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-were they entirely undisturbed by winds, islands, continents, &c., and were the moon always at precisely the same distance from the earth, the height of the tidal wave would be exactly the same every day of the year. None of these conditions, however, obtain. In the first place, the winds are a source of endless variation. It is impossible, therefore, to predict the precise height of any future tides, simply because we cannot foreknow either the direction or force of the winds which may affect them. It is also obvious that their course and altitude must be modified by the nature of the coasts which they encounter in their progress. Again, the orbit of the moon is not a circle, but an ellipse, having the earth in one of its foci; her distance, therefore, is not always the same. Now, as the height of the tide depends upon the force of the moon's attraction, and since attraction decreases as the square of the distance increases, it follows that the tides will be greatest when the moon is in perigee, and least when in apogee. But there are also solar as well as lunar tides; owing, however, to the ⚫ great distance of the sun, the height of the former is much less than that of the latter. They are more or less distinctly marked, according as they concur or conflict with those produced by the moon. Their concurrence, i. e., when the sun, earth, and moon are nearly in the same straight line, produces the highest, or spring tides; while their opposition, or conflict, marks the lowest, or neap tides.

There is still another source of variation: the earth's orbit is also elliptical; and hence the greatest solar tide will occur when the earth is in that part of her orbit nearest the sun. The greatest possible tide, then, is that which is produced when the sun and moon are in conjunction, and both, at the same time, at their least distance from the earth. This somewhat rare coincidence took place about the last of December, 1849.

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Of the numerous influences popularly ascribed to the moon, we may specify the following:

1. Its supposed effect upon the human system. The belief that certain maladies, both bodily and mental, vary in intensity with the changes of the moon, was very ancient, and is not, perhaps, altogether without advocates even at the present. It is sufficient to remark, however, that the opinion has never been substantiated by accredited facts.

2. It is believed by many that our satellite exerts an important influence on vegetation, and that plants, trees, &c.,

in order to flourish, must be planted or grafted during the increase of the moon. A great number of experiments have been made in France by scientific men, for the express purpose of testing this question. The result has shown that the common opinion is wholly unfounded.

3. But the most generally received doctrine in regard to the moon's influence is that its changes have some causal connection with changes in the weather. This question, perhaps, cannot yet be decided. It is said, however, that the popular belief is not substantiated by any extensive series of recorded observations.

ART. III. Memorials and Letters Illustrative of the Life and Times of John Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. By MARK NAPIER. Edinburgh. 3 vols., 1859, 1863.

THE three sturdy octavos which Mr. Napier has presented to the world and to posterity, certainly contain few points for praise in a literary point of view. As a store-house of facts and data, they possess some value; as a monument of unwearied toil, they are honorable; but as a work for general reading, they are hopelessly unsatisfactory. Not only are they unconscionably long and preposterously incommensurate with the interest which the public can be supposed to feel in their subject, but they have the further aggravating mischief of poor execution. There is no method in them; not even so much as chronological arrangement.

Mr. Napier's mental digestion was quite unable to cope with the mighty feast which his research spread before him. A multitude of allusions to the classic authors of ancient and modern times are scattered broadcast through the work, and the frequent use of quaint, antique and unusual words and phrases vindicate his claim to scholarship and to extensive reading. But this richness in literary innuendo, which in moderation is apt to please, is so excessive in these volumes as to appear tawdry. Moreover, we are made incessantly and painfully aware by a certain virulence in the general tone of the work, by a species of fierceness in statement and animosity of speech, that we are reading the passionate argument of a partisan. The violent temper of an angry advocate jars continually upon the feelings of the readers;

passionate exclamations, language too strong to be properly used, except in eager personal controversies, are constantly breaking the even and dignified tenor of an historical work, exciting sometimes disgust, sometimes ridicule, but always appearing reprehensible, and by no means conducing to per suasion or belief. If Mr. Napier wishes to make proselytes he might study with advantage the fable of the traveller who drew his cloak the tighter, the more keenly the wind attacked him, but yielded it readily before the gentle rays of the sun.

Listen to the merciless vigor of his plan as set forth by himself in his introduction (p. xix). The first division of his work, he explains, "is intended to clear the way by the removal of that superincumbent load of mistaken history and vulgar error which has really placed Grahame of Claverhouse in the category of historical myths. Public opinion on the subject required a regular siege, and we have laid our approaches accordingly. In this review we have bestowed upon previous historians a measure of respect as regards the subject of 'Bloody Claver'se' in proportion to the justice which they have bestowed upon him." What was Mr. Napier's opinion of the quantity and quality of this justice, which he so liberally promises to requite, no reader of his volumes can well doubt. He further informs us that his undertaking was greatly provoked by the domineering anathemas of Lord Macaulay against the champion of James II." And his first chapter is entitled "Preliminary Review of False History and Vulgar Errors Relating to Dundee."

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This is the language of an electioneering pamphlet. Yet this fault of temper is an error shared in common by all men who have ever been seduced into this Claverhouse controversy from the days of Wodrow down to those of Aytoun. A bacchantic fury seems to have possessed the contestants on either side; and they fling scholarly abuse at each other, and hew with the swords of scurrilous phrases, and cast the lances of savage contradictions like so many frantic mænades. It is, therefore, with some diffidence that we undertake to handle this miraculous subject, even in a brief article; and we fear the mystic wrath may kindle our soul into disputatious rage; just as the savage who has seen a party of palefaces becoming crazy or maudlin over a few queer-looking jugs, at first meddles with the same with a very gingerly and anticipatory touch, but finally becomes an even wilder disciple of the fire-water than his own exemplars. Nevertheless, we shall venture upon our task, trusting that a spirit

conscious of no partiality may succeed in sustaining its equipoise. The authorities are numerous enough, if they were only harmonious, to settle the most vexed question of morals, history or science; but since the poles are not wider apart than their opposing statements, the cloud of witnesses, by its very density, seems to shut out the sunlight of truth, and to darken our vision.

Wodrow, the petty vender of slanderous wares, and Lord Macaulay, the lofty and imperious historiarch, have, in their widely different ways, painted him black as a son of Belial. Sir Walter Scott, with a tolerably dispassionate pen, has given us only the dubious and misty outline of a romancer's picture. Mr. Napier says, with disgust, that the eminent novelist, with temporising timidity, has made a plum-pudding of virtues and of vices, and has depicted a nondescript animal, a sort of mermaid, or centaur; though we are loath to pass so harsh a judgment on the author of Old Mortality. Mr. John H. Burton, "a fluent historian, from whose acuteness and industry more might have been expected," pleases no better, and concludes his budget of errors "oddly enough, but like all the rest, with historical blunders." Poor Claverhouse! Such resolute, unrelenting calumny is hard indeed! But if this side of the shield is very black, the other is of lucent brilliancy. Napier and Aytoun, men who in the tranquillity of to-day study the relics of a past century, sentimentally bewail the Stuarts and talk harmless Jacobinism, certainly dipped their pens in ink of the rainbow, and have verily drawn an archangel, another Gabriel, crushing a second fiend called Calvinism. In this Babel it is our function to assume the serene functions of judge; to weigh the eloquence and hostility of opposing advocates; to value the testimony of dead witnesses; to deplore the loss of yellow letters that have long since mouldered in indiscriminating waste-baskets ; and finally to judge the prisoner at the bar, over whose dust and ashes the oblivion of nearly two centuries has rolled. It is a tangled skein of black and white and dingy threads, out of which to braid the golden twine of truth.

John Grahame of Claverhouse was born in Scotland in 1643. He was of gentle blood and high connections; yet, though an eldest son, he was heir to no titles, and only to a meagre patrimony. No tales prophetic of future greatness garnish the history of his early years. No sturdy crone patted the head of the manly warrior, and told pretty tales of his boyhood, showing how the germ of the distinguished

Even the

oak was discovered by her in the infantile acorn. question of his graduation at St. Andrews, in 1665, has been mooted fiercely, but without decisive results-an unimportant matter perhaps, but destined, by the fatality of acrimoniousness which clings to this strange mortal, to be dragged into the arena of controversy. It may be interesting to know that Napier avers that his name may be read on the matriculation-books of St. Leonard's College, even by those who "golf." Sir Walter Scott casually accuses him of "spelling like a chambermaid," and Mr. Napier again falls into a terrible rage thereat, because, in that age, it was a very creditable thing to spell at all, or, indeed, that it was then even considered unfashionable and low-bred to be over nice in spelling in one's correspondence. The hero himself, probably, thought the matter of education to be of very slight moment, when he began to look around for occupation in the world, and doubtless found a trenchant sword a vastly better dependence than an accurate pen. In those days, the camp and the court were the sole avenues through which a young man of respectability could enter into active life. Claverhouse did not hesitate long in making his choice; in the language of Pistol, he said within himself that the world was an oyster which he must open with his sword. He first sought service under the banner of the French King. But at the end of a year or two he was with the Stadtholder, William of Orange. And in the heat of the battle of Seneffe, he had the seeming good fortune to pluck this prince out of a filthy Dutch bog, whose too adhesive embrace, had it not been for this timely rescue, must have held its valuable prize until death or captivity overtook him. The reward for this gallant action was meted out with the customary liberality from that treasury of royal promises which never runs low; but the practical mind of Claverhouse did not appreciate intangible largesses and unnegotiable drafts on royal favor. So he threw up his commission in disgust, and turned his back on the Low Countries, shaking the dust from his angry feet. Mr. Napier is very inhumanely provoked that the poor Dutchman, who lived to become William III. of England, had not been left to perish in his native mud; in which case there might have been no Revolution of 1688, Claverhouse might have ended a life of glory by the tranquil death of old age, and Great Britain might now enjoy the inestimable pleasure of a Stuart sovereign. His regret sounds almost absurd in its partisan pathos. "This brave action,"

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