me, and learn. And from that hour Xenophon | zealots for the old orthodox Judaism, so Socrates became his faithful hearer. "Just as remarkably does Nicodemus, who, from fear of men, came to Christ by night in order to hear the Master, remind us of Eutelcedes, who, at the peril of his life, went by night from Megara to Athens to hear Socrates. Even the manner of their presenting themselves in public, and the popular style of their teaching altogether, are very closely related. As Christ taught on the lake, by the side of Jacob's well, in the temple, and in Solomon's porch, so Socrates in the market-place, in the Lyceum, in the Cynosarges, and in the porch of Zeus the Liberator; both teaching the most important truths in the simplest parables and proverbial sayings-as, indeed, it is always the surest sign of genius to present in simplicity what is most sublime as something akin to itself. For the same reason, also, both were friends of childBut most wonderful of all is the resemblance between the two which meets us in all that relates to the last events of their lives here almost every trait finds its counterpart. ren. "As Christ in Jerusalem was persecuted and accused by the Pharisees, the hypocritical by the democrats of Athens, who, in like man- From the British Quarterly. LORDS JOHN RUSSELL, STANLEY, AND BROUGHAM.* THIS volume of 600 pages consists of "Inaugural Addresses and Select Papers," bearing on the several departments of inquiry into which the labors of this Association have been divided. These departments are five in number, and are desig. nated as follows: 1. Jurisprudence, and Amendment of the Law. 2. Education, embracing Middle Class Education, Foundation Schools, and Education of the Working Classes. 3. Punishment and Reformation. 4. Public Health. 5. Social Economy. The names of the noblemen and gentlemen who have contributed papers to this volume are more than a hundred. The papers vary in length, from a page to many pages, and they have a gradation, as will be supposed, in regard to merit. But it is a volume for the statesman, and for every man professing himself a friend to social progress. An Inaugural Address was delivered by Lord Brougham; and addresses of that nature were delivered by Lord John Russell; by Sir John S. Pakington, M.P.; by Lord Stanley; and by Sir B. C. Brodie-that by Lord John Russell on Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law; Sir John Pakington discoursed on Education; Lord Stanley on Public Health, and Sir Benjamin Brodie on Social Economy. Surely a volume made the depository of their wisdom by such men, and by nearly a hundred men deemed fit to be their coadjutors, should have some value. Where the topics are so various, and there is so much that is excellent, it is not easy to make the sort of selection in the way of extract that may best serve the object of this publica tion. Lord John Russell concludes his address on the Amendment of Law by re- | benefit of some of our pugnacious chamminding us of a great fact in the history of jurisprudence: "The laws must be made consistent with the spirit of the times; and this opens for consider ation a great question to which many men of influence and talent have devoted themselves. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion that the consolidation of the laws must be preceded by their amendment. I know but of two great precedents for a code of laws. After the Roman Republic had devised in the freest spirit, and the spirit of justice, the great principles of law-after those laws had remained unwritten for years with the prætors—after various edicts, the Emperor Justinian decided upon laying down a code of laws, for which purpose he assembled to his assistance the greatest and most learned men of his day. No doubt the work produced contained within it the great principle of justice as regarded the criminal law, but it also contained the edicts of one tyrant after another. It also contained the errors of Justinian himself one of the worst tyrants of the Roman Empire, and of his advisers, who, whatever their talent, appeared to have had no moral principle. After a long period-almost in the present day -came the code of the Emperor Napoleon. There could be no doubt that that was a wonderful work, and Napoleon was assisted in it by the most eminent lawyers of France, some of them who had been the most devoted Royalists, and others the most determined Republicansall, however, assisting in the work with the view of benefiting their country. Napoleon, like Justinian, had absolute power, but it was controlled by the opinions of the times, which made it necessary to agree to much which had been enacted under the old monarchy, and much also which, without reference to justice or religion, was derived from the dregs of the revolution from which the country had just emerged. There were, then, but two codes that of the Roman Emperor and that of Napoleon. In this country it is not by means of the will of the sovereign that laws can be enacted for the government of this country, but by the action of opinion; and when the code has been explored by the light of those ancient beacons of civil and religious liberty which have blessed this free nation, we may, indeed, have a code of laws more comprehensive and more complete than those which had their existence under Justinian pions for peace principles. "During the revolutionary war, in twenty-two years, (1793-1815,) there were killed 19,800 men: in the single year, 1848-9, there died of cholera and other epidemics 72,150. In those twenty-two years of war the wounded were 79,700, in the one year of cholera those attacked were 144,860." Yes, and what may thus be said of the bad atmospheres which our great humanitarians do so little to amend, may be said in a still greater degree of the bad governments, which they are not only disposed to leave to themselves, but for which upon occasions, they can get up all sorts of apologies. The cant of humanity, like the cant of religion, is the worst thing put into the place of the best. Put down military feudalism if you please-but put it down for what it is, and not under false pretenses. Clear thy mind of cant, says Thomas Carlyle, and so say we. Those fighting people, the old Romans, were in this respect men of a more genuine humanity than ourselves. Their city above ground was comparatively devoid of ornaments or cost, until they had completed those vast substructions of sewerage, which wind their way like the streets of a great city to this day beneath the ruins of edifices reared two thousand years ago. The spirit in which this was done, was that true old Roman spirit in which Lord Stanley concludes his address: and unattractive as sanitary studies may appear, Only take with you this last word. Dry they belong to the patriot no less than to the future prosperity and the national greatness of philanthropist they touch very nearly the England. Don't fancy that the mischief done by disease spreading through the community is to be measured by the number of deaths which ensue. in a battle, the killed bear but a small proporThat is the least part of the result. As tion to the wounded. It is not merely by the crowded hospitals, the frequent funerals, the destitution of families, or the increased pressure of public burdens, that you may test the suffering of a nation over which sickness has passed; the real and lasting injury lies in the deterioration of race, in the seeds of disease transmitted to future generations, in the degeneracy and mand the admiration of the other nations of the decay which are never detected till the evil is globe, and fit to withstand the assaults of time."irreparable, and of which even then the cause -Pp. 34, 35. or Napoleon. Let us then hope that under the beneficent sway of our beloved Queen we may live to see our code of laws improved, and an edifice erected which shall be of such an order of architecture and of such materials as to com One fact adduced by Lord Stanley on the comparative mortality by war and by preventible disease, we must cite for the remains often undiscovered. It concerns us, if the work of England be that of colonization and of dominion abroad, if wild hordes and savage races are to be brought by our agency under the influence of civilized man, if we are to maintain peace, to extend commerce, to hold our own among many rivals alike by arts and arms-i concerns us, I say, that strong hands should be forthcoming to wield either sword or spadethat vigorous constitutions be not wanting to endure the vicissitudes of climate and the labors of a settler in a new country. I believe that, whatever exceptions may be found in individual instances, when you come to deal with men in the mass, physical and moral decay necessarily go together, and it would be small satisfaction to know that we had, through a series of ages, successfully resisted every external enemy, if we learnt too late that that vigor and energy for which ours stands confessedly preeminent among the races of the world, were being undermined by a secret but irresistible agency, the offspring of our own neglect, against which science and humanity had warned us in vain.”—Pp. 61, 62. From Blackwood's Magazine. RESPIRATION AND SUFFOCATION.* body is there, the form is there, the wondrous structure is there, but where is its activity? Gone are the graceful movements of those limbs, and the tender sweetness of those eyes; gone the rosy glow of youth, and the soft eagerness of womanly grace; gone the music of that voice, and the gayety of that heart. The mystery of Life has given place to the mystery of Death. A YOUNG man, in all the vigor of abounding life, shuts himself up in his room, prevents the access of fresh air, closing the windows, chimney, and chinks, lights a pan of charcoal, and seating himself at his writing-desk, begins to unburden his heart of its sorrow, in the tragic eloquence of one for whom such sorrow is insupportable. The poor boy has been refused the hand of the girl he loves, and believing that without her What has thus suddenly arrested the life would be worthless, he has resolved wondrous mechanism, and, in the place of on suicide. As his pen hurries over the two palpitating, vigorous beings, left two paper, the vapor from the burning char- silent corpses? The cause seems so tricoal fills the room. His pulses throb, his fling that we can only marvel at its imhead is hot, his breathing oppressed. portance, when revealed in the effect; The candle is beginning to burn dimly, it was the same in both cases, in spite of and its flame lengthens. He is unable to the difference of the means: that which continue. He walks languidly up and killed the one, killed the other; the fumes down the room, and finally crawls to the from the charcoal-pan, and the rushing bed. Life slowly ebbs. On the follow-waters of the Seine, interrupted the exing morning, when his door is burst open, a corpse is stretched upon the bed. A few hours later, she whom he loved, and who loves him, hears of this rash act, which annihilates even hope. In her despair she flings herself into the dark and sullen Seine. The next morning a corpse is exposed at the dreadful Morgue. The casual spectator gazes on it with undefinable awe, as he thinks of the stillness of that wondrous organism, which but a few hours before was so buoyant with life. Where is all that mystery now? The change of a small quantity of gases, and by preventing the blood from getting rid of its carbonic acid, in exchange for an equivalent of oxygen, the fervid wheels of life were suddenly arrested. It is the same cause, acting with milder force, which makes the faces pale of those who issue from a crowded church, and gives a languor to those who have sat for some hours in a theater, concert-room, or any other ill-ventilated apartment, in which human beings have been exhaling carbonic acid from their lungs. A breath of fresh air quickly restores them, and after breathing this fresh air, during a walk home, they scarcely feel any evil results of the late partial suffocation. Had the young man's door been burst open, and fresh air admitted to his room, or had the girl been rescued from the river, and made to breathe within a few minutes after her plunge, both would have been finally restored, as our concert-goers are restored; and the concert-goers, if kept much longer in that ill-ventilated room, would have perished, as the lovers perished. men. physiologists have devoted labor to the elucidation of the various difficulties which darken this subject, and a vast accession of valuable facts has been the result. The chief points which have been cleared up we may now endeavor to exhibit.* And first, let us ask, what is Respiration? a question which many may regard as idle; yet, until it is answered in someAmong the earliest experiences of man- thing like a definite manner, we shall find kind must have been the necessity of fresh our inquiries constantly obstructed. Reair for the continuance of life; but the duced to its simplest elements, Respiracomplete explanation, of the fact, in all its tion appears to be nothing more than the details, is a scientific problem, the solu- interchange between the blood and the attion of which only began to be possible mosphere of carbonic acid and oxygen: when Priestley discovered the gases of but although this is the simple formula to which the air is composed, and the rela- which analysis of the process conducts us, tion these bear to the organism; nor is we shall be led into important errors if we the problem even now entirely solved, in see in it the whole of the process. It is spite of the labors of so many illustrious the physical fact upon which the vital We have learned much, and learn- process depends, but it is not the vital ed it accurately; but the difficulties which function itself. This interchange is ef still baffle us are many and considerable. fected by every tissue even when sepaThe ancients really knew nothing of this rated from the organism. They all absorb subject; nor did the men of the sixteenth oxygen, and exhale carbonic acid. A and seventeenth centuries lay any solid fragment of muscle, so long as it retains foundation - stone. That was laid by its irritability, is found to absorb oxygen Priestley, when he discovered the oxy- from the air, and to exhale carbonic acid; gen contained in atmospheric air to pos- but we do not call such interchange Resess the property of converting venous spiration, because Respiration is something into arterial blood, Lavoisier carried out more than a mere exchange of gases; it is this.discovery, and founded the chemical an animal Function, which, although detheory of Respiration. Goodwyn (1788) pendent on the physical laws of gaseous pplied the new views to Asphyxia, show-interchange, derives its special character ing, by a series of experiments, that when air was excluded, venous blood remained unchanged; and when it remained unchanged, death inevitably followed. Bichat instituted a number of striking experiments to prove that an intimate relation existed between Respiration, Circulation, and Nervous Action; he showed how the access of venous blood to the brain stopped its action, and subsequently stopped the action of the heart. Legallois extended these observations to the spinal chord. But by far the most brilliant investigations on the subject of Respiration, are those of Spallanzani, whose Mémoires still deserve a careful study, both as models of scientific research, and as storehouses of valuable facts. He was succeeded by W. F. Edwards, whose Influence des Agens Physiques sur la Vie (which may be found on the old book-stalls for a couple of shillings) still remains one of the best books the science can boast of. During the present century, hundreds of from the organism in which it is effected. In the course of our inquiry we shall have occasion to observe how the neglect of the distinction now insisted on, between Respiration, as the Function of an apparatus of organs, and Respiration as the mere interchange of gases, determined by physical laws, has led to error; for the present, it is enough to have drawn attention to the true physiological conception. In the higher animals we see this Function performed by two different organs— gills and lungs. In both organs we find that a large quantity of blood is exposed to the air by means of a network of ves of the facts cited or alluded to in our exposition: *In the following works will be found most SPALLANZANI: Mémoires sur la Respiration; ED. WARDS: De l'Influence des Agens physiques sur la Vie; CLAUDE BERNARD: Leçons sur les Effets des Substances toxiques; MILNE EDWARDS: Lecms sur gische Chemie; and the Treatises on Physiology of la Phys. et l'Anat. Comp.; LEHMANN: PhysioloBERARD, MULLER, FUNKE, DRAPER, etc./indket breathe; for Respiration in such animals is not effected by a special apparatus of breathing organs; and in Physiology the idea of Function is inseparably connected with that of Organ, as the Act is with its Agent. Professor Bérard says, that, penetrated with the idea of a special organ being necessary for Respiration, he expe sels spread over the surface. The blood arrives there black, and passes away scarlet. It has exchanged some of its carbonic acid for some of the oxygen of the air; it has become changed from venous into arterial blood. This oxygenation of the blood is therefore the special office of Respiration; and although all animals exhale carbonic acid and absorb oxygen-al-rienced a singular disappointment in readthough every tissue does so-yet we must rigorously limit the idea of Respiration, as an animal Function, to that which takes place in the gills or lungs. True it is, that the simpler animals effect such exhalation and absorption by their general surface, and not by any special modification of it-such as gills or lungs; true it is, that even fish and reptiles, furnished with gills, also respire by their skin; and that, when the lungs of a frog are removed, the necessary oxygenation of the blood may be effected through the skin, if the temperature be low; nay, it is also true, that even man himself, in a slight degree, respires by the skin; so that the student tracing upwards the gradual complication of the organic apparatus, and finding first, the whole of the general surface effecting the aëration needed; secondly, a part of the surface formed into a gill, in which aëration is far more active; and, finally, finding this gill replaced by a lung, may be tempted to say: "If the aëration of the blood is the office of Respiration, and if this is effected in some animals by the skin alone, in others by the skin and the gills, and in others principally by the lungs, but still in a slight degree also by the skin, how can you pretend to establish a distinction, other than a simple distinction of degree; how can you expect me to lay much stress on a verbal difference such as that between Function and general Property or Tissue?" In reply to this plausible objection, we must observe that in science verbal distinctions are often extremely important; they keep attention alive to real though subtle distinctions. It is difficult to keep to such distinctions; for, as Bacon says, "words are generally framed and applied according to the conception of the vulgar, and draw lines of separation according to such differences as the vulgar can follow: and when a more acute intellect, or a more diligent observation, tries to introduce a better distinction, words rebel." In strict physiological language, no animal without blood ought to be said to ing the experiments of Spallanzani, which is |