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    DE LA RIVE ON ELECTRICITY . . 4 Treatise on . Electricity . By Augustus de la Kive . Translated by C . V . Walker Vol . II . - Longmans , The science of Electricity is little more than a century old . In 1750 the Leyden jar was indeed known , but the identity of electricity and lightning was still unsuspected . Little more was known than what the ancients knew respecting the properties possessed by certain bodies of exercising an attraction for others after being rubbed ; and this little consisted in the fact that some substances were conductors and others non-conductors ; that there were two electrical principles or " fluids" which attracted and repelled each other ; and that the union of the two opposing fluids produced a spark .

    In 1856 we look back upon this slender budget yvith some surprise , perhaps compassion , in thinking of the varied applications which our more extended knowledge has enabled us to » make of an . agent met with in every corner of the organic and inorganic world ; and we are only brought to a proper state of modesty by reflecting how small our actual knowledge is 3 compared with the manifold and complex problems which solicit attention axid demand solution . We have not even settled what Electricity is ; and this uncertainty , coupled with the marvellous agencies of which daily experience renders us cognisant , causes rash theorisers and facile philosophers to attribute everything they do not understand to the agency of Electricity . Are tables turned by means not obvious ? The explanation is Electricity . No one pausing to ask whether the known effects of Electricity are in the least analogous to

    table turning ; no one trying to turn a table by the application of a gigantic battery . Does an epidemic ravage countries ? It is owing to an " electrical state of the atmosphere" Is a min found burned to death , no five to burn him being discoverable ? It is Electricity which has decomposed the water of his body into o . vyg ; en and hydrogen , a condition brought about by excessive use of alcohol , aud " spontaneous combustion" results . Are the wonders of n"rvous action contemplated ? the brain is a galvanic battery ; thought is Electricity . Look where we will we are sure to sec Electricity made the great Fetish of ignorance—the Deity whoso presence is the cause of all marvels . One would imagine that an agent so constantly invoked would bo carefully studied . So indeed it is , but not much by the facile theorists to whom we allude . not to have

    Electrical science is too important aad too fascinating many adepts . Treatises , popular and professional , abound \ many bad , some few good , half a dozen excellent . The very boat , all things considered , will probably be acknowledged to have oomo from the Guneveso Professor , M . de la Rivo , whose second volume has just appeared . Mr . Walker has admirably translated this work , which is profusely illustrated with diagrams , and which , when the third volume appears , will present a complete and detailed exposition of all that is known of Electricity , executed by a master . In . giving this work our most serious recommendation we must at the same time indicate its character as a Tteatise : it is not a rapid summary of principles , but an elaborate exposition of principles , experiments , facts , and theories , written from the fulness of knowledge , anil with a desire of completeness which

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    will read the other nineteen in a score of different works , they would be a desirable complement . It is not that the work is " well written , " although tlie writer is a clever woman ; nor that it is entirely unalloyed by a certain set mannerism , which certainly does not belong to woman ' s writing in general . Miss Karray is too conscious that she writes , as it were , " in company , "—the company consisting of the lospitable Republic on the one hand , and of the critical republic of letters in England . She is anxious to be thought well of—an excellent quality in woman , biilLonejthatdoes _ not take the best means of success when womanhood endeavours to eke out its attractions and adorn its costume with flowers from the teehnicology of botany instead of the flowers of the field or of the milliner ; with glances of geology not so deep as Lyell , and dashes at

    these slaveholders ; whereas , I fear there is a greater amount of irreligion and vice in one town of ours , or of the Northern States here , than in all the Southern States put together . When I watch the kindness , the patience , the consideration shown by white gentlemen and gentlewomen towards these " darkies , " I coxdd say to some anti-slavery people I have known , " Go thou , and do likewise . " They are better off than the working classes in this country . A . slave girl was astonished when Miss Murray told her that the English working people could seldom get meat at all , still less three times a-day . The negro will remonstrate when it is proposed to free him : —

    Mrs . Stowe gives great credit to a young lady \ rao , becoming the heiress of a few slaves , gave them all their freedom . I have heard of a young lady who succeeded to the possession of negroes , aud nothing else ; by emancipating them she might have gained a fine character front the Abolitionists , and have cast off not only a responsibility , but a heavy expense ; instead of which she sought occupation for herself , laboured hard , and ea rned the means of existence for her poor black dependents , as well a 3 her own 1 iving . Which of these two ladies acted the more Christian part ? They despise the free negro : —

    One woman was offered her freedom , in my hearing : she took the offer as an insult , and said , " I know what the free niggers are , missus : they are the meanest niggers as ever was ; I hopes never to be a free nigger , missus . " A slave quarreling with another black , after calling him names , at last sums up as the acme of contempt , " You be a d d nigger without a master ! " This is the consequence of the fact , that free negroes being idle and profligate are generally poor aad miserable . A common reproach among them is to say , You be'es as bad as a free nigger . "

    Miss Murray goes to Cuba , but does not equal Mr . Hurlbut in the vigour or distinctness of her painting , whether of scenery or society . Slavery she opines cannot be studied in Cuba , the question being complicated -with social backwardness and indifferent government . And the daughter of St . James ' s is strong in the conviction that a better course than the blockading squadron would be to encourage peaceful commerce with , the African coasts ; " couv « mercial remedies being the only certain legitimate slavery preventives . " These conclusions have led to an accident in the life of the authoress ; and the story has been partly told in the papers . * .- We are not in a position to correct the narrative . According to the tale , Miss Murray asked permission to dedicate her book to the Queen ; but on finding the discussion of slavery

    in it , her Majesty not only declined , but felt it necessary to dismiss from the service of the Court a person who had publicly discussed " a question which threatened to rend the Union . " There may be sound policy and good international law in that rigid enforcement of neutrality ; but it strikes us that the " question wKich threatens to rend the Union" has before been discussed—that a certain Mrs . Beecher Stowe was over in this country , and that a ~ special reception was prepared for her by no less a personage than the Duchess of Sutherland , Mistress of the Robes . This was " discussing ; , " with a vengeance , a question that threatened to rend the Union ; but was any manifestation of Court displeasure made at that Court demonstration in favour of the Abolitionist party ? According to the story the neutrality of the Court is all on one side .

    astronomy which is not peculiar to America , for they have not a different moon in the Union , nor does the diversity of institutions exercise a perceptable influence on Charles ' s wain . If lively Miss Murray were really to sit down and write us accounts of the scenery which she praises , and which is tantalisingly glanced at in her rapid pages , she might perhaps paint us very pretty aquatint sketches . But the names of trees are not trees , and the facts which she records in natural history are not brought out with sufficient distinctness , nor always marked by discrimination . When we are told that she sees " a capsicum as small as a pea , " or a privet "like a Chinese privet ;" that the dwarf black jack is abundant , or phlox Drummondi thick in certain

    sandy prairies of Texas , we have scanty materials either for the artist or the botanist . The two ** Horned Frogs" which she caught and petted , and which she calls " crustaceous , " and therefore , not disgusting , are neither new to natural history , nor are we much enlightened by such descriptions ; and we demur to accepting the driest statements from a writer who believes that certain snakes milk cows . But this is the consequence of turning out a diary un .-revised and . unpruned , with , perhaps , an overwhelming sense that anything which was said was worth preserving . Unprofessional writers often make the mistake of supposing that because they have a vivid idea of the things seen when they read the words in their own manuscript , those words must convey the same vivid idea to their readers .

    The thing we look to , however , is not information about anything whatever , but the special view through the special lens . We know all about hotel life in America ; but what will a Court lady think upon it?—that is the question . And when the Lady in waiting is applied to this use , the response which she makes to us is not quite what we should expect . She does not like hotel life in the Union , and that does not surprise us ; but what are the objections suggested by a St . James ' s experience of lifts ? They are mainly that the hotel customs are " ruinous to the manners and domestic character of the young women , " and also ruinous to the purses of travellers . Miss Murray paid on art average ^ 10 a-week for self and maid , although they dined at , tlie public table ; and the woman of fashion from the golden circle of Englisli society discovers that the canny and keen Robert Chambers is quite mistaken when he says that there is no imposition in American iuns . Now , if we had sought for a keen eye to business and an appreciation of cash outgoings ^ we should have supposed either of the Messrs . Chambers fairly to

    represent , not a " near , " but certainly an exact class ; yet the daughter of St . James ' s hath a shrewder eye than the Edinburgh tradesman . So inherent is the housewife in the sex ; so completely does the domestic Englishwoman over-ride the lady of fashion ! She finds an excuse for the hotel life in the difficulty of keeping servants . Its modus operandi destroys the character of young women , " in the frivolity and indulgence " which it encourages , " by superseding domestic occupations . " The daughter of St . James ' s opines that women should lie the " educated companions , not the rivals , of men " — the heart consolers , the binders up of broken spirits , the ' sisters of the sisterless , ' the presiding genius of the social circle . Is not this work enough for them to do ? " Therefore she objects to the woman ' s rights agitation ; objects equally to women being " all queens" or " play things — dolls . " The daughter of St James ' s detects the extravagance and artificiality of the American toilet . " I see here false brows , false bloom , false hair , false everything—not always , but too frequently ; " and Belgravia blushes for the sex !

    Still , there is something pleasant in the hotel life . It is , at all events , convenient for travellers : society is completel y brought forth , and presented for inspection . Take an instance from a Washington inn : — I find acquaintances from Cuba , California , all the Southern States ; from each of the Northern—even some from Canada ; naval meu , who have visited Japan ; politicians , judges , biahops , botanists , geologists , educationalists , philanthropists , abolitionists , slave-holders , voyages of di . scovorj meu , ami men who have beou some of all those things at various periods of their lives , with a large number of ladies , all willing to converge , aud vying iu Idnduess aud hospitality towards nxa , the only foreiguor aud stranger among them .

    It is something , also , to get the daughter of St . James ' s as a witness on the subject of slavery . Miss Murray is so impartial that she becomes a partisan . She has lived so completely under the influence of anti-slavery doctrinos in the highest quarters at home , that , finding the slave-holders human beings , with hearts i « their bosoms , and not demons , there is a strong reaction . She disclaims indeed anything like an opinion , and doos not express one ; but her picture is an opinion . She contrasts the anxious faces , the general absence of content , the prevalence of insanity in the North , with the content in the South , the luvppy condition of the slaves , and the encouragement of religion amongst them . Slavery she accepts as a preparatory state of existence—a sort of purgatory on earth , during which the abject races of Africa ac quire a more rectangular facial outline , a thinner lip , knowledge of religion , and , by n compulsory apprenticeship , a certain power of self-government . In the South the race is happy , oven in its preparatory state of existence . There is mostly the pot an feu in the cottage , and often all the chickens and comfort of an English farm-house . In fact , it is apparent that " slavery is , in moat cases , real freedom : " —

    The Creator of men formed thorn for labour under guulanoo , and there in probablya . providential intention of produclug some good Christian men ami women out of it in timo . Wo have boon blindly endeavouring to oountomot this intention ; wohavo thought ouwolvoa wisor than our forefathers iu all woiuts , booauso wo havo ftdvauood beyond them iu others ; and it has boon Uio lmbit for us iu l ^ uglaud to boliovo ouraolvoo more religious , aud virtuous , and bousvolont than

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    February 2 , 1856 , ] THE LEADER . ^^^ 113

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 2, 1856, page 113, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2126/page/17/