The remainder of Hamilton's career was the ordinary one of quiet professional life; his chief literary employment being the publication of his Discussions with notes, of his edition of Reid, and the editorial care of an edition of Stewart. It cannot surprise us that the chairs of speculative philosophy in three of the four Scottish universities are filled by pupils of his, or that all these were among those who were on terms of the greatest intimacy with him during his last years, Baynes of St. Andrews having been his assistant for some time, and Veitch and Fraser favorite pupils. The late Professor Ferrier throughout the night that followed Hamilton's attack of paralysis, in 1844, paced to and fro opposite his window, unwilling to interrupt those that were caring for his wants, and yet loath to leave the neighborhood of his suffering friend; and afterward, until he had so far recovered as to be able to resume his work, met the logic class in his stead and read to them his lectures.

For none of his students, however, does Hamilton appear to have entertained greater respect than for Dr. John Cairns, with whom he corresponded for many years; while with Dr. Whewell and Professor De Morgan he conducted controversies which but served to further reveal the extent of his philosophical stores. These names-all but two of which are still bodily represented-pleasantly connect the present with the past. It must seem to Baynes but a little while since, as a student, he went to Hamilton's house for the first time, to borrow a Commentary on Aristotle. And Frendelenburg is but lately dead, whose edition he then recommended as the best, and of whose spoken opposition to the widely-spread Hegelianism of Germany he used to say that it was as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." But he who had so often leapt the high walls about Oxford could, after 1844, with difficulty mount the steps leading to his lecture-room. Some thought that the fine proportions of feature and form had gone, and with them the genial temper.

But mental activity did not falter with the loss of physical strength. During the twelve years that intervened between the

warning and the final stroke, he was not less a philosopher than before. A reveller more than a talker, he still could revel; if not, as years before, forgetting the friends with whom he was walking, and for miles returning no reply, then seated in his chair or lying on his sofa. The wider sympathy with humanity, such as is the birthright of most men, may have become the seared hydra of his declining years, and those who engaged him in controversy may have recoiled from the strong blows of his untempered power; but to his family he became dearer than before, while his interest in personal friends remained seemingly unabated. Indeed, the communications he received from them, and the visits, more and more frequent, of those who sought to honor themselves by his acquaintance, became each year a greater gratification to him. His nature, sensitively alive to the opinions of others, and haunted by a dread lest his mental should follow the example of his bodily vigor, was not averse to any chance of comparison which should prove it unimpaired. Nor was this the only respect in which others came gradually to share more largely in his life. Instead of the grotesque caricature on the manuscript's edge that had once relieved the intervals of intense thought (which habit, by the by, he might have caught from Lockhart when both were briefless advocates), there came, at the opportune time, the pleasant remark of his wife -addressing the ear instead of the eye-she meanwhile continuing the writing he had dictated.

All in all, we doubt whether any literary man ever possessed a more serviceable wife than did Hamilton; and, having the good fortune to live for him, she lived for the world. He loved, too, to have his children serve him, and they were on the alert to meet him on his arising in the morning and to carry down stairs for him the books he thought he should need for reference during the day; or to watch until he had established himself for his evening rest, and then to read to him from the weird tales he liked until he had fallen asleep. Thus surrounded, it was not an unpleasant life that he had led; and, though at last he learned to count the days until

the college terms should end, a summer among the hills, which restored to him, in suggestion at least, some of the vigor of his childhood, refreshed him for the coming work. But "the lion-like look," which was said to haunt his face, could not keep death at bay. Like other souls, his was not permitted to linger where it would. Like others, it must hasten to learn what part of the labor of this life is vain. And so it went away-it may have been to inherit such additional senses as permit it to know the absolute.

All in all, we are not disappointed as we lay aside his life; it was of heroic mould, yet sternly heroic; for the world he dwelt in was apart from that which most men love. In him, as in others, success and failure strangely jostled one the other. When we think, with him, that the mental strength which results from highest and life-long culture is worth the life that gains it, we feel that he was successful. And if we could know that it resulted in such mental discipline as could end the keen controversy by forgetting it until the time for its renewal-as, in a word, could always and instantly thrust aside the unwelcome by the pleasant thought-still more should we call his life a success, and count the man as in every respect greater than his works. For so would that which was lost to others have been dowered upon himself. Otherwise, the loss to them of all that which, coming from him, might have made them wiser than they were, was so far an imperfection.

ART. III-1. The Atmosphere. By CAMILLE FLAMMARION. Edited by JAMES GLASHIER, F. R. S. New York. 1873. 2. The Graft Theory of Disease. By JAMES Ross, M. D.

London. 1872.

3. Practical Hygiene. By E. A. PARKES, M. D., F. R. S. Philadelphia. 1873.

Ir has been significantly said that man did not live by bread alone, but by every breath (word) that proceeds from the mouth of God. The spiritual interpretation of this affir

mation contains but half the truth-fully three-fourths of man's bodily sustenance, according to M. Flammarion,* being absorbed from the atmosphere in which he lives. To the uninitiated in nature's chemical mysteries this fact excites incredulous surprise. Such a one often wonders how fishes can live in water, and find enough of what is solid in that medium to elaborate the material fabric of their bodies.. A similar wonder is even more manifest by him upon observing the growth and maturation of certain plants entirely isolated from every source of nutrition save that of the air in which they are suspended. In the nutrition of animals and man the wonder of such minds is of less magnitude only because they are observed to eat and appropriate more solid and substantial substances.

As a matter of fact, however, these creatures live no less on air and moisture than do plants and fishes; and it is because our apprehension of the needs and means of animal life is limited and narrow that we fail to perceive the marvellous displayed in fabricating the higher forms of it. While it is easily demonstrable that an adult individual requires for his proper nutrition several pounds of substantial aliment daily, it is commonly overlooked that he draws upon the atmosphere for a larger and more important means of sustenance. But it is true. The atmosphere is in fact a nutritious medium, in which man lives suspended very much like a fish in water, and from which, through millions of microscopic pores, he receives elements in greater variety and profusion, and immensely more potential, than do the amphibious creatures from their native element.

The medium in which man is enveloped is thinner, more sub

*"Breathing," says M. Flammarion, "affords three-quarters of our nourishment; the other quarter we obtain in the aliment, solid and fluid, in which oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid are the chief component parts. Further, the particles which are at the present moment incorporated in our organism will make their escape, either in perspiration or in the process of breathing; and after having sojourned for a certain time in the atmosphere, will be reincorporated in some other organism, either of plant, animal, or man."-The Atmosphere, p. 11.

tle and elastic, than that inhabited by fishes. It does not bear him up; he walks upon terra firma, in it and through it, while the other forms of beings referred to swim or float in theirs; and yet, in reality, the atmosphere is no less an ocean, as palpable, and with grander proportions than any aqueous ocean-presenting phenomena of greater variety and beauty, elements in greater profusion and splendor, influences rarer, more profound, and celestial. It is sometimes calmer than any Pacific; at others, rougher than any Atlantic; its storms wilder and more destructive than those of any liquid sea, its waves singing with a force, and with a length, depth, and breadth, as superior to those of water as the atmospheric ocean is broader, deeper, and larger than any aqueous ocean. Staunch ships can ride out a wild sea-storm, but the storms of airy and electrical forces which sometimes occur in the atmospheric envelope shake continents from centre to circumference, wind the ocean into monsoons, uproot forests, remove mountains, and overturn and destroy the most solid and substantial things of earth. So mighty are its airy billows, now and then, that an inspired writer of antiquity has suggested the presence of the great Jehovah in the storm. This is not unnatural. The exercise and manifestation of tremendous forces always impress the observer with the idea of an indwelling Omnipotence. And why should they not? Is not His majesty fittingly represented in the storm-cloud? Does not His voice resound in the peal of thunder and in the roar of the cataract?

While, therefore, the gascous envelope in which we live is full of beneficent influences, and grand and imposing phenomena, it is also laden with elements and forces of the most malevolent qualities. Good and evil are in fact commingled in the air we breathe in variable proportions and with variable. sequences upon animal life. "Life and death" are truly, as M. Flammarion has eloquently said "in the air which we breathe, and perpetually succeed the one to the other by the interchange of gaseous particles."* The intuitions of the

*The Atmosphere, p. 11.