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and subsequent death of the latter, he became, in public estimation, though not without rivals, the first railway engineer in Europe.

This is not the time nor the place to review his controversies with some of his rivals, who, with more ambition than genius, attempted to surpass his constructions, and those of his father, by mere excess of dimensions, for which they received from many persons a praise which should be accorded only to improvements of mechanical construction or organization. It is enough upon this subject to say, that the experience of the few years that have yet elapsed has shown, as far as so short an experience can show, that upon all these subjects of controversy Mr. Stephenson was mainly in the right; nor has it yet appeared that in his long and diversified career he ever made what may be called an engineering blunder. Praise like this can hardly be accorded to any one who has gone before him.

Of all the works of Mr. Stephenson, the tubular bridge, of which the first was constructed to cross the Menai Strait, is that upon which his reputation for genius will mainly rest. In the construction of the railway and locomotive, no high claim as an inventor can be accorded to him, for not only his father, but Trevethick and many others had preceded him; but the tubular bridge is the embodiment of a high original conception, at once bold and practical; and although it will probably never be of common use, yet there have been and must hereafter occur extraordinary obstacles, which cannot be so well overcome in any other way.

Our colleague was fortunate, not only in his paternity, but in his time; - a time when the wealth of a long peace and the activity of a great empire were lavishly poured out under an excessive, perhaps morbid, excitement for railway improvements. This, added to the great aid derived from the recent improvements in all the useful arts, gave him a success that no genius or activity at any preceding time could have brought to his career, a career that posterity will not fail to recognize as having left a deep impression upon our age.

FREDERICK WILLIAM THIERSCH, one of the most distinguished philologists of the age, was born at Kitscheidungen near Freyburg, June 17, 1784. His early education was pursued in the schools of his native town; he studied afterwards at the Universities of Leipsic and Göttingen, and took his doctor's degree at Göttingen in 1808, immediately after which he was appointed Professor in the Lyceum of that place. In the following year (1809) he was called to Munich as

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Professor in the University just established there. The condition of the country was such, on account of the military movements of the time, that young Thiersch was only able to reach his destination in safety by joining a French corps, and marching equipped like a common soldier. He found that learning in Bavaria was at a very low ebb, and he at once devoted himself to the promotion of education and literature with extraordinary zeal and ability. It was through his influence over the most enlightened men of the kingdom that classical studies, including the archæology of art, first assumed the prominent position which they maintain at the present day in the Bavarian capital. In 1812, he founded the Philological Seminary, which soon became an important part of the University, and in the same year commenced the publication of the Acta Philologicorum Monacensium. Thiersch took a lively interest in the fortunes of Greece, and was one of the first among the European scholars to predict the restoration of her nationality. In 1814 he went to Vienna, and, meeting Count Capo d'Istria there, assisted in founding a Greek society of the friends of literature (the piλóμovoσi), and afterwards the political society intended to embrace the leading Greeks wherever found, and called the Hetaria. When the war of independence broke out, in 1821, his zeal in the cause influenced the king and court of Bavaria to lend their aid to the establishment of the Greek nation. In this and other ways he proved himself to be a constant and most valuable friend to the Greeks. Soon after the close of the war he visited the country, and made a careful study of its actual condition. The results of his observations were given to the world in 1833, in a work written in French, and entitled L'Etat actuel de la Grèce; and it is to him more than to any other, that Prince Otho was indebted for his election to the throne of Greece. The other writings of Professor Thiersch are on Public Education, on Ancient Art, editions of the Greek Classics, and numerous contributions to the transactions of the Royal Bavarian Society of Sciences, of which he was President for several years. In 1858 the jubilee of Mr. Thiersch's doctorate was celebrated with great enthusiasm at Munich. Deputations from all the leading Universities of Germany, and from numerous learned societies, were sent to Munich with addresses and congratulations. Orders of knighthood were conferred upon him by German sovereigns and by the king of Greece, in token of their high estimation of his character, abilities, and learning. The young Greeks studying in the University of Munich

sent to him a lyrical poem in the ancient language of their country, written by Bernadahes, one of their number, who has since distinguished himself in poetical literature, and the University of Athens addressed to him a grateful letter, written in Classical Greek by Professor Philippos Johannis, one of the most accomplished teachers, and in that year the Prytanis or Rector of the University. Professor Thiersch, it is understood, has left an edition of Eschylus, which he had prepared with a view to its publication after his death.

By his decease the world has lost a scholar of large and various acquirements, a man of elevated principles and pure character, of amiable temper and cordial manners, an acute and tasteful critic in literature and art, an author whose works take rank among the most learned productions of the age, a friend and supporter of learned institutions and of liberal principles of government.

CARL RITTER, the renowned author of the Erdkunde, &c., or "The Science of the Globe in its Relation to Nature and to the History of Mankind," was born in Quedlinburg, a town of Prussian Saxony, on the 7th of August, 1779. When he had passed only two years as a student at the University of Halle, he became, for eighteen years, a private tutor in the family of Mr. Hollweg, a wealthy banker. of Frankfort, where the celebrated statesman and minister, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, was one of his pupils. In 1814, after prolonged travel in the middle and south of Europe, he brought his two pupils to the University of Göttingen, where he produced, in 1817 and 1818, the first and second volumes of the first edition of his great geographical work. Two years after, mainly through the instrumentality of William Humboldt, then Minister of Public Instruction, he was called to Berlin, as Professor of Geography at the Royal Military School and at the University, where the first chair, it is believed, devoted to that special branch of knowledge in any German university, was created for him.

Here, besides other writings, he published, in 1822, the first volume of a second and much enlarged edition of his Erdkunde. This after ten years of intense academical activity, largely occupied by the preparation and delivery of the courses of public lectures which gave him such renown as a teacher - was followed in 1832 by a second volume; and from that time down to 1838, six more volumes, or one volume a year, attest his wonderful industry and learning. In the twenty-one succeeding years, that is, to the close of Ritter's life, eleven

volumes more, or one volume every other year, tell of his ceaseless activity, notwithstanding his advancing age. The first volume was devoted to Africa; the nineteenth, which nearly finishes Asia, was published only a few weeks before his death.

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Ritter's personal qualities and character as one of our colleagues, once his favorite pupil, informs us were exceedingly attractive and admirable. The same competent judge, himself a distinguished cultivator of geographical science, pronounces that "the peculiar turn of Ritter's mind was more intuitive than logical, more synthetical than analytical, more objective than subjective. While, therefore, his views and his method are entirely original, we seek in vain in his works for a formal system, an absolute idea rigorously carried out. His unflinching loyalty to the truth, as he sees it, not as he infers it may be, seems to render such systematization uncongenial to his mind. He shrinks, indeed, from all cold and formal definitions. Even his most characteristic conceptions, those which constitute the spirit of his method, preserve much of the nature of deep intuitions, — the expression of which is always highly suggestive, but often lacks the clear, logical shape which make them easy to define, and would give them immediate currency. With a mind essentially constructive, he descends, nevertheless, with the most scrupulous care into the study of details; and it is upon the well-secured basis of facts alone, and with a sense of the true sometimes almost amounting to divination, that he builds up his broadest generalizations. It may be inferred, accordingly, that Ritter possessed in a high degree that noble endowment of the greatest students of nature, that plastic imagination which gives the power to keep before the mind true and vivid conceptions of natural objects, whether in their isolation or in combination, as in one great picture, so obtaining deeper insight into their whole relations than any mere analytical process could ever afford."

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The fundamental idea of Ritter's whole geographical writings - still to use the language of our colleague, with some condensation - is "a strong belief that our globe, like the totality of creation, is a great organism, the work of an All-wise Intelligence, an admirable structure, all the parts of which are purposely shaped and arranged, and mutually dependent, and by the will of the Maker fulfil, like organs, specific functions, which combine themselves into a common life. But with Ritter this organism of the globe comprises not only nature, but man, and with man, the moral and intellectual life. Old

as is this idea of the Cosmos as applied to the physical world, it was Ritter's merit to have made a special and most happy application of it to geographical studies. No one before him had perceived so clearly the hidden but strong ties which mutually bind man and nature, the close relations between man and his dwelling-place, between a continent and its inhabitants, influences which stamp races and nations each with a character of their own. Considered under this aspect, every portion of our globe, stamped by nature with a peculiar character, assumes new meaning and importance. As the body is made for the soul, so, upon this view, is the physical globe made for mankind."

What the Philosophy of History is in the field of human society, such, with the physical world for its subject, is the Philosophy of Geography; and of this new science, Carl Ritter may be said to have been the founder.

As to the present personelle of the Academy, the Council report,

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