is not more than thirty miles distant from a point TIME AND PHOTOGRAPHY.-We have heard it af that may easily be reached by this launch, which firmed that a fly is a medium-sized object amongst by newspaper measurement draws thirteen inches, living beings-meauing that there are objects as and actually thirty-one. The Lake Shirwa is very much smaller than a fly as an elephant or a whale grand. It is surrounded on all sides by lofty is larger, and this we believe to be true. But what green mountains. Dzomba, or as people nearest shall we say to a second in respect to photographic it say, Zomba, is over six thousand feet high, of time of action? Taking six hours as a maximum same shape as Table Mountain, but inhabited on time of exposure, we can show differences in times the top; others are equally high but inaccessible. of exposure, and variations in active action on the It is a high land region-the lake itself being other side of a second of time, far exceeding any about two thousand feet above the sea. It is thing ever dreamed of in the ordinary practice of twenty or thirty miles wide, and fifty or sixty photography. In taking photographs of rapidlylong. On going some way up a hill, we saw in moving objects-the waves of the sea, for instance the far distance two mountain-tops, rising little -we have been obliged to judge of the proper exislands on a watery horizon. An inhabited moun- posure requisite to bring out the half-tints, and estitain island stands near where we first came to it. mate differences of time, varying between the 1-50th From the size of the waves it is supposed to be and the 1-120th of a second. Exposures like these deep. Mr. Maclear will show you the map. Dr. are, however, enormous, when compared with the Kirk and I with fifty Makololo formed the land par- time occupied in other photographic experiments. ty. The country is well peopled and very much like Thus, in solar photography, according to experiments Louda in the middle of the country, many streams of Mr. Waterhouse, au image was impressed in a rising out of bogs-the vegetation nearly identi- space of time no longer than 1-9000th part of a cal also. Never saw so much cotton grown as second, even when a slow photographic process among the Manganga of the Shire and Shirwa was used; and when wet collodion was employed, Valleys-all spin and weave it. These are the one third of the above time, or 1-27,000th of a latitudes which I have always pointed out as the second was all that was needed. This duration, cotton and sugar lands; they are preöminently however, inconceivably short as it appears, will be so, but such is the disinterestedness of some people seen to be a tolerable length, when we try to bring that labor is exported to Bourbon instead of being the mind to appreciate the rapidity with which Mr. employed here. The only trade they have is that Talbot performed his crucial experiment at the of slaves, and the only symptoms of impudence Royal Institution, where he photographed a rapidly. we met were from a party of Bajana slave-traders; revolving wheel, illuminated by one single discharge but they changed their deportment instantly on of an electric battery. To a casual observer or hearing that we were English, and not Portuguese. reader of this experiment, the wonderful part apThere are no Maravi at or near Shirwa; they are pears to be that the wheel appeared perfectly sharp all west of the Shire, so this lake can scarcely be and stationary in the photograph, although in realcalled Lake Maravi; the Portuguese know no-ity, it was being rotated with as great a velocity as thing of it; but the minister who claimed (blue multiplying wheels could communicate to it. A book for 1857) the honor of first traversing the little further consideration will, however, show that African continent for two black men with Portu- the time occupied in the revolution of the wheel guese names, must explain why they did not cross was a planetary cycle when compared with the the Shirwa. It lies some forty or fifty miles on time of duration of the illuminating spark, which, each side of the latitude of Mozambique. They according to the most beautiful and trustworthy excame to Tete only, and lacked at least four hun- periments of Professor Wheatstone, only occupied dred miles of Mozambique. We go back to the millionth part of a second in its duration.-PhoShirwa in July, and may make a push for N'yin-tographic News. yesi. (Signed)

"DAVID LIVINGSTONE"

DEATH OF PROFESSOR NICHOL.--The North British Daily Mail says: We have to record with unfeigned regret a feeling which will be shared in by a wide circle of scientific and other friends—the death of John Pringle Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow, which took place on Monday, the nineteenth, at Glenburn House, Rothesay, the hydropathic establishment of Dr. Paterson. Dr. Nichol has been in delicate health for a considerable time past, and though, during a sojourn at Rothesay early in the summer of this year, he appeared to have rallied somewhat, the state of his constitution was still very feeble. On Tuesday, last week, his condition was such as to induce his friends to advise his removal from his own residence at the observatory to Rothesay, where, on the following Thursday, his illness assumed a more alarming aspect, and from that day he continued gradually to sink till the afternoon of Monday, when he expired from congestion of the brain, resulting from a palpitation of the heart. Professor Nichol was a native of Brechin. in Forfarshire. where he was born on the thirteenth January, 1801.

PROPOSED HUMBOLDT MEMORIAL. The Prince Consort has laid before the British Association a copy of a letter he has received from Germany, on the subject of a proposal to establish a "Humboldt Foundation for Physical Science and Travels." His Royal Highness states that, should the object referred to in the letter appear to be one which merits the support and assistance of the members of the Association, he will have much pleasure in heading a subscription-list with the sum of one hundred pounds. There is every probability that the matter will be taken up warmly by the scientific men of this country, and, as a beginning, the Geographical Section of the British Association has passed a unanimous resolution in favor of the movement.

THE double festival of the triumphal entry and the Emperor's birthday terminated, on Monday night, as it commenced, prosperously, and without a single drawback. The sky, menacing in the forenoon, brightened as the day wore on, again threatened rain before night arrived, but finally cleared; the wind abated, and fireworks and illuminations met with no impediment. Altoge ther, the fetes have been perfectly successful.

Austria to the richest kingdoms out of the spoils of the French empire, with no other agency than the stroke of his pen. He found Austria reduced to a shadow of her former greatness-a third-rate depend ency of a confederation which was itself the puppet of France. He left her the most powerful kingdom in Europe, endued with a giant's strength, and fortified up to the teeth on the Po, on the Danube, on the Rhine. With its head resting on the sunny plains of Italy; with its trunk

rather to the class of the Wolseys and the superior spirit. But Metternich conthe Richelieus than to any of his own centrived to overreach Napoleon, to bring tury; yet in the marvels he accomplished him as a suppliant to his feet, and to help we must place him above the Wolseys and the Richelieus. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the European populations had hardly emerged from the trammels of servitude-when the multitude was besotted, and the public mind kept down to the stagnant level of a brutish mediocrity, it was indeed easy for a great genius, monopolizing all the learning of the period, to wield the destinies of a kingdom, and make a continent of people, like so many terror-stricken herds, crouch to receive his mandates with slav-in Upper Germany, Illyria, and the Selaish obsequiousness. But Metternich fashioned society in the molds of his own creation, at a time when society was fully as enlightened as himself, and was rushing in a direction fatal to his purposes. He laid down his grooves with the cool air of one who has only to speak to be obeyed; and as the multitude were rejoicing in the vigor of newly-awakened intellect, he arrested their progress, and flung them upon a retrograde movement with a facility the more surprising, as he stood singlehanded in the conflict, and his resources appeared of the simplest character. During the times in which he lived, the literature of his country achieved its greatest triumphs; and the national energies were aroused by events the most startling and turbulent in human annals. To have possessed any influence at such an epoch would have been the mark of a high intellect; but to have been the presiding spirit of the period, and to have so guided its stormiest events as to make them run counter to their natural tendency, this must be confessed to be the mark of the loftiest genius. Yet such was the lot of Prince Metternich. If his system in Austria was at last overborne, the defeat was but momentary; like a ball, it rose higher from the rebound, and seems even now, with its originator in its grave, as likely to endure as ever.

Other men have performed dazzling achievements by the sword, but their empire has been fleeting, and their conquests as transitory as themselves. They have risen like a brilliant coruscation in the evening, and having overawed nations by their splendor, have been engulfed in mysterious darkness. Such was the ca reer of Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon. Of the three, the Corsican was doubtless

vonic provinces; with its extremities stretching far away to the icy ravines of the Riesengebirges, the Austria of Metternich's creation still lies a vast political balance-weight in the center of Europe. As governor of this huge empire, Metternich was the political Titan of his day. He insured victory to whatever side he leaned without unsheathing the sword. Italy, by secret stipulations with its princes, lay at his feet. He ruled Germany through that Confederation, which was itself the creature of his breath, and which, in addition to the imperial forces, placed under his control an army of 300,000 men. Even Napoleon, in the zenith of his power, hardly exercised greater influence, or could dispose of a larger military array than Metternich acquired by pacific means, and which he made Europe believe was essential to its peace that he should retain. But his career extends over double the space of the French hero, though the latter was more fortunate in this respect than any of his predecessors, with the exception of Frederick the Great. Metternich was famous as a European diplomatist in 1797, at the Congress of Rastadt; and the requiem has only just been sung over his catafalque in the Hauptkirche of Vienna. His recollection of and personal acquaintance with our chiefs extended from Pitt to Aberdeen. The Foxes, the Liverpools, the Castlereaghs, the Cannings, the Peels, and the Wellingtons all passed like so many shadows before him. He was acquainted and shook hands with all. Four sovereigns since his manhood sat on the throne of Russia; and five swayed the destinies of France, three of whom he lived to see in exile. During the intervening space, three Emperors stalked, like

so many shadows, through the chambers in their decrees was the social Elysium of the imperial palace; but the real gov- he destined for mortals. The rapid develernment of Austria rested in the hands of opment of science, the electric transmisMetternich. From the age of twenty- sion of thought, the economization of lafive up to within a few years of his death, bor, the volant flight of the steam-engine, he was the virtual sovereign of the heter- which are, as we write, gradually elevatogeneous populations united under the ing society to a more lofty region of existHouse of Hapsburg; and the prestige ence, had no meaning for Metternich. derived from his lofty position, as well as The rosy morning of a golden future from the success of his tactics, gave him never knocked at his doors. His political an influence with foreign princes which world had no rainbow of hope illuminatmany of their own councilors did not ing its horizon, no blooming vistas indicatpossess. His name stood as high in Rome, ing a speedy coming time when many of in St. Petersburg, in Paris during the the thorns which at present infest men's Restoration, and in London during the path will be turned into flowers, when the Regency, as at Vienna. Hence the action course of society will lie through gardens, of Metternich was not like that of other and not through deserts; when a social potentates, confined to his own country, structure will arise, which shall beautify but extended over the most influential instead of disgracing material nature, and quarter of the globe. Wherever grave stand out in the same startling contrast to interests were at stake touching the king- that of the present, as a Palladian palace doms at the head of civilization, there his to a Celtic hovel. Metternich read huvoice was in the ascendant. For upwards manity backwards. The present with him of half a century he presided over diplo- was only a bad repetition of the slavish matic councils, and gave the guiding past; and he was determined the future stroke to the policy of Europe. should be in every respect a still more servile repeater of worn-out echoes than the present.

But it is in the hardy task of inclosing the career of the human spirit within fixed barriers, and of arresting the democratic current, that Metternich claims our principal consideration. Nations that might have proceeded gradually from one liberty to another have been kept by him in a degraded state of political infancy. His eyes unceasingly went round the globe, to see if there was not some trembling throne to support, some tribune to close, some germ of liberty to stifle. Hence he called himself the head constable of Europe. But his was not the baton which secures order that men may enjoy the greatest amount of freedom, but that which extinguishes freedom at the sacrifice of order. The force essential to keep humanity in shackles was periodically giving way. It required all the energies of this extraordinary man to save Europe from convulsions, and repair the broken fetter, that the system might continue. According to Metternich, there was no law of progress for society. Men were destined, like animals, to execute continually the same gyrations, only on a higher platform of being. The infallibility attaching to his religious convictions was imported into the domain of politics. Heaven had not only appointed priests, but kings, for his vicegerents. One fixed and eternal round of blind acquiescence

It is singular that this political phenomenon should have continued to knock about the world like a foot-ball for nearly half a century without extorting from his speculative countrymen more dignified notices of his doings than the miserable sketches which introduce this essay. The greater portion of these are vague culogiums, of which Metternich must have been heartily ashamed, and were doubtless written by needy applicants for office, who expected by them to propitiate the favour of the Chancellerie. But if the press of Germany is in fetters, if its political bookmakers, overawed by the machinery of the Confederation, refrain from dealing with Metternich's career in a legitimate spirit, at least we, on this side of the water, are in a different position. we had not had the blessing of Metternich's guidance, we have, at all events, experienced its influence, and have a claim to be just to his memory. Many of his political actions, also, are pregnant with the deepest meaning to Englishmen. We can not, therefore, allow the grave to engulf so much renown without canvassing the merits of a man whom England alternately regarded with pleasure and with distrust, and considering his public acts, both in relation to the foreign interests of

If

Mayence, to imbibe the principles of jurisprudence and international law. At the age of eighteen he assisted his father as master of ceremonies at the coronation of Leopold II, and was subsequently, on leaving Mayence, initiated by him into the mysteries of Austrian statecraft at Vienna.

this country, and the effects they have produced in the later political developments of Europe. It is because we believe the policy of Metternich has had, and still retains, its partisans among a certain class of British statesmen, that we shall endeavor to show in what manner that policy has neutralized the foreign influence of England, and deprived its It is in the influences produced on his diplomatists of that weight in the coun- mind at the outset of his career that we cils of Europe which the success of Brit- must seek for the well-springs of that ish arms gave them a fair title to claim. policy with which he so pertinaciously Nothing can be more opportune than such strove to inundate Europe. That policy considerations at the present crisis. When was too unnatural to have its seat in reathe state of parties is so identical at home son, however much the mind may have as to present little shade of difference un- been employed in adjusting its details and less in their foreign policy, and when the in imparting to them systematic coherfate of one of the countries, which supped ence. Like many other radical errors, full of the blessings of Metternich's gov- we must ascribe Metternich's early bias ernment, is trembling in the balance be- in favor of absolutism to adventitious cirtween the renewal of his absolutism and cumstances disturbing the clear vision of the inauguration of constitutional pro- his virgin intellect, and forcing him upon gress, it is peculiarly fitting to review the a path opposed to his speculative convicclass of evils this statesman has engen- tions. His first prepossessions were in dered, the happiness he has prevented, favor of liberal institutions. With Benjaand to what extent England, by the weak-min Constant and Lowestein, at Strasburg, ness of some of her rulers, has been an- he hailed the advent of a constitutional cillary to the infliction of the blighting government in France as opening a golden effect of his system upon the world.

Clement Wenceslaus Lothaire, Count de Metternich, was born at Coblentz, May fifteenth, 1773. He was descended from one of the best families in the empire, who had constantly maintained a foremost position either as princes of the Church or magnates of the State. In the sixteenth century they figure as Archbishops of Trèves, and military governors of Mayence. In later times, they have given chancellors to the Imperial Cabinet at Vienna. The family estates, more extensive than many German principalities, stretch from the Moselle through the plains of Winneberg and Oldenhausen to Handsruck. The wonder is not that such a family became distinguished, but that they did not aim at independent sovereignty. Clement's father, Francis George, however, who was born at Coblentz 1746, was the first who bore the title of Prince of the Empire - a dignity conferred upon him in reward for his efficient services as conference minister at Vienna. Of Clement's education scrupulous care appears to have been taken. Having surmounted a host of private masters, he was forced through the curriculum of two universities the one at Strasburg, to perfect himself in the arts; the other at

vista to humanity. But when the French made war against the class to which he belonged; when they pulled down the altar, and extinguished the throne in blood; when they menaced Europe with a war of propagandism; when they seized on the left bank of the Rhine, and confiscated his own patrimony in the general spoil; then his visions of human progress vanished, and he saw no hope for his species, unless cooped up in the cage of an iron-banded despotism. To crush liberty, and promote the cause of absolutism, be came henceforward the grand object of his life. Nor did the visit which he paid to England and Holland before entering on his diplomatic career in the slightest degree mitigate this tendency. When he first came amongst us, in 1794, the flower of the Whigs, imitating his own recreancy, had passed over to the Tories, and Pitt was invested with almost dictatorial powers by a corrupt Parliament. In Holland, matters were even worse. That little kingdom, in hourly terror of invasion, had suspended the functions of its senate, and, in the hands of military generals, was bracing every nerve for its defense. Metternich doubtless mistook the diseased state of the freest of the Western Powers for their healthy condition; and