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    The Ancients sang of Wonders ; we realise them . Song has given place to Science . Almost every month brings some new discovery to light , some fresh conquest over the wide domain of Ignorance . The discovery we have on the present occasion to announce will delight the scientific mind as much as it will " aggravate" the teetotal mind , for it is nothing less than the discovery of how to make Alcohol . Observe , how to make it ; not how to distil it , not how to produce it by the decomposition of an organic substance , but how to create it by the recomposition of inorganic substances . There lies the interest of the thing . It is another step nearer the great impossibility which has so long perplexed and defied philosophers—the impossibility of making complex organic substances .

    Chemists have long known how , by acting on organic substances , we can produce a series of substances proceeding one from the other , the composition of which becomes simpler and simpler until we arrive at some substance familiar in the inorganic world . And Physiologists have long known how the Plant , acting upon these inorganic substances by a Chemistry of its own , reconverts them into organic substances . What we have iminade , but cannot remake , the Plant recomposes with unerring certainty—because , as Voi / taihe said of the stars , " it has nothing else to do . " Man ' s ambition was to rival the Plant in this respect , as he surpassess it in so many other respects . Hitherto his success has been but mediocre . A very few organic substances he can make , but those of only a low degree . One reason is that while he knows what are the elements which compose an organic substance , he is ignorant of the way in which these elements are united ; he

    knows the what but not the ' hoio . Another reason—and this is perhaps the reason which of all others frustrates his efforts—is , that he cannot produce the necessary conditions of the experiment . In the laboratory he can determine the conditions with precision . He performs his experiments with instruments which are instruments and not participators , in glass retorts which are passive , and which do not mingle their vitreous qualities with the chemical combinations effected inside them . If he places a carbonate with a gas in a . glass vessel , iie knows that the glass simply contains these substances , and isolates them from all others , it does not interfere with their action on each other . Very different is it with the Laboratory of an Organism : there the vessels cannot be passive ; there no action takes place which is not complicated by" the whole surrounding conditions p-there no isolation is possible .

    Having stated the difficulty , we have prepared the reader to appreciate every fresh approach to a solution , however small . M . Berthelot has made such an approach . Alcohol is decomposed into water and bicarbonate of hydrogen by concentrated sulphuric acid at a temperature of 352 degs . Fahr . No experiment is more familiar . But to recompose water and bicarbonate of _ Jbydrogen into alcohol isL . quite another _ affam __ Ejyery Tory will tell you it is easier to destroy than to rebuild . But the energetic and sanguine Reformer persists in trying to rebuild , and with patience , after

    many failures , he succeeds . M . Bebthelot has succeeded . This sulphuric acid , which at 352 degs . separates water from the hydrocarbon , comports itself in a quite different manner at ordinary temperatures . Placed in presence of the gas it slowly absorbs it , and disposes it to enter into combination . M . BBRTiiEXor dissolved some bicarbonate of hydrogen in some concentrated sulphuric acid at the ordinary temperature . He then added five or six volumes of water . This liquid , after successive distillations , aided by a little carbonate of potash , to retain the water , produced Alcohol . He repeated the experiment with the ordinary gas used for lighting , and with the

    same success . Thus we see the chemist unmaking and remaking an organic substance ; and ono of the most interesting points in the experiment is that in both cases the same agent is employed—the only difference being a difference of temperature . An analogous operation with sugar would be a prodigous conquest . Sugar is converted into glucose by taking up one equivalent of water . If we could only reconvert glucose into sugar 1 Glucose is obtained from starch , nay , is obtained even from wood ; and who knows but what our children may sweeten their coffee with our wulking-sticks I

    This same M . Berthelot has been actively engaged in creating fats , new and old . 3 ? or if , as Moi , iere says , il y a fagot et fagot , with still greater reason may we say there are fats and fats . The epicure knows this as well as the chemist , when ho cuts the fat of mutton or the fat of venison , for example , or the fat of a sucking-pig , which Charles Lamb , in his immortal essay , calls " the adhesive oleaginous —O call it not fat 1—but an indefinable stocetneangrowing up ' to it—the tender blossoming of fat . " A phrase which may bo , placed beside the unctuous lines of Homer , whore Patkocxus heaps on the fire the . backs of sheep and fat goats , and the chine of a fat pig , blooming with fat — ' cp 5 * apa vaiTov edijK oios kcu itiopos atyos ( v 6 V o ~ vos criaXoio ' pavtp redaXvtap akoKpjj .

    The TfddKviap dkouprj is precisely Charues Lamb ' s phrase ; and shows in both an unctuous gusto prompting enthusiastic diction . While we were turning over the pages of Homer to find that passage , the Phrase " people-devouring Ruler—Snfiofiopos fiturikevs" met our eye , and at once called up the Czar ,- to whom it is so terribly applicable in these days ; and as a little silent moralising went on in ' our minds ( which need not be inflicted on an unoffending reader ) an Italian organ-boy sang under our window " with full-throated ease" Viva la Republica I evviva la Liberia /—a contrast which his own condition , so very unlike that of a patriot , made the more profoundly ironical . Here was a juxta-position—old Homer , eternal in youth , singing of barbarian wrath and barbarian joys with a clear voice , joyous yet grave ; the young Czar , representative of a system more barbarous and fearfully decrepit ; and Young Italy at the Organ , singing in melodious voice of the Republic which is so distant , and of Liberty , which it is irony to mention !

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    Two American periodicals lie on our table , neither of which gives a very exalted idea of American literature . The New York Quarterly is to rival our Quarterly and Westminster , but at present we can only perceive that from the first it has borrowed the animosity against Whigs , and the tone in which that animosity expresses itself ; while from the second it has borrowed the idea of a survey of contemporary literature , which it executes in the meagrest manner . The " constant endeavour ' of this review is , to " foster a noble nationality in literature and art ; " a noble endeavour , but not likely to be furthered by such -articles as the one on Macatjlay . The sagacity , no less than the amenity , displayed in this paper , may be gathered from this sentence : —

    For history , indeed , he is in no respect qualified . He lacks the most important and essential point . A brilliant essayist—the most brilliant , perhaps , in the languagean able but not an extemporaneous advocate , a vivid though not strikingly original poet , he is utterly destitute of the calmness , the impartiality , and the solidity of history . He exhibits but little philosophy , and is wholly without either fairness or temper . He enters upon history with all the animosity and asperity of a writer of the present day . In the name of Grammar , so mercilessly treated by this writer , how could Macaulay enter upon history but as a " writer of the present day ? ' *

    In the name of candour and courtesy , how has Macaujcat deserved to have an American say ofThim , " He has- prostituted- himself to politics , and perverted his talent to faction . He is the sycophant of a vile party , and the slanderer of an unhappy race . " A critic who is so intolerant of an historian ' s temper , and so severe on his want of impartiality , "should at least show some tolerance himself , if he can show no sagacity . Perhaps this sort of writino- is considered forcible . Of the writing which is considered " eloquent" we have an amusing specimen in Putnam's Monthly , where a very juvenile penis ambitious On the subject of " Sensitive Spirits , " e . g . —

    Poor Jean Jacques , for instance . Here is , in effect , a sensitive spirit . With a reticulation of nerves the finest and most susceptible possible—thrilling in ecstasy , or writhing in agony—full of a thousand whims , and humours , and inconsequencesvacillating between the poles of endless contradictions , presenting a very Sphinx-riddle for solution—the sublimation of his own happiness and woe . That touch of anatomy , " the finest reticulation of nerves , " is thrown into the shade . by the . tou ^ But even in manhood , there are moments solemn and calm , when , amid bur sad satiety , we ask ourselves these same child-questionings over again . Times in which we realise with Dante that " Tutte l ' oro , che sotto la luna , . " " E che qia fu , di queste anime stanche Non poterebbe fame posar una . "

    And when the same eternal whence and why and whither , come with awful force over us . But still without a response . . . Why ? . . . Because the Finite can never inake out the theorem of the Infinite . The italics are the author ' s , and make the sentence impressive . If the Finite cannot make out the aforesaid theorem , neither . can the Indefinite intersect the Hypothenuse of Space ; and what then ? Amid no inconsiderable quantity of rubbish there is nevertheless some good matter in Putnam ' s Monthly ; one paper in particular deserves attention : it is called " Nature in Motion , " and is curious as an assemblage of the various migrations of plants and animals . Here is a passage worth extracting , on

    TIIB HERRING . The herring , a small , insignificant fish , yet gives food to millions , and employment to not less than three thousand decked vessels , not to speak of all tho open boats employed in the same fishery . Where their " homo is , man doos not know ; it is only certain thai they are not met with beyond a certain degree of northern latitude , ana that tho genuine herring never enters tho Mediterranean , and honce remained unknown to tho ancients . In April and Juno , all of a sudden , innumerable masses appear in the northern seas , forming vast banks , often thirty miles long and ten milea wide . Their depth has never been satisfactorily ascertained , and their denscnoss may De judged by tho fact , that lances and harpoons thrust in between them , wink not ana into bandsherrings also in

    move not , but remain standing upright ! Divided , move a certain order . Long before their arrival , already their coming is noticed by the flocks of eea-birds that watoh . thorn from on high , whilst sharks are seen to sport around them , and a thick oily or nlimy substance is spread over their columns , colouring tho sea in daytime , and shining with a mild , mysterious light m a dark , still night . The sea-ape , the « monstrous chimera" of tho learned , precedes them and is , hence , by fishermen called tho king of tho herrings . Then are first seen single males , often three or four days in advance of tho great army ; next follow the strongest and largest , and after thorn enormous shoals , couhtloss like the sand on the soa-shoro and tho stars in Heaven . They seek places that abound in fltonea and marine plante , where to spawn , and likei other animals they frequent the localities to which they

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    Critics are not the legislators , but the judge 3 and police of literature . They do not mate laws-they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .

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    March 31 , 1856 . ] THE LEADBB . 305

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 31, 1855, page 305, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2084/page/17/