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    « Thus the more special type it developed from the more general . Every step in the development of the Chick testifies to this . In the beginning , when the dorsal folds have closed , it is a vertebrate animal , and nothing more . As it raises itself from the yelk , as the gill-plates coalesce and the allantois grows torth , it show , itself to be a vertebrate animal , which cannot live freely in water * buDuequently the two cseca grow forth , a distinction appears between the pairsof extremities , and the beak is developed ; the lungs pass upwards ; the rudiments of the air-sacs are recognisable , and there can be no doubt as to its being a Bird . While the ornithic characters become more and more marked , in consequence of the further development of the wings and air-sacs , of the coalescence of the twsal cartilages , &c ., the web of the feet disappears , and we recognise a land Bird . The bealc , the feet , pass from the general into a special form ; the crop is developed , the stomach has already divided into two cavities , and the scale of the nostrils appears . The Bird takes on the character of a Gallinaceous bird , and finally of a domestic fowl .

    " It is an immediate consequence—in fact , it is merely a changed form of expression of what has been said above—that the more different two animal forms are , so much the further back must their development be traced , to find them similar . " Although , the various portions of a plant are all modifications of the leaf , the farther they are removed from each other , the farther hack must their origin be traced . " The further back we trace development , so much the more agreement do we find among the most widely different animals , and thus we are led to the question , . —Are not all animals essentially similar at the commencement of their developnient—have they not all a common primary form ? We have just remarked , that a distinct germinal disc probably exists in all true ova ; so far as we are

    acquainted with the development of germ-granules ( Keim-korner ) , it seems to be wanting in them . They appear to be originally solid ; however it may be , that on their first separation from their parent , they have an internal cavity like the central cavity of the yelk , which only escapes microscopic observation on account of the thickness of the often somewhat opaque wall . Supposing , however , they are at first solid , and eventually become hollow , as seemed to me to be the case with the germ-granules of the Cercaria ? and Bucephali , yet we perceive that the first act of their vital activity is to acquire a cavity , whereby they become thick-walled , hollow resides . The germ in the egg is also , according to Schol . II . c , to be regarded as a vesicle , which in the Bird ' s egg only gradually surrounds the yelk , but from the very first is completed as an investment by the vitellary membrane ; in the Frog ' s

    egg it has the vesicular form before the type of the Vertebrata appears , and in the Mammalian from the very first it seems to surround the small mass of the yelk . Since , however , the germ is the rudimentary animal itself , it may be said , not without reason , that the simple vesicle is the common fundamental form from which all animals are developed , not only ideally , bat actually and historically . The germ-granule passes into this primitive form of the independent animal immediately by his own power ; the egg , however , only after its feminine nature has been destroyed by fecundation , ( compare the Coroll . to Schol . I . ) After this influence , the differentiation of germ and yelk , or of body and nutritive substance , arises . The excavation of the germ-granule is nothing else . In the egg , however , there is at first a solid nutritive matter ( the yelk ) , and a fluid in the central cavity ; yet the solid nutritive matter soon becomes fluid .

    " We remarked above , that to find a correspondence between two animal forms , we mu « t go back in development the further the more different these two forms are ; and we deduce thence , as the law of individual development , — " 1 . That the more general characters of a large group of animals appear earlier in their embryos than the more special characters . " With this it agrees perfectly , that the vesicle should be the primitive form ; for what can be a more general character of all animals than the contrast of an internal and an external surface ? " 2 . From the most general forms the less general are developed , and so on , until finally the most special arises . " ThU has been rendered manifest above by examples from the Vertebrata , especially of Birds , and also from the Articulata . We bring it forward again here only to append , rs its immediate consequences , the following propositions concerning the object of investigation : —

    " 8 . Every embryo of a given animal form , instead of passing through the other forms , rather becomes separated from them . " 4 . Fundamentally , therefore , the embryo of a higher form never resembles any other form , but only its embryo . " It is only because the least developed forms of animals are but little removed from the embryonic condition , that they retain a certain similarity to the embryos of higher forms of animals . > ** This resemblance , however , if our view be correct , is nowise tho determining condition of the course of development of the higher animals , but only a consequence of tho organization of tho lower forms . " With the warning that Yon Baer ia fighting against an enemy no longer in the field , but who was in tho field when Vou Baer wrote , we call attention to Mr . Huxley ' s translation of these Fragments of Philosophical Zoology .

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    BE QUINCEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES . Selections Grave and Gay , from the Vubliahed and Unpubli $ hed Writings of Thomas da Quincey . VoL I . Autobiographic Sketches . drooinbridgo and Song [ SKCOND AHTICLB . ] Tubninq from general considerations of De Quincey as a writer to tho more special subject of this the first volume of his republished writings , we have to noto the singular want of art ( or what comes to the same thing , want of intellectual volition ) revealed in tho perpetual digressions and footnotes , pertinent and impertinent , which break tho continuity of the narrative , and break the continuity of feeling . It is sometimes as if an

    organist were to stop suddenly in tho culminating passages of his melody to toll you an indifferent story of his tailor ' s family troubles ; or ns if a poet in the midst of a passionate burst , were to check the current of emotion « . o u ^ , 8 Omo oruditc gossip about the invention of printing . ' Sketches" theses chapters are truly named j and as truly " autobiographic ; henoe one abiding source of interest , for they tell us of a man rer ^ rwtiow «^ ^ T " kftble men ' ° y famil'awe us with a mind of ^ liyZ ' m ^ mh Z !" esotistical M B 7 roaot Montai ^ ° ' ™ -

    Among the things lie tells us of himself there is one to which we -would fain draw the earnest attention of young men , the more so as it g ives personal emphasis to a counsel we have repeatedly iterated in these columns—the counsel , namely , of not wasting powers available elsewhere on Poetry , when no special gift exists . . Whatever a man's taste for music , it is idle in him to cultivate the art of singing if he have no voice ; but not more so than to cultivate the art of Poetry if he have not the special gift . De Quincey is surely a man whose marvellous mastery of language , whose imagination and sensibility , whose poetical instincts and cultivated taste , might claim the position of poet with far more justice than thousands who claim it ; yet although , like all men of letters , he began by writing verse , early in life he came to the just conclusion that poetry was not his vocation : t—

    " In fact , whatever estimate I might make of those intellectual gifts which I believed or which I knew myself to possess ,-1 was inclined , even in those days , to doubt whether my natural vocation lay towards poetry . Well , indeed , I knew , and I know that—had I chosen to enlist amongst the soi-disant poets of the day —amongst those , I mean , who , by mere force of talent and mimetic skill , contrive to sustain the part of poet in a scenical sense , and with a scenical effect—I also could have won such laurels as are won by such merit ; I also could have taken and sustained a place taliter qualiter amongst the poets of the time . Why not then ? Simply because I knew that me , as them , would await the certain destiny in reversion of resigning that place in the next generation , to some younger candidate having equal or greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old

    traditionary language of passion spread through books , but having also the advantage of novelty , and of a closer adaptation to the prevailing taste of the clay . Even at that early age I was keenly alive , if not so keenly as at this moment , to the fact —that by far the larger proportion of what is received in every age for poetry , and for a season usurps that consecrated name , is not the spontaneous overflow of real unaffected passion , deep , and at the same time original , and also forced into public manifestation of itself from the necessity which cleaves to all passion alike of seeking external sympathy : this it is not ; but a counterfeit assumption of such passion , according to the more or less accurate skill of the writer in distinguishing the key of passion suited to the particular age ; and a concurrent assumption ot

    the language of passion according to his more or less skill in separating the spurious from the native and legitimate diction of genuine emotion . Rarely , indeed , are the reputed poets of any age men who groan , like prophets , under the burden of a message which they have to deliver , and must deliver , of a mission which they must discharge . Generally , nay , with much fewer exceptions , perhaps , than would be readily believed , they are merely simulators of the part they sustain ; speaking not out of the abundance ofjtheir own hearts , but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotions at second-hand ; and the whole is a business of talent ( sometimes even of great talent ) , but not of original power , of genius , or authentic inspiration . "

    The distinction between Genius and Talent , is one De Quincey has often indicated as one not simply of " degree" but of " kind" ( we formerly endeavoured to reconcile the two opinions , by pointing out how differences of degree , when of certain magnitude , necessarily constitute differences of kind ) , and a note on this passage succinctly explains his position : — " Talent and genius are in no one point allied to each other , except generically —that both express modes of intellectual power . But the kinds of power are not merely different , they are in polar opposition to each other . Talent is intellectual

    power of every kind , which acts and manifests itself by and through the will , and the active forces . Genius , as the verbal origin implies , is that much rarer species of intellectual power which is derived from the genial nature—from the spirit of suffering and enjoying—from the spirit of pleasure and pain , as organized more or less perfectly ; and this is independent of the will . It is a function of the passive nature . Talent is conversant with the adaptation of means to ends . But genius is conversant only with ends . Talent has no sort of connexion , not the most remote or shadowy , with the moral nature or temperament—genius is steeped and saturated with this moral nature .

    " This was written twenty years ago . Now ( 1853 ) , when revising it , I am tempted to add three brief annotations : " 1 st . It scandalises me that , in tho occasional comments upon this distinction which have reached my eye , no attention should have been paid to the profound suggestions as to the radix of what is meant by genius latent in the word genial . For instance , in a recent work entitled Poetics , by Mr . Dallas , there is not tho slightest notice taken of this subtle indication and leading towards the truth . Yet surely that is hardly philosophic . For could Mr . Dallas suppose that the idea involved in tlie word gemallmd no connexion , or none but an accidental one , with the idea involved in tho word genius ? It is clear that from the Roman conception ( whensoever emanating ) of the natal Genius , m the eecret and central representative of what ia most characteristic and individual in tho nature of every human being , are derived alike the notion of tho genial and our modern notion of genius as contra-dist ' m guished from talent .

    " 2 nd . As anothor broad character of distinction between genius and talent I would obwrve—that genius differentiates a man from all other men ¦ whereas talent i « tho « nmo in one man m in another : that is , where it exists at all it is tho mere echo and reflex of the same talent , a « seen in thousands of other men differ ing only by more and l « w , but not at all in quality . In genii , * , on tho contrarv no two men were ever duplicates of each other . 1 I 4 I * J » " 3 rd . All talent , in whatsoever claw , reveal « itself as an effort—as a countorac faon , to an opposing d . fficulty or hindrance ; whereas goniU 9 universally Z ^ n headlong sympathy « nd concurrence with ¦ pontimeo ,,. | M ) wor . Talont ^ X un versally by intense ^ istnnco to an antagonist force ; whereas treni . m L 7 I ?' a , rapture of nece ^< y and spontaneity . " fcCU 1 "S WOrk" under Talent is , so to speak , a Hand to do thirnrs with - < " •««• • -n hence the impersonality of the one and life 1 ^ % T * r ' ? , , There are men of talent Without genius-ndro / u « Zf { l ° ^ ^ are also men of genius without tSen ^ b ^ e" ^^?" ' , ^ wa . hng , unhappy victims , with inordinate ^ fe ^ S ^^ g *^ Qmneey ib a man of genius who has many talents l » . » «•« r m " faculty which would render them perfect v In 1 « "P wantm K . ono curb rein , galloping aimlessly ! P OrlLUly cihcient-Pcgusus Without a ***** let u , pJt aa thi , ^ Zl ^ X l ^ l ^ Z T

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    618 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 25, 1853, page 618, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1992/page/18/