as the Christ of contemplation; and upon the third as the Christ of the preacher, held up to the revering homage of all the world.

Two questions of grave importance arise out of the facts that have just been stated. Do these facts throw any suspicion over the authenticity of the records? Do they interfere with the unity of our impressions concerning the Redeemer, or blur our clear apprehension of him? To the first of these questions we answer, Not in the least degree. The discrepance of those accounts does but multiply the evidences of their truth. They who describe independently any object must always describe it diversely, according to their several habits of mind and points of view; and the larger the object is, the more variously will they be likely to represent it. We should not expect that the beloved disciple, the tender-hearted survivor of all his brethren, would speak of his Master in the same tone with others. As for the Epistles of Paul, they are so demonstrably his that all antiquity cannot show such an accumulation of proof for the genuineness of any writings. To the second question, also, we reply, Interfere with the unity, blur the distinctness, of our conceptions of Christ! Just the contrary. We need that divergency, which we have seen actually to exist, in order to spread a foundation wide enough to contain and hold up the full idea of so divine a person as the Lord Jesus. Who supposes that our view of the Grecian sage is confused, or that any doubt is cast upon what he really was, by the differing accounts of his disciples who wrote of him? How should they have written of him alike, though they both were his favorites and admirers, when one was a man of affairs and a great commander, and the other lived chiefly in the inward life? One was flattered by his countrymen with the title of "the Attic bee." He flew over Asia, to bring back, even from its fields of battle, sweets for his native hive. The other was saluted by the philosopher himself as "the academic swan," dwelling in silence, purity, seclusion, and peace. The learned Professor of Greek at Harvard University has just told us, that a perfectly proportioned figure of Socrates can be made only by combining the three representations of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes.*

* North American Review for April, 1850, p. 523.

1850.]

Agassiz's Tour to Lake Superior.

9

How vastly stronger is the case before us, when the figure to be displayed is that of the Saviour of men! That sacred form is nowhere and in no dress to be mistaken. No biographer could make him ordinary or tedious. No idealist could reach the height of his excelling nature. No ribald satirist could touch him with one stroke of ridicule.

In a word, we required the holy testimony, as we have it, in a triple bond of descriptions. This makes all complete. It is the "threefold cord that is not quickly broken";that will tie up its treasure secure and fast for all generations.

N. L. F.

ART. II. AGASSIZ'S TOUR TO LAKE SUPERIOR.*

LAKE Superior has, ever since its discovery, been regarded as one of the most remarkable features of the Western Continent. The philosophical traveller from the East has looked towards it, as towards Niagara, with longing eyes. A vast fresh-water sea, Atlantic in its storms and waves, Norwegian in its mountainous borders, set with innumerable islands, small and large, inhabited by savage Indians and Indian superstitions, and stored with copper and gold, with thirty unexplored rivers said to be pouring into its northern unexplored shores, and as many half explored, into the hollow crescent of its southern side, with unknown fishes, larger than swim in any other lakes, and waters so transparent that, as Jonathan Carver has taught us to believe, the canoe floating over them in a calm seems to be suspended between earth and heaven; - such has Lake Superior presented itself to the imagination. How came the lake where it is? What has given it its shape? What has uplifted the precipitous cliffs of its northern shores and islands? Whence its ores and metals? What is its

With

*Lake Superior: its Physical Character, Vegetation, and Animals, compared with those of other and similar Regions. BY LOUIS AGASSIZ. a Narrative of the Tour, by J. ELLIOT CABOT. And Contributions by other Scientific Gentlemen. Elegantly illustrated. Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln. 1850. 8vo. pp. 428.

vegetation, and to what flora of the Old World, modern or ancient, does it correspond? What are its animals? Were they created here, or have they found their way across seas and snows, from some garden of Eden in the East? Such are some of the questions to which an answer is attempted in the volume before us.

This is a remarkable volume, containing the fruits of a summer-vacation journey, the plan of which was conceived and executed with signal skill and success. A party of young gentlemen, most of them belonging to one or another of the several Schools in the University at Cambridge, leave Boston on a pleasant morning in June, in company with two men of learning as their instructors, and are joined in Albany by New York members of the party, which in all numbers eighteen. Their object is to study the natural history of the northern shore of this lake, and to learn, under the guidance of a most experienced observer, how to observe. The story is graphically, and only too rapidly, told, by a gentleman who unites love of science, and familiarity with more than one of its branches, with the eye and taste of a painter. It would be difficult to find a more graceful and agreeable narrative, or one which we should more willingly have had longer.

The professor never forgets his class, nor allows them to forget the objects they should have in view. At the end of the very first day, they assemble in an upper room in their hotel at Albany, and listen to an admirable lecture, of a few minutes, upon the geology and vegetation of the country which they have been passing through. This is his almost daily practice throughout the journey; and a precious part of the narrative is a clear and sufficiently full abstract of these gems of lectures, whenever and wherever given. They form the characteristic feature of the journey, and they may be pointed to as models for all future teachers who may be inclined thus to sweeten the liberty and brighten the hours of summer excursions. Attentively considered, they will not fail to raise the tone of scientific instruction, by showing what must be the extent of the resources from which these daily conversations were drawn, and from which alone similar ones can be drawn.

As the party passes across the country to the Lakes,

1850.]

Lectures by the Way.

11

and over and along the Lakes, from Ontario to nearly the western end of Superior, and thence back through Lakes Huron and Simcoe to Toronto, there is scarcely a subject in the sciences which treat of rocks, plants, birds, fishes, shells, animals of all kinds, of land or water, which is not touched upon; and the productions of these regions are compared, not only with those of Europe of the present day, but with those of the more important recent geological periods.

To a reader so far tinctured with a love of science as to wish to know the opinions of learned naturalists upon the points of greatest interest in these subjects, and by what conclusions or conjectures many of the great questions which occur to every observer are answered, these conversation lectures are invaluable. To the party, they must have been far better than elaborate written lectures;-first, because always short; secondly, because suggested by objects before them, which served as apparatus for illustration; and lastly, because they present, in a few clear words, the conclusions of years of thought and observation. Given at the end of a day's sail, or at a lunch, or on a rainy day, they served to set the mind at work in the right direction, expanded and amplified themselves, and, explained, as they naturally were, by subsequent observation, they must have left on the memory deeper and clearer impressions than hours of listening or volumes of reading. We quote a few extracts from them, which may serve at once as examples of this mode of instruction, and as presenting the leading principles of the Professor's philosophy.

At Albany, speaking of the vegetation on their road from Boston, he says:

"In the meadows are various grassy plants, carices, and ferns; the latter in great variety. These spots exhibit probably a condition analogous to that of the Coal Period, in which the ferns, &c. prevailed. All the plants growing on the road-sides are exotics, as are also all the cultivated plants and grasses. Everywhere in the track of the white man we find European plants; the native weeds have disappeared before him like the Indian." P. 10.

He might have added, that most of these plants, which have come over with the Europeans as weeds, were originally brought into cultivation either for use, as pot

herbs, or as medicines, or as ornamental flowers. The friends of man in his poverty, they seem disposed to cling to him still, in his better days, and they meet the usual return, in hard names and hard usage.

At Niagara, after some talk about the geology and vegetation of the State they had passed through, he tells them:

"Among the plants peculiar to this country are many in whose analogues in Europe many interesting chemical products have been traced. Very little has been done here in organic chemistry, and it is a matter which might well occupy one's lifetime, to ascertain the chemical relations of analogous plants of the two countries (for instance, Angelica, walnut, &c.)."-p. 14.

The hint will not be lost upon the organic chemists. We Americans have not been quite without such researches as are here recommended, as the volumes of Dr. Bigelow testify; yet there are doubtless many plants whose virtues are now known only to Shakers, to Indian doctors, and to other simplers whose acquaintance is not quite a reputation even to herbs, which may nevertheless be possessed of most valuable properties, and which, although not destined to the fame of Indian corn, tobacco, or the potato, may yet show themselves of great value. to mankind.

Professor Agassiz has a good deal to say, and much of what is the best that can be found to say, upon the geology of the Falls. But, more honest and more generous than some of his predecessors who have talked learnedly upon the same subject and from the same materials, he tells us freely, in a note, that his data are derived from Professor James Hall's investigations, in the New York State Survey. It is natural for some rich men to be generous, and it is certainly easier for one to be so who has a large fortune accumulated by his own labors, than for one who only succeeds to an inheritance. This may account for the fact, so honorable to Mr. Agassiz, that he is always ready to allow, in the largest measure, the claims of other naturalists to discoveries and observations. fect justice is, in this case, the highest generosity. Less than justice is meanness, and whoever is capable of it may be a distinguished naturalist, but he is at best but a mere naturalist.

of a man.

Per

He does not approach to the nobleness