and the Antonines their appeals for a fair hear- | themselves into the camp, the forum, and ing. These men, it was alleged, who peti- even the very temples of the empire. It did tion Cæsar for indulgence, are the Pariah not appear, indeed, that they were connected caste of a nation more mutinous than the with any political movement, for, upon inEgyptians and more effeminate than the Syri-quiry, the recent tumults in Cyprus, and ans; and, thrust out by their own nation and kindred, they are suing for admission into the company of our pontiffs and philosophers.

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that everlasting caldron of sedition, Judæa, were not merely disowned by the apologists, who, in fact, were hated by the insurgents, and hated them in turn with true theological rancor. In fact, so far as they had aught in common with any party or person, the Christians were most inclined to fraternize with the Platonic academy, and a syncretic reconciliation had in fact commenced in some quarters, and especially at Alexandria, between them.

If Trajan or Aurelius had at any time leisure or inclination to turn over the scrolls of a Christian apology, he was probably struck with equal surprise and disgust at its contents. On the one hand, he would marvel at the high moral tone of its ethics and at its constant assertion of the unity of the divine nature- a truth which the philosophic Now syncretism, under every possible systems had each, in its turn, adumbrated, form-ethical, political, social, and theologbut none of them broadly announced. He ical, was the favorite policy of the Roman would mark with satisfaction that these treat- emperors. They would have all the varieties ises were couched in a spirit of fervent loyal- of mankind called in and restamped at the ty; that prayers such as they were- Cæsarean mint. Syria should bear the same and often they were such as, for their compre-impress as Britain, and the Morinian, who hensive piety, would have well befitted the picked up amber on the shores of the Baltic, secular games-were offered up for his own be brought to resemble the Bibyan who yearwelfare and that of the empire; and that ly descended the Nile with ivory and frankinthey denied none of his earthly attributes, cense. In the world of thought similar tenbut rendered cheerfully unto Cæsar the dencies were visible. No writers resemble things which were his. If, moreover, the one another more closely than the Roman emperor, as Hadrian had been, was initiated poets and historians who flourished between in the mysteries, his wonder would be in- the reigns of Claudius and Commodus. creased in proportion as he discovered in the There are, indeed, diversities of gifts among rude manifesto before him intimations of se- them, but there is an extraordinary similaricret bonds and recondite emblems or dogmas ty in the character of their minds. If all more awful and enigmatic than any which memorials of the authors had perished, no the Eleusinian hierophants had disclosed to attentive reader could doubt that Quintilian, his gaze. On the other hand, he would be the Plinys, and Tacitus, belonged to the same offended by the presumptuous tone of the age, or that Lucan, Silius, and Valerius Flacapologists. Men untrained in the schools, cus held similar canons of poetry. Nor and unacquainted with the very A B C of was Christianity itself, in spite of its occaphilosophical terminology, denounced in this sional denunciations of the world and its audacious roll the wisdom of the wise as rulers, averse to syncretism, on certain confolly and the creed of the civilized world as ditions, with the empire. Its records were a rank imposture. The petitioners, he would addressed to all mankind: its missionaries remark, seldom argued and generally as- had penetrated into every region, and it serted they cut the knots of the deepest found everywhere, short of the verge of barethical problems without scruple, and chal- barism, the human race gathered into two lenged discussion while they ignored the principal hemispheres of government. From practic and theoric of every sect in its turn. the Hyphasis to the Atlantic- the arena in What manner of men are these, he may well which the new religion moved principally have pondered in himself, who, in the very - two empires, and two alone, were to be act of seeking protection for their dogmas, found. Each minor body politic had been wage universal war with received opinions, drawn into one or other of these mighty cirand combine a philosophy worthy of Plato cles. He who was neither the subject nor the with the impiety of Diagoras the Melian? ally of the Cæsar whose throne was on the Seven Hills, was the slave or the friend of the great king of Susa or Ecbatana.

Such, probably, was the aspect which the earliest manifestoes of the Christians presented to a philosophic heathen. To the magistrate the next important question would be, how far have these opinions already prevailed? The apologists themselves alleged, and the police reports of the day would confirm their allegation, that they had reached to Cæsar's household, and had insinuated

The unity of the political world paved the way for the unity of creed and ritual. And in this respect Christianity possessed over its antagonist an advantage almost in itself alone decisive of victory. Although not without internal divisions, it possessed certain primary and universal truths common to all its sects:

it regarded Pagandom as its common foe, and | Comum, and Spurinna, an Etruscan Squire it marched in a compact mass to the assault Allworthy. In Macrobias and Aulus Gellius of the established religion. Its adversaries, we have glimpses of circles where high intelon the contrary, had no common principle of lectual cultivation went hand in hand with union; neither code nor charter of opinion; at least decorum; and even in Apuleius we their philosophy was caviare to the general, meet with records of unobtrusive virtues in and their ritual an empty, and often an ab- the heart of social corruption. We are not surd and offensive, pageant to the instructed. in a position to decide whether these are rare Even when Cicero was drawing up his man- or ordinary exceptions; but at least these uals of ethics and theology for the use of his casual examples of worth afford a ground for countrymen, and interpreting, not very suc- doubting the wholesale denunciations of the cessfully, to their more practical understand- apologists. Fashionable literature. - such ings, the subtile speculations of the Greeks, as the poetry of Ovid, Martial, and even mankind at large had become weary both of Ausonius is but an indifferent test of the their priestly and their philosophical teach- morality of an age. It may have floated ers. The latter they knew for pedants, the down to us, because it was from the first former they more than suspected to be quacks. popular by virtue of its corruption. Paul de Consciously or unconsciously, they required Kock and Dumas will probably survive, as a law by which to steer amid the ebb and they long since supplanted Fenelon. Neither flow of opinion, and since philosophy doubt- is history necessarily a sure guide, since it ed, while Christianity decided, the latter rap-deals only or chiefly with the eminences of idly attracted to its banners all who desired relief from doubt.

So far we have attempted to compress the argument between the old and new belief, as it related to religion and philosophy. But this is by no means the only ground on which the apologists and their opponents contended. Each side in these controversies produced a list of crimes committed ordinarily by the adverse faction, and Octavius and Cæcilius respectively bandy reproaches of fraud, cruelty, and licentiousness. This, indeed, is the favorite ground of attack and the most secure position of defence with all the Christian writers. Yet to us, who command a view of the entire battle-field, the assault probably appears more effective, and the position stronger than they appeared to contemporary eyes. So much, at least, we infer from the anxiety with which, on these points, the apologists prepare them both for defence and reprisals. The attack was comparatively easy. The arts, the literature, and the social life of Pagandom, even in its better ages, were all deeply infected with impurity; and at the time when Minucius wrote, a fresh stream of Syrian corruption had recently been poured into Rome by Elagabalus. Yet rife and even anomalous as were the vices of the Roman world in its period of decay, we should perhaps accept the relations of the apologists with some caution. Seneca, in his caustic and antithetical way, has sketched the portraits of certain prodigies of immorality in his time; but he has also drawn the lineaments of many noble characters among his contemporaries. The most delightful portions of the letters of the younger Pliny are those in which he describes the life of the country-gentleman if we may transplant the term of Italy, the accomplished Terentius and his no less accomplished wife, Pliny's neighbors at

social life, and these, like the dregs, are, for the most part, in corrupt eras, the chosen haunts of vice. We read Tacitus and Suetonius with some distrust; and we extend our distrust, in some degree, on similar grounds, to Tertullian and Augustine, when they declaim upon manners and morals. They had a case to make out; and they had plenty of witnesses to call, and they have had the Christian world ever since for their jury and judges. Compared with other apologists, Minucius is moderate in his assault upon the vices of his time; and the tone of his reproaches is that of an earnest but goodnatured man, displaying as much pity as anger in his rebuke. The defence of the Christians, again, may appear to us easier than it really was at the time to its actual champions; for they were committed, in limine, to two formidable objections. First, in denying the truth of the state-religion they denied the authority of the Cæsar as supreme pontiff, and thereby exposed themselves to the penalties of the lex majestatis, the law of high treason; and, secondly, by setting themselves against the entire texture and machinery of Paganism, they assailed the whole system of gentile, local, and national worship, and accordingly so far arrayed themselves against so many of the elements of social order. Consequently we find, both in the dialogue before us, and in longer and more animated manifestoes, elaborate, exaggerated, and punctilious expressions of loyalty to the emperors, in their civil capacity, as the rulers appointed by God. No Jacobite was ever more zealous and laudatory toward his exiled princes, than Tertullian shows himself to the Cæsar of his day; especially after some civic picture of the everlasting torments in store for two thirds of the Cæsar's subjects, and by implication accordingly for the Cæsar himself, if he sanctions or partakes in

such and such abominations. So that the Christian apologists ran inevitably upon the horns of this dilemma - professing themselves the most obedient and orderly of citizens, they did their best to pull down the social machinery of the world; and, avowing themselves the most loyal of subjects, they assailed the most sacred attributes of the

Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, as an earnest of better things in future, this edition of a Christian apologist, who illus trates the history of opinion without adding fuel to controversy.

INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS. Jan. 11. -J. M. Rendel, Esq., President, in the chair. Cæsar, his pontificate and his apotheosis. Notices of several Methods, now in use, for its "On the Nature and Properties of Timber, with This was indeed bearding the lion in his den; Preservation from Decay," by Mr. H. P. Burt. these were worshipful truths to tell the mas- The author examined the different species of home ter of thirty legions and of any number of and foreign grown timber, their various properlictors, with sharp axes upon their shoulders, ties, uses, tendencies to decay, under certain cirto boot. Upon the whole, we are inclined to cumstances, the most apparent causes of dry rot, think that, all circumstances considered, the the formation of fungi, and the action of wet and Cæsars, from Nero to Constantine, were a of heat; noticing the extraordinary duration of tolerant race of despots. Francis I., of specimens of timber found in Egypt, in the ruins France, to expiate, in the eyes of Christen- of Nineveh, and in the more recent monastic and dom, his alliance with the Sultan against castellated edifices of this country. The chemical Austria; Henry VIII., to maintain his own constitution of wood was examined, in order to divine right to curb men's consciences, and trace the origin of decay, and to lead to the conPhilip the Second and Third of Spain, to clear sideration of the most efficient means of arresting their dominions of Jews and Moriscos, com- moderately cheap system of preserving timber, it. The necessity for some efficacious and yet mitted more wholesale atrocities than were was insisted on, from the great demand for railperpetrated by the Pagan emperors, and with- way and other engineering works, not only in out their excuses for ignorance or panic. Europe, but even in the East Indies; where it Fortunately for the apologists and their breth- was remarkable, that the wood which would reren, the age in which they wrote their fiery sist the climate and the ravages of the white ant, declamations was not a reading age, and the was only to be found at such distances inland, sovereign and his ministers were generally that the expense of carriage, in a country devoid too deeply engrossed in business or pleasure of good means of communication, rendered it for the Christian defences to reach the im- more economical to buy fir timber in the north perial or ministerial bureaus regularly with the other police and provincial reports. We know from Pliny's letters, when they did reach head-quarters, how greatly they perplexed the circumspect and humane Trajan: and how reluctantly he signed the rescripts for punishing the offenders against the maj esty of Jupiter and his own.

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of Europe, convert it to the required dimensions, and saturate it with creosote in England, and convey it by sea to India, for the use of the railtry. The earliest records of preserving animal way now in course of construction in that counand vegetable substances were traced back to the Egyptians, whose mummies were embalmed by being boiled in pitch, found floating in the lakes; the linen and the timber, so preserved, gave the We have endeavored to place before cur first idea for adapting the process to the wants readers the argument of the Dialogue of Oc- of the present period, and several of the patents tavius in the light in which it was probably granted were enumerated and commented on; the regarded by contemporaries. We, who see greatest space being devoted to those of Kyan, the results only of the diffusion of Christian- for chloride of mercury; Burnett, for chloride ity, who live in a social system which of zinc; Margary, for acetate, or sulphate of supposes its truth and partially adopts its copper; Payne, for the use of two solutions in maxims, and whose private as well as public and forming an insoluble substance in the pores succession, mutually decomposing each other, morals profess to be founded upon its laws, of the wood; and Bethell, for creosote, or oil of can but imperfectly appreciate the position coal-tar; which last had, by its extensive emof its early champions, unless we place ourployment in harbor, railway, and other engineerselves, so far as we can ideally, upon the ing works, proved, that when properly executed, ground occupied by them. We repeat our the preservation of the timber from decay and thanks to Mr. Holden for placing within the from the ravages of insects might be considered reach and drawing the attention of the stu- complete. The paper was illustrated by a series dent to this classical writer. We trust that of models and drawings, showing the various aphe may be induced to extend his labors in paratus for the several processes, enlarged diathis direction, and employ his various and grams of microscopic views of sections of several accurate scholarship upon other popular kinds of timber, both in the natural state and treatises of the patristic age. Our universi- after being creosoted; experiments on the deties have been too prone hitherto to regard grees of saturation by the process, and on the the writings of the Fathers as merely foun- transverse strength of the timber; with the redries for Church of England artillery against tem by the author, whose experience had been sults of the improvements introduced into the sysdissent, and we are glad to receive from the very extensive.-Athenæum.

BY PROFESSOR ROBERT HUNT.

STRANGE mysteries appear to surround this curious natural production. It long stood between the three kingdoms of nature, like the Egyptian sphinx, an unsolved enigma: hence amber attracted the attention alike of the poet and of the philosopher, and it became the basis of more than one romantic story. Event ually, by subjecting amber to a peculiar kind of optical analysis, the enigma was solved; and, by its action on polarized light, it was determined most certainly to be a vegetable resin.

A fine transparent piece of amber appears as though it were a thing of yesterday- the gathered tears of some oriental gum tree, full of sunlight; yet it is as old, it may be older, than the hills. The flies in amber tell us thus - there they are :

fire of precisely the same character as that which had been previously developed from resin and from glass. Here we had a modern Prometheus, indeed, stealing fire from heaven. Thus it was proved that lightning was only a

which had first excited the attention of Thales of Miletus. The danger incurred by the illustrious Franklin was soon fatally proved by the death of a continental philosopher, who repeated his experiment. Professor Rickmann had reared high in the air an electrical conductor, and connected it with some experimental arrangements in his study. Proceeding without sufficient caution, the discharge from a passing thunder-cloud flowed through the conductor, and, penetrating the body of the philosopher, destroyed his life.

once developed. A large glass globe was fixed on an axis and turned rapidly; a gun-barrel, suspended by silken strings, was hung near it, a wire fastened to the gun-barrel, dropping into a glass of water at the other end. The glass globe was excited, as old Thales ex-grand manifestation of the same phenomena cited his amber, by friction with the hands; and the person holding the glass of water, upon applying his finger to obtain the spark from the barrel, received a shock, which convinced the terrified experimenters that the spirit was a giant in its wrath. The most exaggerated statements were published in all the large cities of Europe. The glass globe and the Leyden phial, as it was called, was exhibited in Paris and London, and crowds of spectators flocked to witness the discharge, and to feel the "fearful" shock. The spirit of the amber was now fairly developed, and its powers were examined by experiment, guided by the new ideas. Men no longer used thought as the only element in the discovery of knowledge; they had begun to employ their senses and to cultivate habits of ob

servation.

At length, a great single-minded man, who had made his home

In lands which echo further west

Than the Greeks' island of the blest,

seeing through some of the mystery which enveloped this subtile spirit in amber, resolved on determining by an experiment, beautiful in its simplicity and grand in its danger, the relation which it bore to the awful spirit of the thunder-storm.

The sculptor has idealized the noble form of the impious Ajax defying the lightning: how much more dignified would be a statue of the philosopher compelling the thunder of the heavens to speak aloud its secrets! Benjamin Franklin stood forth from among men in the boldness of his views, and he saw, or thought he saw, in the attractive principle of electron, a power of universal diffusion, and he resolved to examine for himself. He had previously made himself acquainted with the laws by which electricity appeared to be guided, and availing himself of this knowledge, Franklin devised his grand experiment.

He mounted a kite into the air, insulated its string, which served as a conductor, and, waited to see the result. For some time he waited in vain, the evocator received no answer to his call, the spirit refused to obey his summons. But when man calls on nature in the purity of his soul, and solicits earnestly a development of natural truths, nature rarely fails to vouchsafe a reply.

Franklin stood watching his arrangement; presently every fibre of his kite-string was seen to stand on end, and, on applying a pointer to the ball to which it was attached, he was saluted with a discharge of electric

Further researches in the same direction confirmed the great result of Benjamin Franklin, and proved that the earth and the air were equally under the influence of this allpervading element. It was shown that no body existed in nature through which this subtile principle was not diffused, that changes were constantly being produced by the interference of other physical powers, and that in the efforts made to restore equilibrium we had the manifestations of electrical phenomena.

During all the stages of animal and vegetable growth, electricity is either absorbed or given off, and no change can take place in the form of matter without its effecting a corresponding change in its electrical relations. Thus water is converted into vapor, and it takes from the earth some of its electricity. This ascends into the air, and floats as clouds, accumulating in this way its quantity of elec trical power. Circumstances may arise through which the electricity is quietly returned back to the earth, or such as may determine a concentration of the electrical element in the atmosphere. It floats on, dark and lowering, with its stored artillery, until, becoming overcharged, it bursts forth in fury, and too frequently performs the work of devastation.

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A hill, a tall tree, a pointed spire, becomes the object of heaven's wrath, and it is torn and splintered by the violence of the disruptive discharge from the cloud. We have learnt something of this, and we are profiting by our knowledge. The electricity does not cannot pass by the solid matter of the object upon which it falls; consequently, it endeavors to find its way into the earth by the intersticial spaces between the particles of the solid matter. These channels being insuffi cient to convey it, they are split and rent in all directions. There are certain bodies which, by their peculiar molecular constitution, have the property of allowing this fluid to pass through it very freely; and if we place such a mass of matter as is sufficient to convey