from the other. But this failure does not throw upon us the necessity of erecting a third kingdom between the other two. On the contrary, we should meet with the same difficulties in attempting to fix the limits of this new kingdom, and even find those difficulties multiplied manifold. Admitting the absence of absolute distinctions between animal and vegetable life, it is none the less possible for the zoologist to make up his mind whether he will class this or that creature with animals or with plants. In such a case he will be guided by the total impression made upon him by all the affinities manifested during the creature's whole life history. It may be that he will be finally led by some features not distinctly of a vegetable nature to class the creature in question with a group of beings bound by inseparable bonds with unmistakeable plants. Thus to take an extreme case. The amoeboidmould, to which we have more than once referred, presents no features whatever in itself which absolutely divide it from what we may venture to call the true amœbæ. Yet there seems to be no doubt that this amoeboid creature is a phase of a true mouldof a fungus; and no one, except for the sake of a mischievous worship of hard-cut definitions, would take the fungi out of the vegetable world. The true amoeba, on the other hand, as far as we know, belongs of right to those mysterious creatures, the foraminifera, whose chambered shells are the delight of microscopists, and whose animal nature no one disputes. So also with the sponges. It is not by vain discussions as to whether their canals and cavities ought to be called 'stomachs,' or by inquiring whether they can truly' be said to feel' that the sponges' place in Nature can satisfactorily be settled. The amoeboid elements which make up their flesh, the structure of their horny, or calcareous, or silicious framework, the arrangement of their channels and ciliated chambers, the fashion of their feeding, the manner in which they produce their kind by true ova all these features, and others with them, show their affinities with the other classes which form the great Protozoan region of animal life. In the words of Professor Huxley,— 'Some zoologists have been anxious to relegate the sponges to the vegetable kingdom; but the botanists, who understood their business, refused to have anything to do with the intruders. And the botanists were quite right. Now that we know the whole cycle of the life of the sponges, and the characters which may be demonstrated to be common to the whole of this important and remarkable class, I do not think any one who is acquainted with the organisation and functions of plants will be inclined to admit that the Spongido have the slightest real affinity with any division of the vegetable kingdom.' A much more satisfactory line of reflection is opened up for us us when we let go these attempts to thrust the rounded doings of Nature into the square holes of human definitions, and come to regard plants and animals not as so many puppets dancing on the world's great stage, each with its individual string, but as broken pieces of matter driven by the one flood of life, though spread and scattered in many different directions and whirled by many eddies. We may then watch how the current sets towards this point or towards that, producing here a vegetable, there an animal; here a molluscous, there a vertebrate; here a flowering, there a crypotogamic, stream. We may look upon animals and plants as starting from the same point, originating in the same homogeneous phase, beginning with the simple embodiment of vital powers in a drop of tremulous, irritable, nitrogenous jelly, and note how each, pursuing a different path, becomes more and more unlike the others the farther they all travel from their common source. There is at bottom but one life, which is the whole life of some creatures and the common basis of the life of all; a life of simplest moving and feeling, of feeding and breathing, of producing its kind and lasting its day; a life which, as far as we at present know, has no need of such parts as we call organs. Upon this general foundation are built up the manifold special characters of animal and vegetable existence; but the tendency, the endeavour, so to speak, of the plant is one, of the animal another; and the unlikeness between them widens the higher the building is carried up. As we pass along the series of either kingdom from low to high, the plant becomes more vegetative, the animal more animal. We may even attempt to analyse this development of difference, this process of differentation, and, perhaps, trace out the factors which, multiplied over and over again, bring about the geometric progression of unlikeness. For instance, in every living thing there must be at each moment of its existence a part which is just new and a part which is becoming old. Two ways are open for the creature to deal with its material. Retaining the old, it may add to it the new; or, casting the old away, it may put the new in its place. It may proceed by way of addition or of substitution. If we run through the animal and vegetable kingdoms we find that in the latter, addition is the prominent method of nutrition; in the former, substitution. Accordingly, in the plant we meet with abundant repetition, with a spreading, straggling outline and almost unlimited growth; while in the animal we have a finely-finished compact form of many different parts skilfully packed together. But the one thing which draws most strongly the plant away from from the animal and from their common ground, and which works the greatest changes in its history, is the appearance of the mysterious chlorophyll corpuscles, and the establishment of that wondrous deoxidizing work of sunlight, of whose action their presence is the token. In some of the simpler plants these new features make their appearance rather as special organs of construction and elaboration, as a sort of by-play of the creature's life, in no wise interfering with its other broad vital functions; and hence we see green beings still openly enjoying the power to move and feel. But as we pass along the ranks of plants from low to high, we see this special function of construction encroaching upon all other duties, and gradually hiding them out of sight. In every plant, however high, there is still mobile protoplasm, possessing all the fundamental powers of life, capable of movement and sensible of shocks, breathing oxygen, and producing carbonic acid, and liable to be killed by suffocation when robbed of pure air. Yet of these things the plant itself makes no sign, unless most carefully questioned; for this protoplasm being not one whit more highly developed than the protoplasm of the lowest beings, cannot do even so much as they do, for it is buried and choked amid the treasures of woody fibre and other rich material which it itself has been indirectly the means of hoarding. Looking at the animal kingdom on the other hand, we see that any attempts at similar special constructive organs, if they are made at all, are soon given up; while that primeval quality of protoplasm which is neglected in the plant-the power to feel and move-is raised step by step to high perfection, and becomes the be-all of the animal's existence. We thus come to regard that plant as the most plant-like which is best able to fix the carbon from the air, and to store up the force of the sun in treasuries of fuel or of food, and to recognise that animal as the highest animal which can best avail itself of the force thus garnered by plants, and can spend it with greatest effect in swift and skilful movements, and in quick and fertile sense. We are made to feel, too, in some dim way the grand economy of Nature working up the primeval protoplasm into the twin systems of animals and plants, each more and more unlike the other the more highly both are wrought, and all the while so skilfully fitted, that what the one does, the other leaves undone; and what the one becomes less and less able to do, the other becomes more and more powerful to achieve. Without plants animals would perish; without animals plants had no need to be. ART. ART. X.-1. Speeches by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., delivered in Lancashire in October, 1868. 2. Letters on the Irish Question. By G. R. Gleig, M.A., Chaplain-General to the Forces. London, 1868. A CHANGE would seem to be creeping over public life in England which, if it be real, it is especially important to signalise and understand. The change has been gradual, but promises to be rapid. It began with the Reform Act of 1832; it has been growing ever since; and, if we are not mistaken, it will be accelerated and consummated by the electoral measure of last Session. It springs out of a combination of circumstances, and is aided by many influences, and will assuredly entail many grave and potent consequences. In a word, a Parliamentary career is no longer what it used to be; it is entered upon by a different set of men; it is sought from other motives; it is used for other purposes. The rewards it offers are fewer than formerly; and the cost and sacrifices it involves are greater. It is still nearly as much desired as ever, and it must always be an object of ambition; but the ambition which aspires to it bids fair to become less pure and lofty than it was and than it should be-less hallowed by the character of the arena in which it plays its part-less ennobled by a consciousness of great purposes and great power. The change we speak of is not completed yet, and therefore we see only a portion of its operation; but it is not the less indisputable or significant on that account. It is insidious; it may be slow; it may be inevitable and incurable; -but at least it ought not to be unconscious. Perhaps all we have to say on the subject might be summed up in a few words, if readers could be safely left to think out the matter for themselves, perceive all its bearings, and follow all its ramifications and applications. The truth is, then, briefly this: -The House of Commons is growing less attractive and less easy of access than of yore to the best men, while it retains all its charms and opens wide its doors to the worst men. Those whom we most need there are not those who can most easily get there, or most eagerly seek to be there. Those whom the country can well dispense with in such an 'arthritic' position (to use an expressive phrase coined by Sydney Smith) flock to it in scores, and step easily over the threshold. Those who have personal, professional, or class interests to serve have every motive for entering Parliament. Those who have only great public objects to serve, and great principles to propound and promote, are beginning to discover that their exertions may be far more effiVol. 126.-No. 251. T cient cient and secure much prompter success in other careers and on other platforms; the seed they sow will ripen faster and bear richer fruit in other soils; while nowhere and on no stage is it so difficult for a labourer in the public vineyard to keep his conscience pure, his eye single, his attitude upright and unbending, and his course unswerving and direct. The price you must pay for the House of Commons as a stage on which to exert your powers and promote your ends (supposing those ends noble and unselfish) is disproportionately great; while the success you can achieve (practical and unselfish success we mean) is disproportionately small-and too often soiled and mutilated as well as small. Macaulay long ago described Parliamentary strife as 'a career in which the most its combatants can expect is that by relinquishing liberal studies and social comfort, by passing nights without sleep, and summers without one glimpse of the beauties of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely-watched slavery, which is mocked with the name of power.' The description, true enough even in his day, is incomparably truer now. The sacrifice of comfort and leisure is more complete, the toil severer, the slavery at once harsher and meaner, and the power immeasurably scantier and more illusory. But we must enter a little more into detail. Of course, a seat in Parliament is still, and will long continue to be, eagerly sought by large classes and by many individuals who have special interests to defend, special causes to serve, special objects to gain. It will be sought, too, by numbers who deem it a fit appanage or a natural corollary of their social position, as well as by those who hope through it to attain or assert a social position which is not theirs by general consent or hereditary right. Thus, there will always be plenty of country gentlemen-sufficient, it may be hoped, to leaven the mass with a due infusion of the genuine old genial Conservatism of England -whose standing and influence as great landed proprietors and representatives of ancient families point them out as fitting representatives also of an order still powerful and respected. Many of this class, moreover-though fewer than formerly, and fewer perhaps year by year-will be able to secure their return, through the felt but unasserted influence of combined character and rank, without resorting to those humiliating means of canvassing or cajoling, or the still more humiliating means of intimidation, which deter the more scrupulous natures from the strife. What effect upon the success of candidates of this sort may be wrought by the votes of the new 127. constituencies who reside in and about small unrepresented towns, it is too soon to judge, and is not worth while to guess. But that they will always come for ward |