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Ale of twelve months old went circling round; the boar's head was served up in great state; burlesque pageants were performed; Christmas tales were repeated, and laughed at again and again; and oft-sung Christmas carols were sung over and over, and were thought all the better for being old. But these things have nearly gone by. So with May Day. Being a form of the old Roman festival of Flora, and so having the savor and unction of antiquity; embalmed in the verses of England's best poets; occurring at the delightful season of Spring; and always a favorite holiday with the young, it might seem that it would maintain an abiding hold upon the popular heart. In a few secluded districts of Derbyshire, May-poles may still be seen, and garlands are hung upon them every Spring. But this festival, too, is very much a thing of the past. The death-blow to it and the immoralities generally associated with it, was struck by the Reformation. Nor was its demolition a question altogether of morality and religion: it came through the natural growth of society. May Day and the rude revelings connected with it were the pastimes of an unthinking if not a corrupt age; the views and tastes of men underwent a great change in the progress of centuries: new wine must not be put into old bottles.

Several ancient games have now only a lingering hold upon the people;—such as archery, hawking, cock-fighting, boar-hunting, stag-hunting, tennis-court, the tilt, and tournament. Some of these are occasionally reproduced as matters of curiosity and amusement, but do not maintain an abiding place among the national customs. Over these changes, romantic and antiquarian people may lament, telling us that the golden age is past, that merrie England is merrie no more; but their mourning is vain. The times change, and men change with them. And instead of lamenting for what is irrecoverable it were better to devise new modes of public diversion and entertainment adapted to the spirit of the age. Many, indeed, have already been provided, such as boating, skating, horseback-riding; public gardens and parks, museums and galleries of art, public lectures, reading-rooms, and musical concerts. These are recrea

tions mostly of a higher order than the old, and are doubtless productive of as much enjoyment, if not of as much noise.

But our remarks have reached their assigned limits. We can conceive of but few pleasanter tours than one leisurely made up and down the rural portions of England, visiting scenes of historic and romantic interest, and studying the manners and habits of the people. But while waiting the opportunity of such a journey, one may be quite content with fireside travel over the same ground in the genial company of Howitt and Hawthorne.

ARTICLE II.-DR. DRAPER'S NEW BOOK.

Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M. D., LL. D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York; Author of a "Treatise on Human Physiology," and of a "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe." New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square. 1865.

If the only object we had in view, were to call attention to the mechanical execution of this book, there would be no occasion to use other than words of warm commendation. It is a beautiful specimen of American typography. Seldom does one meet with a volume which, in type, paper, binding, and general attractiveness, more completely fills out his idea of what a book ought to be. And this work comes from the press of Harper & Brothers. We have a painful recollection, reaching back over many years, of books issuing from their hands, which have been wanting in the elements of beauty, and still more deficient in strength and durability. The present specimen, however, is, in all respects, as nearly perfect as may well be.

Turning from the publishers to the writer, if we were to have regard only to the aesthetics of his work, grace and fluency of manner, wealth of illustration, wide sweep of general knowledge, and all those incidental touches of style by which an author puts himself into easy and agreeable relations with his readers, we should find slight occasion for blame. It is not to be denied, that, in these general particulars, the book bears a charm. It fascinates the reader, and he floats on as one borne upon a full-flowing stream, even though he find himself, little by little, in vital antagonism with the current that carries him forward. The book bears a striking likeness to the famous volumes of Mr. Buckle, in more points than one. These resemblances will appear as we go on, and we do not

wish to anticipate, except to say, that in attractiveness of style the two are wonderfully alike.

"There is no literary crime," says Dr. Draper, "greater than that of exciting a social and espécially a theological odium against ideas that are purely scientific, none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own dignity to tolerate no longer offenses of that kind.”* On the other hand, we sit down to write this Article, under the fixed impression that the republic of letters, in our own day and generation, has no more important service to perform, than to watch and discriminate carefully between what is scientific and what is not-to point out the fact, that much which obtrudes itself upon the world under this august name is nothing else than a system of showy and shallow hypothesis, even if it be anything more than the most vulgar private prejudice. Science, that is such in truth, is always and everywhere to be respected; and whatever crude conceptions on this subject may have belonged to other days, whatever unseemly conflicts may have arisen in the past, we are not aware that among the educated men of this age, theologians or others, true science is regarded with any other feeling than that of profound reverence. Scholars bow before it as that final truth which is not to be shaken. And just in proportion to their regard for what is truly scientific, is their contempt for the pretensions of science. When a man comes before his fellow-men with a set of half formed and rapid generalizations, when it is apparent at the merest glance that he is using the name of science simply to dogmatize and domineer, the "republic of letters " has other duties than to say "amen." We have no doubt that Professor Draper is truly a scientific man. He could unfold the laws and combinations of chemistry, or the facts of physiology, in so clear and masterly a way that all would feel and confess that he was dealing with those fixed and absolute truths which could not be gainsayed or resisted. But when leaving these fields of study, he chooses

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to ramble over those broader fields of thought, in which thousands of men are more at home than himself; when upon topics moral, philosophical, and theological, he comes forward and says, "I, also, will show mine opinion," he is at perfect liberty to do so; but because he sometimes stands behind a Professor's table, let him not therefore insinuate that his crude utterances on these subjects are scientific. They are the utterances, doubtless, of a thoughtful and cultivated man, with a strong bias in one particular direction, but they cannot have, at least in these pages, any of the privileges and immunities. which belong always and everywhere to genuine science.

On the contrary, we have to say, that hardly anything is working more mischief, and producing more confusion in the great world of thought and opinion, than these oracular givings forth of some of our scientific men on topics wholly aside from their special studies. A multitude of people who read little, and think less, are deluded with the notion that such men must know whereof they affirm-while the trained thinker sees at a glance that these utterances are in defiance of all the laws on which true science proceeds; that the process of generalization is so rapid and superficial as to merit little respect. We fully agree with what Henry Rogers has said on this topic in a recent Article. He is addressing a certain "M. D.," real or imaginery. He says:

"You ascribe my skepticism in relation to your new-fangled speculations, to a 'blind adherence' to the traditional beliefs of a 'stereotyped theology,' and you tell me that it is in oblivion or contempt of what Bacon says in the First Book of his Novum Organum.' You were never more mistaken in your life. I demur to your scientific crotchets, not because I believe the Bible, (though I do believe it), but because I believe in Bacon. If I know myself, I fancy that, even though I had not read a syllable of the Bible, and had no traditional beliefs' to renounce, I should have objected to the new scientific dogmas which you urge on my acceptance, just as much as I do now; and that precisely because (as I think) you, and not I, have forgotten Bacon, and been misled by those idola' of the human intellect, before which not theologians alone, but scientific speculators, too, (as, indeed, his First Book is more expressly designed to show), may too readily fall. * # Certainly, my friend, I believe that never, since Bacon's time, has there been greater license of hypothesis than in our own day; and that, especially, in relation to subjects demanding (if they are ever destined o be effectually settled by man at all, and are not rather among those things

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