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kind of self-consciousness. I have often fancied that nobody can be so dogmatic as your thoroughly candid person. The fact that he has listened to all sides gives him a kind of right in his own opinion to speak with the authority of a judge. It has been said that a tendency to be cock-sure'' is a special characteristic of Mill's school; and perhaps we may recognize it in their master not the less because it is combined with a scrupulous desire to grant a hearing to all antagonists. But another manifestation of character is never interesting. No one could be more anxious than Mill to arrogate nothing to himself. Nobody could state more explicitly that his merit was less in original thought than in willingness to learn from others, and thus that his true function was to meditate between the public and the original thinkers. And therefore it is natural to find him insisting with passionate eagerness upon the superlative merits of the woman who was, according to him, the guide of his mature years, as his father had been of his infancy and youth. Here was the practical commentary on the text of cultivating the emotions. If he withdrew from society and many social enjoyments, it was because his whole emotional strength was concentrated upon a single object. We listen with some mixture of feeling to his rather strained and exalted eulogy. It may be true that Mrs. Mill was more of a poet than Carlyle, and more of a thinker than Mill himself; that she was like Shelley, but that Shelley was but a child to what she ultimately became; that her wisdom was all but unrivalled," and much more to the same purpose. It may, I say, be true, for one cannot prove a negative in regard to a person of whom the world knows so little. Yet it is a weakness, though an amiable weakness, to attempt by force of such language to overcome the inevitable decree of circumstances, and to try to dictate to the world an opinion which it cannot receive upon any single authority. It may be profoundly melancholy that such exalted merit should vanish without leaving more tangible traces; but it is useless to resent the fact, or to suppose that when such traces are non-existent, the defect can be supplied by the most

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positive assertions that they might have existed. And Mill would have seen in any other case what was the inevitable suggestion to his readers. He could not, he says, 'detect any mixture of errors" in the truths which she struck out far in advance of him. What are the opinions in which a man detects no mixture of error? Plainly his own. But these were far in advance of him? That means that they were deductions from his own. Is it possible, to speak it plainly, to resist a strong impression that these extravagant expressions of admiration may have been lavished upon a living echo-an echo, it is true, skilful enough to anticipate as well as to repeat, but still essentially an echo? We know, for Mill has told us, what he did alone, and we know what he did in cooperation; and if the earlier work was not his best, it certainly contained the whole sum and substance of his later teaching. That his wife must have been a remarkable woman may be a fair deduction from his admiration; that she was all that he then thought her would be, to say the least of it, a very rash conjecture.

Happiness, says Mill, is to be found by aiming at something different from happiness. And if we thus cheat ourselves into happiness, we may attain to the vanity of self-esteem by a similar expedient. By lavishing all our enthusiasm upon one who is but a second self, we may deprive our appreciation of our own merits of its apparent arrogance This, indeed, is one of the many illusions which give a peculiar interest to the unconscious confessions of autobiographers. But neither is it to be roughly set down as all illusion, and still less as an unworthy sentiment. It in no sort diminishes our interest in discovering that this so-called reasoning machine was a man of the most delicate fibre and most tender affections. It is easy to forgive the illusions against which a thick cuirass of tough selfishness is the only known safeguard of complete efficacy. Rather it helps to convince us that Mill should be classed in some respects with the unworldly enthusiasts of the Vicar of Wakefield type whose very simplicity leads them to a harmless vanity which exaggerates their own infallibility and importance to the world. He

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had the character, though not the crotchets, of the life-long recluse. Though his intellect was deeply interested in the great problems of contemporary thought, and though he had been for many years in State affairs, there was a wall of separation between himself and his contemporary society. When he came into Parliament he came as re-entering the world from a remote hermitage. Hermits, whether they come from deserts or from the India office, have a certain tendency to intolerance and contempt for the social part of the species. They have lost some human feeling and preach crusades with a reckless indifference to consequences. I cannot determine how far Mill might be rightly accused of a want of practical sense. But in any case he had nothing of the bitterness or the harsh pedantry of the solitary theorist. Even his enemies could see that his sympathies were fresh and generous, and that his impulses were invariably generous. As a philanthropist, his philanthropy was not of the merciless and inhuman variety. The discovery of the fact was a surprise at the time to those who believed in the traditional Benthamite and Malthusian. The autobiography, with its strange bursts of emotion, perhaps reveals the true secret. If he naturally exaggerated the merits of the partner of his hermitage, he did not necessarily exaggerate her services to him. It is easily credible that her company saved him from ossifying into a mere grinder of formulæ and syllogisms. We shrink a little from certain overstrung phrases, but they reveal to us the pathos of the man's life. Admit that his affection produced illusion, or that it covered and was combined with a sort of vicarious self-conceit, yet at bottom it rep resents the intense devotion which springs only out of simplicity and tenderness of nature.

It would be tempting here to draw the obvious parallel between Mill and Carlyle, which must just now be in every one's mind; for certainly whatever may be said of the "Reminiscences' just published, they contain one of the most remarkable self-revelations ever given to the world, and the relations of the two men to vigorous fathers and passionately adored wives have singular points of

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contrast and resemblance. But I must be content to close this ramble through some famous autobiographies by touching upon one which often seems to me to be the most delightful of its class. I know, as everybody knows, what may be said against Gibbon; against his want of high enthusiasm, his deficient sympathy with the great causes and their heroes, the provoking self-sufficiency and apparent cold bloodedness of the fat composed little man. yet, when reading his autobiography and contrasting it with some of those we have considered, I find myself constantly led to a conclusion not quite in accordance with the proper rules of morality. After all, one cannot help asking, did not Gibbon succed in solving the problem of life more satisfactorily than almost anybody one knows? Other autobiographies are for the most part records of hard struggles with fate, plaintive lamentations over the inability to obtain any solid satisfaction out of life, appeals of disappointed vanity to the judgment of an indifferent posterity, vain-glorious braggings over successes which should rather have been the cause of shame, weak regrets for the vanishing pleasures of youth and hopeless attempts to make the might-have-been pass muster with the actual achievement. The more a man prides himself upon his successes, the more we feel how good a case a rival's advocate could make on the other side; and when he laments over his failures, the more we are inclined to say that after all it served him right. But when in imagination we take that famous turn with Gibbon upon that terrace at Lausanne beneath the covered walk of acacias, look up to the serene moon and the silent lake, and hear him soliloquize upon the conclusion of the "Decline and Fall," we feel that we are in persence of a man who has a right to his complacency. He has not aimed, perhaps, at the highest mark, but he has hit the bull's-eye. Given his conception of life, he has done his task to perfection. With singular felicity, he has come at the exact moment and found the exact task to give full play to his powers. Nobody had yet laid the keystone in the great arch of history; and he laid it so well that his work can never be super

seded. Somebody defines a life to be une pensée de jeunesse exécutée par l'âge mûr. It was Gibbon's singular good fortune to illustrate that saying as few men have done. Though his plan ripened slowly and with all deliberation, he acted as if he had foreseen the end from the beginning. If he had been told in his boyhood, You shall live so long a life, with such and such means at your disposal, he could hardly have laid out his life differently. To mistake neither one's powers nor one's opportunities is a felicity which happens to few; and Gibbon had the additional good fortune that even his distractions seem to have been useful. The interruption to his Oxford education made him a cosmopolitan; his service with the volunteers helped him to be a military historian; and even his parliamentary career which threatened to absorb him only gave to the student the tone of a practical politician. It seems as though everything had been expressly combined to make the best of him.

What more could be desired by a man of Gibbon's temperament? Undoubtedly to be a man of Gibbon's temperament is to have a moderate capacity for certain forms of happiness. In the lives of most great men the history of a conversion is a record of heart-rending struggle, ending in hard-won peace. Gibbon merely changed his religion as he changed his opinion upon some antiquarian controversy; it is a question as to the weight of historical evidence, like the question about the sixth Æneid, or a dispute about the genealogy of the House of Brunswick. Whatever pangs and raptures may require religious susceptibility were clearly not within his range of feeling And in another great department of feeling we need not inquire into the character of the author of the inimitable sentence, "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." One is tempted to put it beside a remark which he makes on another occasion, "I yielded to the authority of a parent, and complied, like a pious son, with the wish of my own heart.” Perhaps the heart which sanctioned his filial obedience in the latter case was not so opposed to it in the other as he would have us believe. It is better worth noting, however, that in spite of the very tepid

disposition, illustrated by these familiar passages, Gibbon has affections as warm as are compatible with thorough comfort. He was not a passionate lover ; and we cannot say, for he was not tried, that his friendship was of an heroic strain; but he had a very good supply of such affections as are wanted for the ordinary wear and tear of life-to provide a man with enough interests and sympathies to make society pleasant, and his family life agreeable. Nay, he seems to have been really generous and considerate beyond the ordinary pitch, and to have been a faithful friend, and excellent in some very delicate relationships. For a statesman, a religious teacher, or a poet, much stronger equipment in this direction might be desirable. But Gibbon had warmth enough to keep up a pleasant fireside, if not enough to fire the hearts of a nation. He clearly had enough passion for his historical vocation. A more passionate and imaginative person would hardly have written it at all. It requires a certain moderation of character to be satisfied with a history instead of a wife, and Gibbon was so great an historian because he could accept such a substitute. No one capable of being a partisan could have preserved that stately march and equable development of the vast drama of human affairs which gives a monumental dignity to his great book. Even if you do not want to write another " Decline and Fall," is not such a disposition the most enviable of gifts? If such a life has less vivid passages, is there not something fascinating about that calm, harmonious existence, disturbed by no spasmodic storms, and yet devoted to one achievement grand enough to extort admiration even from the least sympathetic? Surely it is a happy mean: enough genius to be in the front rank, if not in the highest class, and yet that kind of genius which has no affiniity to madness or disease, and virtue enough to keep up to the respectable level which justifies a comfortable selfcomplacency without suggesting any awkward deviations in the direction of martyrdom. That is surely the kind of composition which a man might desire if he were to calculate what character would give him the best chance of extracting the greatest possible amount of

enjoyment out of life. Luckily for the world, if not for its heroes, men's characters cannot be fixed by such calculations; and a certain number of perverse people are even glad to possess vehement emotions and restless intellects, however conscious that the fiery soul will wear out the pigmy body. We try to persuade ourselves that they are not only choosing the noblest part, but acting most wisely for their own interests. It may be so; for the problem is a complex one. But it has not yet been proved that a man can always make the

best of both worlds, and that the sacrifices imposed by virtue are always repaid in this life. Certainly it seems doubtful, when we have studied the self-written records of remarkable men, whether experience will confirm that pleasant record; whether it is not more probable that for simple employment it is not best to have one's nature pitched in a key below the highest. Most of us would make a very fair compromise if we should abandon our loftier claims on condition of being no worse than Gibbon.-Cornhill Magazine.

THE PERMANENCE OF CONTINENTS.

BY J. STARKIE GARDNER, F.G.S.

Ir is not too much to say that every spot which is now dry land has been sea at some former period, and every part of the space now covered by the deepest ocean has been land.' This sentence occurs in the latest edition of Lyell's "Principles of Geology," still perhaps the most authoritative text-book on the subject, and the view it expresses has been generally received as an article of faith by geologists until within a few years, or even months ago.

Lately a change of view has taken place, and now many distinguished men hold the completely opposite opinion that oceans have been permanent from the remotest times, and that continents are, and have ever been, fixed lands, subjected to ceaseless modifications of form. Among the most conspicuous partisans of the new theory are Sir Wyville Thomson, Prof. Geikie, and Mr. Wallace; and the latter especially seems to have collected together and presented in his fascinating book, "Island Life,' every kind of evidence that tends to support it. Nothing appears to have escaped him, yet the whole when summed up must seem to every geologist to fall far short of proof. Still, although the evidence upon which the theory is based is as yet wholly insufficient, it by no means follows that the theory itself is improbable.

The chief evidence upon which the Permanence of Continents at present rests, is purely geological. It is argued

that the whole of the sedimentary rocks are littoral deposits, or those of inland seas; and if this can be maintained, the theory would, almost as a matter of course, be accepted. Mr. Wallace, therefore, endeavors by every means to prove it.

Chief among deposits hitherto supposed to be oceanic, is the chalk; and to the discussion of this formation, accordingly, almost a whole chapter is devoted. Mr. Wallace expresses the belief that, far from the chalk sea representing a wide ocean with a few scattered islands comparable to some parts of the Pacific, "it formed as truly a portion of the great northern continent as it does now.'

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The evidence which he has to set aside, in favor of the chalk being a truly oceanic deposit, is extremely weighty, however, and by no means easily disposed of. Its vast extentstretching from Sweden to Bordeaux, and from Ireland to China--and its freedom everywhere from impurities derived from the degradation of land, are greatly in favor of its oceanic origin. The areas that are known to have been denuded, and the enormous deposits of flint-shingles which characterize the Eocenes from their base upward to the most recent gravels, show how colossal this denudation has been.

The chalk that has escaped seems but the fragment of a mass which once passed under the Atlantic, for even the

Scilly Isles are strewn with flint, and the last remains of it in Devonshire and the north of Ireland are as pure as elsewhere, and show no signs whatever in the chalk itself, toward its western boundaries, of the proximity of shores. This vast deposit abounds with Globigerina, of species identical with those of the modern Atlantic mud, and with coccoliths and discoliths. Representative siliceous sponges are abundant in both, and the recent chalk-mud has yielded a large number of the group Porifera vitrea, which find their nearest representatives among the Ventriculites of the white chalk. The Echinoderms of the deeper parts of the Atlantic basin are very characteristic, and yield an assemblage of forms which represent in a remarkable degree the corresponding group in the white chalk. Species of the genus Cidaris are numerous; some remarkable flexible forms of the Diademidæ seem to approach the Echinothuria* Rhizocrinus is closely allied to the chalk Bourgueticrinus, while even among fish the genus Beryx, so abundant in the chalk, has been found by Dr. Carpenter, and the fresh light that the publication of the deep sea fish of the Challenger expedition is likely to throw on the subject will be looked forward to with much in

terest.

Prof Duncan, when investigating corals, became impressed with the remarkable persistence of character and absence of variability in those of the deep sea fauna. "The dredging in 1095 fathoms off the coast of Portugal, which yielded Pentacrinus WyvilleThomsoni, Jeffreys produced many corals; and the series presented an eminently Cretaceous facies. The genus Bathycyathus, whose species, Sowerbyi, is so well known in the Upper Greensand, was represented there by numerous specimens of a species closely allied to that form.'

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A new species of Caryophyllia, allied by its structural peculiarities to C. Bowerbanki of the gault, and a species identical with the well-known Caryophyllia cylindracea, Reuss, sp., were discov

* Sir Wyville Thomson, "Nature" vol. iii. P. 297. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc." xxvii. p. 437.

ered at the same time. The homotaxis of part of the coral fauna of the Atlantic and that of the Cretaceous ocean, Prof. Duncan considers to be very remarkable.

Against this well-nigh irresistible evidence in favor of the oceanic origin of chalk, Mr. Wallace states that no specimen of Globigerina ooze yet examined agrees, even approximately, with chalk in chemical composition. The differences between the few analyses that have been published, are chiefly in the relative quantities of carbonate of lime, silica, alumina, and oxide of iron. It is by no means apparent that Sir W. Thomson's sample is the nearest analogous deposit to chalk that could be found in the beds of the Atlantic or Pacific; but supposing it to be so, the great changes in chemical composition to which chalk has been subjected since its consolidation, are entirely overlooked in comparing the analyses.* Chalk is, and probably always has been since its upheaval, constantly saturated with percolating rain-water, which enters as soft water charged with carbonic acid, and comes out in springs of hard water charged with carbonate of lime; and this alone in the course of ages would carry away the more soluble constituents such as iron, alumina, and magnesia. An even more important change is due to the removal by segregation of its silica into the form of flint. This, doubtless, took place when the silica was in a colloid state, and seems to have been arrested, while the chalk was consolidating, wherever harder and softer layers alternate. Its once viscid, almost fluid, state is shown by the manner in

* The analyses relied upon in support of ths are by Sir W. Thomsor., of Globigerina ooze, viz.:

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