a larger or smaller proportion of blood, but how great or small this proportion may be, the evidence of language only enables us to guess within the widest limits. Thus it is evident that the classification of the languages of the world can tell us little either as to the original unity of the human race, or as to its original plurality, so vehemently asserted by several modern writers. Even if we take a narrower and easier field, that of our own Aryan race, we may indeed judge to some extent from the evidence of language, but we must be careful that our words do not convey a larger meaning than we can justify. When it is said, for instance, that the English foot-soldier and the Indian sepoy are men of one kindred, the words no doubt express a truth, but one which is very liable to be exaggerated. No doubt the Englishman and the Hindoo trace from one dominant Aryan race their languages, much of their civilisation, and a certain fraction of their blood. How large or how small this fraction may be, perhaps some day the ethnologists, or as a large body of them now prefer to call themselves, the anthropologists, may be able to give us some answer from their studies of skin and hair, of bone and feature, of food and climate, of intermarriage and degeneration. But as yet their methods seem wanting in the sureness and accuracy required for so perplexed a problem, while no prudent philologist will commit himself to an opinion on the strength of any evidence which his science can supply.

What the science of language has done for the ancient history of mankind, and what its methods yet may accomplish in this field, are subjects of familiar remark. Its success in setting before us the picture of the life and manners of that early Aryan race, of which we have just spoken, is indeed one of the especial triumphs of modern re-construction of an ancient world. By comparing the words relating to the arts, to law and custom, to thought and religious belief, which have remained comparatively near their source in Sanskrit and Zend, and have also travelled far westward with the Greek and Latin, the German and Slavonic stocks, it becomes possible to show what arts, what thoughts, what manners, prevailed among the early Aryan people before they divided over the face of the earth. It can be proved,' as Professor Müller says, 'by the evidence of language, that before their separation the Aryans led the life of agricultural nomads—a life such as Tacitus describes that of the ancient Germans. They knew the arts of ploughing, of making roads, of building ships, of weaving and sewing, of erecting houses; they had counted, at least, as far as one hundred. They had domesticated the most important animals-the cow, the horse, the sheep, the dog. . . . They had recognised the bonds of blood and the bonds of marriage; they

followed

followed their leaders and kings, and the distinction between right and wrong was fixed by laws and customs. They were impressed with the idea of a Divine Being, and they invoked it by various names.' The great worker in this field of ancient history is M. Adolphe Pictet, of Geneva, whose 'Origines IndoEuropéennes' is a mine of knowledge relating to the early Aryans. Written with a strong bias which often perverts its argument, and in the spirit of an advocate making the most, and more than the most, of every point in favour of his client, M. Pictet's work is nevertheless the great authority on its subject, as those well know who are most alive to the fact that his Sanskrit derivations are far from being always sound, and that, as for instance in his attempt to prove that his Aryans possessed iron as well as bronze, his facts are often the best possible answer to his arguments.

When we glance over the leading topics of modern philology, observing how problems once left to mere speculation are now studied by definite rule and system, and how far the presence of law and order is already to be discerned among phenomena which, if looked at in detail, might seem to result from mere arbitrary accretion and change, we have no difficulty in admitting Professor Müller's claim, that there really is a science of Comparative Philology. There is, too, another science closely interwoven with this, and drawing much of its evidence directly from it; but Comparative Mythology has seemed to us too important in itself, too intimately mixed up with the hardest problems of thought, of religion, and of early history, to be discussed here as an offshoot of the science of language. In both these modern sciences of Language and of Mythology, Max Müller has long been a leading discoverer and teacher. By what course of circumstances it has happened that his work has been done in Oxford, instead of at some German university, he related a year or two ago at an evening lecture at the Royal Institution. As a student, some twenty years ago, he had taken in hand the great task of editing the Vedas, the main source of religious belief among a large fraction of mankind, the oldest relic of the literature of the great Aryan race, but as yet unprinted. In the course of this undertaking he came to England; and, finding it time to return thence to Germany, he went to the Prussian embassy in London for a visa to his passport. Baron Bunsen had heard of him from Humboldt and Wilson as an Oriental scholar, and, noticing the name on the passport, called him into his study, and asked how far his preparations for the Vedas had progressed; he replied that he had materials for the first

Lectures,' 1st Series, p. 244.

volume,

volume, but must go back to his university work in Germany, hoping to return in a few years' time, when the volume had been published. Then Bunsen told him that it had been the dream of his own youth to go to India to find out whether the Vedas did really exist, and could be published and translated, and that a young American, whose private tutor he had been at Göttingen, had once promised to meet him in Italy, and go to India with him. Bunsen went to Italy and waited for his friend, but the friend never came; he himself met with Brandis and Niebuhr, and fell into a new career, where his first love was forsaken, but not forgotten. When Bunsen had told Müller this, he turned to him and said, 'Now, in you I see myself young again, and what I can do for you I will. You must stay in England till your collections are finished; and if you want money I shall write you a cheque.' It was through the Prussian Ambassador's influence that the East India Company were induced to bear the expense of the publication, now approaching completion, of a work of such paramount importance to Englishmen, whether they look at it as enabling them, now for the first time, to understand the religious system against which their missionary efforts are directed in India, or as recording for their students primæval history of the life, the art, the language, the thought, the belief, of the great race to which they trace their ancestry. We may refuse to recognise Bunsen's system of chronology-we may judge of his reconstruction of early history that he is prone, like his master Niebuhr, to imagine instead of to infer; but he was not only a learned, but a good and great man; and no one who has known and honoured him would willingly pass by an occasion of making known one more example of his disinterested zeal for the advance of knowledge. Nor was the obligation a slight one which he laid us under in leading Max Müller to become in England the trainer of an English school of philologists.

ART. V.-1. The Coal Question: An Inquiry concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the probable exhaustion of our Coal-Mines. By W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., Fellow of University College, London, and of the Statistical Society. Macmillan and Co., 1865.

2. Reports received from Her Majesty's Secretaries of Embassy and Legation respecting Coal. With an Appendix. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 1866.

3. Coal, Smoke, and Sewage, scientifically and practically considered

sidered; with suggestions for the Sanitary Improvement of the Drainage of Towns, and the beneficial application of the Sewage. Being the substance of a Paper read before the Literary and : Philosophical Society of Manchester. By Peter Spence. Manchester, 1857. Pamphlet.

4. The London Corporation Coal Tax. An Explanation of the Origin, Progress, and Operation of the Tax, constituting at present an Annual Charge of above 187,0001. on a prime Necessary of Life throughout the whole area of country within twenty miles of the General Post-Office. By John Dickinson, Esq., F.R.S. London, 1854. Pamphlet.

5. To the Vestrymen of the Metropolitan Districts. The Metropolitan Board of Works and the London Coal Tax. By Archibald Kintrea. London, 1859. Pamphlet.

HERE is no question of more momentous concern to Great

question which of late has excited the attention both of statesmen and philosophers. It was referred to in anxious terms by Mr. Graham, the Member for Glasgow, in seconding the address at the recent opening of Parliament. Sir Robert Peel, in his speech of the 9th of March last, in the House of Commons, on the nuisance arising from the smoke of furnaces in towns and rural districts, sounded notes of alarm at the enormous and yearly increasing consumption of coal; and in the course of the debate which followed, other speakers expressed similar apprehensions. On the other hand, it is maintained that the supply of our mineral fuel is practically unlimited; and some persons, with as much presumption as ignorance, have even ventured to predict that several thousand years will elapse before our collieries are exhausted.

It will not be denied that our marvellous prosperity has mainly resulted from our manufacturing power, and that this power is for the most part to be ascribed to our coal. It is also evident that the position of Great Britain among the nations of the earth depends in a great degree upon her wealth, and that this wealth has been chiefly accumulated by manufacturing enterprise. Hence the 'Coal Question,' as Mr. Jevons terms it, may be justly considered as of vital importance to all the dwellers in the land, high as well as low, rich as well as

poor.

Notwithstanding the boasted enlightenment of the present age, it is really astonishing how defective is the information, even of many highly-educated persons, concerning such a familiar object

as

as coal. It may be well, therefore, to preface this article with a short description of the nature, origin, and varieties of coal.

Amongst the different kinds of matter constituting the earth, which chemists have hitherto failed to resolve into other kinds of matter, and which, therefore, they designate elementary bodies or elements, one of the most remarkable is carbon. It occurs in definite geometrical figures, that is, crystallized; or without form, that is, amorphous. It crystallizes in what mineralogists term the cubical and the rhombohedral systems, when it appears respectively as the queen of gems, the diamond,-and as the black, opaque, greasy substance, graphite or black lead. In the amorphous state, carbon is familiar to us as charcoal. The diamond is known only as a natural product, and chemists have been utterly baffled in their attempts to prepare it in the laboratory. As a few cubic feet of space would probably contain all the diamonds that have ever been collected, it may be inferred that the conditions necessary to its formation must have been exceedingly rare. Still, on chemical grounds, its artificial production may be reasonably anticipated. Graphite or carbon, crystallized in the rhombohedral form, is daily generated in large quantity at our iron-works.

Carbon has a strong liking, or, as it is technically termed, affinity for oxygen. When a piece of common charcoal is ignited and exposed to the air, it burns, smoulders away, and finally disappears, leaving only a little white earthy matter or ash. In thus burning it combines with the oxygen of the air, and the product of the combination, or combustion, is the heavy, colourless gas, carbonic acid, a gas which all animals exhale in expiration, and which sooner or later destroys animal life. Carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen in the proportion (by weight) of 1:23; and carbon is incapable of combining with a greater proportion of oxygen than exists in carbonic acid. But there is another compound of these elements to which particular attention must be directed, namely, carbonic oxide. It contains just half the quantity of oxygen existing in carbonic acid, that is, carbon and oxygen in the ratio of 1:14. This gas is somewhat lighter, bulk for bulk, than atmospheric air. In contact with the air it burns with a beautiful blue flame, and is converted into carbonic acid. It is exceedingly poisonous. It is always formed when carbonic acid comes in contact with carbon heated to bright redness. Thus it is produced when a layer of charcoal a few inches in depth is burned in a stove or furnace. The oxygen of the air, which passes through the grate at the bottom, forms carbonic acid the moment it impinges upon the charcoal; but immediately afterwards this acid, in ascending through the over