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PEITCHAED'S HISTORY OF ANIMALCULES . A History of Infusorial Animalcules , Living and Fossil . Illustrated by severalJHimdred Magnified Representations . By Andrew Pritchard , M . E . I . A new edition enlarged . Whittaker and Co . The wonders of the Microscope are not less astounding than those of the Telescope , and far more important in their revelations . If the one familiarizes the mind with vast interstellar spaces , wherein God ' s name is writ in worlds , and distends the mind by the grandeur of the conceptions it subserves , the other by its revelations leads us into the mysteries of organization , and renders it possible to trace the laws of organic evolution . Structural Anatomy was impossiblebeforel 838 , when Schwann's immortal discoveries , founded on microscopic observations , opened the portals of a new science which will revolutionize philosophy . _ )( The Microscope , however , is like the traveller , and "tells strange things . We must not be too ready to give it credence . Partly because it is an instrument difficult to handle ; mainly because Observation itself i 8 ™ " mensely difficult , as all philosophers well know . It seems easy to " observe " a fact , and describe what you observe ; but , in truth , " there are more false facts than false theories " in science , and it is by knowing what to look for that the best observations are made—a consideration we submit to Factrnen , scorners of theory ; adding thereto the pregnant saying of Bacon , that observation as observation is a blind groping which rather
stupefies than informs the mind : vaga expericntia et sc tantuin scquci . merit paljpatio est , ct homines potius stupe / licit qiiam informal . ^ The moral of these remarks points at . Ehrenberg ' s world-wide discovcries . " Wo are not backward in our admiration of tho industrious zeal with which the Berlin microscopist has pursued for years his observations , nor are we insensible to the impetus given to science- by tho very exaggeration of his statements , which has provoked inquirers to verily < refute them ; but we must say that Mr . Pritclmrd ' s account of «>/«" Ehrenberg has seen in Animalcules has instituted an incurable fluspi < : > > in our mind of all his observations not amply confirmed by otm- • Ehrenberg has not sevn correctlbecause be does not think
correctlyy But lot us firat give Homo ucconnt of tho volume before us . It is u * tistically put together , but itn very vices of compoHition enlinne . e ltHvaU ^ - a paradox which will cease to be paradoxical directly wo inform ^ the r (' / in what the vicen consist . Mr . Pritchard is an assiduous Microscop y and a warm admirer of Ehrenberg , whose discoveries he introduced l <> ¦ Englwli public iu the first edition of this work in the year IMM . ¦ '"?" ' ] however , of confining himself to Elireriberg ' . s researches , he has induced tho results arrived at by Kiitzing , Siebold , Dujardin , ni"l < ")()] which decisively overtlirovv JOlirenberg ' H viewH , ho that althoug h the
ih compoHcd in a fragmentary manner , and reads 111010 « ' «* ' " tf () U ( , excerpts on Infusoria , yet the reader in enabled to correct lUironbcrL ^ of tl ' us wry pages intended to glorify him . ! Nor is this tho only » ' j the work . ft embraces a History of Animalcules , their organization , ^ localities ; a treatise on the Use of the Microscope , mul U 10 modes o < ¦ looting Infusoria for examination ; a section full of minute * and v a ^ detail on Classification and Description of Animalcules ; and J 01 ^^ twenty stool engravings containing several hundred lll "" lral ! ° ' j '| H lvne more than the cost of the work in themselves . Now , aUhoiigU ' ,. | io | Ul that the student will miss an organizing hand amidst theHC mulin . ^ and astounding details , it is also true that he will find no had org »> 1 ¦ ¦ ^ no imperfect philosophy . It is a book of nmtorialn—the lnat-oi iaiH groat mtorcHt . . Vouwi " Wo have Haiti that Ehrenberg is to be received with caution .
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Critics are not the legislators , "but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforcethem . —Edinburgh Review .
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Thackeray is not only on the eve of publication with his new historical novel , but is also , we have heard , preparing a cheap edition of Vanity Fair . It will have an immense sale , for it is not a work to be exhausted by a single reading or rereading . Beside Tom Jones , its place will be on every well-ordered bookcase . The French papers announce a forthcoming work of considerable interest , if only executed with moderate skill and trustworthiness , viz ., Memoires secrets pour servir a I'Histoire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand et Catherine I . It is said to be compiled from authentic and inedited documents . Unhappily , French Memoirs , though incomparably amusing , are but little renowned for truth ; and we must wait for the proofs of authenticity before yielding ourselves to these revelations . Lamartine sends us , via Brussels , a new volume , reprinted from his Conseiller du Penple j it contains three Biographies—Jeanne d'Arc , Homer , and Bernard Palissy ; and if the style of these biographies be the style for the French people—for the hut and the atelier—one must form a very singular idea of that people . The platitude and absurdity often disfiguring these improvisations , may be concealed beneath the ample drapery of style , from those who read as they run ; but if once the runners slacken pace , the charm will vanish . Lamartine has the facundia of a Gascon . No one can surpass him in magnificence of verbiage . He is not arrested by a truism , nor obstructed by an absurdity : on and for ever on the sounding current rolls , bearing on its waves the foam of rhetorical abstraction . And it is meant as Literature for the People ! He will tell them , for instance , apropos of Bernard Palissy ' s courage in the prosecution of his inventive labours , that " God and Art , both of whom insist on being vanquished , one by the patience of man , the other by his labour , at length yielded him the victory—Dieu et I'Art , qui veulent etre vaincus . ' " He will talk of the Greeks ( of whom he is very ignorant , though he talks " familiarly as maidens do of puppy dogs" ) , and by way of instructing the people will glibly declare " that they had no other religion than that of Beauty" ( a rhetorical phrase , totally destitute of sense ) , adding , that the Greeks are summed up in Plato , Vadorateur de Videe , showing that he is as unacquainted with Plato as with the Greeks . But it is in treating of Homer that he gives full swing to his propensities . He relates as veridical biography , a rose-pink legend of his own , made up of the legends of antiquity . Traditions , however marvellous , he says , are the " erudition of peoples . " He has his own private reasons for preferring that kind of erudition . His scorn of savants is not simply the scorn a lofty genius" Souring in supreme dominion Through the azure fields of air , "feels for the patient worker grubbing at the roots , it is the scorn of a man superbly ignorant of what those roots are . Yet Lamartine , who quotes as authentic the Hymns attributed to Homer (!) , ventures cavalierly to decide on the groat question raised by Wolf , of the Homeric unity . To disbelieve in IIomkk , he regards as " the atheism of genius . "' We never knew a rhetorician who did not ; and the more unfamiliar with the Homeric works , the more indignant the protest ! Lamaktink , in the innocence of ignorance , says , that if the Minerva sculptured by Phidias were broken in pieces , and you brought him the several parts , he , on finding those parts so marvellously fitting each other , bearing the mark of the same hand , would unhesitatingly declare that the statue was not the Avork of a hundred sculptors , but of one sculptor . So with IIomkk . Unhappily , it is not so with IIomkk . Had he more than a schoolboy ' s familiarity with the Homeric poems , he would know that the parts do not fit in one with another , that the same hand is not visible throughout , but that very distinct hands are visible ; lie would know that even the scholars who argue in favour of unity , admit the whole of the ninth book to be an interpolation , in open contradiction to the rest ; tlr . it the eighth book should bo road in immediate connexion with the eleventh ; mul that tho latest groat defender of unity , Mit . ( Jiiotk , gives up the pretended unity of structure in tho Iliad , which he thinks was originally an Achi / leis , and . subsequently expanded into an Iliad . Indeed , we should bo content to rest the evidence of diversity on the twenty-second and twenty-fourth books , the passion and pathos of which are , we believe , of a much later period , and indubitably of a different hand—even the ancients . suspected them . The discovery of a fact already discovered , and not unfamiliar , made with h flourish of trumpets , in the Literary Gazette of last week , deserves passing notice , if only for rectification : — " We have ibis week to correct , a . blunder of considerable historic .: )] importance ,, which has remained unexnoNod , and . in fact undetected , for the last , four hundred years . The liuino of . loan of Arc , the heroine of 1 'Yance , lias always heretofore been wrongly written , not only by Knglish and other foreigners , hut by the French themselves . Her real name , it appears , was Dare , not d'Arc , : —Unit in to say , plain Joan Dare , not Joan of Arc . To he called fV'Arc , Joan should have been of noble family , whereas she ivaa the daughter of a common peasant , and served as waitress in an inn ; or she should have belonged to a place , ( -ailed Arc , whereas she , * WRH burn nt the village of Domremy in Champagne , commenced her career at VaucouTtjji- ^^ n l ^ hu 11 , n 11 far as it appears , did any exploits at Are . The mistaken f ~ < J ^ 3 pay [( fPs ^ S ^ iS \} e name no doubt aroso from tho folly of some of tho early French i ^ % . ^ v lra :. f . V ^ v ,, ;^ M S ^ 'T > - < v < i" * / # 4
historians wishing to make her appear of sufficient good descent to be entitled to the aristocratic de . But it is nevertheless a great wonder that this erroneous spelling should have become universal , and should never have been discovered bv any later historian foreign or French . And the wonder becomes greater still when we call to mind that Joan Dare has been for so long a period the most marked figure in French history , has been the cherished idol of the French people , has been the subject of histories , and plays , and poems , and novels innumerable , and has had pictures and statues by the score executed in her honour . It is the descendant of one of her brothers , a gentleman named Haldat , now living at Nancy * - who has brought to light the fact that the heroine has never yet been called by her right name ; and it is a little publication of his entitled JExanien Critique de I'JSistoire de Jeanne Dare , which has just fallen into our hands , that has called our attention
to the subject . The proofs that M . Haldat cites are to our mind perfectly clear Amongst them is the patent by which King Charles VTI . conferred nobility on Joan ' s family ; and in this document the name is written Dare . In fact , if the correct way of writing it had at that time been d'Arc , the patent would not have been required at all , as the family would have been already noble . M . Haldat shows too very clearly that Joan ' s father was named Jacques Dare , that he was a common labourer , and that he originally belonged to the village of Septfond . M . Haldat concludes by saying , ' I hope that the name will be henceforth written Dare , and that the heroine will he left in undisputed possession of her plebeian origin . ' We fear , however , that the wish will not he regarded . However plain an error may be proved to be , it becomes so venerable by four centuries' duration , that it is almost certain to last for ever . "
On reading this passage we were so surprised at the " discovery , " that having for many years been quite familiar with the fact , w e turned to Lamartine , feeling certain to find the name Dare there given , even by one so inclined to prefer the " erudition of peoples . " Disappointed we turned to Michelet , and in his Histoire de France , liv . x . chap . iii M we read Dare distinctly enough . " It is the orthography of Jean Hordal , " says Michelet , " a descendant of her brother ' s Johannes Dare historia , 1612 . So that one can no longer derive the name from the village of Arc . " We are more surprised at Mr . Haldat ' s falling into this blunder , because Michelet ' s chapter on the Maid of Orleans is so celebrated ; the Literary Gazette has more excuse for having followed M . Haldat , though a little journalistic caution would have saved it from the " wonder" at French Historians not having detected the fact .
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1020 THE LE ADER , [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 23, 1852, page 1020, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1957/page/16/
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