ally happened, they had never been able to determine. move, the causes which altered this position At length the great La Place, after the most profound of the earth, began to exert their irresisti and accurate investigation, ascertained its date. This remarkable astronomical epoch is the coincidence of the ble power and produce the precession of the greater axis of the earth's orbit with the line of equinox- equinoxes." es, when the true and mean equinox was the same. Now this state of the heavens could have existed only at the This proposition we pronounce incorrect, first moment of the creation of our solar system; for the and will prove it, remarking in the beginmoment the earth and the other planets began to move, ning, should this paper fall under the obserthe causes which altered this position of the earth, bevation of any one who has made astronomy gan to exert their irresistible power and produce the precession of the equinoxes. This great epoch in astronhis study, he must excuse us for attempting omy, or in other words in the history of the heavens, to disprove a proposition so obviously abmust have been the period of the creation of our solar surd, and likewise for the use of non-techsystem. La Place has demonstrated that this epoch happened 4000 years before the Christian era, the very nical terms, as we will endeavor to make year in which Archbishop Usher and other eminent the reasoning popular. chronologists have deduced it from the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures! This agreement between this astronomical demonstration produced by the unerring and sun in a curve called the Ellipsis-the irresistible processes of mathematics, and the chronology of Moses, could not be a coincidence of chance; for upon the known rules for the calculation of chances, the probability that it is accidental, is as one to millions al most inexpressible by figures. The earth revolves in its orbit around the greater axis of the Ellipsis is called the line of Apsides, the part nearest the sun (one point of this line) is called the perihelion. It also revolves upon its axis which is not perpendicular of the plane to revolution around There is here distinctly stated that a most the sun, but inclined to it, making the Equacurious and beautiful mathematical problem for incline about 234°. Now the intersecis not only capable of solution with given tion of this plane of the Equator with the data, but actually has been solved. This plane of revolution around the sun is called problem is no less than the time of the creathe line of equinoxes. While the inclination tion of the world! According to the author of the Equator to the Ecliptic is nearly conof the above extract, there is no longer any stant, this line of intersection or line of equinecessity for the divines who love the old "Mosaic Chronology" to attempt to dis-noxes does not always point to the same prove the conclusions of the Geologists; but the argument for the antiquity of our globe earth, the line is caused, by the disturbing But owing to the spheroidal form of the is removed from the domain of Geology and bodies, to shift its position gradually. It rehas become one of Astronomy and conse-trogades on the plane of the ecliptic 50.23" quently of Mathematics. This is most assuredly a discovery, and one to which the author should lay claim, and not give the credit of it to La Place, who, we are confident, would repudiate it, and in his absence stars in space. annually. This gradual movement of the line of equinoxes backward along the plane of the ecliptic would cause the pole of the equator to revolve around the pole of the ecliptic in about twenty-six thousand years. It is obvious that this movement would make If it were possible to settle this vexed necessary certain corrections in astronomiquestion in regard to the antiquity of the cal observations. Dr. Bradley discovered his friends will do it for him. field? earth by the certain processes of Mathemat-that there was also another more refined corics, why that long battle between Geologists rection necessary, that the pole of the equator and divines on Geological grounds, and why revolved in a small ellipse around an imaginathe author's own lengthy defence in this ry central point that moved around the pole of the ecliptic. That position of the equinox But the question proposed being one in which corresponds to this imaginary central physico-mathematics admits of a positive point (or mean pole) of the ellipse, is called answer. The distinct proposition is this. the mean equinox. Any other position of it "Now this state of the heavens.could have is called the true equinox. The coincidence existed only at the first moment of the cre- of the true and mean equinox that is alluded ation of our solar system; for the moment to in the extract takes place twice every the earth and the other planets began to nineteen years. Now in addition to these motions, there is another movement produc- | creation necessary? not at all. The causes ed by known causes-' the longer axis of the now in operation, will cause this coincidence earth's orbit,' or line of apsides is itself to take place again in about 6485, and again subject to a progessive motion of about 11" a about 16955, and thus this coincidence will year. This causes a change in longitude of continue to occur every 10470 years. These the perihelion of the earth's orbit a little more numbers do not pretend to perfect accuracy, than 61 annually. Now suppose it were but only approximate.* Do not these facts possible to determine the present longitude and conclusions show that this state of the of the perihelion, knowing how much the lon- heavens can exist at another time than the gitude increased annually, it would not be creation? Most certainly. But then where difficult to tell when the longitude was zero. is the physical cause for putting the earth in And that is the mighty problem which the that position when first created? Precession author says was solved by La Place to de- does not depend on the position of the earth termine the time of the creation of the world! in its orbit. It will take place, as it does, in There are different methods of determining every part of it. The redundant matter at with accuracy the longitude of the perihelion. the equator and revolution on its axis with a According to the observations of Lacaille, *the disturbing body produce precession indelongitude of the perihelion in 1750 was 309' pendent of position. The earth might have 5827 (400° in the circle) when the greater been placed any where in its orbit with the axis was perpendicular to the line of equi- other bodies existing in space, as they are and noxes, this longitude was 300°. This phe- caused to revolve on its axis and precession nomenon then happened about the year would have ensued. Every physical con1250. Then the perihelion coincided with sideration demonstrates this. To do it here the winter solstice. Now it is no difficult would be to go into the domain of text books. matter to tell when the longitude of the pe- But, we may ask, if this particular position rihelion was zero, that is, when the two lines was so necessary for the earth, was not a coincided-if they were perpendicular in similar one equally necessary for the other 1250, and moved apart 61" a year. This planetary bodies? They have a precession of happened about 5,735 years before 1750, or their equinoxes-should then this same coin3985 years before the Christian era. Not cidence take place for each planet? There the exact date of the creation according to is as much reason for the one as the other. the chronologists. Hear what Biot wrote But none for either. about this singular coincidence many years ago-" Par une rencontre assez singulière c' ést a-peu-pres vers ce téms selon la plupart des chronologistes, que remontent les premieres traces du sejour de l'homme sur la térre, quoiqu' il paraisse d'ailleurs par un grand nombre de preuves physiques, que la térre elle-même est beaucoup plus ancienne." have been created in that position. The Thus far, to show that the problem to find the time of coincidence is not so difficult as to require the genius of La Place to solve it. The author distinctly asserts that "this state of the heavens could have existed only at the first moment of the creation of our Solar System." And even an approximate solution shows that it did not happen at the time the Mosaic chronology fixes that dateWhat is to be inferred then if we show that of the earth's orbit is another problem which this same state will happen again? Is a new * Le Traite Elémentaire d' Astronomie Physique, par J. B. Biot. Livre Secend. We think we have shown clearly that the proposition as enunciated is not true, inasmuch as this condition of the heavens will happen again, and it did not happen at the moment the proposition asserts it must. And furthermore, there can be no physical consideration presented why the earth should same causes will produce precession any where else. In regard to the coincidence of the true and mean equinox, it obviously must occur nearly within nine years of any period, occurring twice about every nineteen years; but whether a rigid calculation would give the same second for the coincidence of the true and mean equinox and the greater axis can be solved, though even if the coinci *They are deduced from data in Biot's Astronomie Physique. dence would occur, which is doubtful, it would prove nothing. We would not have attempted this discussion at all, had we not been induced to do it from a note in the last Messenger, addressed to the juvenile critics of the Georgia University Magazine. We have endeavored to treat the subject fairly, with more consideration than it deserves-for to every one at all familiar with astronomy, its absurdity is obvious-and we would remark, in conclusion, that if we are correct in inferring that the author of the extract before quoted is a theologian, we hope for the sake of Christianity, his theology is more correct than his physics. University of Georgia, Oct. 25th, 1855. } STARRY WAVES. BALLAD. BY C. ERNST VON F. I. Starry waves, starry waves! The moonbeams gently fall II. Nightingale, Nightingale! Chanting in the grove; Cease awhile, Bird of Song, Listen to my Love; He strikes his joyous harp On yonder rosy isle, And at its thrilling tones The blossoms seem to smile; My Heart with rapture wild Is throbbing by the Sea; Ye dancing, starry waves, Oh bear my Love to me. Notices of New Works. THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA. By Rufus Wil mot Griswold. Sixteenth Edition. Philadelphia. Parry and McMillan, 1855. [From James Woodhouse, 137 Main Street. To embody in a collected form the best poetry of a nation's literature, and to decide critically upon the merits of the poets themselves, as well those who are yet living as those who have passed away, is a task of no little delicacy, and calls for the exercise of several qualities rarely found united in a single individual. Dr. Griswold seems to us to have performed this task with equal impartiality and judgment. Of course there will not be wanting disunfit doorkeeper to the temple of the Muses, alleging that satisfied readers, who will complain of the Doctor as an he has kept out many who ought to have been admitted, while others have been allowed the freedom of the edifice without a spray upon their brows and not having such a thing as a singing robe among their wearing apparel. We think it quite possible that in the present edition there are names that do not belong to fame, for if there be a fault in the compiler, it is leniency towards the weaknesses of authors, but we are sure that nobody has been excluded through any other feeling than an honest conviction, however erroneous, of his want of poetic excellence. Among the additions to the list of American Poets in this edition, we notice Charles G. Leland, Richard Coe, John Esten Cooke, Henry W. Parker and William Croswell Doane. The book is embellished with several steel engravings of favorite authors, among which we are sorry to see one of our lamented friend, Philip Pendleton Cooke, in a style that is absolutely libellous. An expression almost of idiocy is given to the features of that child of genius, and it were far better to have permitted his image to remain in the memory of his companions than to have so distor ted it to the observation of the world. The portraits of Longfellow and Bayard Taylor are very spirited likenesses, Poe's is less satisfactory and gives a sort of man-milliner look to his striking countenance. With so much of comment upon the illustrations, we accept the volume as a valuable compendium of American Poetry. EOLOPOESIS. AMERICAN REJECTED ADDRESSES. Now first Published from the Original Manuscripts. New York: J. C. Derby, 119 Nassau Street. [From T. D. Clarke, 157 Main Street. We should like this volume a great deal better without the affected Greek title of Eolopoesis, which means all sorts of poetry, as we are told in the appendix. It is another of the frequent attempts that have been made to imitate the Theatrum Poetarum of James and Horace Smith, and its success is hardly greater than that of former failures. We can not rate it as high as Bon Gaultier's Book of Ballads, though some of the poets travestied have been happily caught in their more salient characteristics. In the selection of these the author has looked only to the Northern versifiers, not recognising in the South or West any poets of sufficient celebrity to be entitled to the honors of caricature. The great fault of the imitations is in their length-those of Saxe and Holmes are the best, but neither of these wits was ever so prolix in the kind of verse imitated as the gentleman who burlesques them. The hexameters after Evangeline are droll in the final spondees, as par exemple in the al- | JAPAN AND AROUND THE WORLD. lusion to the Indians, Who chopped down trees and built log-houses and wigwams, And subsisted chiefly on fish, potatoes, &c. An Account of Three Visits to the Japanese Empire with Sketches of Madeira, St. Helena, Cape of Good Hope, &c., &c. 1852 to 1855. By J. W. SPALDING, Captain's Clerk of the Flagship "Mississippi." New York: Redfield. 1855. [From T. D. Clarke, 157 Main Street. But to write nonsensical hexameters is not by any means A plain but animated narrative of the incidents attendto imitate Longfellow, we mean, as the Smiths imitated ing the famous Japan Expedition, which imparts more Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, at once with a felici- real information concerning the "the under world" thau tous swing of their peculiar metre and an usurpation, for all the other books that have appeared since public inthe nonce, of their modes of thought. The bards are not terest in the Japanese was stimulated by Commodore humiliated by their Cockney copyists-we could almost Perry's visit to their far away land of mystery and isofancy in reading the Rejected Addresses that they really lation. The author betrays on almost every page one of had written the pieces marked with their initials, but Mr. the best qualities of a traveller-that of acute observaLongfellow in Blouzelinda in the present work, is made tion-and he has recorded his experiences in a style that simply ridiculous-only that and nothing more. never wearies the reader, while it faithfully daguerreowriter never could place himself at the Longfellownian types the most minute as well as the most important fea stand point in looking at an object, and therefore his tra- tures of the various scenes presented. His descriptions vestie can be regarded only an absurd mimicry of an ab- therefore of the voyage out are full of life, and the picsurd form of verse. The same thing may be said with tures he gives us of the strange quasi-civilization of Japropriety, we think, of other pieces in Eolopoesis, and pan are strikingly vraisemblant. Certain crudities, indiwhile we cannot deny that the volume may afford amuse-cating a want of familiarity with book-making, there are, ment by its intrinsic humour and pleasant versification, but these detract nothing from the value of the work as we can as little award it the praise of being a hit. an authentic account of a very remarkable Expedition. The THE PRIVATE LIFE OF AN EASTERN KING. By a member of the Household of his late Majesty, NUSSIR-UDEEN, King of Oude. New York, Redfield, 1855. [From T. D. Clarke, 157, Main Street. The incidents so pleasantly given in this little volume occurred more than twenty years ago, and we are at a loss to conjecture why the author has so long delayed its publication. If it referred to any other country than the unprogressive East, the interest of the narrative might have been greatly impaired by the postponement of its appearance, but in Oude and in the Orient generally, society is stationary, the same to day as when Warren Hastings plundered the Princesses of that regal House in the days of our grandfathers. So that the work before us may be accepted as a truthful portraiture of life within the stately halls of Eastern palaces. It is diverting to read of monarchs flinging about lakhs of rupees in our day with the profusion of the Califs in the Arabian Nights, and somewhat difficult of belief that they order gentlemens' heads to be taken off after breakfast just as they did when the East was first opened to the gaze of Europeans. Nussir-U-Deen, the kingly subject of this biography, was altogether as capricious, as brutal, as childish and as absurd a sovereign as ever looked on an Elephant fight or was removed blind drunk from the dinner table to the harem. He became the dupe of an English barber, who at once bent the royal will and curled the royal whiskers, as suited his purposes and his taste, and by constantly ministering to the bad passions and unlawful appetites of his majestic master, brought him at last to a degree of bestiality so disgusting that we are glad to hear of his being poisoned. We think the book establishes one thing beyond any sort of question, that the British East India Company regulates affairs very badly in Hindostan, when such whimsical and despotic cruelty is permitted to be practised within the limits of its jurisdiction. It is too ridiculous for the author, after giving us some of the fearfullest accounts of the barbarity towards Slaves in India, to say upon the authority of Mrs. Stowe, that the relation there is not so bad as in the Southern States of North America, though doubtless he was sincere in his opinion, and it only shows how deeply the slanders of our Yankee novelist have affected the minds of the English people. Bowles is better known to the world by reason of his famous controversy with Lord Byron on the writings of Pope, than for any high degree of poetic excellence in himself. Nevertheless he was the most graceful of Sonnetteers, and his more extended poems possess sweetness and delicacy. The present edition of his works belongs to the beautiful series of the Messrs. Appleton, which has already extended to fourteen volumes, and is to be continued until it embraces the whole range of English poetry from Chaucer down to Tennyson. Mr. Gilfillan's skyrocketting in the Critical Dissertation and Memoir prefixed to each volume lends additional attraction to the series which we commend to public favor. THE ANNALS OF SAN FRANCISCO, &c., &c., &c. By A work of great interest in which may be found a full and clear narrative of the rapid growth of the City of San Francisco, during seven years of extraordinary incident. The authors, who participated in all of the thrilling scenes described, have told their story with spirit and ef fect. The volume is beautifully printed and most richly illustrated with the finest wood and steel engravings mostly from photographs or daguerreotypes. THE POETRY AND MYSTERY OF DREAMS. By Charles G. Leland. Philadelphia: Published by E. H. Butler & Co. 1856. [From T. D. Clarke, 157 Main Street. So far as we know, this is the only work in the English language in which the author has attempted to present in a collected form, the emotional phases of the mind dur ing sleep, as caught from the writings of the learned and gifted in various ages of the world. It is a charming compilation, showing a large erudition and a discriminating taste. PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT THREE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR. VOL. XXI. RICHMOND, DECEMBER, 1855. NO. 12. Of the customs and habits of the two Good Eating Among the Greeks and Ro-most interesting and enlightened people of mans.* ΟΡΩ πάντα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις εκ τριττῆς χρείας καὶ ἐπιθυμίας ἡντημένα δὲ ὧν ἀρετὴ τε αὐτοῖς ἀγομένοις ὀρθῶς, καὶ τούναντον ἀποβαίνει κακῶς ἀχθεῖσι. ταῦτα ς'εσίν ἐδωδὴ μέν και καί 'έρως--- ποτίς antiquity, the Greeks and Romans; of the habits of the great philosophers, orators, poets, statesmen and warriors of these nations, their domestic and social life and manners, and particularly their table enjoyments, much Are the words in which Plato (Leg. vi. p. that is useful as well as entertaining may be 782) contends that the appetites are the main- gathered. The very marked contrast which springs of human action, and that from them they present to the manners and customs of proceed human virtues and vices. That the present time is also extremely curious there is much philosophic truth in this can- and not without instruction. not be doubted. The gratification of these In the early and more patriotic times of appetites has ever been a main concern of the Greek and Roman Republics, the citilife. The modes of living, and the customs zens paid but little attention to the enjoyof nations as well as the habits of individu- ments of eating. Spare and wholesome diet als-particularly those distinguished for wis- satisfied their wants and appetites. After dom or elevation of character-furnish mat- the Persian invasion, when the Greeks carter of private and national interest and in- ried the war into Persia and became acquainstruction. Simple manners, frugal diet, and ted particularly with the more polished, becoming attire, produce individual and na- wealthy, and luxurious Greek States of Asia tional character far different from artificial Minor, they began to imitate their manners manners, luxurious living, and fantastic and and customs, and to introduce a taste for immodest apparel. Very different were the luxurious living, especially in their public domestic habits and modes of living of the festivals, whether of religion or the State. heroic Greeks who fought the battles of Mar- So it was with the Romans. After they athon and Platea, from those of their degen- had conquered Corinth and the other Greek erate descendants who were overthrown by States, they carried back to Rome a taste the hardy Macedonians at Cheronea! The for Grecian and Asiatic luxury, and, as usual, same remark may be made of the Romans there was a decline of ancient temperance in the days of Cincinnatus and the elder and frugality, which rapidly led to a deteri Cato, and those who, under their despotic oration of the moral and physical powers of Emperors, could discourse only of their feats the individual, and to a deplorable decline in catching turbots, and cooking and eating in private and public virtues. Instead of shell-fish and the tongues of singing birds. * "CHARICLES: ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS, WITH NOTES AND EXCURSU- admiring and endeavoring to imitate great statesmen, warriors and patriots, cooks and eating-house keepers became great men, and instances are not wanting in which public honors were paid to the inventor of some APICIO DE OPSONIIS ET CONDIMENTIS, SIVE ARTE CO-new and expensive dish. GALLUS; OR ROMAN SCENES IN THE TIME OF AUGUS- TUS. don. John W. Parker & Son. 1854. OF THE EATABLES IN USE AMONGST THE ROMANS. From the French of M. Peignot. Loudon. Longman & Co. VOL. XXI-90 In Athenæus we have numerous examples of the insolence and vanity of cooks. From these we learn that the cooks of the ancients were complete adepts in their science, and have not yet been equalled by the professors of the art in Paris. As a proof of their skill, |