THE name and writings of this eminent | vincial. In 1840 he received the appointhistorian of the Netherlands have become ment of Secretary of Legation to the familiar to American readers. The pages American embassy to Russia. He held of THE ECLECTIC this year have been en- the post about eight months, when he reriched with a review of his works. The signed and returned to the United States. English quarterlies speak the language of In 1849 he produced a second historical high commendation of his talents as a his- fiction, entitled Merry Mount, a Romance torian. We have now the pleasure of pre- of the Massachusetts Colony. This work, senting to our readers a fine portrait of like the preceding, although well written, Dr. Motley, which we are quite sure will and giving abundant evidence of talent, be welcomed as an appropriate embellish- attracted little attention. Meanwhile he ment of our present number. The por- had contributed various articles to some trait has been engraved from a photo- of the leading reviews. Among these pagraph taken at Boston a few weeks since, pers, one on De Tocqueville's Democracy which Dr. Motley kindly consented to sit in America, and another on Goethe and for at our request, which we accompany his writings, appeared in the New-York with a brief biographical sketch. Review. Still another of very striking character on Peter the Great, was publish ed in the North-American Review for Oct. 1845. Soon afterwards he became interested in the history of Holland, and began to collect authorities for a work on that subject, writing enough to form two volumes; but, unable to gather such material at home as he deemed necessary for the thorough prosecution of the subject, he embarked for Europe with his family in 1851. On examination he became dissatisfied with his labors, threw aside all that he had written, and began his entire task anew. In Berlin, Dresden, and the Hague, he passed the principal portion of JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY was born in Dorchester, Mass., April fifteenth, 1814. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1831, and thence proceeded to the University of Göttingen, where he continued about one year, and another year at the University of Berlin, after which he traveled for some time in the south of Europe, chiefly in Italy. On his return to America he studed law, and was admitted to the bar in 1836-'7. He displayed little liking for the drudgery of the law, and scarcely practiced his profession. In 1839 he published a novel entitled Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Young Pro 1 his time during the next five years, engag | regular ambassador, Mr. Adams, arrived ed upon the composition of his history, in London. In the prosecution of his reentitled The Rise of the Dutch Republic. searches into the history of the sixteenth It was published in London in 1856, (3 century, Mr. Motley had not forgotten the vols. 8vo,) and was at once reproduced political history of his own country. He in New-York. It was also reprinted in was perfectly familiar with all the facts, English at Amsterdam, beside being trans- arguments and principles on which the lated into Dutch under the supervision of Unionists and the secessionists respective the historian M. Bakhuyzen van den Brink, ly relied, and he was perfectly familiar who prefixed an introductory chapter. A also with all those avenues to the English German translation was published at Leip- mind, by availing himself of which an sie and Dresden; and the first volume of American can hope to convey intelligence a French translation, with an introduction on American affairs to English statesmen by Guizot, was published in 1859. The and men of letters. sale of the work in England, to Nov. 1857, had reached fifteen thousand copies; and in America, up to June, 1860, seventyseven hundred and ninety copies had been printed. Mr. Motley visited the United States for a short time in 1858. He is now in Europe pursuing his researches regarding the history of Holland. A new work, entitled, The United Netherlands, (3 vols. 8vo,) is announced (Oct. 1860) for publication in London. Since the publication of his Dutch Republic he has been elected a member of various learned societies in Europe and America, among them of the Institute of France in place of Mr. Prescott, deceased. In 1860 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, and that of LL.D. from Harvard College. Dr. Motley returned from Europe the past summer, (1861,) and after a few weeks' sojourn among his friends at Boston, he received his appointment as Minister Resident to Austria, concerning which the Boston Transcript, of August twentieth, has the following: "His high social and his high literary rank afforded him the opportunities for influencing English opinion, not only by his masterly communications to the London Times, but by private conversations with Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and other members of the British Cabinet. After the attack on Sumter, and the grand uprising of the people to defend the Constitution and the Union of the States, Mr. Motley, not Mr. Dallas, was really our Minister at the Court of St. James. He did all that the wide information, the untiring activity, and the bright intelligence of one man could possibly do, in disabusing Englishmen of the misinformation regarding the matters in dispute, which the diplomatic agents of the Confederates were industriously circulating. To this work he cheerfully gave up all literary activity which had previously engaged his attention, and into this new work he threw himself with all the chivalrous earnestness and patriotic fervor of his nature. "We perceive that some journals con"John Lothrop Motley, the newly ap gratulate Mr. Motley that his office will pointed Minister to Austria, one of the give him the means and the leisure to conmost accomplished men ever sent by the tinue his history.' This, we feel assurGovernment of the United States to re-ed, is a consideration which has no promipresent it abroad, will sail from this city nence in his own ardent mind. He goes in the steamer to-morrow. Mr. Motley to Europe, not so much to obtain matedoes not, as some journals seem to think, rials for his history of the Thirty Years' owe his appointment to the influence of War, as to employ in the service of his powerful friends, or to his great literary country. all his knowledge, all his intellireputation among the scholars and histo-gence, all the charm of his frank and corrians of Europe, but to his demonstrated capacity for the performance of diplomatic duties, as shown by his services to the American cause in England, before our dial manners, and all the consummate tact in dealing with men he has acquired by mingling freely in European society." TWO NEW From the Edinburgh Scotsman. FAMILIES OF ASTEROIDS. SOMETHING NEW ABOUT PLANETS. turbing action of an unknown planet (Neptune) was ascertained; and by marvelous refinements of calculation, its very place in the heavens pointed out. By a similar process, M. Leverrier was led to infer the existence of a ring of small bodies revolving between Mercury and the sun, and though no living astronomer has seen them, the reality of the discovery will most probably not be questioned. His paper was noticed in the Scotsman of September twelfth, 1859, under the title of "An Unpunctual Planet." MONS. LEVERRIER, the celebrated as-puted longitudes of Uranus that the distronomer, read an interesting paper to the Academy of Sciences in 1859, on certain irregularities in the motion of the planet Mercury. These, carefully studied, led him to the curious conclusion that the planet's motions were disturbed by a quantity of matter revolving between it and the sun. Believing that if this matter had existed in the form of a planet it could not have escaped notice, he concluded that it must be distributed in a group of small bodies, like the asteroids, circulating between Mars and Jupiter. In confirmation of this idea, he found that Lemonnier, in 1772, saw, under some peculiarly favorable circumstances, a ring or chaplet of small bodies across the sun's disk, occupying some minutes in doing so. Further researches submitted to the Academy on the seventeenth of last month, have enabled him to advance a step farther in the path of discovery thus opened up. He observes that from the action of the planets on each other, their orbits are subjects to changes of three kinds. There may be a change in the plane of a planet's orbit, or the angle it forms with the ecliptic; secondly, in its orientation, or the part of the heavens to which its longer axis points; and thirdly, in its form, or the shape of the ellipse described by the planet. Now, the amount of such changes, ascertained by observation, affords data for computing the masses of the bodies producing them; and if we assume that the known planets are the only disturbing bodies, it follows that the results obtained -the value of the masses-should be the same whatever be the changes from which the computation is made. If the results do not exhibit this harmony, the discordance indicates the action of some body exterior to the planets, which has been overlooked. It was in this way, from the difference between the observed and com 66 M. Leverrier has also been studying, and apparently revising, the theory of Mars. From the movements of the earth, he estimates the mass of that planet at one three millionth part" of the mass of the sun; that of the earth at " one three hundred and fifty-five thousandth part ;" and that of Venus at one four hundred thousandth part," of the mass of the great central luminary. In Sir John Herschel's Outlines, the mass of the earth is put down about one fifth, and that of Mars about one seventh part greater than the above estimates, while that of Venus is nearly the same. Setting out from these data, the French astronomer finds that to reconcile the ancient with the modern observations of Mars, it is necessary to accelerate his perihelion movement. To find an adequate cause for this again, we must assume an increase in the attractive force of the earth or Venus—that is, in the computed mass of one or both of these planets. But the action of Venus on Mars is from its position comparatively feeble; and the value of its mass rests on grounds that are considered unassailable. We have no alternative, then, but to add to the computed mass of the earth, and an addition of a tenth suffices. But there are good reasons against admitting such a change; and an equal quantity of matter, in another form, revolving round the sun at the same distance, will give us the attractive force required. This, Leverrier concludes, must exist in the form of a ring of planetary bodies, analogous to the asteroids, revolving round the sun in orbits of nearly the same diameter with that of the earth. He rests this conclusion on purely astronomical grounds, and makes no allusion to a phenomenon which will readily connect itself in many minds with his ring of planetary bodies, and could not be absent from his own-we mean the aerolites or mineral masses, lumps of iron, and showers of stones falling from the atmos phere, which have so long been a puzzle to philosophers. One of the earliest of these on record is the block, as large as two millstones, which fell at Egos Potamos, on the west bank of the Hellespont, in the year 465 B.C. From one which fell at Tahlinder, in the Punjab (of iron) in 1620, a sword was made for the Emperor Jehangire. Since the year last mentioned there have been sixteen instances, well authenticated, of stones having fallen in the British Isles. Ed. Biot has found an equal number recorded in the imperial annals of China, between 650 B.C. and 333 A.D. The explosion of a fiery globe at l'Aigle, in Normandy, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1803, at midday, scattered thousands of stones over an area of twenty or thirty square miles. There was a similar shower of aerolites in the State of Ohio, on the first of May, 1860, which was also attended with loud detonations, some of the larger blocks weighing from forty to one hundred pounds. There are many other instances. (See Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. i. 108-118; vol. iii. 422.) For the last twenty years it has been all but universally admitted that the falling blocks are of the nature of planetary bodies. Hitherto, however, it has been supposed that the number was very small, and there was nothing in the mode or time of their occurrence to indicate that they had any connection with one another, or with any known part of our solar system. They seemed as independent, and to defy calculation or prediction, as much as the non-periodical comets, without having the marks of brotherhood which these display. Leverrier's discovery, therefore, comes opportunely to give us some idea of their origin. The aerolites, it may be presumed, are stragglers from the ring or circular belt of stones revolving round the sun, and consist of individual blocks, which during their revolution happen to come near enough to the earth to be detached from their places by its attraction. Judging from the specimens which visit our globe, these traveling stones must amount to many millions, since, in the aggregate, they are equal to one tenth of the earth's mass. It may be assumed that the orbit in which they move has a different plane from that of the earth, and, if so, the fall of aerolites can occur only at the points where the planes intersect-that is, periodicallyand twice a year at most; while, as their orbit, like the earth's, must be elliptical, and the ring of meteoric stones may not be entire, but consist of detached portions, it is evident that many years may elapse without the earth encountering one aerolite, while on other occasions it may encounter many in a single year. If M. Leverrier's conclusions are accepted, they extend the science of astronomy in its more minute features, and make us acquainted, by an indirect but ingenious and refined process, with two multitudinous systems of small planetary bodies, of which otherwise we never could have obtained any knowledge. An incidental but valuable result of the discovery is the rational explanation it offers of those mysterious masses of stone and metal which fall from the atmosphere. C. M. MAKING ΜΟΝΕΥ ΤΟ DIE WITH. OUR lunatic asylums are insufficient for the accommodation of their patients. A prodigious increase of the number of the receptacles for the insane, has coëxisted with a still greater increase in the madness and idiotism of the nation; and, rapid as has been the multiplication of private establishments, the demand has far exceeded the supply. This was a result not less certain than it is alarming. Insanity is constitutional-hereditary. The seeds of it lurk in the constitution of many who marry before it has developed its marked characteristics. They multiply themselves indefinitely in their children, and there is nothing to arrest the indefinite, the geometrical ratio of increase, but the feeble effect of a "crossing of the breed." The conventional tyranny of appearances has much to answer for. Families with five hundred pounds a year think they must have every thing that those with one thousand pounds a year appear to have. The needy maintain the same worldly exterior as the comfortable and the rich. War, mechanical invention, discoveries of prodigious quantities of the precious metals, facilities of communication with distant countries, have given a stimulus to production and speculation so general and intense, that hope, fear, anxiety, sudden fortune, unforeseen reverse, agitate the whole of society to a high-pressure degree. The brain softens, the morbus Brightius seizes his victim, and mania or slavering idiotcy follow. "Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is it to leave betimes ?" Shakspeare, the author of that sentence, adorned his own doctrine. He retired to Stratford in the blossom of his early fame and the dawning of his pecuniary fortune. He was the greatest of practical philosophers as well as the poet for all time; his plan of life was eminently wise in securing true happiness, the proper end of exist ence. He refused to exhaust his life in the mere means of living, and had the sa gacity to know when he had enough, and contentedly to resign the tempting and treacherous solicitations of avarice and ambition to scrape together and grasp at more. Lawyers seem to think it some great merit when they say there is no galley-slave worked harder than a leading barrister in full practice. Why the deuce does he slave? He has only to return fees he never earns, to refuse retainers for work that is beyond his strength, and let briefless clever fellows have his redundant share of business. But no, Greed masters him; like the spider, he spins his entrails out at his brains; and nine out of ten successful (?) lawyers live on in the monstrous life-shadow of sophistry and lies, to be hurried by paralysis or imbecility out of existence, without having known an hour of enjoyment. A fashionable physician who is telling patients all day of their overwork and of the Bright disease, is himself dying by inches, of nothing but fees. A great professor of surgery literally, at last, had a total inability to refuse them. In vain his colleagues proscribed a limit to his professional hours, and a longer period of relaxation and enjoyment. It was so easy to receive guineas and to say two or three sentences, and to write a prescription, that positively he could never leave it off until first mind, and then life left him off. If we will just imagine what must be the effect on posterity of the whole nation since the commencement of the great French war, having acted more or less on this view of the end and significancy of life, we can be at no loss to account for the rapid increase of paralysis, apoplexy, failure of the senses, softening of the brain, mania, fatuity. The overtaxed brain becomes vitiated and suffused-the victim imparts to posterity congenital and hereditary cerebral disease. He gives but the dregs of his being to his children. The family of the man who has exhausted his brain are very frequently "washed out," barren, feckless, or absolutely insane or foolish. Left by a muckworm or worldly father with the large fortune he had not the wisdom to enjoy or the heart to spend, their inheritance is generally fooled away in a muddle, or recklessly squandered in facile profligacy or insane dissipation. Had the progenitor earned |