accomplished in their political condition was not a striking one, and had no immediate momentous effects, except that for some years they were exposed to great danger of anarchy and general bankruptcy. After reviewing the constitutions established by the several States, and the powers of Congress as they were defined at the close of the war, Mr. Hildreth says, "it is apparent from this review that the Revolution made no sudden nor violent change in the laws or political institutions of America beyond casting off the superintending power of the mother country; and even that power, always limited, was replaced to a great extent by the authority of Congress."

This, we say, is a possible view of the American Revolution; it gives the same general idea of it that we derive from Mr. Hildreth's history. It is not a caricature, and we know not that a single statement in it can be successfully impugned. But here again it may be said, that it is not the truth, because it is not the whole truth. When regarded in its broadest aspect, and when its causes, its general character, and its consequences are fairly estimated, the Revolution appears in its proper light, as one of the greatest events in the annals of nations. It was a turning point in the history of the world. Its remote effects are still developing themselves upon the continent of Europe, and shaping the political destiny of the most enlightened portions of mankind. It gave the initial impulse to the first French revolution, and to some extent determined its character; and through that, it is still heaving the foundations of the most stable monarchies of the Old World. The whole of our Western Continent was long since revolutionized by it, and is still experiencing its good or ill results. It was the first war of opinion between a people and a government, which was not kindled by the fires of theological controversy, and which was conducted by the people to a successful termination. The experiment of a Commonwealth had been tried in England, and had failed, so disastrously failed, that the patriots of 1688 feared to renew the trial, and contented themselves with merely changing the line of their kings. It succeeded here, and the consequences of its success have been momentous. Even a frivolous and cold-hearted wit like Horace Walpole, writing at the outbreak of the Revolution, had sagacity enough to declare, that the

independence of America would be "a new era in the annals of mankind."

But we need not dwell upon this view, or endeavor to expand it to its full dimensions. The reflection of every reader at all conversant with the history of the last three quarters of a century will readily fill up the outline. The interest reflected back upon the American Revolution by the long train of great events of which it was the prelude and inciting cause, give it a new value and dignity in the eyes of the philosophical observer. Every little incident connected with it appears worthy of study; the actors in it become ennobled by the magnitude of the work of which they were generally the unconscious instruments. The farmers and mechanics who were engaged in the running fight at Lexington, or in the short and sharp conflict at Bunker Hill, take their place among the movers in the great crises which have affected the destiny of mankind. Any historian of the Revolution who fails to regard it in this light, leaves out what should form the characteristic feature of his work. In this case, certainly, a barren chronicle of events does not constitute a true history.

We have spoken frankly, though with no unkind spirit, of the faults of Mr. Hildreth's performance, because they seem to be serious blemishes in a work of such pretensions, which begins with a sweeping censure of its predecessors, and aspires to present the history of America for the first time in its true character. It is not a feeble or careless production; the author of it is an independent thinker, a correct writer, and has other eminent qualifications for his task. But he began with a wrong conception of his subject, and has written upon it under as strong a bias of preconceived opinion, as that which affects a professed eulogist or a bigoted defender of a narrow creed in politics or religion. His work is most faulty in the very respect in which he seems most ambitious to excel; and he has thus shown, though in a manner which he did not intend, that freedom from prejudice is the first requisite of a historian.

Miss thandles.

ART. VI.1. The Old Red Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field. By HUGH MILLER, Author of "Footprints of the Creator," etc. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1851. 12mo. pp. 288.

2. First Impressions of England and its People. By HUGH MILler. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1851.

12mo. pp. 430.

3. The Course of Creation. By JOHN ANDERSON, D. D. Cincinnati: William H. Moore & Co. 1851. 12mo. pp. 376.

4. The Poetry of Science, or Studies of the Physical Phenomena of Nature. By ROBERT HUNT, Author of "Panthea," "Researches on Light," etc. Boston Gould & Lincoln. 1850. 12mo.

pp. 383.

WHEN astrology became astronomy, and alchemy became chemistry, the change was not greater than when the science of geology, in its present form, was developed out of the crude fancies held by learned men at the time when fossil remains were first observed. That these could ever have belonged to living animals seems never to have occurred to the minds of the learned doctors of the sixteenth century, who supposed them to be the products of what was termed a "plastic nature;" and when Fracastoro announced his belief that they were the remains of animals which had once existed upon the earth, he encountered only incredulity and contempt. His opponents maintained that fossil shells were generated in the earth by fermentation, and acquired their peculiar forms through the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations." Elephant's tusks dug up in Italy were said to be nothing more than "earthy concretions;" and one writer, who published a work on the subject, illustrated with drawings of fossil shells, announced his conviction that they were stones which had assumed the appearance of shells through the influence of the heavenly bodies. The plastic force of nature was even made accountable for certain ancient vases which were disinterred at Rome; and all things bearing a resemblance to organic forms were but freaks of the same power. The race of observers of this class is not yet extinct, but their voices have no longer any effect except upon the

credulous and the ignorant. A few religious bigots, having dogmatically asserted that geology as it now stands is opposed to Mosaic history, doggedly close their eyes to all evidence offered by facts, and stand established in their ignorance like effigies representing the minds of a past age. For a long time, geology was a bugbear to the religious part of the world in general. Not many years ago, we saw the face of a religious man, and an intelligent one too, assume an expression of positive distress, when a suggestion was made that the first chapters of Genesis might not be the literal history of things done in seven of our ordinary days, but a brief and figurative summary of events that had occupied long ages in their progress and completion. Earnestly did he endeavor, as though striving to snatch a brand from the burning, to convince the theorist of the danger incurred by such trifling with the words of the Holy Scriptures. If we once began to question their truth, we should be led on from step to step till all faith would be replaced by infidelity. Such fears may now seem puerile to those who believe nature to be the work of His hand, so that it is a veritable Scripture no less than the written Word; and who therefore feel sure that the two must agree. The Bible gains or loses nothing from the efforts of religious men who oppose science, or from scientific men who oppose religion. Nature and the Scriptures stand upon a basis of reality that no words of man have power to shake. It is the superficial and the timid inquirer alone who fails to find the eternal harmony existing between them. The leading asserters of the "development" theory are bad geologists, and the opponents of geology are not found among the most profound divines. A narrow religious sect may take the same stand against geology that Catholicism formerly took against astronomy; but from the nature of the human mind, such opposition must be as futile now as it was then. Religious faith rests upon a very insecure basis if it can be maintained only by rejecting the conclusions of science and the evidence of the senses.

When "The London Record," in trying to write down the doings of the British Scientific Association, is driven to such an absurdity as to affirm, that for aught which appears to the contrary, the world might have been made yesterday, we know that the cause of geology is safe; for the practical observer

will as readily be brought to believe that the bones dug up in a churchyard were created yesterday, and were never clothed with flesh, as that the fossil deposits in the lower depths of the earth were created fossils, and never belonged to living animals. There are those who take the ground that God created the earth full of such apparent remains of the past, in order to satisfy the craving inherent in the human mind for the contemplation of that which is venerable through its age. If such persons would turn the ingenuity they are now wasting upon such inane theories into the paths of true scientific inquiry, and show to the timidly pious how God's words and works have seemed to disagree only on account of our imperfect knowledge, there would be nothing to fear from the puny strivings of irreverent men who love their own theories better than the word of God; and whose zeal to disprove that word proceeds from and is accompanied by a general neglect and ignorance of thorough scientific observation.

No writer has yet appeared whose powers seem so perfectly adapted to neutralize the works of the timidly pious, and of the boldly impious, as Hugh Miller. Born in the lower ranks of Scotch peasantry, with no advantages of education but such as a village common school afforded, and laboring until middle life as a common stone-cutter in the quarries, he has worked his way upward to a position as a scientific observer and writer that any man might be proud to occupy; and yet without forgetting the class from which he sprang. While ignorant of much of the knowledge taught in schools, his mind was enriched by familiarity with the master minds of English literature; and having a naturally fine imagination, his taste has been cultivated by such models, until he is able to embody his own thoughts in a style so eloquent as to charm the educated, and so clear and forcible as to attract the ignorant. Among scientific men, we think it would be difficult to name one who surpasses him in clearness, elegance, and force of style. His thoughts well to the surface as fresh and transparent as a living fountain; and his descriptions are models of the power that brings the object vividly before the eye of the reader. Now that authors are prone to measure their productions by the amount of letter-press rather than by the number of ideas contained, it is refreshing to find so eminently popular a writer who uses words only because he