are as fit for a parish priest as I am for a Most people, we pre according to his own confession-yet was sume, on a priori evidence, and judging The last great act of his life was the singu- from the nature of things, would be dislar chivalrous enterprise, undertaken in a for-posed to agree with Mr. Drummond. A lorn hope of saving two victims of Eastern parish priest, however, the Grand Dervish ignorance and cruelty, Stoddart and Conolly. has been for fifteen years, and in that posiWith a characteristic touch of superstitious tion has built a church, parsonage, and friendliness, Wolff recalls to his mind that schoolhouse, increased his acquaintance to in all his disasters he has been delivered by a large extent, and evidently, by the testiBritish officers, and, inspired with the recol-mony of the preface and execution of this very lection, full of pity, vanity, affectionate re- book, won the love of his neighbors, whatgard, and confidence perhaps excessive, but ever his parishioners may have to say. In entirely just, in a knowledge of Eastern ways this calm refuge reposes still the most notawhich few living persons could equal, set ble of wandering Jews. How he confines out to Bokhara on the forlorn hope of deliv- his restless activity, his adventurous spirit, ering those captives. Trusting to his quick his love of frolic and commotion, into the wit and old experience, and to the effect restricted life and narrow limits of the vicwhich his clergyman's gown, doctor's hood, arage, we will not undertake to say. The and shovel hat, and the title of "Grand Der- cage into which he has thus cooped himself, vish of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and however, has evidently not broken his spirit. of the whole of Europe and America," which He seems to have retravelled all his various he meant to assume, would have upon the adventures with the highest relish and enignorant and brutal court of Bokhara, the joyment; and we know no book of recent good man went forth in full canonicals, with times that will stand comparison with this a Bible, English and Hebrew, open in his original record. The story overflows with hand, into the jaws of the lion. A most not- character, humor, acuteness,sense, and folly able, vain, generous, and noble enterprise, the most naïve and unreserved self-diswhich did not save the already murdered victims, but which must commend Wolff to If Dr. Wolff was a romantic hero, or the every man who has any thing of the Quixote brightest type of a wandering apostle, we in his veins as most men have whose good might indeed object to many matters which opinion is worth asking. Though he escaped hold a place in his narrative. But he is neiby the merest hairbreadth himself, he over-ther one nor the other; and what he does awed the savage potentate into an inquiry whether he had power to raise the dead?a striking confession of remorseful fright and compunction. The Grand Dervish, however, found it difficult enough to accomplish his own escape, and all but testified his "gratitude to British officers" with his blood. By diligent use of all the devices common to captives, and by firmness and self-possession, he did at last manage to get away from Bokhara, and, coming home by a devious course, enlivened by many of his old experiences, came finally to England, and received from some confiding patron the living of Ile Brewers, in Devonshire. He had held a Yorkshire curacy before setting out upon his journey, touching which Mr. Drummond wrote him with all the frankness of friendship, "Your call is to be an evangelist for all the nations of the earth, and for this you are fit; but, to use your own simile, 'you closure. not consider beneath his dignity, we, the well-pleased recipients of his confidence, are not called upon to consider in such a light, All the vague reputation in which his name has been wafted abroad, will be vindicated by his own honest out-spoken tale. He is not a heroic personage, but he is the most lighthearted and dauntless of adventurersthe most amusing of companions. Dipping at random into his stores, it is quite uncertain whether you may light upon a broad modern joke or a quaint Oriental legend of primeval antiquity. His peals of comfortable complacent laughter-the laughter of a man fully satisfied with himself, and enjoying his own jests-are interrupted by wild chants of the desert, and pathetic Hebrew lamentations, pealed forth in a voice that has made itself heard among the clamors of savage tribes, and caused the halls of the Propaganda to ring again. Altogether the book, which is not free from vulgarities, or even a would gladly see followed. A man of higher suspicion of tediousness, in the latter part strain might make that sublime which Wolff especially, has a fascination quite irresisti- has made interesting and exciting; and we ble. We know neither priest nor traveller cannot doubt that the flash of this passing of modern times worthy to compare with this visitor through regions of obscurity will son of Levi and the desert-this wandering throw farther reflections than anybody cross-bearer-this Grand Dervish of Chris- dreams of-reflections in all probability tendom. It would be hard to light upon more original, and therefore more lasting, another Wolff; to look for such exceptional than those which are likely to arise round irregular personages would be foolish, and the permanent glimmer of some single stato find them undesirable. Nevertheless, tionary taper planted alone in the wilderthere is in his mission a precedent which we ness. natural colors will in every particular be true to nature, with all the harmony of hues and tones, and with due graduations. We know from past experience that a very little success goes a great way when photography in natural colors is concerned; but if M. Niepce succeeds in obtaining the promised result, it will be indeed a wonderful achievement. OPINION FORMED OF WASHINGTON BY PHOTOGRAPHS IN NATURAL COLORS.-M. LOUIS PHILIPPE.-When M. Guizot had com- Nièpce de St. Victor, who is so well known for pleted his "Study of Washington,' he sent a his researches in heliochromy, has succeeded in copy to the king, who thanked him in the fol-producing colors of great brilliancy, and with a lowing letter:"MY DEAR LATE MINISTER,-If I have so greater degree of permanency than has hitherto long delayed my reply, it is because I wished to been obtained. The colored images, it is said, thank you myself for your work on Washing- will resist the action of strong sunlight for sev ton, and to tell you how much I should be grati-eral hours. It is assumed that the pictures in fied if I could command time to read and talk over it with you. You know too well how completely I am deprived of these tranquil relaxations. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor, at least, to read the introduction, which I hear spoken of as a masterpiece. My three years' residence in America produced an important influence on my political opinions and judgment on the march of human events. The puritanic and democratic revolution, vanquished in England, and driven for refuge to the little States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, overflowed and subdued all the other elements of population in the vast continent on which the European tempest had impelled it. For, although the Dutch at New York, the English Catholics under Lord Baltimore at Baltimore (1632), and, earlier than either, the French (under Henry IV.), had attempted this great colonization, all were extinguished under the puritanic democracy, and the fragments of the Long Parliament and its army. But Washington was neither puritan nor aristocrat; still less was he a democrat. He was essentially a man of order and government, secking ever to combine and use to the best advantage the often discordant and always weak clements with which he had to combat, and to rescue his country from anarchy. I feel convinced that you have drawn him thus, and my confidence on this point adds much to my regret at not having time to read your Washington; but it always gives me pleasure to repeat the assurance of my sentiments towards you." THE astronomers of Germany intend to meet at Dresden, on August 20 and 21, to discuss the distribution of observations of the stars-fixed, nebulous, and variable; also an arrangement for observing and calculating in a systematic manner, for the future, the movements, etc., of planets and comets. MESSRS. LONGMAN have in the press a treatise 66 on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, and how they may be successfully taught in Elementary Schools," by Mr. Robert Floyd. THE first part-from Abraham to Samuel of the Rev. A. P. Stanley's "Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church," is announced. MR. BENTLEY is about to publish a "Cook's Guide for the Middle Classes," composed by M. Francatelli. ENGLISH SYMPATHY FOR PROF. LONG- has ever made himself so broad a way into FELLOW. OUR readers will all welcome the words of touching appreciation with which the London Star announces the sad bereavement of Professor Longfellow. "One who has given," it well says, "so many bright gleams of happiness and so many impulses of elevating emotion to all the reading public of his own land and of Europe; one who has written so many lines of exquisite poetic beauty and refined tenderness of feeling, deserves, at such a crisis in his life, the sympathy of the world." the popular English acceptation as Longfellow. Thoroughly domesticated in England, his works have long been, as the works of a foreign author scarcely ever were before. familiar to general English readers. We reSome of our own great writers are far less member hearing an American once remark that he met with more copies of Elizabeth Browning's poems in Boston than in London; and more of Longfellow's works in England than in the United States. England may claim the credit of having first recognized the peculiar qualities of beauty, feeling, and quaint thought which distin-Transcript. guish the exquisite prose-poem of Hype"In the recent news from America-rion,'-a romance with which the name of among the brief telegraphic accounts of the lady just dead was connected in the pubskirmishes which have taken place, and an- lic mind in a manner now most melancholy nouncements of battles and campaigns which to recall. are expected-appeared one small scrap of "We are only repeating what has been melancholy intelligence having no relation stated more than once in print, and what to any warlike scene. Few Englishmen or certainly was believed in Heidelburg, the Englishwomen who read at all can have seen scene of the leading portions of the romance, without very deep regret the few words in when we say that the wife of Professor Longthe telegram which announced the heavy fellow-she whose sad death we have just stroke of fate just fallen upon Henry Long-learned-was the Mary Ashburton familiar fellow. We have received only some few to the readers of Hyperion.' The life roparticulars, but the precise manner in which the catastrophe took place is of little import. Professor Longfellow's wife has just been snatched literally from his arms, by one of the most terrible deaths a human being can die. The unfortunate lady was burned to death, and the poet himself, in striving to rescue her from the flames which enveloped her, sustained in his own person some severe injuries. The character and the celebrity of the man who has suffered this peculiarly terrible infliction remove the bereavement which has fallen upon him out of the range of mere private calamities. One who has given so many bright gleams of happiness and so many impulses of elevating emotion to all the reading public of his own land and of Europe; one who has written so many lines of exquisite poetic beauty and refined tenderness of feeling, deserves, at such a crisis in his life, the sympathy of the world. mance which the poet so exquisitely pictured, and which was believed to have had a climax of poetic fitness and happiness, has now found its mortal conclusion in an event which no one can think of without a shudder. The setting of a great hope,' writes Longfellow himself in the romance we speak of, is like the setting of the sun.' But the sun of the poet's hope has set in gloom sadder and darker than that which belongs to ordinary calamity. To have lost such a companion must, under any circumstances, have been to a man like Longfellow a blow which only the best resources of Christianity could enable him to bear with resignation. But to have lost a precious life by such a fate and for such a cause-to have seen the object of love and the source of happiness destroyed at once by a flame from a morsel of sealing-wax ignited in sport to amuse a child-must indeed increase beyond any power of words to describe the bitterness of the calamity. "Into how many saddened hearts have not the words of Longfellow poured consolation? How many mourning eyes have not "The number of women whose lives have looked up with a brightening hope from the been sacrificed during the past few years by pages in which he had written such hymns the sudden meeting of flame and floating of resignation-such cheering and strength- drapery, would form a long and an appalling ening appeals? A singer, whose lips breathed record. It has been culminated for the purer and sweeter inspiration, is not known present by the death of the wife of one in to our present literature. No American whose sorrow Europe and America at least writer, except perhaps Washington Irving, feel the deepest sympathy." OZONE. the language of Faraday, to view their fundamental doctrine of transmutation as no longer opposed to known analogies, but only some stages beyond the present state of knowledge. VERY slowly, and in a tottering, uncertain manner, do we become acquainted with the mysteries hidden in apparently the most simple substance. The discovery of oxygen was one of the first fruits of modern chemistry; It has at last become the custom to record and after its properties have been seemingly ozone observations at most of the meteoroinvestigated scores of years ago in the most logical observatories, and the scientific and exhaustive manner, we are just beginning to general public are pretty well aware that find out how utterly ignorant we are as to these indications afford a rough but on the its real nature. A substance which is the whole a reliable test of the healthiness of very breath of life for all created beings on any particular locality. The usual way of the earth, the consumption of which, to sup- preparing the test papers for ozonimetrical ply respiration and combustion, amounts to purposes has been to soak fine paper in a more than seven millions of tons weight per mixture of starch and iodide of potassium day,-forming three-quarters of the animal dissolved in water. Upon drying, the paper kingdom, four-fifths of the vegetable king- was cut into slips, and the rapidity of its dom, half the mineral kingdom, together darkening, or the intensity which it acquired, with one-fifth of the atmosphere and eight-in any given time, was compared with a numninths of the water on the earth, constitut-bered scale and recorded-the indications ing, in fact, nearly two-thirds of our globe, ranging from one to ten. Two errors are and endowed with properties more strikingly liable to creep in when the ozone papers are remarkable than any other body in nature, used in the ordinary way. They are usually certainly offers some inducement for the earnest inquirer to explore its mysteries; and if we now feel so ignorant on the subject, it is not on account of the little that is already known, so much as the vast regions of unexplored wealth of which we have recently caught some faint glimpses. suspended freely in the air, and exposed to light. Air is of course necessary, as the ozone is an ingredient of the atmosphere; but light causes the papers to fade, and thus destroys the indications. The other objection is that the papers are liable to be darkened by other bodies in the atmosphereIn connection with the most wonderful, as nitric acid, for instance, which is known to well as the most fascinating, branch of this in- be present in quantity after thunder. The quiry, the mysterious power which oxygen, former difficulty has been overcome by Mr. ordinarily quiescent, possesses of splitting E. J. Lowe, who has contrived an ozone box, up into two intensely energetic oppositely which is simple in construction, small in size, endowed halves, the name of Schönbein and cylindrical in form; the chamber in will always be remembered. The untiring manner in which he investigated the subject of ozone, tracking it from the electrical smell through all its phases, patiently working on in spite of the ridicule with which it was, up to a very recent time, the custom to assail him as the philosopher with one idea, the man with an ozonic monomania, and ultimately forcing the subject, by its very importance, before the notice of physicists,—is a worthy model for every young experimenter. Through him we have been led to ask whether the so-called chemical elements may not, after all, be mere allotropic conditions of a few bodies?-whether the speculations of the alchemists upon the mutual convertibility of the metals into each other, may not prove ultimately correct, and, in which the test slips are hung being perfectly dark, whilst at the same time there is a constant current of air circulating through it, no matter from what quarter of the compass the wind is blowing. The air either passes in at the lower portion of the box and travels round a circular chamber twice, until it reaches the centre (where the test slips are hung), and then out again at the upper portion of the box in the same circular manner, or in at the top and out again at the bottom of the box. The second difficulty is not so readily got over; but from some recent researches of Schönbein it seems probable that the substance known as pyrogallic acid will answer the desired end. He has just found that when a strip of paper, moistened with a solu tion of pyrogallic acid, is introduced into an not be any disadvantage in practice, for a atmosphere containing ozone, it is rapidly paper would never be exposed so long to atdarkened; whilst, if no ozone be present, mospheric influences for this reversed effect the paper retains its original whiteness. to take place. Schönbein therefore suggests that unsized We do not know a more valuable or inpaper, moistened with a solution of pyrogal-structive study than that of the ever-varying lic acid, would form a good test for the pres- quantity of ozone in the air. A test for this ence of this form of oxygen. This would body ought to be as common in a house as a seem to be a far better test than that in which starch and iodide of potassium are used. Nitric acid in the atmosphere would not be likely to have any action upon it; indeed, every photographer is in the daily habit of mixing pyrogallic and nitric acids together without any discoloration taking place. There is only one slight drawback, and that is, that long-continued action of strong ozone re-appearance is almost as certain a sign of has a bleaching effect; this, however, would the cessation of the sickness. barometer. Ozone is equivalent to health. In crowded cities or unhealthy neighborhoods it is scarcely ever to be detected; whilst on the ocean, the seashore, or elevated, open tracts of country it is almost invariably present in quantity. The first outbreak of an epidemic is always heralded by a rapid decrease of ozone in the atmosphere, whilst its CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS.-If one truly | loves God, he has the witness of the Spirit within him, and cannot doubt the reality of this Christian consciousness. More abstruse evidences of the reality of the new birth may be overlooked, if one can say, like the blind man, "One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see." The Home Circle has a pleasant illustration of this, told by Rev. Mr. Martin, of an eminent Southern states. man, "On one occasion, while the late Hon. W. C. Preston was an inmate of my family, I had been from home several days, and on my return, my little boy, Henry (then in his seventh year), as was his wont, manifested great joy on the occasion; so much so as to attract the attention of my honorable friend, who said to the little fellow: "Henry, do you love your father?' "Yes, sir,' said Henry. "Are you sure you love your father?' "Yes, sir, I am sure I do.' And by way of proof the little fellow kissed me. "Henry,' he still asked, 'do you know that you love your father?' "The little fellow was puzzled for a moment, but recovering himself, replied with evident feeling, "Yes, sir, I know it, for I feel it '—and again he threw his arms around my neck, and kissed me. "My friend was amused; so were we all; but there, as far as we knew, the matter ended. Colonel P. was at that time an earnest seeker after the truth, and two years afterwards, when nearing the eternal world, having made his peace with God, and realized the power of converting grace, as he lay calmly waiting and patiently suffering the will of God, he said to a friend, in speaking of his confidence in God: "I am like a little child with his father-like little Henry Martin-I know that I love God, and am in his favor, because I feel it -1 feel it.' Truly his confidence was simple and childlike, his humility deep and genuine. He loved God-he felt that he loved him; and in this peaceful frame of mind he continued most of the time, until his happy spirit took its flight to the bosom of his God. He had long been an inquirer after truth, and the simple remark of that little child furnished him with an illustration of the spirituality of religion; that it is something that may be experienced, that may be felt. He sought it and found it, to the joy of his heart and the salvation of his soul." MESSRS. LONGMAN & Co. will publish immediately a "Manual of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," by the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Also, "A History of Learning and Literature in England," by George L. Craik, LL D., Professor of the English Language in Queen's College, Belfast. THE second edition of Henry Chorley's "The Authors of England," will be ready early next month. |