The circle of professional readers is necessarily small. Within that small circle, moreover, there are other circles. Thus among mathematicians, the majority cannot master Newton's Principia;' and Playfair used to declare that there were not six men in England capable of understanding Laplace's Celestial Mechanics.' It must always be so. There will be few who attain the summits, and those few must have works written only for them. But, the people form an ever-widening circle.

They

In the early ages of the world knowledge was confined to the priests. imparted it only to their own castes, because the people were unfitted to receive it. Even in democratic Athens the philosophers had two modes of instruction; one destined for the initiated, the other destined for the people. And the people there were similar to our middle classes. The working classes were slaves. SOCRATES was the first to bring knowledge into the market-place. He was the first to strip philosophy of its professional language, and to bring it home to the understandings of all men. LUTHER, by his translation of the Bible into the vernacular, gave the people a literature. The circle gradually widened. First, the priests were the sole cultivators of knowledge. Next, in Greece and Rome, the nobility and gentry cultivated it as an elegant distinction. Then, colleges and schools having multiplied, every well-born man was forced to make some slight pretension to cultivation. Now, cheap literature has so widened the circle, that all mankind can share in the "feast of reason."

The people, then, in a literary sense, may be regarded as comprising the whole mass of the intelligent public-all who are not specially educated. We say, therefore, let

your reader be artisan or nobleman, when you do not address the professional few, you are writing for the people. Write clearly, and avoid the language of the schools, then all men will understand you; but do not write down to any imaginary standard of dulness unless you are addressing children. Write out the conviction that is labouring within you; utter the thoughts that lie deepest in the language that is fittest; only do not assume that the reader is familiar with the language and distinctions of the schools; remember he is not one of the profession.

Such is the diffusion of knowledge, and such the activity of intelligences, that, even among the artisans, the gravest and greatest works of the gravest and greatest minds find eager students. We will not instance Shakspere; we will content ourselves with Locke. Every Mechanics' Institute in the kingdom will prove how many readers there are for the 'Essay on Human Understanding.' If Plato had been translated in a readable style, he would have been popular. It is not sympathy, it is not intelligence which is deficient; it is simply education. The people are as those who have never learned a foreign language. The remedy is simple: translate what is in the foreign language into the vernacular; then all men will understand it: the screen which was before their eyes is removed, and they see.

If the people, the populus, be compared to those entirely ignorant of a foreign language; the educated, who are not the specially educated in science or literature, may be likened to that numerous class of persons who have been taught the language, but know so little of it that they can neither read nor write it with efficiency. To them also translation is necessary; for them also works should be popular. Their knowledge, such as it is, is no more than preparatory; they cannot master the works written for the professional.

We are coming to something like firm ground. Except in the higher branches of science and philosophy, the difficulty lies rather in the language than in the matter. The abstruseness does not arise from the ideas, but from the form in which they are

expressed. We are addressed in a foreign language, and do not comprehend what is said. Translation is the only remedy.

What translation is to literature, popular treatises should be to science. It is obvious that in both cases something must be lost in the process. The charm of style, the easy grace of negligence, the happy phrase, and the idiomatic turn of language can rarely be preserved in translation. The nicety of precision, and the brief suggestiveness of mathematical formulæ and technical terms, must be lost in the popular treatise. Granted; but in both cases a rough cast is thought worthy of purchase by those whose fortunes would never give them the original. Popular literature and popular science are not meant to replace or to do away with higher works, no more than the translation of a French work is meant to do away with the study of French. The superiority of the original no one disputes. The question is, Are those who have not learned French, and who have no time to learn it, to be, therefore, deprived of the benefit of the ideas which Frenchmen may put forth? In the same way we would ask, Are those who have never studied anatomy, and who have no time to study it, to be debarred from understanding the general laws of organized beings; are those who have no proficiency in mathematics never to learn the laws of astronomy?

Let there be anatomical works written for the profession; let there be astronomical works written for the scientific. We would not abate one jot of terminology, nor banish a single formula that was not mere ostentation. No person competent to form an opinion can dispute the utility of technical terms and algebraical formulæ.

But these are works for the specially educated. For the people-i. e. for all men not so educated-let there be works written with a steady conception of the important point: that although the acquirements of the reader are not to be assumed, the intelligence is; if he must not be supposed to understand a foreign language, he may be supposed to understand its meaning if translated.

The objections to most works of popular science is, that they are popular trash. They are trivial and false;-written by men who ought to be learners instead of teachers, who write "down" to the people, simply because they could not write up to scientific men. They make a virtue of their own defect; superficial, they declaim against pedantry and obscurity; ignorant of mathematics, they proclaim formulæ to be useless paraphernalia. Unable to write sense, they endeavour to be childish-and succeed. That profound science and complete mastery of a subject can be combined with the simplest, clearest exposition, has been signally proved by Professor Airy's treatise on Gravitation,' and by Dr. Arnott's priceless Elements of Physics.' This latter book has been one of the most popular (in every sense) ever written. It has been translated into every language of Europe. It has been studied by men and women of all grades of intelligence. It has been often imitated; but not one of the imitations has ever made the least stand: they all wanted either that mastery of the subject, which alone can make a book live, or that power of exposition, clear without childishness, which alone can make a book attractive.

That there is no royal road to science is very true; no mastery is attained in any department without courageous effort. But there is a royal road to the understanding of the general laws of nature; and to make that road all popular treatises should attempt. Science is abstruse; nothing can make it intelligible at a glance.

But with regard to literature and philosophy, writing for the people is a much simpler matter. The author's motto should be, not to assume acquirements, but only intelligence, in the reader. To assume that the reader should understand your Greek

and Latin quotations, or all your allusions to things classical and historical, is unwarrantable. Quote as much as you please—but always translate; illustrate as much as you can, but be plain, and avoid allusions which presume a classical education. Any other mode of writing down to the reader is insulting. The intelligence of the people is not so trivial as many of the pretended teachers assume. Nothing can be too good for the people; no literature can be too high for them. Clearness, which is perhaps the highest excellence of prose, is the only demand made by the people. It is the demand which all men should make. There are many who fancy that fine writing is difficult; but the fact is that no difficulty is greater than that of clearness, and only the great writers are clear. Pompous periods, involved sentences, shadowy epithets, ambiguous words, and obscure allusions are easy enough. Moreover, they throw a veil over vanity. By screening their meaning from the light of day, they prevent all men seeing how trivial that meaning is. Whereas the writer who labours to bring his. meaning forth into the light must be conscious that it deserves inspection. In literature lustre is seldom without weight; and as Chesterfield says, "weight without lustre is lead." Hence you will find, as a general rule, that the greatest writers are the clearest writers; and that the clearest writers are the clearest thinkers.

Politics, morals, and metaphysics are subjects which, inasmuch as they require continued effort of thought, may be called abstruse. Can abstruse subjects be fitted for the people? If by this question be meant, Can abstruse subjects be otherwise than abstruse? we answer, Certainly not. Those who are incapable of any continued effort of thought will be incapable of following any abstruse speculations. But to write for such persons would be idle. No one thinks of addressing them. If, however, by the above question be meant, Can abstruse subjects be so treated as only to require an ordinary effort of thought to be continued, in order that the subject should be intelligible? we answer, Yes. Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, and Paley are examples. They are profound thinkers, and clear writers; they are intelligible to all intelligent minds. And to show how vast is their superiority in these matters, we need only cite the name of the German philosopher, Kant, who, treating of the subject which Locke made so easy of comprehension (at a time when the philosophy of mind was in its infancy), failed not only in making himself intelligible to the people, but even to professed metaphysicians. The abstruseness here lay not in the subject, but in its treatment. This mode has become very generally adopted both in Germany and France. No man now thinks of writing on philosophy in a clear intelligible manner. The old scholastic forms, with a cumbrous paraphernalia of verbiage, darken the meaning. Instead of the effort of thought, which the subject itself demands, the reader is called upon for a twofold effort: first, to interpret the language, and afterwards to examine the ideas. The abstruse is made repulsive.

For those who do not pride themselves upon their unattractiveness, who will consent to labour for the enlightenment of mankind at large, and not simply for the gratification of a few, we would say, Endeavour to be intelligible. To be so, there is no need of keeping back abstruse ideas; the only requisite is, that the expression be not also abstruse. The deepest thinkers of modern times, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Reid (to mention only the philosophers), have been universally intelligible. As to the folly of writing down to the people, you will not heed it. The people resent the insult. If you are above them, draw them up to you; if you are on their level, cease the assumption of superiority.

We shall speak hereafter of the other part of our subject the servility of the popular writer.;

OLD Year, thou hast but an hour to stay,
Another hour, Old Year;

Shall we give that hour to feast and play,
And then lay thee on thy bier,

Or watch thy ending with holy fear?

Thou art hurrying away at thy wonted pace;

Wilt thou not stop to die?

Oh, stop, while we gaze upon thy face,

And catch thy parting sigh,

And whisper a last and a sad good-bye.

Wilt thou talk with me, Old Year, apart;
I am growing old, like thee;
I will show thee all my secret heart,
And thou, my friend, shalt be free
To rail as thou wilt at mankind and me.

We have walk'd together three hundred days
And sixty-five-no more:

Thou art leaving the earth and its miry ways
For the sea without a shore :

Speak out, for our journey is well nigh o'er.
Thy son is coming, grey sire, full soon,
With his budget of weal and woe;

Now honest Old Year, let me beg a boon :
Instruct me, for thou dost know,

What can make men happy, and keep them so.
Not a word!-Look back from thy funeral car;
There is famine in thy rear,

And the sound of slaughter is heard from far,
And thy son is at hand, Old Year,

With no healing balm for a sick world's care.

He is gone-the crazy Old Year is gone;
In silence he has died,

In silence the jocund young Year is born;
He is floating on Time's tide:

Let us speak for a moment, New Year, aside.
He will not stay.-He has work for his hand;
He must build and he must till,

He must scurry about through sea and land,
He must rear and he must kill,

And affright the earth with his restless will.

They are not yet prophets, Old Year or New!
Great Spirit of the Past,

Teacher of Nations, let me view

Thy records dim and vast

By God's pure light, and hold thy lessons fast.

THE ECONOMY OF BENEVOLENCE.

THE year 1846 opens with the prospect that the mysterious potato disease, the general deficiency of the harvest in these islands, and the legislative restrictions which have forbidden us to stretch forth our hands to purchase the surplus produce of other countries, will bring upon us a season of scarcity and of consequent high prices.

This impending evil frowns upon us at a period when there are many mitigating circumstances in our social condition. We speak with reference to the condition of the people of Great Britain. The social position of Ireland is so essentially different, that there is no proportion in the effects of scarcity upon the people of the two great British Islands. In Ireland scarcity is synonymous with famine; in Great Britain it is severe privation. The people of Great Britain are not now suffering from insufficient employment and consequent low wages. Capital is abundant, and is creating new demands for labour in many public works. But nevertheless an insufficient supply of the staple food of the people will disturb the balance of wages and wants; there will be suffering, complaint, perhaps outrage. To mitigate the suffering,