third. He also received six hundred pounds for Births, Marriages, and Deaths, and four hundred pounds a year as editor of Colburn's New Monthly. Charles Mathews paid James Smith one thousand pounds for Country Cousins, A Trip to Paris, Air Ballooning, and A Trip to America, written for his entertainments. The sums of money Sir Walter Scott received for his works are unparalleled. His share of the first work, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, was but £87 Ibs., or half the clear profits; but he sold the copyright afterwards for five hundred pounds. His share in the Lay of the Last Minstrel was £769 6s. Longman gave him one hundred pounds for Lyrical Pieces, suggested by the popularity of the last. Constable offered one thousand guineas for Marmion very shortly after it was begun, and with out having seen one line of it; and the price was paid long before the poem was published. It was first printed in quarto, price one guinea and a half. In less than a month, the 2,000 copies were sold, then 3,000 octavo copies followed. By 1825, 31,000 copies of this poem had been sold. For the Lady of the Lake, Sir Walter had two thousand guineas; and by 1836, 50,000 copies had been sold. Constable gave fifteen hundred guineas for one-half the copyright of the Lord of the Isles. Of Rokeby, more than 3,000 were sold at two guineas by the second day of publication. For his edition of Dryden's works, in eighteen volumes, he had seven hundred and fifty-six pounds; fifteen hundred pounds for an edition of Swift; and for the articles

on Chivalry, the Drama, and Romance, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, one hundred pounds each. But what a mine of wealth he discovered when he first thought of embodying the thoughts and feelings of the olden time in works of fiction! Waverley was an anonymous novel put forth at the dead season. Constable refused to give one thousand pounds for the copyright; but 1,000 copies were sold in five weeks, and on his share, Constable netted one thousand pounds in the first year. Constable agreed in 1821 to give for the remaining copyright of the four novels published between December, 1819, and January, 1821—namely, Ivanhoe, the Monastery, the Abbot, and Kenilworth-the sum of five thousand guineas. By these four novels, the fruits of not more than a year's labor, Scott cleared ten thousand pounds before the bargain was completed. But all this (and much more) was of no avail, when Sir Walter, at the age of fifty-five, found himself involved in the failure of Constable & Co. to an enormous extent. The debts exceeded one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. This was in 1825; and in a year and a half, this indefatigable author had reduced the amount by twenty-eight thousand pounds. The Life of Napoleon produced eighteen thousand pounds, which was at the rate of more than thirty-six pounds a day for his time. Woodstock realized eight thousand six hundred pounds. By the republication of his novels, etc., he reduced the debt by fiftyfour thousand pounds.

FEW of the eminent names in modern English literature are more familiar to the readers of the ECLECTIC than that of John Tyndall, F.R.S., and there is no scientific man perhaps whose work is better known to them. Every one of our recent volumes has contained one or more articles from his pen, and in our literary department we have kept our readers advised of what he has been doing from time to time in the field of general literature.

His life has been an uneventful one, as is generally the case with a student, and the details which are accessible to the public are few; but we give below the

substance of an excellent sketch which appeared in one of the early numbers of Appleton's Journal.

Professor John Tyndall, the successor of Faraday in the chair of natural philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, was born in the village of Leighlin Bridge, Ireland, in 1820. He is descended from the old English family of Tyndales, some members of which emigrated, about the middle of the seventeenth century, to Ireland, on the eastern or Saxon fringe of which a few of their descendants are still scattered.

The father of Professor Tyndall was a

man in lowly circumstances, but of marked character, in which intellectual power and personal courage, combined with delicacy of mind and feeling, were distinguished traits. From his forefathers he inherited a taste for religious controversy, as far as related to the Churches of Rome and England; and thus the earliest intellectual discipline of his son consisted in exercises on the doctrines of infallibility, purgatory, and transubstantiation, while his early text-books were the theological works of Tyndale, Chillingworth, and Tillotson. By the silent operation of his character-by example as well as by precept-this remarkable man inspired the intellect of his boy, and taught him to love, above all things, a life of manly independence. He died in May, 1847, quoting to his son a little before his death the words of Wolsey to Cromwell,-"Be just, and fear nothing."

Of his early education, received at a school in his native village, nothing is noteworthy, except that he there cultivated and acquired a taste for mathematics, and especially pure geometry. In 1839, Mr. Tyndall quitted school to join the branch of the Ordnance Survey which was stationed in his native town, in the capacity of "civil assistant." He quickly acquired a practical knowledge of the business, becoming in turn draughtsman, computer, surveyor, and trigonometrical observer.

A simple circumstance, which occurred to Mr. Tyndall in 1841, formed a turningpoint in his career. While stationed at Cork, he worked at mapping in the same room with an intelligent gentleman, Mr. Lawrence Ivers, who became interested in his companion's work. One day he asked Tyndall how his leisure hours were employed, and the answer not being quite satisfactory, he rejoined: -"You have five hours a day at your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to systematic study. Had I," he continued, "when I was your age, had a friend to advise me as I now advise you, instead of being in my present subordinate position, I should be the equal of Colby" (Director of the Survey). Next morning, Tyndall was at his books before five o'clock, and for twelve years never swerved from the practice.

In 1844, seeing no definite prospect before him, Mr. Tyndall resolved to come to America, some members of his father's family having emigrated to this country in the early part of the present century. He

was, however, dissuaded from this, and, turning his attention to railway engineering, he was engaged by a firm in Manchester. In 1845-the period of the "railway mania"-in the Yorkshire office of the company, he first met Mr. T. A. Hirst, an articled pupil, who became one of his most intimate friends, and is now professor of mathematics in University College, London.

Thus five years were spent on the Ordnance Survey, and three on railroads. His character, at this period, is thus described by one who knew him well :

:

"Extreme caution and accuracy, together with dauntless perseverance under difficulties, characterized then, as now, the performance of every piece of work he took in hand. Habitually, indeed, he pushed verification beyond the limits of all ordinary prudence, and, on returning from a hard day's work, he has been known to retrace his steps for miles, in order to assure himself of the security of some 'bench-mark,' upon whose permanence the accuracy of his levels depended. Previous to one of those unpostponable thirtieths of November, when all railway plans and sections had to be deposited at the Board of Works, a series of levels had to be completed near Keithley, in Yorkshire, and Manchester reached before midnight. The day was stormy beyond description; levelling-staves snapped in twain before the violent gusts of wind; and level and leveller were in constant peril of being overturned by the force of the hurricane. Assistants grumbled impossible,' and were only shamed into submissive persistence by that stern resolution which, before night-fall, triumphed over all obstacles." In 1847, he accepted an appointment

as teacher at Queenwood College, in Hampshire, a new institution, devoted partly to junior instruction, and partly to the preliminary technical education of agriculturists and engineers. It was surrounded by eight hundred acres of land, upon which, besides farming, surveying, levelling, and other engineering operations were to be practically taught. Professor Tyndall here developed remarkable tact and resources in the management of insubordinate students, declining all harsh expedients, and depending for influence upon pure force of character. In the laboratory of this institution he found Mr. Frankland, now the distinguished professor in the Royal School of Chemistry, in

London. Desirous of pursuing their scientific studies under more favorable circumstances, the two friends left England together in 1848, and repaired to the University of Marburg, to study under the celebrated chemist and physicist Bunsen. Professor Tyndall attended his lectures, and worked in his laboratory. He also attended the physical lectures of Professors Gerling and Knoblauch, and the mathematical lectures of Stegmann. His first scientific paper was prepared here, and was a mathematical essay on "Screw Surfaces." But the investigation which first made him known to the scientific world was one "On the Magneto-optic Properties of Crystals, and the Relation of Magnetism and Diamagnetism to Molecular Arrangement."

In 1851, Professor Tyndall went to Berlin, and continued his researches on the newly-discovered force of diamagnetism, and on the magnetic properties of crystals, in the laboratory of Professor Magnus. After making the acquaintance and securing the friendship of many eminent men in Berlin, he returned to London, where, during the same year, he first became personally known to Professor Faraday. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1852, lectured first before the Royal Institution in February, 1853, and was elected professor of natural philosophy to that establishment in June of the same year.

The first three years of Mr. Tyndall's residence in London were devoted to an exhaustive investigation of diamagnetic polarity, and the general phenomena of the diamagnetic force-magne-crystallic action included. In the Philosophical Transactions and Philosophical Magazine he published various memoirs on these subjects, all of which were received with favor by the scientific world.

The scientific researches for which Professor Tyndall is chiefly distinguished relate to the molecular constitution of matter. Beginning with his magneto-optical and diamagnetic investigations, he has pursued this train of inquiry into the field of the radiant forces with the most interesting results. His researches on the relations of radiant heat to the constitution of vapors are embodied in his able work entitled "Heat as a Mode of Motion," published in 1863, and have subsequently been still further and very brilliantly pursued.

As a thinker, Professor Tyndall's posi tion is a unique and commanding one. He is not only thoroughly disciplined in the methods of science, a consummate and indefatigable experimenter, full of new devices, both for the exploration and the illustration of phenomena, but he is also a man of enlarged and independent views, to which his high scientific position gives weight and force with the public. As it is more and more perceived that the mind in all its modes of movement is one, and that its scientific action is its most perfect action, the opinions of men of thorough scientific culture upon all questions involving truth and error, will meet with constantly-increasing consideration. shown in the general interest that is taken in whatever Professor Tyndall has to say to the public, and whatever the subject upon which he speaks. Of his character as a writer, it is perhaps superfluous to speak; but it may be remarked that the same extraordinary power of vivid imagination which he carries into his experimental researches, and which is tasked to its highest in grasping the conception of complex molecular phenomena, is equally manifested in those bold and striking images with which he enriches his descriptions and narrations. Professor Tyndall is also a man of quick and ardent feeling, which constantly kindles his intellect into poetic action. His is the rare gift to give us the poetry of science without impairing the quality of science itself. As a lecturer, Professor Tyndall is vigorous, racy, and impressive. Although neither fluent nor eloquent in the current rhetorical sense, he carries his audience completely with him by the clearness and freshness of his expositions and the brilliancy and boldness of his illustrations. Of a highly-vitalized and restless temperament, and a wiry, elastic physique, which is superbly adapted to Alpine climbing, his movements upon the platform are rapid and decisive, and hardly conform to those ideal curves of grace which are so prized in declamatory art. But of his characteristics in this respect we need not speak, as he has pledged himself to come to this country and lecture, when the public will be able to judge for themselves. Socially, Professor Tyndall is free, genial, and interesting-a man of the world, at home in all relations, and, although a favorite of the ladies, is still a bachelor.

the

Mr. Swinburne is about to send to the press Prelude" to his unfinished poem, "Tristram and Iseult," itself a poem of considerable length and importance, being several hundred lines long. The death is announced of Mr. Thomas Roscoe, the editor of Lanzi's "History of Italian Painting," and the son of the author of the "Life of Leo the Tenth."

M. Romek, of Prague, has just brought out the second volume of his history of that city, which is brought down to the fifteenth century. The first volume appeared as far back as 1856. Both are in Czech.

Mr. R. Somers, who made a six months' tour in the southern portion of the United States last winter and spring, will soon publish a volume containing the results of his travels, under the title of "The Southern States since the War."

The Rev. Dr. Richard Morris's "Historical Outlines of English Accidence," which gives in a condensed form, for the use of schools, the results of his many years' study of Early English and Anglo-Saxon, will be published shortly.

The-long expected novel by George Eliot is to be published by the Blackwoods in December. Like most of her previous efforts in this field, it is a story of provincial life in England. It will be presented first to the American public through the pages of Every Saturday.

The Rev. A. B. Grosart is compiling a volume of contemporary judgments on great poets, like those of Gower, Occleve, and Lydgate, on Chaucer; Raleigh, etc., on Spenser; Ben Jonson, Milton, etc., on Shakspeare; Marvel, etc., on Milton.

The Academy states that a new translation of Byron is announced from Prague. Professor Durdik, of that city, to whom literature is already indebted for a valuable essay on that poet, is about to translate his complete works into the Bohemian language.

M. Bedarrides, a French artillery officer who served in the Crimean War, and wrote an interesting work on that war, has written a very able brochure, entitled " Réorganization de l'Armée

Française, ou Morale de l'Invasion Prussienne,' founded on his observations during the campaign of 1870 in the Army of the Rhine.

Joseph Skipsey, a heaver of coal, a genuine pitman of thirty-seven, who has been at work in the pit since he was five years old, and who taught himself to read, has just published a small volume of poems at Blyth, "printed by William Alder," which contains a few touching pieces on the accidents that a pitman is liable to-Athenæum.

According to a Report on the libraries of Switzerland, read at the recent Congress of the Swiss Statistical Society at Basle, Switzerland posand no less than 1,629 popular and educational sesses 25 public libraries, with 920,520 volumes; libraries, with 687,939 volumes. The largest libraries are those of Zurich, with 100,000 volumes; Basle, with 94,000; Lucerne, with 80,000.

Rights of Editor.---In an action lately brought against the Editor of the "Echo," for the value of an article sent unsolicited, the judge decided that articles so sent were at the disposal of the editor, who had the liberty of accepting or refusing; and that, if he gave notice to that effect, he had the right to destroy those which he did not accept.

The first and fifth volumes of Mr. Ruskin's "Modern Painters" are out of print, and the other volumes nearly so. In the first volume of the uniform octavo edition of his works now in preparation, Mr. Ruskin has declared his intention to reprint very little of his "Modern Painters," as his opinions have changed so much since the days in which he wrote that book.

Herr Berthold Auerbach has published a German translation of Spinoza's collected works in two volumes, under the title of "B. de Spinoza's Sämmtliche Werke." Some thirty years ago, Herr Auerbach published his first translation of Spinoza's works. The present work contains the later discovered works of Spinoza and a new biography.

We understand that the new volume of Mr. Freeman's "History of the Norman Conquest is entirely taken up with the reign of William the Conqueror. The fifth and last volume will carry on the narrative in the form of a sketch to the

period to which Mr. Freeman originally designed that his history should extend-the reign of Edward the First.

A new edition of Low's "Handbook to the Charities of London" is in preparation, under the editorship of Mr. Charles Mackeson, who will be glad to receive additions and corrections at the publishers'. It is intended to show, as far as possible, the working expenses of each charity, in addition to the usual information as to the work

done during the year, the income, and the names

of the officials.

The revision of Luther's Bible, undertaken by delegates from Prussia, Würtemberg, and Saxony, is proceeding much more rapidly than might have been expected from the incorrectness of the translation. The New Testament has been ready for some time, and has been introduced by authority

in the churches of Prussia. The alterations are neither very numerous nor important, as far as can be judged from a cursory examination of the part already published.

The first volume of the unpublished memoirs of the celebrated Polish poet Jean Ursin Niemcewicz has just been published at Posen (Zupanski). Niemcewicz was the friend and fellow-laborer of Kosciuszko, and took part in the revolution of 1831. After this he lived successively in Italy, France, Germany, and America. He was member of the Diet of Poland, and one of the most brilliant writers of the period preceding Mickiewicz. The memoirs are full of interest, both in a literary and political point of view.

An English Quarterly is about to be published in Berlin, to be called the German Quarterly Magazine. It is proposed to translate those lectures by Virchow, Haeckel, Gneist, and other celebrities of Berlin, which have appeared and are in the course of publication in a series edited by Virchow and Holtzendorff, on science, history, and art, which may be interesting to English read

ers.

One-half of them are on scientific subjects, treated in a popular style; the other half relate to history and art, and each quarterly part will contain essays only of a similar character.

The Catalogue of all French publications during the twenty-five years 1840 to 1865, compiled by the German bookseller Lorenz, settled in Paris, is at last completed, having been interrupted by the involuntary flight of the editor from Paris, about a year ago. In the absence of any comprehensive catalogue since Quérard, which reaches only to 1839, this is a great boon to librarians, booksellers, and persons who desire to refer to the publications of French authors. The arrangement is alphabetical, under the name of the author; in anonymous works, under the first substantive of the title. Each author's list is preceded by a short biographical notice.

An extensive work on the History of Mary Stuart of Scotland, by Prof. Petit, of Beauvais, is, we understand, nearly ready for publication. The Professor has been engaged upon it for the last ten years, and has spared neither money nor labor in order to lay before the world such an accumulation of evidence relative to the unfortu

nate Queen of Scots as has never yet been made public. The work is intended by the author to prove a complete justification of the Queen from the charges brought against her. It will be in two large quarto volumes, an English translation of which will be published before the original in French. M. Charles de Flandre, of Edinburgh, is the translator.

The Saturday Review.-The editorial writers of the London Saturday Review have no reason for fault-finding with the proprietors, so far as hospitality is concerned. It is the agreeable custom of the owners of that journal to give an annual dinner to the writers; and at the one given three or four weeks ago nearly fifty gentlemen were present. The editor, Mr. Harwood, was in the chair, Mr. Beresford Hope being on one side, and Mr. Venables on the other. Among the company were Sir R. Maine, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. E. Pigott, Mr. C. H. Fyffe, Mr. Oxenford, and others eminent as writers.

There were no speeches. Many of the diners looked like country clergymen fresh from their rectories, and it was curious to imagine which part of the Review was in their charge.

Darwinism. In a reprint of an article in the last number of the North American Review by Mr. Chauncey Wright, the author ably defends Mr. Darwin from some of Mr. St. George Mivart's attacks; and clearly points out the nature and extent of the variations suitable for the efficient action of natural selection--a point on which Mr. Mivart, like so many other critics, has misunderstood, and to some extent misrepresented, the the ory. Several of Mr. Mivart's special difficulties are very ingeniously overcome, but others of equal or greater weight are left unnoticed. The discussion of the theological bearings of the subject is somewhat obscure; and though the article must be con. sidered to be a criticism of, rather than an answer to Mr. Mivart's book, it exhibits much originality of thought and a very accurate conception of the essential features of the theory of natural selection, and is therefore a real contribution to the literature of the subject. The Academy.

A work by Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, is announced in our list of publications, containing the History of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, B. C. 668 to 626. The cuneiform texts are given of all the historical inscriptions of the reign of Assurbanipal, the most important in Assyrian history. Each text is accompanied by an interlinear translation (in English), and the whole book is divided into sections, according to the various campaigns of the king. The long inscription on the decagon cylinder of Assurbanipal, now in the British Museum, is taken as the standard text. This document alone contains 1,200 lines of cuneiform writing. The annals of Assurbanipal mention the conquest of Egypt by the Assyrians under Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal; in this part we have the Assyrian account of Tirhakah, Ñecho I., and Psammitichus I. In the affairs of Asia Minor, Gyges and Ardys, kings of Lydia, come in; and there are numerous wars and other events, including the conquests of Babylonia, 'Susiana, and

Arabia.

ers,

Public Libraries in Italy.-From a return of the statistics of public libraries in Italy for 1870, presented to the Minister of Public Instruction, it appears that Italy possesses 28 of these instructions, which were resorted to last year by 723,359 readNaples, the most populous of Italian cities, with five public libraries, has also the largest number of readers, being 192,992. Turin, with one public library, has 115,000 readers; Florence, with three, 92,000. The library most frequented in proportion to the population was that of Catania, with 18,641 readers. Nine only of the libraries are open in the evening; the number of visits made at that time was 104,000. Works in general literature and philology were most largely in request; after these, treatises on jurisprudence and legislation; and in the third place, works on physical science. The proportion of novels issued was very small, which may perhaps be owing to works of this description being but sparingly admitted into the libraries. The total number of works

added to all these institutions during the year was 11,706.