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WmtBin Engl ^ nd wo we vbut slowly beginning to appreciate the importance ofAmerican Literature and its remarkable leaders , the Americans are better acquainted tHth our Literature than we are ourselves . They attend tS ' everyiJietr ap ^ araijcei and ^ ferret out the names hidden behind signatures , sp ^ twe ' m JEngisuid mayi&flfy learn something of what passes here by ^^^^ Aj 5 ^^ joui : na ] fe . In Putnam ' s Monthly there is a paper on &BfewEngT&sh I ^ s '' -r-that is on Owen Meredith , Matthew itogpu ) , and Gebaijj'MAas&r * 3 ? he critic scarcely mentions the name of Meredith , he at once withdraws the masfc , and speaks of Robert Lytton Bui . wxr , as he
nowhere speaks of Sidney Ybndts , but simply of Dobeuc ; andsin this ^| t ^ H ^ aric ^ jlifere' is the tadt assumption that all America is perfectly Familiar with the name of Dobexi ,, which is certainly not the case in England * ' where ihW ^ aj ©^ know Sydnet Yendts . What a prospect is held oufe for / English Authors when once an International Copyright is arranged I To popular writers such a change would bring wealth ; to serious ifrriters , who , pannow scarcely secure a public large enough to pay expenses of : p ^^^* it . wo ^ dbrihg a public large enough to reward as well as to proteci !«< Sia loss .
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t few weeks ago we announced the somewhat startling fact that a discovery which had c ^^ name of Ciabdb Bebnakd over Europe , and § r ^ chiintfeed w-as one of the most striking physiological discoveries of the 4 ge , natnejythat the liver is not Only a gland secreting bile , but a manufactory Tof , sugar—this discovery had been contested in the Academie des Sciences , after a reputation of six years , during which it had been ^ tested "by most experimental physiologists . The antagonist is M . Louis Figuieb
whom our readers may know as the author of a popular work on the Fnn-£ to& Modern Scientific Discoveries . His experiments and arguments were strain " end ^ h to cause no little sensati on ; and the Academy appointed a ^ om ^ Tssion of inquiry ^ Meanwhile the Anndles des Sciences has published fjb . e ^ . two Memoires which M . Fxguikb addressed to the Academy ; and Glacdb 5 bksabd has published his lectures , delivered at the College de Stance during ¦ 1854-55 , in a volume called Legons de Thysiologie Bxpetiptentctle 7 ^ h * h we very strongly recommend to those of our readers whose Studies : He at all in that direction . Without awaiting the decision of the Commission of Inquiry , we may at once declare our conviction that M . Beb-S-ab ^ s lectures establish the truth of his discovery , and that his reply to M .
terrible confifeion amdrig the savants ; ' and ; we shall , have our : sceptical anatomists parodying the sceptical philosopher , and bequeathing their bodies ( if they have bodies ) to the hospital ( if there be ahcispital ) for the advancement of science ( if there be a science ) . ¦' , .-. _ .
Figuieb is triumphant . , SSM ^ S ^^^ -V * ' ; genersl idea of this discussion , it may be premised flj jitjR ^ NAj ^\^ xpeiiments prove that howeve r you depriv e the food of an apimal of saccharine matters , the animal does nevertheless form sugar putof tHdalbuminoas ^ ubstances ; and the organ in which this sugar is formed is p ^ Li ^ kaWd the Liver only- The vessels which convey the albuminous ^ s tai ^ . ^^ L | ver 4 re found destitute of sugar ' the vessels which cou-$ gy the i ^ ood ^ ow ihQ ^ v are found rich in sugar ; and the tissue of tli e Hwritself '/ iBifound filled with sugar . / The conclusion is inevitable if the tf ^^ ev ^ rtainv ' f-Well , these facts have been tested by many of the first fexIperim ' eiitaUsts . 'and declared to'be correct . Mi Figuierv however , denies
their correctness . He denies that the blood carried by the portal veins' to || je , ^ »^ . /^! de ^ tufe ' of ; jsugar . He , says the sugar is present , but masked bjihe-pVepeiice " of ^ albumwose . Jflte brings , forward experiments ^ 6 prove his assertions / Hereupon Bernard plainly denies Fichuer ' s experiments to f ^ v ^ kny Valdei because they . have not been * conducted under proper phy-9 M ^ ft& ditiohs . This is very provable , seeing that Figuieb is not a plysiofogis ^*|| ijCj jj £ chemist ; and' chenSiits are apt td make sad blunders when they enWr the more delicate domain of physiology . And thatM . Figujucb is not profoundin his physiological knowledge may be seen in tlic fact that in one . of > bjs experiments the raw . meat with which he fed a dog is 39 $ dft (* be ,,., digested , and its saccharine elements yto have , passed into tlie ^ rtalireinVtu'o'AQMr * after the animal w « s fed . ' Here are two error *!— - !• . . the ftsaumed presence of sugar in raw meat ; 2 . the assumption that raw meat itf'dig ^ sti ^ ia ^ wohours < : digestfoh is not half completed in the storaacTi , less hhH
^ fif ^ ch theflood passea into the intestines , in that time . The question f ^ ftkciil ' h ^ fe ^ r ; 'iiijji 8 % fQffn bis decided * Whether the portal system < 16 < js jqr v does , not contiyn e . ugar cannot long remain dubious . jytean . while Moi » ii-« c « ott . has brought forwwd some striking observations which give gre ^ t -Weight to Bbbnabe 6 ' s ViewB ^ Ho cut out the Liv % r from several frogs , ^ Vhlfch he ntei | iag £ d to keep alive for three weeks after the operation . He ' tijen e ^ amiiied ithe bloody niuflcloa i and ^ epretioris of the frogs , but found in ' $ )[ ejin , ' j ^ o . trace pf / bifc or sugar . The conclusion is plain ; for as we know tlje jeitirpation of the ki ^ eys onuses . urea , to be accumulated in the blood , eo / the extirpation of the Livor ought to cause nn accumulation of bile and -ity £ ar in the blood if tho Liver were a maro Jitter for these substances , und '¦• t iiot tlie ' oi * gan which makes tlicm . ' ' > i ^•' '' ^^ M ^ ' ^ 'F / IptojpKB tujpn ¦ oiit to be coirect he will have thro'ivn a doulit / upon ' ftll the best eatabllehed facts of physiology ; he wilt have thereby dbiie great service , for doubt is tho mother of wisdom ; but he will have created
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SIR G . C . LEWIS ON THE CREDIBILITY OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY . An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History . By the Bight Hon . Sir George Cornewall Lewis . John VF . Parker and Son . We have too long delayed our notice of this excellent book , which it is the duty of a literary journal to recommend to the notice of scholars . Its importance will not be confined to the special investigation with which it 13 concerned , and to which it gives a new , and , we believe * a decisive turn . It will , we apprehend , be regarded as a most valuable example of sound historical criticism , conducted on just principles , and a most useful and invigorating lesson to the student in that department . _ Niebuhr ' s reconstruction of the history of Rome , and especially of the constitutional history , during the first four and a half centuries of the Republic , has been successfully impeached in some important points by Ihne and others , who have exhibited his want of sound ^ exegesis , and his orhifraw mnrip . of dealing with oassasres in Livy , Dionysms , and the other
authorities , from a reconstruction of which he . undertook , guided by the power of divination which he professed to have acquired , to restore the lost lineaments of the constitutional history of Rome . But these critics did not think of rigorously examining the basis of his whole theory . They showed that in some important instances he had not used his data fairly ; but they did not think of inquiring exactly what data he or any one else had to use . The consequence was , that for his unauthorised speculations they s ubstituted speculations almost as unauthorised of their own . Ihne has given us a new theory of the proprietary relations between patricians and plebeians , which led to the agitation for agrarian laws . Mr . F . Newman has shown what , considerin g his ordinary habits of mind , is an almost wayward credulity m treating of the political history of the _ later kings . " of the evi
Schwealer begins at the right end by giving a conspectus aU - dence for the early history , both documentary and monumental . But SirG . C . Lewis has first brought fully and decisively home to our minds the utter want of trustworthy evidence , and the consequent inanity of all speculations , for the long period in question . His principle is the perfectly sound one , that no historical fact is to be relied on the evidence tor which is not traceable to contemporary testimony . Now , if we include the Greek historians who wrote upon the war with Pyrrhus , the evidence for the facts of Roman history is traceable to contemporary testimony as far back as the landing of Pyrrhus in Italy , 281 B . C ., though the contemporary historians for the earlier and larger portion of that period are not now extant . But at that point contemporary testimony totally fails . Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus , who first reduced the early history to writing in the time of the second Punic war , had no materials for that history but oral tradition : a few isolated and often apocryphal documents and monuments
( of which the most important was the Code of the Twelve Tables ) , and from the Gallic conflagration downwards an imperfect register of the annual magistrates , and a few other matters , principally prodigies and their procurations , which formed objects of high importance in the eyes of the pontifical registrars ,, by whom the state registers of Rome were kept . Livy tells us himself ( without apparently suspecting the bearing of the statement on the character of his own history ) that almost all the archives , private as well as public , perished in the Gallic conflagration . There is no trace of any prose historian at Rome before Fabius Pictor , or of any poetical chronicler before Nasvius , who wrote a poetical chronicle of the first Punic war * with which he was contemporary . On the contrary , there is , strong evidence of the absence of literature of any kind at Rome before that period , in , the fact that Fabius and Cincius wrote in Greek , implying thereby that Latin was not a literary language . The first historian who wrote in the
native language was the elder Cato . . Now , on the most liberal computation , and allowing the political memory of the Romans , as a nation much governed by political precedents , to have been strong , oral tradition can hardly be trusted for more than one of tho five centuries before Fabius . The history of the rest , as it has come to us through Livy , JDionysius , Cicero , and Plutarch ,, who followed the chroniclers from , Fabius to Valerius Antias , " » ust be regarded by sound criticism as legendary , and , like other legends , as lying beyond the province of history , and affording no sound data for historical . speculation . We must take it as it is ; enjoy its legendary beauty , appreciate it as a , characteristic offspring of the national imagination , turn it into " Lays of Ancient Rome , " but not trout
it as a fund for the manufacture of endless antiquarian hypotheses and conjectural restorations , which are all alike incapable of proof and of confutation , and may be multiplied without end . Throw it into the crucible as often as we will , it will yield no historical truth , because it does not contain the stuff out of which historical truth is made . Curiosity must acquiesce , however unwillingly , in the fact that the first four centuries of Rome , the origin and formation of the Roman character , and tlio early development of theKoman institutions , is involved in almost total darkness . And" it is almost worthy of a Cagliostro to pretend that by shutting yourself up for a , long time in that darkness ^ and guziing intently on it , you acquire a right to pronounce , without positive proof , that real objects nre discernible in it , and to determine what those real objects are .
, But Niebuhr has discovered , as he thinks , that there are other materials for the early history than oral tradition , in the slwpo of national lays or ballads and funeral orations . The " ballad" theory , it is well known , has formed the nominal ground for Mr . Macaulay ' s Layn of Home , which are good enough of themselves , and do not need a bad theory tojuatify their production . Sir G , O . Lewis examines the evidence for thia theory , and it crumbles to nothing under his hands . It consists of a statement of Cato that tlie Romans , inauy centuries before his time , used to sing the praises of musiiqoug men at banquets , and an allusion of , l £ nniua , to bnrdawho had written before him in tho verse of Fauna and prophets . The statement ot Cuto , whatever his evidence may be worth for so distant a period , certainly does
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 22, 1855, page 916, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2107/page/16/
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