondled, and mine eyes called love's own blue;

Ah! I never thought of IIcaven, for my treasure was on earth :
But now my cheek is sunken, and mine eyes have lost their light-
The sunny hours have faded in a long and rayless night;
Not rayless-no !-for angels still their blessed influence shed,
And still the dreams of peace and love revisit oft my bed.
Of earthly treasures I have none
And I am in the world alone.'

C. A. M. W.

HOW TO PUNISH THOSE WHO INJURE YOU.

DEAR, KIND SIRS-I am a teacher employed by the And then my step was bounding, and my laugh was full of mirth, who have been in England two years for the sake of my health. It is my intention to return in the West Indies, in the course of next month, and there resume my labours among the poor children of Africa. Knowing your humane and Christian disposition, as evidenced in your meritorious works (which I have read many a time beyond the Atlantic), I have taken the liberty of asking a favour. It is, to make me a gift of a few of your excellent school books, with a view to the instruction of the negroes, both young and adult. You will be delighted to know that these poor and once oppressed beings show a wonderful aptitude for literary instruction. They are of course very far behind, and even the elder amongst them must be looked upon as children. They are all pleased with books with pictures, and like anything droll. I have seen a whole village kept in amusement for a week with a halfpenny edition of Cock Robin; and for long after, they might be heard singing snatches of that juvenile work. On this account, I ask you to be so kind as let me have some of your books of early lessons, containing wood-engravings. If you could let me have fifty of the "First and Second Book," thirty of the "Simple Lessons," and twenty of the "Rudiments of Knowledge," with, say half-a-dozen of your cheapest Atlas," it would be conferring not alone a favour on me, but on many poor beings who are now struggling into the light of civilisation, and are crying to their more highly-favoured brethren for help. I am permitted to refer you to —, Liverpool, to whom the packet could be forwarded. Trusting to a favourable reply,' &c. 'P. S.-If you could include a selection of the "People's Editions," the favour would be greatly enhanced in value.'

We have, on a former occasion, said something of our literary correspondents, and their distribution throughout the three kingdoms; and we have now only to notice, as an indication of the course taken by education, the surprising increase in the number of translators. A day rarely passes without bringing us several offers of translations from the French and German, but more especially the former; and we have thus the constantly-recurring

Addin Ballou tells the following anecdote:- A worthy old coloured woman, in the city of New York, was one day walking along the street quietly smoking her pipe. A jovial sailor, rendered a little mischievous by liquor, came sawing down, and when opposite the old woman, saucily pushed her aside, and with a pass of his hand knocked the pipe out of her mouth. He then halted to hear her what was his astonishment when she meckly picked up fret at his trick, and enjoy a laugh at her expense. But the pieces of her broken pipe, without the least resentment in her manner; and giving him a dignified look of mingled sorrow, kindness, and pity, said, "God forgive you, my son, as I do!" It touched a tender chord in the heart of the rude tar. He felt ashamed, condemned, and repentant. The tear started in his eye: he must make reparation. He heartily confessed his error; and thrusting both hands into his full pockets of change, forced the contents upon her, exclaiming, "God bless you, kind mother; I'll never do so again!"-American paper.

SCIENCE OF THE PRESENT DAY.

The characteristic peculiarity of the science of the present day is its delight in details. A mass of pebbles are collected together-each one, perhaps, being cursorily examined and named-but they remain useless lumber, by which the highway of science is obstructed; whereas by the exercise of industrious thought, and by enlarged views, they might have been moulded to a form at once beautiful, the further progress of man.-Pharmaceutical Times. as illustrating nature's design, and useful, as facilitating

Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh. Also sold by D. CHAMBERS, 98 Miller Street, Glasgow; W. S. ORk, 147 Strand, London; and J. M'GLASHAN, 21 D'Olier Street, Dublin.-Printed by W. and R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh.

EDINBURGH

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 221. NEW SERIES.

SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1848.

ARTICLE LITERATURE.

BY LEITCH RITCHIE.

AMONG the radical changes that have taken place in
the present century, there is a change in the body of
our literature which, strange to say, has been little if at
all noticed by the generation whom it concerns. The
'miscellanea,' 'fugitive pieces,' 'occasional poems,' and
'papers' which our ancestors regarded as a mere make-
weight, now fill unnumbered volumes. Of the making of
many books there may be no end, but there is assuredly
an end of the reading of them: their day has gone pretty
nearly by, and the present is the age of ARTICLES.

PRICE 14d.

be estimated without reference to the circumstance of price.

But articles are not preferred merely because the age is practical; for they are themselves born of the practical spirit of the age. They are condensations of thought and knowledge; they have a terseness of style which would be fatiguing in a larger work; they avoid superfluities, and not unfrequently sacrifice elegance to utility. It may seem paradoxical to say that this popular department of literature is the most difficult; yet such is the fact. There are more bad articles, even in proportion to number, than bad books, and it requires a master-mind to fulfil all the conditions of the former. He who would

It is a pity that a better word was not chosen to desig-write a good article, must unlearn as well as learn; he nate what may almost be called a new literature. An 'article' means properly a clause, a part of a wholea thing incomplete in itself; whereas the brief pieces alluded to, whether in prose or verse, have an entireness, working out a single conception, and are scattered over with thoughts all tending to a single end. An article is not a chapter, or a canto, but a complete work. It stands upon its own legs; it bears its own charges; and like many brevities in the human species, it has a sense of dignity out of all proportion to its deficiency in inches.

must have the idea constantly before him, that he is not meandering through the ample pages of a volume; he must recollect that brevity' is not less the soul of wit than the soul of articles.

I have some suspicion that the number of book-readers (for I do not affect to deny that there are still a few) is smaller than is usually supposed. Take any country town of moderate population, and on inquiring into the facilities for such study, you will find that these are pretty nearly confined to a small circulating library, or the works The supremacy of articles may be dated from the era of a reading club. In some towns of considerable size, when men, tired of perplexing themselves with philoso- more especially in Ireland, there is no such thing as even phical questions, and cutting off heads as a solution, set a circulating library; and the family supply of books, in fairly to work to spin cotton, make railways, build steam-ordinary houses, in all the three kingdoms, is not only boats, and change the whole face of the world. Immersed in such occupations, they had no time for books; and perhaps too (for I will do justice between the two kinds of literature) they lost the taste for study. This preference, however, of the brief, pointed, off-hand article, is rarely a question of taste. It is a mere affair of time. In the hurry of life, comparatively few are able to grapple with a continuous work. Men of business are too much disturbed by anxious thoughts to reunite with any satisfaction the broken thread of study; and persons engaged in laborious and long-continued employments have neither the energy nor the leisure to give up their faculties to what resembles a task. It is a mistake to suppose that the brief papers in such works as the one in which I am now writing, circulate widely merely because they are cheap: they do so because they are constructed on a principle which is applicable to human nature in all ranks of society. If the rich read more books than the poor, it is simply because they have more time; but, generally speaking, the same preference for short articles is found in both classes. This is what keeps the high-priced magazines alive; and this is what introduces the low-priced journals to the best company. Extreme cheapness, however, is in one grade of society as repulsive as extreme dearness in another; and we are only verging by degrees towards that point in civilisation when the quality of the literature will

very scanty, but appears to have descended as an heirloom for more than one generation. The custom of individuals buying books, appears to have gone almost completely out; and generally speaking, the publishers who still persevere in the old system of business, make their calculations solely with reference to the book-clubs and circulating libraries. The comparatively small number of wealthy families who furnish their book-room, just as they do any other part of their house, has little effect upon trade, and still less, I fear, upon the circulation of knowledge. The classics of the language are more talked of than read; and as a proof of this, if you will examine, in such depositories, the works of the canonised names, you will be surprised at their state of preservation! This is far from being an agreeable condition of things. It shows both a decline of capital and a decline of taste, and it would imply some want of depth in the existing literature of the country. Articles are read for information: he who would acquire knowledge, must read books.

But the limited circulation of books is compensated, and more than compensated in quantity, by the extraordinary increase of articles. No man in our day, who can read at all, is so poor as to be in intellectual destitution. The most ignorant among us is a philosopher, the rudest a sentimentalist, when compared with his grandfather. The knowledge thus disseminated may be,

or rather must be, wanting in depth; but it is know-fortitude that was not my own. I have been nerved to endurance, and incited to perseverance; and as I read, I have felt a warm sunny light breaking anew upon crushed feelings and withered hopes.

ledge for all that; and the papers that contain it are the winged seeds, light as a feather, that, floated here and there on the unconscious winds, are destined to cover the earth with a glorious vegetation.

Articles (and I now consider them generally, whether occurring in books or otherwise) are of more value than as vehicles either of mere information or mere entertainment. They have a personal character which is necessarily wanting in more elaborate productions, and they thus serve as links to interlace and bind together the sympathies of men. In a book, an author loses his own identity in the subject-he does not dare, as it were, to fill so important a space with himself; while in a few stanzas, or a few pages, he is upon less ceremony, and has no scruple in occupying the trifling area with his own feelings as well as his own opinions. Almost all brief poetical pieces are full of this individuality; and even in short tales and essays, the author is usually seen, in his moral being, through the thin coverings of fiction or philosophy.

I have likened this system to a universal correspondence; and I would have it understood that not one letter fails of reaching its address. Every mind has its like. It belongs to a class, possessing a common calibre, a common standard, and a common language. Within this sphere the article appertaining to it circulates, because it is therein felt and understood, although in other spheres it may be too high for apprehension, or too low for notice. Nothing is written in vain. The volume that is said to drop still-born from the press does its work like the rest. A few copies see the light, and a few kindred minds-were it only those of the trunk-maker or the butterman-attest, however unconsciously, its power.

If such is the influence of literature-and the fact will be denied by no thinking person-the moral responsibility that devolves upon authors must be great indeed. It matters not what the piece may be-whether designed for entertainment or instruction, or whether a mere vagary of the fancy-it has still its effect upon some minds, whether few or many, and must therefore assist or retard pro tanto the progress of the race. Brief pieces more especially, being usually indications of personal character, should be carefully written, from policy, if from no higher motive. It is vain, for instance, for a man to declaim against public war, who incites class against class, and sows dissension among those parts of society on whose union the safety of the structure depends. It is vain for the moralist to preach against the poison of intoxicating liquors, who disseminates the worse poison of uncharitableness. Without consistency and coherence, we can do nothing. Our guiding principle must be a love of mankind in the aggregate-a devout faith in human nature-for this involves true charity and true liberality; and in the end, as refinement and civilisa tion advance, it will triumph over the clamour of sects and parties.

This may be one reason, independently of other considerations, why such pieces possess so great a charm for ordinary minds. But let not the author fancy, in his fond simplicity, that he is himself the object of the readers' interest. He is only known to them in his sentiments. He is an ideal being, as unsubstantial and as fleeting as the creations of his fancy, and he vanishes as suddenly. The article has done its work when it is read. It has laid impressions-perhaps enduring ones -upon the mind; it has suggested thought; it has opened out vistas for the imagination; and is then, when its fruit is gathered, thrown away and forgotten. Perhaps we may think for a moment that we should like to know the writer who has touched a chord of sympathy in our hearts; perhaps we may amuse ourselves with piecing together an image from the fragments of memory, so as to identify his features with those of the loved and lost: but presently the colours fade, the phantom flies, and, hurried on in the ceaseless round of our ever-busy existence, we plunge into new dreams, as fragile and as brief. Before concluding these desultory remarks, I may be Although the article, however, has so short an exist-permitted to advert to a most gratifying characteristic of ence, it is full of dignity and importance in its connec- the article literature of the day. I do not confine my tion with the system of which it constitutes a part. That observation to what are called tracts short papers system embraces the intellectual world. It forms a per- designed for spiritual admonition—or to the essays petual correspondence of mind with mind, of heart with which circulate as usual among the different denominaheart. Its business is not only to inform, or amuse, but tions of the Christian world; but there appears to me to refine and humanise, to draw closer together the sym- to pervade the respectable portion generally of this depathies and affections of men. This will be obvious if we partment of our literature a deeper and more catholic only call to mind the effect which these unconsidered feeling of religion than has hitherto been manifested in trifles' have had upon ourselves. How often, in reading a popular form. But how, indeed, could it be othersome page of the kind, which had possibly no other merit wise? The more general the diffusion of letters, the more than that of suggesting a train of thought to be fol- firmly fixed must be the idea of Spirit. In the last cenlowed out in our mind-how often have we felt our heart tury, when the human mind was in preparation for a soften, and our eyes grow moist! It has snatched us mighty political revolution, the comparatively small away from the present world of care, and we walk again number of authors were the priests of the people, and, with the phantoms of other years, and dream once more like many an older priesthood, their aim was to confine the dreams of our haunted youth; and when we awake, the popular worship to themselves. This hierarchy is now it is neither with a start nor a shudder we look around, at an end, and the gates of the temple are thrown wide but with a subdued temper and a chastened spirit, as if open. We are all priests, and prophets, and soothsayers. the past reacted upon the present, imparting to it a mel- We are all interpreters of the mystic whispers that run lowness of hue which is otherwise seen only through the through the eternal aisles. Spirits ourselves, we commists of time. Again, how often have we been roused by mune with spirits. Imprisoned no longer within the similar means from apathy, and almost despair! How external crust of nature, we know that there is something often have we felt a thrill run through our inner being, beyond; we read the fact in the 'starry scriptures of the awaking our dormant energies, and stirring up our faint- sky;' and hear, as of old, the voice of the Lord God ing courage, as if with the sound of a trumpet! For my among the trees. part, I care not to conceal that, in passing through a life of perhaps more than ordinary vicissitude, I have frequently derived from these hasty and laconic monitors a

The religious feeling I allude to is not obtrusive, not sectarian, not controversial: it is simply a feeling-an inward conviction, conscious or unconscious-which must