effectual movements will shortly be made with reference to the National Gallery; and active debates are taking place among those who will at least have a share in determining the result. The means they choose lie, of course, along the ancient highways of immemorial routine. In this country prescription rules the progress even of reform. We advance by invariable gradations. First, abuses accumulate until they almost overwhelm the institution to which they are attached, and entirely bury its utility out of sight; then the press sounds an alarm, the functionaries deny the grounds of complaint, the press repeats the charge, and at last a circle of discussion widens over the vast waters of public opinion. Then government takes up' the subject, and acknowledges the wrong, but never goes straight forward in search of a remedy. It must have a commission; it must have a blue book; it never supposes the existence in Great Britain of shrewdness or skill enough to accomplish a simple end. So with the National Gallery. Inquiries are to be made at every court of Europe that possesses a collection of pictures-for on the Continent nothing belongs to the peopleabout their plans and their ideas, and out of all this a model for ourselves is to be made. Well, if the thing be done well, we shall not dispute the fashion of doing it; but our anticipation is, that we shall not have a better National Gallery than we might have by employing at once some architect of genius to design it.

The Museum question is in a better way of solution. We have built and re-built; we have spent on it, within thirty years, almost as much as the bishopric of Durham has swallowed up in that period; and now the trustees confess that the place cannot accommodate what it already contains, and will be turned into a mere warehouse if we attempt to choke it with any more. No change of details can now suffice. There is a mighty bull coming from Assyria, and possibly some antiquarian Mahmoud may bring after him his colossal brother of Tanjore. Marbles and metals, mummies and monoliths, are waiting to have space provided for them, with pillars from Athens, friezes from Rome, sculptured slabs from Nineveh; and the trustees, with a sapience worthy of a justice of the Dorsetshire petty sessions, recommend that, with respect to science and antiques, we smooth the difficulty away by suspending all purchases, and refusal of gifts.' By this means, they say, we may limit the growth' of the collection. Had a mandarin of China or a port-admiral of Japan invented this suggestion, we should have admired it as consonant with the ignorance and folly which in those empires stint and famish every liberal aspiration of the people; but from gentlemen like the trustees, so much extravagance could not have been expected. But, as the Times'

following the 'Athenæum'-allows, they have really pointed out the only alternative. We must abandon our national collection to its present incompleteness, or we must allow the Museum to colonize a number of institutions in the capital. The Vatican at Rome, says our literary contemporary, St. Mark's at Venice, the Imperial at Vienna, the National at Paris, the Escurial at Madrid-in fact, all the renowned libraries of the continent, have a history stretching back into the middle ages; but the British Museum is the growth of a single generation. We may expect books in future to be added at the rate of nearly twenty-eight thousand a-year; so that a room of equal capacity with the splendid King's Library' will be required every five years-that is, the whole building must be increased by a tenth of its present dimensions.

6

It will be to little purpose to adopt the suggestions which some ingenious patriots have offered. Not one of them will be efficacious for anything except putting off the evil day. Filling up the great quadrangle with a circular reading-room of glass and iron would be a piece of incongruous patchwork-totally unsuited to its object. No one, of course, thinks any change could be for the worse from the vault-like approaches and pestilential gloom of the reading-rooms we have; but a new building in the centre would leave the other general defects exactly as they are, so that the whole discussion would soon have to be revived. There is a vast collection of manuscripts, too, most inadequately provided for. Consequently, nothing seems feasible or sufficing as a remedy, except giving up the Museum to literature, and sending the minor collections where they can be accommodated better, and be equally accessible to the public.

Two questions, in addition to these, have arisen. Who are to be admitted to the reading-room, and when are they to be admitted? Though we cannot agree with Mr. Carlyle in ridiculing the compilers, who have their vocation, and ought to be allowed facilities for it, we are sensible of the great disadvantages to students in the presence daily of about two hundred idlers, whispering, laughing, walking to and fro, and whisking flippantly the leaves of 'picture-books' and light romances. We would not expel these, but they might be divided from the genuine explorers of those literary treasures now guarded by the equivocal courtesy of Sir Henry Ellis. The hours of study seem clearly to be-while there is sufficient light to read by, without exposing a priceless collection to peril from fire.

And now, we have one question to ask, and shall be glad if the answer does not involve an exposure of flagrant abuse. What becomes of the lighter books, which our publishers forced to send to the Oxford library? Is the rum inger

founded that they are first read by the officials and then sold? The country has a right to be informed on this point.

To these subjects we direct our readers' attention. They ought not to be neglected by the country. If, beyond political liberty and domestic prosperity, we ought, as a people, to have an ambition, it should be the exaltation of literature and art. These are the embodiments of truth and beauty; they constitute the immortal fame of nations; and by them all that is delightful to the vision is fixed into enduring shape. Commerce enriches, and freedom ennobles a state; but art and letters soften and elevate its people; delight them by images and colours, starting like dreams from the canvas, or forms of perpetual beauty chiselled from the marble. If, then, we have the refined and liberal aspiration to revive for ourselves the bloom of the Athenian myrtle wreath, let us dedicate to books, to sculpture, and to painting, edifices which are worthy of them; and while we cultivate these adorning and elevating graces, the purity of letters and the grandeur of art will return upon us a hundredfold all that we bestow on them.

ART. II.-The Works of Pascal. Newly Translated and Arranged. By George Pearce, Esq. London: Longman and Co.

1. The Provincial Letters. 2. The Miscellaneous Writings. 3. The Thoughts on Religion, and Evidences of Christianity.

DURING recent years considerable light has been thrown both on the works and the life of Pascal. M. Cousin and M. Faugères have especially contributed to redeem from obscurity and destruction some of the finest fragments which be left behind him, and to set in a new, or at least more intelligible colouring, an interesting period of his history. In 1848, M. Vinet published his 'Studies upon Pascal;' and Ernest Havet has recast Faugères' edition of the Thoughts,' and given a complete view of the recent controversy relating to that work. Mr. Pearce has done well in presenting us with a version of the minute and copious edition of Faugères. He has accomplished his task, upon the whole, with scholarship and taste; and the English reader is now for the first time enabled to study Pascal-at least in those noblest monuments of his genius, his 'Thoughts'-in a form and garb of which he himself would not have been ashamed.

We propose to avail ourselves of the opportunity of presenting our faders with a brief sketch of the life and labours of

this great man, in which we shall embody whatever new particulars the industry of his recent commentator and editor have been able to glean. Often as his portrait has been already drawn and his works criticised, there is more than enough to repay us still in a review of both; for there are but few names in the past associated at once with so much worthiness of character and such a rich and manifold range of intellect as that of Pascal. The high union of the most rare and even diverse qualities of mind which his writings display, is amongst the most remarkable of which we have any record. How seldom do we see such a combination of mental powers-the highest scientific skill wedded to the finest literary art; at once the most severe and vigorous and the most light and playful cast of thought; the subtlest and most comprehensive reach both of mathematical and philosophical investigation, and the happiest and most exquisite graces of the belles lettres; while the glow and tenderness of an enthusiastic piety irradiate and beautify all.

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, on the 19th of June, 1623. His father was first President of the Court of Aids in that city; but on the death of his wife he abandoned his professional duties and repaired to Paris, with the view of devoting himself to the education of his children, of whom, besides the subject of our notice, there were two daughters, Gilberte and Jaqueline. Here he united himself with a band of sages, who then, in the springtide of science,' were applying themselves with all the ardour of a fresh-born zeal to physical studies. Among these were Descartes, Gassendi, Mersenne, Roberval, Careavi, and Le Pailleur; and, in order to stimulate and forward their respective labours, they were in the habit of assembling at each other's houses, and engaging in discussion on the topics which so strongly interested them. They held also a regular correspondence with other savants in the provinces and throughout Europe, and were thus instructed in the general progress of scientific discovery. This small society of friends, thus united by the simple attraction of congenial pursuits, it is worthy of notice, formed the origin of the famous Academy of Sciences established by royal authority

in 1666.

Young Pascal, who from his earliest youth had given signs of great mental activity, became a frequent auditor of these conferences when held at his father's house. He is reported to have manifested the deepest attention and the most inquisitive spirit; and it is even said, that when only eleven years of age he composed a treatise upon sound-in which he sought to explain how it was that a plate, struck with a sharp instrument, returned a sound which ceased all at once on the finger

being applied to it. His father, apprehensive that so lively a taste for science might prove pernicious to his other studies, agreed with his friends to abstain from speaking of subjects relating to it in the boy's presence. This was found, however, to be of little avail. The thirst for scientific knowledge, once awakened, continued to burn in the breast of the young philosopher; and shutting himself up in his solitary chamber, he gave himself unrestrained to the bent of his desires, and was actually found to have traced upon the floor the figures of triangles, parallelograms, and circles, and so far examined their properties, without even knowing their names. · His reasoning, it is said, was founded upon definitions and axioms which he had made for himself;' and, according to the same authority, he had, step by step, succeeded in reading the demonstration of the thirty-second proposition of Euclid -that the sum of the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles-when surprised by his father in his extraordinary task. Astonished and overjoyed, the father ran to communicate the fact to his intimate friend, M. le Pailleur.

It is true that some have ventured to doubt the fact of this wonderful precocity on the part of Pascal. According to the Abbé Bossut, however, on whose authority we have relied, it is substantiated by the most indubitable evidence; and if only substantially correct, it no doubt bespeaks a marvellous capacity in Pascal as a mere boy. Having so remarkably asserted his love for science, his father no longer sought to lay any restraint upon him in following out the strong bent of his genius. He was provided with the Elements of Euclid,' which he almost immediately mastered without assistance. By and by he began to take a conspicuous part in the scientific conversations which took place at his father's house; and while still only in his sixteenth year, he wrote the famous Treatise on Conic Sections,' which so excited the mingled incredulity and astonishment' of Descartes.

Stephen Pascal was now the happiest of fathers, in the contemplation of his son's rising genius, and the maturing graces and accomplishments of his amiable daughters, when all his fair visions were suddenly dashed by an unforeseen calamity. Impoverished by the long continuance of war, and by financial embezzlements, the government, under the direction of the well-known Cardinal Richelieu, ventured to reduce the divideuds on the Hotel-de-Ville. This proceeding naturally excited the discontent and murmurs of the annuitants, and meetings were held on the subject. So mild an expression of liberty, however, could not be tolerated by the cardinal minister. All such meetings were pronounced to be illegal