IN RETROSPECT

[IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW TO REPRINT IN EACH

NUMBER PERTINENT EXCERPTS FROM ITS ISSUES OF A CENTURY OR MORE AGO.

The Editors.]

DANIEL WEBSTER, famed as a jurist as well as an orator, discussed the value of the Jury system in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for December, 1818:

There can be no legal reasoning, until a particular state of facts is considered as settled. But there are cases, in which some doubts would always remain as to the facts connected with them, if a certain and precise issue were not joined between the parties, and a verdict, "importing absolute verity," found upon this issue. In many instances, this is much better done in a jury room than on the bench; for this reason, among others, that the finding of the jury is not accompanied with dissenting opinions.

A strong impression against the use of juries in civil causes generally prevails in countries where the civil law is established. Yet, there are reasons, at least plausible, for supposing that something very analogous to English and American juries existed both in Athens and in Rome, in the better days of those Republics. "I have always been of opinion," says Sir William Jones, "with the learned antiquary, Dr. Pettingal, that they (the judges at Athens) might with propriety be called jurymen; and that the Athenian juries differed from ours in very few particulars." Dr. Pettingal's Inquiry into the use and practice of juries among the Greeks and Romans deserves to be more read and better known. It is a book of accurate and extensive erudition, although written with somewhat too much acrimony against the civil law, as it existed after the time of Augustus.

RICHARD HENRY DANA, in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for May, 1818, made observations upon child education quite pertinent to our own times:

An over anxiety to make of babies, little matter-of-fact men, and unbreeched philosophers, will add but little to their sum of knowledge in after life, and nothing to that faculty which teaches them to consider and determine for themselves, and begets that independent wisdom, without which their heaped

up knowledge is but an incumbrance. A child, now, "learns by heart" how a shoe is made, from the flaying of the ox for the leather, to the punching the last hole; and can give the best of reasons for its being so made, when it had much better be chasing a rainbow. Such a system may make inquisitive, but not wide ranging minds. It kills the poetry of our character, without enlarging our philosophy; and will hardly make us worthier members of society, or give us the humble compensation of turning out better mechanics.

Modern developments in gas manufacture, combustion, etc., were forecast in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for September, 1818, by JAMES FREEMAN DANA, the distinguished chemist:

The operation of the water-burner, then, appears to be simply this,—tar, minutely divided and intimately mixed with steam, is inflamed; the heat of the flame, aided by the affinity for oxygen of that portion of carbon, which would otherwise pass off in smoke, decomposes the water, and the carbon and oxygen unite; the hydrogen of the water, and probably of the tar, expand on all sides (and hence the flame is very large) to meet the atmospheric oxygen, water is recomposed, and passes off in steam; a degree of heat is produced, no doubt, greater than that which is produced by the combustion of the tar alone, and this heat is equal to that evolved by the combustion of a quantity of carbon, which would otherwise form smoke . . . With regard to the light emitted by this flame, we can only refer to the general fact, that when solid matter is evolved and ignited in a flame, the light is very intense, and on the contrary, where gaseous matter is the product of combustion, the light is feeble. Hydrogen, when inflamed, gives little light, carburetted hydrogen more, and bicarburetted hydrogen produces a flame of still greater brilliancy. The flame of a spirit of wine lamp gives light of low intensity, but when a coil of platina wire is held in it, the illuminating power is greatly augmented.

The reorganization of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars was discussed in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for May, 1818, by NATHAN HALE, nephew of the Revolutionary hero:

All the Powers of the first order, except France, have increased in the extent of their dominions, population and resources; but on the other hand, the small States are not so closely allied, and so intimately dependent on particular large States, as they were before the French revolution. Several of the States have acquired more natural and convenient boundaries, and their territories are in a less degree intermixed. The States of the first order, with the exception of Russia, are more nearly equal in power and resources than formerly, and Russia, the only apparently dangerous Power, is remote from the small States

whom she would be most likely to bind to her yoke, and separated from the rest of Europe by the two States who have the strongest interest, and are the most able to keep a check upon her ambition. On the whole, there does not appear to be any thing in the present distribution of power, which ought to discourage the hope of a long period of security from the miseries of conquest and revolution. There is no one sovereign, who can, with any rational confidence, aspire to universal dominion, or even any material increase of his power. On the contrary, if the several States act from a principle of enlightened self interest, or even of prudent ambition, it is not in the power of any one of the number, to assume more than his part in the political system, or to disturb the general welfare.

The urgent need now felt for the preservation of the Rights of the States was forecast by WILLIAM JONES SPOONER in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for March, 1819:

What has a government to fear, whilst it can enlist on its side the patriotism of the good, the ambition of the great, the interests of the selfish? There is nothing to place in opposition to all this, unless it be the force of local jealousies; but these, as we have before intimated, do not run parallel with our present State divisions; nor appear to have a necessary connexion, with the State authorities. We do not mean to intimate by what has been said, that the Constitution, when fairly construed, has vested more power in the General Government than was necessary. But believing the safety of the Union not likely to be endangered by the portion of power left in the States, we have no wish to see that power diminished. To these governments was meant to be left the care of the morals, the improvement, and most of the individual rights and possessions of the citizens; for these purposes we are bound to preserve them; but to be preserved they must be respected.

The social habits and health of literary men were discussed in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for December, 1818, by WALTER CHANNING, eminent physician and brother of WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING:

Besides, the scholar should be much in society for its excitement, for the diversion it gives to his thoughts. He should surrender himself sometimes to the influence of other minds. He must relax his strained powers, be gay and even vacant, if he would remove the feverishness, the depression and restlessness, which so often visit him after long and intense study. But it is also necessary that every class of men should have habits suited to their occupations,-habits of pleasure as well as of work; and besides the difficulty of establishing these, which arises from the variety and irregularity of their pur

suits, our scholars are too few to form a separate class, with distinct manners and an appropriate mode of life, and therefore are apt to accommodate themselves in these respects, where imitation is more natural than in almost any other, to the mass among whom their lot is cast. And nothing can be more fatal to that composure of the faculties and tranquillity of the circulations, which are so essential to the health of a student, than the irregular hours, the innocent dissipation, the parties, dinners, and suppers to which he is continually exposed and solicited. Regularity is the first of his wants, and the habit of avoiding all strong excitement should be the first of his cautions; and if he fails in neither of these, health will almost surely follow. . . . It is not desirable, indeed, that our scholars should have all the influence in polished society which the philosophers of France enjoyed, who governed in the drawing-room as well as in the Academy. And yet, when we know that, for the last century, the average of the life of a man of letters in France has been stated at something over sixty years, and that the ages of twelve of her laborious philosophers, taken at random, amount to a thousand years, one cannot help ascribing this in part to their independent mode of life, and wishing that our own scholars would feel it a right and a duty to prescribe their indulgences as well as their labours.

WILLARD PHILLIPS, the eminent jurist, in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for May, 1818, reviewed unfavorably the writings of WILLIAM GODWIN:

Godwin is a writer of a severe and sombre cast, who seems to take a gloomy satisfaction in dwelling upon whatever is deplorable in the constitution of society, or execrable and loathsome in human nature. In many parts of each of his works, and more especially in Caleb Williams and Political Justice, he writes with the spirit of a conspirator against the moral government of the world; and seems to look upon all the order, and beauty, and harmony of the social system, as Satan contemplated the delights of Eden, when he first alighted on the Tree of Life,—as something to be blasted and spoiled. But he has nothing of malignity in this;-he everywhere speaks like one of benevolent dispositions; but his benevolence is ill directed; he does not, like Satan, regard mankind, as those "whom he could pity" for the evils his own labours are intended to bring upon them. He compassionates them for what constitutes the beauty, and dignity, and security of existence. Though he sometimes speaks in tones of condolence, he more frequently utters the language of indignation and reproach. "Of what use," says he, "are talents and sentiments in the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a happier and purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate into usefulness, is thus converted into henbane and deadly nightshade."