The personal and moral character of the two chiefs was still more strikingly opposed, and emblematic of the sides they severally led. Both were distinguished by the unwearied perseverance, the steady purpose, the magnanimous soul, which are essential to glorious achievements: both were provident in council, and vigorous in execution: both possessed personal intrepidity in the highest degree: both were indefatigable in activity, and iron in constitution: both enjoyed the rarer qualities of moral courage and fearless determination. But, in other respects, their minds were as opposite as are the poles asunder. Napoleon was covetous of glory, Wellington was impressed with duty: Napoleon was reckless of slaughter, Wellington was sparing of blood: Napoleon was careless of his word, Wellington was inviolate in faith. Treaties were regarded by the former as binding only when expedient-alliances valid only when useful: obligations were regarded by the latter as obligatory, though ruinous; conventions as sacred, even when disgraceful. Napoleon's wasting warfare converted allies into enemies; Wellington's protecting discipline changed enemies into friends. The former fell, because all Europe rose up against his oppression; the latter triumphed, because all Europe joined to place itself under his guidance. There is not a proclamation of Napoleon to his soldiers, in which glory is not mentioned, nor one in which duty is alluded to: there is not an order of Wellington to his troops, in which duty is not inculcated, nor one in which glory is mentioned.

The intellectual character of the two heroes exhibited the same distinctive features as their military career and moral qualities. No man ever surpassed Napoleon in the clearness of his ideas, or the stretch of his glance into the depths of futurity; but he was often misled by the vigour of his conceptions, and mistook the dazzling brilliancy of his own. genius for the steady light of truth. With less ardour of imagination, less originality of thought, less creative genius, Wellington had more justness of judgment, and a far greater power of discriminating error from truth. The young and the ardent, who have life before them, will ever turn to the St Helena memoirs for the views of a mind of the most profound and original cast, on the most important subjects of human thought. The mature and the experienced, who have known its vicissitudes, will rest with more confidence on the "Maxims and Opinions" of Wellington, and marvel at the

numerous instances in which his instinctive sagacity and prophetic judgment had, in opposition to all around him, beheld the shadow of coming events amidst the clouds with which he was surrounded. No one can read the speculations of the French emperor without admiration at the brilliancy of his ideas, and the originality of his conceptions: none can peruse the maxims of the English general, without closing the book at every page to meditate on the wisdom and justice of his opinions. The genius of the former shared in the fire of Homer's imagination: the mind of the latter exhibited the depth of Bacon's intellect.

But it was in the prevailing moral principles by which they were regulated, that the distinctive character of their minds was most striking and important. Singleness of heart was the characteristic of the British hero, a sense of duty his ruling principle: ambition pervaded the French conqueror, a thirst for glory was his invariable incentive; but he veiled it to others, and perhaps to himself under the name of patriotic spirit. The former proceeded on the belief that the means, if justifiable, would finally work out the end; the latter, that the end would in every case justify the means. Napoleon placed himself at the head of Europe, and desolated it for fifteen years with his warfare: Europe placed Wellington at the head of its armies, and he gave it thirty years of unbroken peace. The former thought only in peace of accumulating the resources of future war: the latter sought only in war the means of securing future peace, and finally sheathing the sword of conquest. The one exhibited the most shining example of splendid talents devoted to temporal ambition and national aggrandisement; the other, the noblest instance of moral influence directed to exalted purposes and national preservation. The former was in the end led to ruin, while blindly pursuing the meteor of worldly greatness; the latter was unambitiously conducted to final greatness, while only following the star of public duty. The struggle between them was the same at bottom as that which, anterior to the creation of man, shook the powers of heaven; and never was such an example of moral government afforded as the final result of their immortal contest. Wellington was a warrior, but he was so only to become a pacificator; he has shed the blood of man, but it was only to stop the shedding of human blood; he has borne aloft the sword of conquest, but it was only to plant in its stead the emblems

of mercy. He has conquered the love of glory, the last infirmity of noble minds, by the love of peace, the first grace of the Christian character.-ALISON.

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

The true is the beautiful. Whenever this becomes evident to our senses, its influences are of a soul-elevating character. The beautiful, whether it is perceived in the external forms of matter, associated in the harmonies of light and colour, appreciated in the modulations of sweet sounds, or mingled with those influences which are, as the inner life of creation, appealing to the soul through the vesture which covers all things, is the natural theme of the poet, and the chosen study of the philosopher.

But, it will be asked, where is the relation between the stern labours of science and the ethereal system which constitutes poetry? The fumes of the laboratory, its alkalies and acids, the mechanical appliances of the observatory, its specula and its lenses, do not appear fitted for a place in the painted bowers of the Muses. But, from the labours of the chemist in his cell, from the multitudinous observations of the astronomer on his tower, spring truths which the philosopher employs to interpret nature's mysteries, and which give to the soul of the poet those realities to which he aspires in his high imaginings.

Science solicits from the material world, by the persuasion of inductive search, a development of its elementary principles, and of the laws which these obey. Philosophy strives to apply the discovered facts to the great phenomena of being, to deduce large generalities from the fragmentary discoveries of severe induction, and thus to ascend from matter and its properties up to those impulses which stir the whole, floating, as it were, on the confines of sense, and indicating, though dimly, those superior powers which, more nearly related to infinity, mysteriously manifest themselves in the phenomena of mind. Poetry seizes the facts of the one and the theories of the other; unites them by a pleasing thought, which appeals for truth to the most unthinking soul, and leads the reflective intellect to higher and higher exercises; it connects common phenomena with exalted ideas; and, applying its holiest powers, it invests the human mind with the sovereign strength of the true.

Truth is the soul of the poet's thought; truth is the reward of the philosopher's toil; and their works, bearing this official stamp, live among men through all time. Science at present rejoices in her ministry to the requirements of advancing civilization, and is content to receive the reward given to applications which increase the comforts of life, or add to its luxuries. Every improvement in the arts or manufactures has a tendency to elevate the race who are benefited thereby. But because science is useful in the working days of our week, it is not be neglected on our Sabbath, when, resting from our labours, it becomes agreeable to contemplate the few truths permitted to our knowledge, and thus enter into communion, as closely as is allowed to finite beings, with those influences which involve and interpenetrate the earth, giving to all things life, beauty, and divinity.

The human mind naturally delights in the discovery of truth; and even when perverted by the constant operations of prevailing errors, a glimpse of the real comes upon it like the smile of daylight to the sorrowing captive of some dark prison. The Psychean labours to try man's soul, and exalt it, are the search for truth beneath the mysteries which surround creation, to gather amaranths, shining with the hues of heaven, from plains upon which hang, dark and heavy, the mists of earth. The poet may pay the debt of nature, the philosopher may return to the bosom of our common mother, even their names fade in the passage of time, like planets blotted out of heaven; but the truths they have revealed to man burn on for ever with unextinguishable brightness. Truth cannot die; it passes from mind to mind, imparting light in its progress, and constantly renewing its own brightness during its diffusion. The true is the beautiful; and the truths revealed to the mind render us capable of perceiving new beauties on the earth. The gladness of truth is like the ringing voice of a joyous child, and the most remote recesses echo with the cheerful sound. To be for ever true is the science of poetry-the revelation of truth is the poetry of science.

Man-a creation endued with mighty faculties, but a mystery to himself-stands in the midst of a wonderful world, and an infinite variety of phenomena arise around him in strange form and magical disposition, like the phantasma of a restless night.

N

The solid rock obeys a power which brings its congeries of atoms into a thousand shapes, each one geometrically perfect. Its vegetable covering, in obedience to some external excitation, develops itself in a curious diversity of forms, from the exquisitely graceful to the singularly grotesque, and exhibits properties still more varied and opposed. The animal organism quickened by higher impulses, powers working within, and modifying the influence of the external forces, presents, from the monad to the mammoth, and through every phase of being up to man, a yet more wonderful series of combinations, and features still more strangely contrasted.

Lifting our searching gaze into the measureless space beyond our earth, we find planet bound to planet, and system chained to system, all impelled by a universal force to roll in regularity and order around a common centre. The pendulations of the remotest star are communicated through the unseen bond; and our rocking world obeys the mysterious impulse throughout all those forces which regulate the inorganic combinations of this earth, and unto which its organic creation is irresistibly compelled to bow.

The glorious sun by day, and the moon and stars in the silence and the mystery of night, are felt to influence all material nature, holding the great earth bound in a manystranded cord which cannot be broken. The tidal flow of the vast ocean, with its variety of animal and vegetable life, -the atmosphere, bright with light, obscured by the stormcloud, spanned by the rainbow, or rent with the explosions of electric fire,-attest to the might of these elementary bonds.

These are but a few of the great phenomena which play their part around this globe of ours, exciting men to wonder, or shaking them with terror.

The mind of man, in its progress towards its higher destiny, is tasked with the physical earth as a problem, which, within the limits of a life, it must struggle to solve. The intellectual spirit is capable of embracing all finite things. Man is gifted with powers for studying the entire circle of visible creation; and he is equal, under proper training, to the task of examining much of the secret machinery which stirs the whole.

In dim outshadowing, earth's first poets, from the loveliness of external nature, evoked beautiful spiritualizations. To them the shady forests teemed with aërial beings,-the