expect to live long, he consistently renounced pleasure, and worked hard to make the most of the small time remaining to him. "Don't be surprised," he wrote to a friend, "if any morning at breakfast, you find I am gone." He was perfectly resigned to his fate; but from 1842, till the day of his death, he gave up all hopes of enjoying life, and devoted his nights and days to doing good. "While lecturing ten, eleven, or more hours weekly, sometimes with a pulse at 150°, it was frequently with torturing setons and open blister wounds; and every holiday was eagerly seized for the application of similar heroic remedies, or 'bosom friends,' as he named become, indeed, perfect torture. Struck his days were numbered, that he could not down unexpectedly from all my hopes, I cannot look hopefully to the future, and must recover the stun and shock of my fall, before I become alive to all the comforts which yet surround me." Inflammation of the eyes was added to his list of ailments. Severe illness ensued, and he lay for eighteen months at the gates of death. At length, he determined to undergo a proposed amputation of the left foot. Chloroform was not then in use, and he carefully concealed from his family the day fixed for the operation, which, it was feared, might be attended with a fatal issue. The family were not aware of the truth till they heard his cries of agony from a room adjoining theirs. "I watched all that them." His keen appreciation of the pleasthe surgeons did," he writes, "with a fasci-ures of society, and of all beautiful things, nated intensity. Of the agony it occasioned, I will say nothing. Suffering so great as I underwent cannot be expressed in words. The particular pangs are now forgotten, but the black whirlwind of emotion, the horror of great darkness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, bordering close upon despair, which swept through my mind and overwhelmed my heart, I can never forget, however gladly I would do so." His life was saved, but his whole system was irreparably injured. The busy years which followed were a succession of acute physical suffering, struggling vainly with an undue amount of mental and physical labor. He himself was conscious of this; and, when any extra work had been completed, he would say, half sadly, half jocosely, "There, I've driven another nail into my coffin." was sternly put aside, to meet professional claims; and all with such quiet simplicity, and gay good-humor, that few, if any, guessed the price at which his work was accomplished. A review of the various contributions he made to science during the next ten years would be out of place in these columns. Enough to state, that they made him widely known as one of the most gifted savans of Scotland, and, that they procured him a host of eminent friends; among others, Lord Jeffrey, who had the highest opinion of his powers, and the deepest veneration for his character. They are the productions of one who was a logician, an expositor, and a poet; they reconcile imagination with logic, science with poetry, playful fancy with acute thought. Perhaps the most generally interesting of his works is that on Color Blindness; the fruit of original researches, induced by his pet theory, that the chief aims of science were to demonstrate God, and to heal In 1842, he renewed the task which had been interrupted by his illness, and he was this time enabled to finish it satisfactorily. His labors were soon multiplied. He was appointed Lecturer on Chemistry to the Ed-man; that science was inseparably united inburgh Veterinary College, and also to the School of Arts; he had, moreover, to deliver a course of lectures to the young ladies of the Scottish Institution. These engagements involved the delivery of ten lectures a week, each lecture being illustrated by separate experiments; a labor trebled by the more than necessary trouble he took in preparing and manipulating his subjects. At the same time, he engaged himself in trying literary work; the books and pamphlets he has left behind him are a sufficient proof of his activity in this branch of toil. Conscious that with medicine, as a physical comforter. His biographies of scientific men, and his paper on Natural Theology, both of which appeared in the British Quarterly Review, evinced the depth and the brilliance of his intellect. We may note here, as a circumstance throwing light on his literary life, the fact that his well-known "Text Book of Chemistry," was dictated to a sister, while the author, deprived of the use of his arms, was pacing up and down the room, in order to repress his expressions of agony. The good heart laboring so earnestly with arm, stumbled, and broke the bone near the shoulder; the bone was set, and he bore his new suffering like a stoic. He would fall back, unable to move a limb for some weeks, and as suddenly, would re-appear in the lecture-room, bravely bearing the immense the fine mind, to do good to humankind, led the shore at Rothsay, he overstrained his Wilson to multiply his already enormous duties by work, which, strictly speaking, was unnecessary. Wherever he saw the slightest chance of doing good, he sacrificed both time and money in order to gratify his benevolence. In this spirit he responded to every call upon him, and delivered lectures load of professional and literary labor. to poor people, and to ragged schoolboys. In this spirit, he was never tired of lecturing to medical students on the sacredness of the profession on which they were shortly to enter, and of urging them to prosecute their studies with the self-sacrifice of love, and the energy of philanthropy. medical aid was called in, and his life was saved with great difficulty. He worked on. Bronchitis and dyspepsia were added to his other maladies. He worked on. Again, he was one night awakened by the rupture of a bloodvessel, occasioning great loss of blood. Unwilling to forego duty, or to render his relations uneasy, he breakfasted with the family next morning, as if nothing had It was universally regretted that one of the happened, and actually lectured twice that most gifted men in Scotland should rely for day, although his white, ghastly face filled subsistence on uncertain sources of income, his hearers with fear. The next night and that science should lose the great results hæmorrhage returned: and, unable to call which he would be certain to arrive at, if his assistance, he lay helpless till morning," suropportunities were equal to his zeal. He re-rounded by the spirits of those of the family ceived no professorship, because, although who had gone before." In the morning, theoretically and practically religious, he could not take the requisite test. Most of his valuable experiments were accomplished at his private cost. He said, on one occasion, alluding to the treatment by government of men of science," If her gracious majesty would give us some hard cash, we should not mind letting the artists pocket the stars and ribbons. There is a petty German duke enabling Liebig to beat all the English chemists hollow. If a tithe of what is spent on masquerades and trumpery, dogs and stables, were granted to some school or university, to fit up, and keep in existence, a well-appointed laboratory, the whole country would be the gainer. Liebig is a man of genius, of the highest order, and would unfold himself, though he had not a sixpence; but he could not have reached the eminence he has done had not money in sufficiency been supplied him. Here, our very professors can scarcely keep life in them. Chairs are not worth having, even as sources of income, and there is no surplus to spend on experiments." He At last, the long-delayed recognition of his services came. In 1854, Government founded the Scottish Industrial Exhibition, of which he was appointed Director; and created for him the chair of Technology in the University of Edinburgh. In these new fields he labored con amore; but struggling with perpetual embarrassments, till his death, on the 22d of November, 1859. died rather suddenly from pleurisy, induced by bleeding of the lungs; but the wonder of his medical attendants was, that he had survived so long. He was honored by a public funeral. The gloom cast over Edinburgh by his death communicated itself to high and low. Perhaps no man ever made himself more beloved than he had done; among his friends, by the sweetness and vigor of his mind, and among the citizens generally, by his private charity and public spirit. Thus died, at the early age of forty, one of the most remarkable men to whom ScotAgain and again, during these arduous land has given birth. The loss science has years, Wilson relapsed into illness; again suffered by his early decease cannot be too and again he recovered. He was a mystery highly estimated. Of his scientific reto his medical attendants, who could not searches, of his literary career, we have not fathom a tenacity of live, which rose from thought fit to speak particularly here. His the indomitable will of the man, conquer- life was better than his books, better than ing even physical debility. On one occa- all homilies. He was the sweetest-minded sion, while dragging his weak frame about man of whom we have ever read. As an instance of the pains he took to arrive this defect should be excluded from certain at satisfactory conclusions, we may mention callings and professions; such as those of the that, while preparing his report on Color railway servant and the sailor, who are liable Blindness, he examined in two years no less to cause serious loss to life and property by than one thousand one hundred and fifty-four confounding the colors of flags and signal persons, and subsequently a much larger lamps. number. By virtue of researches like these, he was able to publish most startling statistics. He ascertained that one in every twenty persons has an imperfect appreciation of color, and that the number who are so colorblind as to mistake red for green, brown for green, and even red for black, is one in fifty. He consequently advised that persons with The book from which we have gathered the above narrative is the work of a surviving sister of Dr. Wilson; but it is free from partiality, the common vice of biographies principally told by means of correspondence, written by near relations. The story is the chief business of the biographer being to collate and comment on the facts so vouched for. A SQUIRTO GENTIL! Gush of Poetry that welled forth from a Sentimental Being after taking a Turkish Bath. AIR-" Spirto Gentil." SQUIRTO gentil! DEATH OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S FATHER. | erations of unhealth and agony. And we would -Charlotte Bronte's father is dead. On the have no more of the Brontes left us than dwells 7th of June he fell asleep in the weird old par- in their immortal books.-N. Y. Evening Post. sonage of Haworth, closing his eyes on the hearthstone where the three lovely women who made his name glorious sat but a little while ago, dreaming inscrutably over the wonderful world within them, and whence they passed one by one, their fragile shapes seeming rather to fade slowly than die quickly, like the common lot. Eighty-four years old, and, but for that faithful son-in-law Nicholls, who looks to us in reading of him more like a protraction of Charlotte's life than a separate existence-but for him and the servants, all alone! We may believe or disbelieve the stories of his iron sternness, he may have fired himself off in pistol-cartridges from the back-door step, he may have torn taffeta gowns, he may have been a gloomy companion for three motherless women and a gifted, reckless, unbalanced son-we forget all that nowhe outlived one of the rarest families that were ever born to man. All that we know of him is known because he was the father of Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell, of Patrick the younger, dead in his despairing youth, after a life of wild, brilJiant misery, for which no philosopher in the tangled organism of morbid nature could dream of holding him responsible. The Rev. Patrick Bronte was born on the saint's day which gave him his name, in the year 1777. A brief but unutterably fascinating history, with an end which saddens us, yet makes us still more glad. It is impossible to feel overbalancing regret at the death of the last Bronte. We rejoice that there is none living to bear that name which always meant misery and spiritual unhealth, while it portended genius and glory. It is as if we saw a galaxy of glorious stars, and knew that while they shone they were burning in a bitter conscious pain. We might sorrow for ourselves when they dimmed and went out in white ashes; but for their sakes we should rejoice. It is a beneficent law of nature that no morbid growth, however splendid, propagates itself through gen Is that cold water douse: -Punch. From The Danville Quarterly Review. * I. Civil War.-Influence upon it, of the Idea War one of Self-Preservation on the respects, hardly less uncertain than they may be vast. Hundreds of thousands of armed men are hastening to slay each other-led by captains many of whom are worthy to command heroes, and provided with every means of mutual destruction which the science and skill of the age can devise. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been expended in these immense and fatal preparations: and so thoroughly is the most warlike of all races aroused, and so completely are the exigencies of the times held to demand of every man a complete readiness to defend all that he is not willing to surrender, that, at whatever cost, every one capable of bearing arms will be armed, and will use his part of the Nation. Not aggressive and against the South - but defensive and against Secessionists. Supposing the arms with deadly effect, according as the Triumph of the Secessionists; insuperable difficulties. Every benefit contemplated by Secession, defeated by the War into which it plunged. Restora tion to the Union the true Result. V. Miscalculations of Secession. Miscarriage, as to a "United South." And as to a "Divided North." And as to the temper, and purpose of the Nation. And as to Expansion, the Slave Trade, Free Trade, Boundless Prosperity, Cotton Monopoly. Secession a frightful and incalculable Mistake. VI. The Border Slave States. State of Parties in 1860. Sudden and secret Revolution in Virginia. Probable effects, political and military. Western Virginia. Central Mountain Route to the Central South. Delaware, Maryland, Missouri. The Original StatesStates carved out of them-the Purchased States. Kentucky, her position, peril, temper, purpose. VII. General Conclusion. - the course of events may seduce or oblige him to do so. It is, indeed, possible that some wonderful interposition of God, or some sudden and heroic impulse falling upon the people, may even yet avert the terrible catastrophe, and arrest the destruction even as it is ready to descend. It is equally possible that, before these lines are printed, great armies which already face each other, may have fought one of those bloody and decisive battles, whose issues determine the fate not only of wars, but of ages. Ignorant of all the future, and imperfectly informed concerning passing events, it becomes us to speak with moderation and candor of the prospects before us. Penetrated with the deepest sorrow at the mournful, though it be in many respects sublime, scene which our country presents, we would forbear to speak at all, if it were not that the general tenor of what we purpose to utter, is designed to keep alive tion that the whole country may, even yet, in the hearts of our countrymen the convicbe restored; and to influence, so far as any thing we can do may influence, the conduct of all these terrible affairs, to that end, and by that idea. It is this which is the burden of all we have hitherto said and done—it is this which justifies nearly any effort, any sacrifice, any suffering on the part of the nation -it is this which we must keep before the minds of men if we would preserve our countrymen from turning savages, under the influence of the civil war upon which we have entered, and for the prosecution of which such enormous preparations are made by both parties. II. The long and terrible reign of Parties. Majes-ernment, which had characterized the whole tic Re-appearance of the Nation on the scene of Affairs. Great Truths accepted, and to be previous course of the revolt, and which has marked the whole treatment extended to maintained. Union men in every seceding state, to the 1. For a long course of years political parties, sectional factions, and the clamor of present moment. It was possible to have demagogues, had given that sort of political divided the American nation peaceably, into education to the people, and occupied the two or more nations, by the consent of the thoughts of men with that description of po- American people, and the change of the litical ideas and desires, that the nation- Federal Constitution. But it was not, in the mighty American Nation - - had disap- the nature of things, possible to rend it by peared from the area of our general politics. a military revolt, characterized by a spirit It had been for a whole generation Whig, and of contemptuous and reckless violence, alike Democrat, and Republican, and Know-Noth- illegal, unjust, and fatal, without arousing ing, and Secessionist, and Abolitionist, and the outraged nation, and bringing all the Fire-Eater; the people rent, and confused, mighty questions at issue, to that arbitraand maddened-fraud and violence reigning ment of arms which the secessionists had in the heated canvasses and elections and chosen-and by which, in one form or anthe most shameless corruption spreading like other of violence, they have achieved every a pestilence amongst public men. The glori- conquest they have made. We are not parous Nation had disappeared utterly, as the tisans of the present National Administracontrolling element in national affairs ;-so tion, and have no adequate means of formutterly, that a President of the United States ing an opinion, as to whether the particular was found capable of conniving-whether occasion and moment-or whether earlier, through timidity, through folly, through im- or whether later, occasions and times-were becility, or through corruption let posterity best suited for armed resistance by it, to the decide at the ruin of the nationality which progress of the great military revolt, whose his Government represented, and the over- avowed objects were the destruction of the throw of the Constitution by virtue of which Government, the overthrow of the Constituit existed. So utterly, that a revolt openly tion, and the ruin of the nation. What we conducted in flagrant contempt of the Pres- wish to signalize is the majestic re-appearident, the Constitution, and the nation, and ance of the American Nation in the mighty attended in all its stages by innumerable scene-the simultaneous perishing of all acts of war-was allowed to spread from factions, and disappearance of all parties but state to state, without the slightest attempt the party of the nation, and the party of seof the nation, or any one representing it, to cession-and the unanimous conviction of make itself felt or even heard; until the vast all American citizens loyal to their country, extent of the revolt, and the great number that the National Government is the true of states on which the partisans of it had and only lawful representative of the nation seized, became the chief embarrassment in itself. With almost absolute unanimity the dealing with it at all, and the main plea with twenty millions of people in the nineteen timid statesmen why the degraded nation Northern States; the great majority of the should accept its own destruction, as a fact four millions of white persons, in the five fully accomplished. Border Slave States; and, as we firmly be2. That mighty Nation has re-appeared lieve, a very large portion of the four milonce more on the theatre of affairs. All lions of white people in the remaining ten thoughtful men knew that such a destruc- Slave States, though now cruelly oppressed tion as was attempted, could not be accom- and silenced, cordially recognize these great plished by war on one side, without begetting truths, and will maintain them—namely, war on the other side. It may be consid- that the American people are a nationered madness in the Confederate Govern- that the Constitution and laws of the United ment to have preferred the bombardment of States are supreme in this nation-that the Fort Sumter, to its peaceful surrender in Federal Government is the true and only lethree days through starvation. But it was gal representative of this nation, charged a choice precisely in the spirit of every act with the defence of its safety, the execution towards the American nation and its Gov-of its laws, and the protection of its liber |