its centre and the durations of their siderial revolutions, nize with the real facts as they exist in this our field of as given by observation, are as follows: A comparison of these mean distances with the durations of the siderial revolutions, will convince our astronomer, that the squares of the times of the siderial revo. lutions are as the cubes of their mean distances. What then becomes of his favorite hypothesis, that the satellites have a common velocity about Jupiter? for were this the case, the times would be as the distances. Observations show, that the relation above established between the periodical times and distances of Jupiter's satellites, holds equally true of the planets. This being so, any treatise on dynamics will prove the following consequence, to wit: that the planets must tend towards the Sun with a force that decreases inversely as the square of the distance from the Sun's centre. 50. But let us pass to the December No. of the Messenger, and see if our author has been more successful in producing difficulties respecting the Newtonian system. We find that he has presented but one, and in the following words, viz: "The European mathematicians say, that Mercury performs one period in eighty-seven days twenty-three hours-Venus in 224 days 17 hours. Then, for greater convenience, I will reduce these days or times to hours. Mercury's time will be 2,111 hours, and Venus' 5,393. Now divide the time of Venus by the time of Mercury: 2,111)5,393 (21,171 4,222 1,171 2,111 creation. If we take the Earth and Jupiter, similar results will follow." (Pages 769, 770.) By the division of the paths of Venus and Mercury, the one by the other, our author obtained the ratio of the lengths of their paths. Thus, if A travels 800 miles, and B 200; if we divide 800 by 200, we ascertain merely how much greater the distance of A is than that of B; in this supposed case, four times greater. Now if A and B travel at the same rate, the ratio of their distances would be the same as the ratio of their times of travelling: otherwise not. Thus, suppose the rate of each to be 10 miles per hour: then A would travel 80 hours and B 20. And 20 and 80 have the same ratio as 200 and 800, that is of 1 to 4. But if A travels 8 miles per hour and B 10, A will be travelling 100 hours and B 20. Or, B's time will be to A's time as 20 to 100, that is, as 1 to 5, and no longer as 1 to 4, the ratio of the distances travelled. I have been thus minute, to make it plain, that it is incorrect to divide the distance of A by that of B in order to arrive at the ratio of their times, excepting in this one case, viz: when their velocities or rates are the same: and that in every other case, the ratio of the distances must be different from that of the times. Now on the supposition that the velocities of Mercury and Venus are different, our author obtains their respective paths. Then in dividing the path of Venus by that of Mercury, he calls the quotient the ratio of their periodical times!!! This is mathematical to perfection. Let us recur to our example above. A travels 800 miles at the rate of 8 miles per hour, and B 200, at the rate of 10 miles per hour; what will be the relative lengths of time they are travelling? Dividing A's distance by B's, our philosopher would make B's time to A's time as 1 to 4: while any school-boy will tell him that B would be on the road 20 hours and A 100 hours, and that 20 are to 100 as 1 to 5. But let us apply to the velocities, periods and paths of Mercury and Venus the principles of uniform motion, which give this relation between them, viz: T:t: S S (See any treatise on V V T = X 2.5 81 23221 That is, the time in which Mercury peforms one revolution is to that in which Venus performs one, as 1 to By giving the velocities to these two planets, according to our mathematical teachers, Mercury would make but one revolution and part of another only, while Venus makes one. Whereas it is well known that Mercury actually makes two revolutions and nearly half of another while Venus is performing one. Now, what is true 2.5; or, in other words, we have two and a half revoof these two planets, is true of all the others; and what-lutions of Mercury for one of Venus, as we ought to ever may be the real velocity of Mercury, is certainly have. the real velocity of all the other planets. Give to Venus In the example of the Earth and Jupiter, our author the velocity given to Mercury, and then their periods made the same unpardonable blunder, and obtained, of correspond, and all is harmony; but give them different velocities, and the results cannot, by any correct mathe- course, results alike absurd. To apply, however, the matical process, by no conceivable arrangement of true laws of motion to this case, we have, (using the figures or numbers, be made to correspond and harmo- numerical values of our author,) Here then we see, that the velocities, periods and paths of the planets harmonize perfectly with each other and with the established laws of dynamics. 60. I have now noticed briefly, all of the objections urged in the two papers before me against the Newtonian system of astronomy, and showed that they were all founded, not upon any inconsistency of the system either with itself or the principles of science generally, but upon the ignorance of their author; who, notwithstanding, gives out himself to be a better mathematician than Newton, and altogether a wiser man. With the exception of the questions propounded in article (20,) I have not noticed at all his own peculiar theory, nor is this necessary, until he has redeemed his promise, of favoring the public with a complete exhibition of it, accompanied with diagrams and demonstra tions. I shall conclude this review, with making two remarks upon the following extract from the July paper, page 435: “Because the practical astronomer predicts transits, eclipses, &c., many suppose that he is indebted to the physical astronomer for this art; and that gravitation, attraction and projection are necessary; and that he could not get on without such supposed forces. But this art was brought into practice thousands of years before Copernicus had an existence, or such forces were even thought of by our modern astronomers. In fact the practical astronomer derives no advantage whatever from the physical department of the science." My first remark is, that the eclipses calculated before the time of Hipparchus were exccuted in a rough way, and by means of the period of 6585.3333 days, in which the Moon makes 223 revolutions with regard to the Sun, 239 with regard to the apsides of her orbit, and 241 with regard to her nodes. According to Diodorus Siculus, the ancients did not attempt to calculate the eclipses of the Sun, because these last are much more difficult on account of the parallax which enters into the calculation. The most accurate eclipses recorded by Ptolemy are not within an hour of the truth. While therefore, the period of 6585.3 days above referred to, enabled astronomers to predict lunar eclipses in a rude manner, it was not until the motions of the Sun and Moon were expressed in tables, that these predictions were made with any degree of certainty. The formation of these tables were based upon the periodical times of the Sun and Moon, and their distances from the Earth. The very first step which it is necessary to take in forming a solar table, is to convert mean into true anomaly; this involves the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, which is the quotient arising from the division of the distance from the centre of the ellipse, in which the Earth revolves, to its focus, by the semi-axis major. The true mean distance of the Earth is then one of the elements which enters into these tables. So likewise in forming tables of the several planets, their periodical times and distances enter as elements in the calculation. These tables are found sufficient to predict all of the phenomena of the heavens with accuracy; and yet it is against these very periods and distances that our author makes his attack. It is not true that predictions were made with any accuracy until such tables were formed; and how could they have served so admirably this purpose, if calculated upon false data? Moreover, our author will much oblige us, by calculating the latitude or longitude of a place, or an eclipse of the Sun or Moon, in no part of which the dimensions of the solar system shall enter. Take the simplest of all problems, that is, to find the latitude of a place by the meridian altitude of the Sun. How will he correct the observed altitude for parallax, without taking into account the distance of the Sun ? My second remark is-that the tables of the Sun, Moon and planets, which have made astronomy available for practical purposes, as any one may see by merely referring to a nautical almanac, owe their perfection to physical astronomy. Observations could never have made known and expressed in numerical values the various perturbations of the system. Physical astronomy has been the instrument of research for detecting and developing them and applying them to our tables in the form of corrections. Let us see in what manner our best tables have been formed. Their title pages will fully show: "Tables of the Sun according to the theory of La"Tables of the satellites of place." By Delambre. Jupiter, from the theory of their mutual attractions." By Baron Damoiseau. Paris, 1836. "Astronomical Tables, published by the Bureau of Longitudes of France, constructed according to the theory of the Méchanique Celeste; by M. Bouvard." Paris, 1821. "New and correct tables of the planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, according to the theory of Gravitation of Laplace. By Bernhardo De Lindenau." Gothæ, 1810. Then physical astronomy has given us our only accurate tables; and considered in this point of view, how vastly are we indebted to the immortal work of Laplace, the Méchanique Céleste. From these improved tables, all our ephemerides are constructed, upon the accuracy of which the mariner depends for determining his path through the trackless ocean—and the practical astronomer for making all his calculations. And yet our author says, "there is no advantage to be derived from the physical department of the science "!! The truth is I am weary of reviewing such stuff. Here are tables which are constructed exclusively upon the theory of gravitation, and upon the distances, motions and masses of the planets as taught in modern astronomy. By means of them we can with the last degree of accuracy predict all the phenomena of the heavens for centuries to come. We can fix to-day the axis of a telescope upon the precise spot which any one of the planets shall occupy at a given moment a century hence. True to its appointed place, at the very spot and moment predicted, the planet is seen at the centre of the cross wires of the telescope: and yet all of the data upon which these calculations are based are declared to be false. If any theory in the world has been severely tried by practical results, that theory is the one of which we are now speaking. I will conclude this paper in the language of professor Garland, in the Messenger of February, 1838. Speaking of astronomy, he says,-"All the phenomena of this science depend upon a single law, which has been repeatedly put to the severest trial, by a series of discoveries unparalleled in number and delicacy-such as the precession of the equinoxesthe nutation of the earth's axis-the aberration of lightthe oscillations of the ocean and atmosphere--and those variations in the elements of the planetary motions and orbits, termed secular, requiring in some cases the lapse of ages for their development. In all these instances we have not only seen every anomaly disappear, but each becoming a striking conformation of the law it seemed likely to subvert. Nay, farther, this law itself has been our most efficient instrument of discovery. Many variations in the planetary motions, so delicate and refined as to elude the nicest observation, have been brought to light, by being first deduced as mathematical consequences from the general law. Such instances as these are among the triumphs of science; and we cannot put from us the consideration of them in an assay on the importance of astronomy. To do so, were to reject the noblest use of the sublimest of sciences." I am not ashamed of the title school master. It is expressive-it is time-honored; methinks it savors of dignity, and of times when the ferula was, in some sort, a sceptre. There was a pedagogue, (he is now in Canada,) who whipped a boy for calling him a "school master." So would not I; and I lament, in an age when many a good old thing is going into desuetude, that our masters are shot up (a spindling growth,) into preceptors, principals, and professors, and our schools into institutes and seminaries. We live in a grandiloquent age, and among a grandiloquent people: and Americans are detected in Europe, not more by saying "sir," than by talking big. so certain of intimating to the public, one's knowledge of classic antiquity, as by an apt quotation of recondite morsels. There is, not far from New York, a learned doctor, whose English is so piebald, that it is said he could not ask to be shaved, without a sesquipedalian phrase which should bewray his erudition; and though I know not at what university he was graduated, nor what nepenthe quieted his conscience, under that which the Germans call the doctor's hat, yet I can attest that many a collegian has stood aghast at the latinity of his English. My scholars, good judges surely, think him very learned. I will therefore not repress the rising quotation, when it trickles over my tongue; nor fear to affront the ladies, in a day like this, when every "female seminary" has its course of Latin. But over and above this, I am somewhat old; I cannot choose but be old; and, you remember what Horace tells the Pisas about the garrulus senex, I have a right to be laudator temporis acti. My grandfather on one side, (my father's,) was an Englishman, who intermarried with a Frazer of the Highlands; my maternal grandfather and grandmother were of the county Cavan; so that, as I sometimes used to say to my lads, when they had gone far enough to take the joke, I have in my veins tria juncta in uno. Being therefore more Irish than any thing else, I have a right to be called Patrick. My surname, Pedant, is truly English; and was said by my great-great-grandfather, (obiit 1707, at Cirencester, where he taught a grammar-school,) Roger Pedant, to have been originally Pendaunt, or de Pendaunt; the family being called by the last of these names in Domesday-Book; which see, in the library of the university. But the n being sucked in for euphony, or, as we say in Hebrew, assimilated; and the u being knocked out by some predecessor of Noah Webster, that giant of spelling-book-memory, (who will ere long succeed in giving us a New England tongue which shall not be intelligible in Britain;) and the aristocratic prefix de being disused out of modesty; our name has come to be simple Pedant. There are many branches of the Pedants, and therefore I hope that the race will not cease, even though it should be my lot to die, as I have lived, in celibacy. And O! let me in passing say, fair ladies, think not I have been such, as doubting of, or not reverencing your charms; inasmuch as the day was when I have well-nigh forgotten the time at which my school was to open, so sedulous was I in fluttering and philandering about the lovely Mistress Mildred Maltby, then of Wil I am a school master; call me by none of your new-liamsburg, but now of Elm-Row, in the Isle of Wight. fangled names. Why should I be ashamed of a compellation which has been offered for ages by those who afterwards grew up to be the pride of England, into the wigged heads of Eton, Westminster, and Rugby ? I am content to sit on the same form with Busby and Parr. Being then a school master, emeritus it is true, yet still delighting in the old title, I have to crave my friends' pardon for sometimes forgetting where I am, and schooling my company; for interlarding my discourse with bits of Latin-nay, even of French, of Italian, of German, and of Greek, if these happen to jump with my humor; and, in general, for being given to rehearsal of too many old things, in an age when every body is after something new. To say truth, there is no way But, à nos moutons, there is one of my second cousins professor in a college, and my father's uncle, Plutarch, though much more hale and abdominous, has, on a hasty glance, been taken for myself. He is now settled in the Holston river country. To get on with this introduction of myself, be it known, once for all, I am a Virginian by birth, and partly by education; but my days have been days of pilgrimages; I have seen London; I have seen Rome ; I have seen Etna: it has even been my lot adire Corinthum. I have walked in Switzerland and the Highlands, and smoked in Göttingen and Wiesbaden; and almost died at Oxford, where a kinsman is fellow of Caius (they call it there keys) College. But I am not the less a Virginian, and a warm one. I have, how ever, seen a little of the world, and am persuaded that all the excellency of the world does not centre in my own state. Time was, (I was a very young and very green lad,) when I was proud of mere heat, and used to say to my Yankee friends, "the cold in clime are cold in blood." It was kind in them only to smile. They had been foolish and raw themselves; and somewhat pitied the juvenile gascon. Semel insanivimus omnes. The compatriots of Hancock and of Putnam, forgave the enthusiasm of a Virginian boy, who had never been much further than to the nearest court-house. I have learned to love my native country more wisely, as believing that she suffers shame when her sons grow boastful in her behalf; and yet I am, every year, more an old Virginian. CHAPTER II. THE OLD-FIELD SCHOOL. No Yankee or Englishman can possibly understand what is meant by an old-field school, for two reasons, First-(or firstly, as overseers are wont to say, just as they manufacture an analogous adverb, viz: illy, for ill,) no such foreigner has the faintest idea of what an old-field is. Secondarily-for a moment conceding such knowledge, a school, in such locality, would be inconceivable. Though I never presided in such an institution, I was taught in one. It was but for a season, and before I was ready for my Latin Accidence. But the scene is before me! There, in the picture of memory, is the log-hovel, its interstices crammed with reddish earth, and its chimney not unlike a tall patridge trap, ever tottering to its fall. There, within, is the fire-place, ample as that of ancient baron, cheered by the crackling blaze and odoriferous exudation of the pine knot. There, also, mending his pen at the only window, (as a square aperture was by courtesy called,) is the schoolmaster-a white hat on his head; (for surely a preceptor may do that among his subjects, which a soi disant gentleman has been known to do before his host,) and bluish-grey Virginia cloth for the remainder of his person. There, upon crazy, slender forms, sit the flaxen-haired urchins, who are to be the boast of a county, or the magistrates of an embryo state in the west. At such a seminary, among chinquepin bushes, and the haunts of "scorpions," (a genus greatly meliorated, and as I may say mitigated from the fabulous scorpio,) and the thorn bushes, where mocking-birds would sing day and night, I received rudiments which I still prize, and which will "stick to my last sand." headed in the Campus, and to swim the Tiber in January? I have my fears of a fire-side discipline, which shall keep a lad so near his cradle, as to give a too tender mother the decision on every hazard he shall submit to. Such was not our early privilege; and if we emerged from the old-field school with little book lore, we knew what many a perked-up master Betty never knew, videlicet, to curb a fiery horse; to bear a rib-breaking hug without complaint; and to climb, hatchet in hand, to dislodge the rackoon from its lofty hole in the red-gum tree. But, again I say, I would fain know where are the playmates of my early boyhood. Where is Offley? the first that ever called me friend. I have seen his name, as I suppose, in the list of a foreign embassy. Ernest Sackley? the last I saw of him, he took from his pocket the first pair of dancing shoes I ever beheld. He had travelled a little, and told us of ships and of fire-works. There was one Bruce, a knotty chap, whom our orbilius chastened with the strap of a shoemaker, for a good hour, so as almost to kill, though not to mend him. Frangas non flectas is, I dare say, the motto of Bruce to this day. There were the three Macklins, brothers, the gayest, cleverest, handsomest boys in our circle. I saw them afterwards at Norfolk; two of them doctors; they were something worse when I last heard of them at Vicksburg : jacta est alea ! I have often wondered that in Quintilian's matchless inventory of the uses and functions of the human hand, next to voice and eye, the implement of elegance, he has said nothing of the hand of woman. In that period next to infancy, while boys and girls sat intermingled on the same forms, I was already sensible that the little plump hand of Cornelia Bray, who sat next to me, conveyed a tactual impression somewhat magnetic, and different from the attrition of a male paw, seamed with cuts and indurated with dirt. N'importe, I will say no more of thee, Cornelia, nor of the bevy of sunbonnetted lasses, who gave us of their pies and apples, when we pick-nicked by the muddy spring. Let those who so please, praise the joys of childhood; it hath its sorrows too; and I am frank to say, that my youth was happier than my infaney, and my maturity than my youth. Were it not so-what were the worth of experience, of philosophy, of religion? What the excellence of increasing vigor, knowledge and virtuewhat the vaunted bliss of conquering evil, and conferring good-the luxury of temperance--the gains of benevolence-the hope of futurity and its prelibation— which even heathen Tully was transported with? What, I say, would the voyage of life avail, or why not remain in the haven of infaney, and never put out I wonder where the boys are who used to meet me at to sea, unless there were some port to gain, and some the Bear Creek school? In many of them the founda-summer-isles to touch at? Nay, while I abhor the tions were then laying of a noble, independent man- ethics of the utilitarians, yet I crave to know the final bood; I mean not so much the influences of the in-door cause of a discipline such as ours, if the progress in as of the out-door instruction. It was less the horn- every thing we hold to be best, lead only to successive book and the slate, that wrought great effects, than the losses. Perhaps, however, they who look back to childbrave walk through sleet or snow, three good miles to hood and youth, as to an irretrievable golden age, an school; or the races on break-neck colts; or the scuffle Eden guarded by a flaming sword, have been travelling for wild-plums or flying-squirrels; or the desperate in a wrong direction, with their backs on happiness. plunge to save a comrade, perhaps a rival, from the If they have lost the comparative innocence, they may deceitful pool. These are the things to make men. well bewail the departed joy of boyhood. But I follow Did not the Romans, even when wealthiest, teach their the serene effulgence of a philosophy which teaches me sons to be tolerant of hunger and cold, to go bare- | to look for better things-for things perpetually better; VOL. V.-15 and under the guidance of such a hope, I will not, even amidst gray hairs, shed any drops on the convex glasses of my spectacles, at recollection of the old-field school. CHAPTER III. is in the reader's power to make it as short as he pleases." The prejudice runs against school masters, especially of the old sort. We are too frank. We tell fools that we cannot reform them. We tell idlers that they cannot excel. We tell fond parents that they err in expending money on the training of young asses. And, No author can long conceal himself from his readers; suiting the action to the word, we do somewhat gall the the innate quality will betray itself first or last, and the wincing creatures by timely argumentation of the mask of an assumed character, worn with constraint birchen sort, wherewith we come down upon such as and labor, cannot but fall off, during the collisions of an are refractory: which reminds me of Niles Upton, a unceremonious acquaintance. It is for this reason that clever though crabbed youth, of Surry, since an auditor in my humble and fugitive papers, I would discard all of the treasury, having come for a whole year to my affectation, and be the simple schoolmaster. There school, without learning ten pages of his Ruddiman; are divers things I might pretend to be: as, for exam- and having been duly mulcted for the same, by the ple, I might claim to be a foreigner travelling in Vir-process known among ancient persons as horsing, he ginia; or I might set up for a gentleman of ease, and was called upon by his ireful grandfather, at my quarsuppress my quotations, which, my friends say, are terly examen, to declare whether he could conjugate a redolent of the shop. But I despise all sham, and as I single verb: "Yes, sir," he blubbered out, overawed was never able to carry on a feint for ten minutes by the red face and eyes of the old gentleman, who together, and hope never to be ashamed of my name or was, as usual, three parts drunk; "Yes, sir-I have calling, I really cannot hear of being any body but been putting one verb through all its moods and tenses plain Patrick Pedant, schoolmaster. which is Vapulo-Vapulabam-Vapulatus sum vel fui.” I forgave him for that quirk. To bring the matter down to the level of even a low capacity, we may see how futile all simulation is, by the ancient fable of the ass in the lion's skin, or that of the daw with borrowed feathers. Suppose, for an instant, that those famous ecclesiastics, Rabelais, Erasmus, Swift, Sterne and Sidney Smith, had undertaken to put on the vizard of sanctimonious gravity!-the very notion of the disguise, presents the figure of pug in a full-bottomed wig. Nature will come out. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: apropos of which verse, I make no doubt that the poet derived his metaphor from having seen the Roman hinds, when treading out their corn, trying, ever and anon, to keep some hungry bullock away from the open area, or threshing-floor. Again, suppose Æsop to have tried to be Solon; for some make them contemporaneous; or Sir Thomas Browne, (the Charles Lamb of the seventeenth century,) to have put on the garb of Jeremy Taylor; or Gifford to have jingled the bells of Peter Pindar; or Tom Moore to have attempted the thong of Cobbet. Suppose these things, or any of them, and you will perceive how vain, how frustrate, nay, how absurd would it have been for me, in my humble den, to have taken on any supposititious character. When Sir Thomas More and Erasmus met at a certain feast, without being mutually presented, they still found out, each for himself, that he had met his match. On this Erasmus exclaimed, Aut Morus es, aut nullus; to which the Chancellor replied, Aut Erasmus es, aut Diabolus! So, likewise, I nothing doubt that sundry of those who have formerly sat in my various schools, having not forgotten the crack of the whip, (I speak per tralationem, or metaphorically,) will at once recognize the hand of a former mentor. In all the countries where I have sojourned, I have eschewed affectation of foreign manners. There is, I think, a certain neutral manner, a native politeness, a generalization, as it were, from the mannerisms of different times and regions, which is equally current at Paris and St. Petersburgh. It bears the same relation to the conventional ways of any particular clique or court, that the koin diaλextos of the Greeks doth to the several inferior dialects. It is the sublimation of manner, the beau-ideal of politeness, pleasing alike in the camp, the boudoir and the hamlet; above imitation of any thing, without ceremony, without "fuss;" the first prompting of native benevolence, and the last attainment of laboring art. Such is the manner which comes back only simplified by foreign travel: I have seen it in a French beggar; I have seen it in the king of the French; I have seen it in Lafayette, and Sir Walter Scott. I wish I could see more of it in my countrymen; and most of all, I wish I had attained it myself. I endeavored to come home no worse, even if no better than I went. Therefore I imported no profound bows, learnt of valets de place and commissionaires; no gold chains, colored neckerchiefs, black satin bosoms, (or whatsoever may have been the lineal predecessors of these insignia;) no whiskers, moustache, impérial, or ear-rings. I saw, that in the Hague, in Potsdam, and in Florence, genuine breeding was evinced by doing little, rather than doing much; by showing little, rather than showing much; by quiet, by repose, by transparency of manner; and that bowing, scraping, refusing to go out of doors, or to go into coaches, palavering and bobbing, and "sir"-ing and "madam"-ing, were rather the tokens of the poor count, or the poor count's spruce gentleman, or the parvenue. And seeing all this, I became really quite content to come back as I went, so far as regards externals. And, as to internals, I am afraid even our most travelled bucks realize the truth of the hackneyed verse An old man may be allowed to gossip; I cannot speak by the square, but must utter my thoughts as one thing brings up another. And if any of my too hasty friends find my work too long, I may say as Dr. Garth says in the preface to his translation of Ovidius, (which, be it observed, I always retained in my desk, lest the boys of the fourth form should use it in a clan- "Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt:" cular manner, instead of plying their Ainsworths,) "it lan adage which was a favorite with Van Benthuysen, |