doubtless grant a place in your widely-circulated Journal to the few observations I am about to offer; the more OH! LOVE WHILE LOVE IS LEFT TO THEE readily, as they refer to the sacred, world-wide cause of Divine Revelation. At page 301 of Chambers's Journal, Dec. 12, 1857, occurs this remark: I believe there is no other light on this difficult question, than that given by the New Testament. There, clear and plain, shines the doctrine of which, until then, there was no trace either in external or revealed religion-that for every crime, being repented of and forsaken, there is forgiveness with Heaven; and if with Heaven, there ought to be with men. This, without at all entering into the doctrinal question of atonement, but simply taking the basis of Christian morality, as contrasted with the natural morality of the savage, or even of the ancient Jew, which, without equivalent retribution, pre-supposes no such thing as pardon.' I consider this, the second of the two passages referred to, first, because it is the more important in its action on the moral convictions of the human race. Its refutation here rests not on deductions, manifest as they are from the whole tenor of the writings of Moses and the Prophets. I shall, I am sure, best fulfil the duty I have undertaken by bespeaking the patience of your readers in verifying here the references I append below,* to one passage of each of certain of the inspired writers from Moses to Malachi. My difficulty in their selection has been, not to find, but to withhold; so numerous are the texts which shew that so far from the doctrine of the forgiveness of sin following on repentance, being 'unknown to the ancient Jew,' he was distinctly taught that by penitence, and penitence alone, could he secure the pardon of his God. The other passage, whose fallacy but a superficial acquaintance with biblical history suffices to demonstrate, sets forth that: Nature herself has apparently decided for women, physically as well as mentally, that their natural destiny should be not of the world. In the earlier ages of Judaism and Islamism, nobody ever seems to have ventured a doubt of this. Christianity alone raised the woman to her rightful place as man's one help-meet for him, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, his equal in all points of vital moment.' FROM THE GERMAN. Oh! love while love is left to thee; And let thy breast with kindness glow, And guard thy lips, and keep them still; • Ah, Heaven! I did not mean it ill!' Oh! love while love is left to thee; Unheard, unheeded then, alas ! And murmur: 'Oh! look down on me He hears not now thy voice to bless, He did forgive-long, long ago! Oh! love while love is left to thee; M. G. It seems to be almost an insult to the memory of your readers, who, from week to week, attend the services of their parish church, to remind them that the words quoted by our author as indicative of the true vocation of woman, and accompanied by the declaration that it was assigned to her by Christianity alone, are the very words in which her Creator's aim in her creation is described by Moses, in the earliest of all written revelations; or to advert to the part women played in the great drama of life, during the existence of both the republican and monarchical forms of government that prevailed in Judea. For, that the Hebrew women did appear as actors in many scenes of their race's history, is abundantly air to breathe, but it is necessary to provide air for the It is not only necessary that men may have sufficient shewn by their public participation in all the most import-apartment itself in which they live, as well as for the men ant national events; as also in that most sacred of all functions-prophecy. I once more cite,+ on this head, the verses of Scripture. They tell of the Women of Israel,' who, by their words and deeds, aided the great cause of 'national and religious regeneration.' The columns of a popular journal are not the fitting arena for polemical controversy or personal criticism, or it would be easy to prove, that while holding forth the urn, which our writer affirms is alone filled with the pure waters of life, the attempt to shew that the very source whence those waters first flowed, is turgid and impure, is as inconsistent as it is mistaken and futile.-I remain, Gentlemen, with much esteem, yours, ANNA MARIA GOLDSMID. ST JOHN'S LODGE, REGENT'S PARK, LONDON. * Lev., xxiii. 27-32; xxvi. 40-42; Deut., iv. 30, 31; 1 Kings, viii. 38, 39; 2 Chron., vi. 27; Nehemiah, i. 9; Psalms, li. 17; ciii. 3; Isaiah, lvii. 15; Jeremiah, iii. 12; Ezekiel, xviii. 21, 22, 23, 27; Joel, ii. 12, 13; Micah, vii. 18; Malachi, iii. 7. + Exodus, x. 20, 21; Deut. xxx. 10, 11, 12; Judges, iv. 4; v.; xiii., 1 Samuel, i. 1, 2; 2 Kings, xi. 2; xxii. 14, 15; 2 Chron., xxxiv. 22; the Book of Esther; Proverbs, xxxi. 1; Jeremiah, xliv. 20. PURE AIR. who inhabit it. The influence of impure air is not only exercised upon the men through their breathing organs, but the surface of their bodies, their clothes, their seats, their tables, beds and bed-clothes, the walls of the apart ments; in short, the free surfaces of everything in contact with the air of the place become more or less impure, a harbour of fouiltes, a means of impregnating every cubie foot of air with poison, unless the whole apartment has its atmospheric contents continuously changed, so that everything animate and inanimate is freshened by a constant supply of pure air.-Medical Times, May 1, 1858. 'FRENCH CRITICISM ON SHAKSPEARE.' In the article with this title in No. 222, the translator of the Shakspearian sonnets alluded to is said to be Victor Hugo. To this announcement should have been added fils: the translator is the son of Victor Hugo. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, DUBLIN, and all Booksellers. OF POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 232. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1858. SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. Of making many books there is no end. 'SIR,' was heard to say the great monologuing moralist of our times the modern Samuel Johnson of adoring English Boswells, American Goldsmiths, and aristocratic Mrs Piozzis-and since authors cannot be expected to write one thing and say another, the sentence may probably be found in print, though how could weak type deliver it with that ponderous monotonous roll of long-drawn vowels and harsh resolute consonants, which gives to the said moralist's speech even more originality than his pen-Sir, the one thing wanted in this world is silence. I wish all the talkers had their tongues cut out; and all the writers had their pens, ink, and paper, books, and manuscripts, thrown into the Thames; and there were silence for a generation.' One not a disciple might suggest that the illustrious moralist had better set the example; a satirical mind might begin to calculate the amount of possible loss to the world by such a proceeding. Nevertheless, a wise man's most foolish sayings are likely to contain some wisdom; and the above sentence deserves consideration, as involving certainly an ounce of solid truth in a bushel of eccentric extravagance. Silence for a generation. What a state of things! No authors, and no reviewers, no orators political, controversial, or polemical; and no critics on oratory; no newspapers; no magazines; no new novelists to be advertised up; no new poets to be bowled down; travellers to wander, and never relate their adventures; men of science to make discoveries, and be unable either to communicate or to squabble over them; philanthropists allowed to speculate at will on the abuses of society, so long as they concealed their opinions; in short, returning to the ante-Cadmus period-the world to be compelled, in familiar but expressive phrase, 'to keep itself to itself, and never say nothing to nobody.' What a wondrous time!-what a lull in the said world's history! Even to dream of it, sends through the tired nerves and brain a sensation of Elysian repose. Silence for a generation-which generation of people, great or small, clever or stupid, should be born unheralded, grow up unchronicled, live uncriticised, and die unbiographised. It should feel, without discussing its feelings; suffer, without parading its sufferings; admire, without poetising its admiration; condemn, without printing its condemnations. Its good and ill deeds should spring up as naturally as PRICE 1d. the flowers and weeds of a garden-to be left all a-growing and a-blowing,' or quietly pulled up. All this busy gabbling, scribbling, self-analysing, selfconscious society should be laid under a spell of hopeful dumbness-forced to exist simply, exempt even from the first axiom of metaphysics: 'I think, therefore I am.' Such a state of universal silence, who would welcome? Possibly nobody; least of all those who have really nothing to say. What in that case would become of the innumerous, shadowy throng who haunt every periodical; unanswered correspondents;' authors of unread manuscripts—of whom, a luckless editor once said to the present writer-in a sort of hopeless despair Don't say you're bringing me another manuscript. Look there! I've got a heap of them, two yards high.' And you, ye cumberers of publishers' shelves, in print and out of it, inditers of novels that nobody reads, poetry that nobody understands, and mental miscellanea that may be briefly ticketed as 'Rubbish: of no use to anybody except the owner'— what would be your sensations? You, too, young and ardent thinkers, so exceedingly anxious to express your thoughts, by word or pen, as if nobody had expressed the like before; and the world, as you honestly and devoutly believe, would be the better for that expression-as it might, Heaven knows!-truly, rather hard upon you would fall this compulsory silence. For you cannot yet see that, great as literature is, it is merely the fitful manifestation of the world's rich inner life-its noblest thoughts, its most heroic deeds; that this life flows on everlastingly and untiringly, and would continue to flow, were there no such things as pens, ink, paper, and authors; types, printers, booksellers, and publishers. Wofully, too, would such a crisis affect that race of littérateurs far, far below these, who pursue authorship simply as a trade, without the slightest faith in it or reverence for it-who, happening to have been brought up in what is termed 'literary circles,' possess hereditarily, or through habit, a certain aptitude with the pen, and accordingly make it a tool of business to write anything or everything, no matter what, so that, like any other tool, it suffices to earn their bread. What would become of them, who, like most gabblers, prate not out of their fulness, but their emptiness, if there were an age of silence? There is another class as heavily to be condemned, and yet more pitiable than these the authors, real authors, not bookmakers, whom such a law would teach, what they have not the moral courage to teach themselves, the timely necessity of silence. These are, the writers who have written themselves out, yet still go on writing. For example: a book appears; it has merit; it succeeds, and deserves to succeed. Its author rises into note, becomes a man whom coteries seek; whom the public flatters and esteems, publishers bargain with, urge, and sue. His wares are valuable, consequently the more produced of them the better. Money follows fame, and expenses follow money. He who wrote at first because he loved it, and could not help it, now writes for a living; or if he wrote at first for a living, now writes for an income-the handsome income that a man of talent can so willingly enjoy and so readily spend. People say: 'What a deal of money Mr So-and-so must make!'-as possibly he does; but they forget how he makes it. Not out of so many hours per diem of handwork or mechanical headwork, of ingenious turning of capital, or clever adaptation of other people's ingenuity. All his capital, all | his machinery, all his available means of work, lie in a few ounces of delicate substance, the most delicate in the whole human structure, wonderfully organised, and yet subject to every disorganisation, mental or material, that chance may furnish-his brain. People do not recognise this-perhaps he does not recognise it himself. He may be a very honest man, deserving all his fame and all his money. Yet both must be kept up; and how does he do it? He goes on writing for a long time-faithfully, no doubt, carefully, and well. But Providence allows to every intellect only a certain amount of development, limited by certain laws, spiritual and physical, known or unknown, yet not one of which can be broken with impunity. The brain is like a rich quarry; you may work it out in a year, or you may, with care and diligence, make it last a lifetime; but you cannot get out of it more than is in it; and work as you will, you must get to the end of the vein some day. So does our author; but still he writes on. He must write; it is his trade. Gradually, he becomes a mere trader-traffics in sentiment, emotion, philanthropy. Aware of his own best points, he repeats himself over and over again. How can he help it? Whether he knows it or not, he has written himself out. For the rest of his career, he lives on the shadow of his former reputation-letting fall, perhaps, a few stray gems out of that once rich storehouse, his all but empty brain; or else he drops at once, a burnt-out candle, an oilless lamp, vanishes into such utter darkness, that at first, till posterity judges him more fairly, it is almost disbelieved that he ever shone. This truth-fellow-authors, is it not a truth? could be illustrated by a dozen instances, living as well as dead, did not charity forbid their being chronicled cruelly here. Cases such as these, befalling not ignoble but noble minds, do indeed force us to see some sense in the severe moralist's impossible ultimatum. Surely it is worth pausing to consider whether the evil which he deplores could not be cured by any less arbitrary means than an age of silence. The time is gone by when literature was a merely ornamental craft-when unsuccessful authors were Grub Street drudges, and successful ones some patron's idle hangers-on, or perhaps independent patrons themselves. Gone by, also, except in very youthful and enthusiastic minds, the imaginary ideal of an author'-a demigod not to be judged like other men, whether he attain the climax of fame. or groan under the life-long wrongs of unappreciated genius. Happily, in these days, we have very little unappreciated genius. Go round the picture exhibitions, and, depend upon it, you will find a large proportion of the really good pictures marked 'sold.' Go to any editor of magazine or journal, and he will tell you that he is thankful to get a really powerful original article by anybody, celebrated or obscure; that such papers will always command their fair price; and that the only reason of their rarely illuminating his pages is, the exceeding difficulty of getting them. Ask any publisher of honour, credit, and liberality— as the majority of them are-and he will own, that though a bad book may be puffed into factitious notoriety, and a good book, from various accidents, remain temporarily unknown-give each a fair chance, and they are sure to find their own level— a level which, in most instances, necessarily produces the same advantageous results to both author and publisher. There can be little doubt that any writer of real genius, nay, even of available talent, will always be able, sooner or later, to earn a livelihood by the pen. Whether, hapless instrument! it will suffice to give dinners to millionaires, and furnish white gloves and velvet gowns for countesses' assemblies-whether it will, in short, supply to the man or woman of letters all the luxuries of the merchant-prince, and all the position of ancestral nobility, is quite another question-a question which is about as solemn as any writer can ask himself. Alas for him, if neither he nor his have the moral courage to give the answer! In one sense, there is a great deal of cant sympathy and idle enthusiasm wasted upon authors and authorship. Noble as literature is, it is nevertheless no mere picturesque recreation; it is a profession, a calling, a trade if you will, to be pursued in all love and reverence, but as steadily, honestly, and rationally as any trade. You would laugh at a workman who threw away his materials; you would blame a merchant who rashly expended his capital; you would turn away, as from something dishonest, from a shopkeeper who tried to foist upon you, even through carelessness, goods inferior to those you expected him to sell, and wished to buy; and yet all these things, under fine names, are sometimes voluntarily or involuntarily perpetrated by authors. And surely not the least act of dishonesty-for it is fraud not against man only, but against his own soul and its Makeris that when not for daily bread, but for 'position," society,' 'keeping up a family, and all the pegs on which excuses can be hung, a literary man goes on writing, writing, long after he has got anything to say. For what is it that constitutes the author, as dis tinguished from the rest of the world, who live, suffer, and enjoy, in a placid, unconscious dumbness?-it is because he is the voice, the loosened tongue of all this mute humanity. Because, somehow or other, he knows not how or wherefore, he feels the infinite spirit stirring within him, teaching him to speak; and he must speak. He is no better-often, alas! less good-than the hundreds and thousands of silent ones. Yet in this he is set apart from them all-he is the speaker. Art, nature, with all their mysteries, by others only felt, are by him understood; perhaps into humankind generally he sees further than most people; but whether or no, to the extent that he does see, has been given him the power to arrange and demonstrate, which has not been given to them. Without any vainglory or self-exultation-God knows how little there is to exult over!-every true author must be conscious of this fact, that by some great mystery, as incomprehensible to himself as to any one else, it has been granted him to express what others only experience-that, so to speak, he is the living voice of the world. Then, in God's name-who has consecrated him such-let him dare not ever to open his mouth unless he has something to say. Rather let him live moderately, feed plainly, eschew fashionable frivolities and expensive delights as he would the allurements of that disguised individual whom St Anthony's honest tongs seized by the beautiful nose. Let him turn his back upon adoring crowds who would win him from his true vocationthe worker and thinker, into that of the mere idler. Let him write, if needs must, for his daily bread-an honourable and lawful act; but as soon as he begins to write for his mere pleasures and luxuries, or for the maintenance of a certain status in the world, let him pause. And as soon as he feels himself writing, not because he is impelled thereto, having something to write about-but because publishers and public expect him to write about something or worse, because money is to be made, and writing a book is the only way to make it-let him stop at once and cry: Get thee behind me, Satan. Lure me not to prostitute any gift I have-less for necessary bread and cheese than for things which are not necessary: riches, show, and notoriety.' which, however disguised and corrupted, unseen or unrecognised, is the central essence of all our wonderful world. And sometimes we would fain it were left as such, and not written about; that Love, and beauty, and delight, Exceeds our organs, which endure might rest in heavenly shadow, safe from frantic poets, Ay, and oftentimes, especially on days such as this present day, when birds are singing, and green leaves budding, and all nature bursting out into redundant life-innocent of authors, printers, and books, does one long for a brief season of that celestial silence-to lie down and dream, without order, arrangement, or even consciousness in the dreams; to gaze, enjoy, observe, and act, naturally and involuntarily; to live and see all around us living-the life of a flower of the field. Even as Wordsworth, the charm of whose genius is this power of making himself 'one with nature,' recalling how I wandered lonely as a cloud Which floats on high o'er vales and hills, A host of golden daffodils: Better, in truth, live on honest bread and cheese, reducing his wants to the narrowest limit; better slip from the world of letters altogether into kindly obscurity, than go on—scribble, scribble, scribble-flooding the public with milk-and-water mediocrity, which so that ever afterwards does it no more good to read than him to write, reducing the noblest calling under the sun to mere journeyman's taskwork, and himself, his subtle intellect or brilliant imagination, to the condition of a spiritual suicide. For he has murdered worse than his body-his genius, his moral faculties, his soul. And cui bono? In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon the inward eye, Wordsworth himself can find no other form in which And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. Truly, this sort of writing bids us pause in our demand for silence. It makes us feel that there is some good in authorship after all; that genius, the marvellous power which, by means of a few inches of black type and white paper, can re-convey to the human mind all its passions, emotions, and aspirations-can retranslate to it the whole beautiful and immortal life of the universe-this genius must be a wondrous gift-a divine possession. Let those who have it hold it-intact, unalienated, unsquandered, undefiled. To most professional authors, this question at times presents itself forcibly. What is the good of writing at all, when the noblest of fictions, the grandest of poems, or the purest and most elevating of psychological disquisitions, is at best but a faint reflex of what is going on in the world every day? If that same world could only perceive it, its own simple and natural existence, in joy and grief, struggle, action, and endurance, is a higher thing than all imaginary representations or intellectual analysations thereof. Do we not, we authors, continually see living pictures, lovelier than any we can portray-ideals which, if transferred literally to paper and print, readers would never believe in? Do we not, creating our imaginary world-which the aforesaid reader may happen to think pleasant and fair-often smile at him in secret, while of ourselves and for ourselves we are more prone to sigh? What nonsense, what execrable travesty, all stage-paint, tinsel, and canvas, frequently appears this fictitious arena, compared to the realities around us, which we strive poorly to copy. How small seem our got-up tragedies-how shallow our feigned passions-how paltry our imaginary pathos, when we For the rest, sorry pretenders to literature-vain look at this, God's world, filled with men and women chattering pies, who really have no song to sing, and of His making; where we meet, as we do continually, only desire to hear the clatter of their own sweet scenes beyond all painting; characters of variety inex-voices-let them be! No need to have their small haustible; histories that, in their elements of tragedy, pathos, heroism, tenderness, put to shame all our feeble delineations, making us feel that, so far from trying to portray it, we are hardly worthy to look in the face of it, this ideal beauty, this infinite perfection And for those who have it not, there is little to repine. They possess most of its benefits, safe from its dangers and tribulations. Any man, so long as he can enjoy a fine poem, feel his heart strengthened by a good novel, and his spirit refreshed by a few pages of any wholesome writing, rich in that true humour which is so great a lightener of the heavy burdens of life, let him rejoice and be thankful; he also has been in Arcadia. tongues cut out, or their luckless manuscripts tied up in a bundle, and flung into the Thames, or any other river. A few years will end all their clamour in an unbroken and eternal silence; and their works, designed to float down the stream of time, will soon sink to the bottom by their own ponderosity, and afflict its waters no more. Requiescant in pace! All things find their own level very soon. The world will do extremely well even without silence for a generation. PROGRESS OF PISCICULTURE. IN No. 148 of this Journal (1st November 1856) we gave, under the title of Pisciculture, some account of the interesting experiments which were, and are still, being carried on at Stormontfield on the Tay, with the view of increasing our supplies of salmon, and determining certain disputed questions in the natural history of this favourite fish. We purpose now to bring down the history by referring to the progress made since then in artificial fish-breeding both at home and abroad. So far as Scotland is concerned, the only experiments yet made, have been with salmon; but we are not without hope that, as the success of these become known, the system will be extended so as to include other kinds of fish, and also to lend its aid to the introduction and naturalisation in our rivers of the best food-fishes of other countries such as the magnificent black bass of Canada, and the salmon of the Danube-described in another portion of this article. The principal reason why salmon has been selected for experiment is, doubtless, because of its being considered our most valuable native fish, and also from the cry which has arisen as to its danger of extermination from over-fishing, and want of adequate protection during close-time, and also, in some degree, to put an end to the uncertainty which has so long prevailed as to its mode of breeding and growth, and generally to ascertain the various stages of its progress from the hour of its birth to the day of its capture-the want of such knowledge having impeded effective legislation. In all the varied stages of its career, the history of the salmon has been the subject of much controversy; and no wonder, if we consider the singular fact that salmon, fit for the purposes of the cook, can be caught in the Tay, while the little parr is just venturing on its way to the sea -both being of the same brood, hatched perhaps the same hour! When the eggs now under experiment at Stormontfield come to maturity and assume the smolt state, a few more points in the salmon controversy will be determined; but it will be a year or two before this consummation takes place, a portion of the young setting out for the sea at the end of the first year, and the rest remaining in the pond a year longer. In the meantime, we may devote a few paragraphs to a minor controversy which has arisen as to the proper way of sending_impregnated ova from the Perthshire ponds to New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, and other far-distant countries. The superintendent of the Perthshire fisheries has, we have reason to know, been overwhelmed with letters on the subject; and to lighten his correspondence, he promulgated, in conjunction with some of his Perth friends, a plan for the transmission of the ova, and also hinted at the possibility of transporting the infant fish. His idea was to fit up a small hatching apparatus on board ship, having a cistern containing ice to supply the water to the ova, and a reservoir to catch the fluid after its part was performed. No sooner was this idea made public than objections were taken to its practicability, and a multitude of epistles have appeared advocating different plans. One says the boxes containing the ova should be filled with sand; another, that they ought to contain horse-bean-sized gravel; while a third writer recommends 'stanes the size o' life;' that is, such as are to be found on the natural spawning ground. We have not space to give even a brief In detailing the great success which has attended Professor Anthony Wimmer of Landshut, in a letter to Mr Ashworth of Egerton Hall, near Bolton, gives an interesting account of the artificial propagation of the Danube salmon in Bavaria; and as some idea is entertained of acclimatising the fish in Scotland and breeding it in our rivers, we select such a portion of his communication as will give the reader some idea of its value: But "The Danube salmon is very similar in form to the |