Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/520

 hours, his short conversations. The only part of the day given to society is the dinner-hour, and half an hour which he spends in the drawing-room after joining the ladies with the rest of the guests. Tea is brought in at ten precisely: he takes a cup, and as soon as he has put it down on the table, he rises and retires to work without intermission till the middle of the night; a labour which he resumes next morning, and which is uninterrupted till dinner-time, with the exception of a walk or a ride of three-quarters of an hour, or an hour, which he allows or imposes on himself, late in the day, for his health's sake. . . . Indifferent to what people think of him, persevering, active, indefatigable, sincerely liberal, and desiring liberty for all; a partisan of reform, yet attached to all the old customs of his country, and as little of a rash innovator as an obstinate follower of routine, his mind is open and ready to understand the real wants and desires of the English nation. A master of his language, knowing how to be lucid, eloquent, genial, enthusiastic, according to his audience, there is no speaker who can make himself better understood by every one nor whose language seems better to express the sentiments of each individual in the crowd he is addressing. These, I believe, are about all the qualities and gifts which gain for him the great popularity he enjoys in England; but several of these qualities are of no use to him when he has to do with other countries: some of them even change their character and become dangerous in intercourse with foreigners — his indifference to opinion looks like contempt, his taste for liberty makes him pass for a favourer of revolution. Neither does he write as he speaks, and, strange to say, he lets fall fewer intemperate expressions in the heat of a speech than he writes deliberately in a despatch. In a word, whilst in England he is nearly always master of his audience, because he knows them better than any one, his ignorance of foreigners is extreme, and the mind, so liberal towards his countrymen, is seen to be imbued with the strongest and strangest prejudices with regard to others. This alone is sufficient to explain some of his mistakes, as well as the dislike he inspires abroad. And yet this dislike is unjust; for, in spite of his blunders, nothing is more untrue than the opinion which ascribes to him the systematic design of revolutionizing Europe with the object of advancing an English interest which is entirely imaginary. He has a sincere love of justice, and an equally sincere hatred of oppression; he believes that it is for the interest of all nations that each one of them should be governed in the best possible way, and that this is especially the interest of England. He is right in thinking that the political experiments made in his own country have been successful, and he is wrong in not seeing that elsewhere their dangers might often exceed their advantages, and that English institutions are easy to caricature, but almost impossible to imitate. In short, he often makes mistakes: but, on the other hand, people make a good many mistakes about him. Conversation with him is not difficult. He talks with tiresome people just as he does with those who are not tiresome, without seeming to perceive the difference. His manners are not exactly what one would call those of a grand seigneur, but he is simple and cordial, and there is nothing about him which shows the slightest surprise or intoxication at his high position. His memory, activity, and energy are the same at seventy-two that they were at twenty-five: it is rare to find all these qualities and faculties so vigorous at that age; and it may well be said that labours and anxiety sit lightly on him.

 

  — At a recent meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Mr. T. Meehan remarked that the influence which nutrition, in its various phases, had on the forms and characters of plants was an interesting study; and in this connection he had placed on record in the proceedings of the academy, that two species of Euphorbia, usually prostrate, assumed an erect growth when their nutrition was interfered with by an Æcidium — a small fungoid parasite. He had now to offer similar fact in connection with the common purslane (Portulaca oleracea), one of the most prostrate of all procumbent plants, which, under similar circumstances, also became erect. Popular Science Review.