and to unlink and disperse the associations which have somehow confounded Jefferson's masterpiece with the rattle of firecrackers, with the flash and the splutter of burning tar-barrels, and with that unreserved, that gyratory and perspiratory eloquence, now for more than a hundred years consecrated to the return of our fateful Fourth of July. Had the Declaration of Independence been what many a revolutionary State paper is,-a clumsy, verbose, and vaporing production, not even the robust literary taste and the all-forgiving patriotism of the American people could have endured the weariness, the nausea, of hearing its repetition in ten thousand different places, at least once every year for so long a period. Nothing which has not supreme literary merit has ever triumphantly endured such an ordeal, or ever been subjected to it. No man can adequately explain the persistent fascination which this State | paper has had, and which it still has, for the American people, or its undiminished power over them, without taking into account its extraordinary literary merits: its possession of the witchery of true substance wedded to perfect form; its massiveness and incisiveness of thought; its art in the marshaling of the topics with which it deals; its symmetry, its energy, the definiteness and limpidity of its statements; its exquisite diction,—at once terse, musical, and electrical; and as an essential part of this literary outfit, many of those spiritual notes which attract and enthrall our hearts,— veneration for God, veneration for man, veneration for principle, respect for public opinion, moral earnestness, moral courage, optimism, a stately and noble pathos, finally, self-sacrificing devotion to a cause so great as to be herein identified with the happiness, not of one people only, or of one race only, but of human nature itself. Upon the whole, this is the most commanding and the most pathetic utterance, in any age, in any language, of national grievances and of national purposes; having a Demosthenic momentum of thought, and a fervor of emotional appeal such as Tyrtæus might have put into his war-songs. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence is a kind of war-song: it is a stately and a passionate chant of human freedom; it is a prose lyric of civil and military heroism. We may be altogether sure that no genuine development of literary taste among the American people in any period of our future history can result in serious misfortune to this particular specimen of American literature. JOHN TYNDALL (1820-1893) OHN TYNDALL was one of the many Irishmen who have contributed substantially to English thought. He was born at Leighlin Bridge, near Carlow, Ireland, on August 21st, 1820. His early education was got at home, and at the school in his native town; his grounding in English and mathematics being especially sound. In 1839 he became civil assistant to a division of the ordnance survey, and from 1844 to 1847 was a railway engineer at Manchester. He then became a teacher of physics at Queenwood College, Hampshire; and in 1848, desirous of further scientific study and culture, he went to Germany and heard the Marburg lectures of Bunsen and Knoblauch, working in the laboratory and making original investigations in magnetism. He secured his doctorate in 1857; and after more study in Berlin returned to England, where the publication of his scientific discoveries brought him a fellowship in the Royal Society. In 1853 he was, on the proposal of Faraday, elected to the chair of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, with which he remained connected for more than thirty years, becoming its superintendent in 1867 and not retiring until 1887. Professor Tyndall's long career, from its inception as a teacher and investigator, was one of fruitful discovery in the realm of physics and of brilliant exposition of scientific tenets. He began as a young man the study of radiant heat; and the problems of electricity, magnetism, and acoustics also engaged his attention, valuable books upon these subjects resulting. Such volumes as 'Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion' (1863), 'On Radiation' (1865), and 'Dust and Disease,' are among the more familiar. The scientific phenomena of glaciers interested him for many years, and from 1856 to his death he visited the Alps every season,—the initial journey was in company with Huxley, —and made studies, the deductions from which were embodied in a series of books very enjoyable in point of literary value. 'Mountaineering in 1861' (1862), and 'Hours of Exercise in the Alps' (1871), are typical of this class. The publications of Tyndall also include a large number of more technical treatises, adding substantially to his reputation as a physicist, and to the advancement of modern science in the field of his election. In 1872 he made a successful lecture tour in the United States; and devoted the proceeds to the establishment of scholarships for the benefit of students doing original research in sciences. Degrees were conferred upon him by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford, the latter in spite of a protest that he taught materialism. -- Tyndall was a man of marked force of character, unswerving in his loyalty to truth as he saw it, and gifted in the synthetic presentation of principles with lucidity, vigor, and eloquence. His literary quality is of the high order also to be found in the English Huxley or the German Haeckel. His Belfast Address in 1874, as president of the British Association,—which made a sensation as a bold, clear, uncompromising statement of the position of the present-day scientists, is a masterly survey and summary of scientific progress, and very noble in its spirit and expression. The fine closing portion is one extract chosen to show Tyndall as a writer. A careful reading of the whole address is sufficient to relieve the speaker from the charge of being a materialist in any strict sense, for he distinctly disclaims that creed; confessing the mystery of the source of all life to be insoluble for the man of science, and giving full credit to the intuitional and creative faculties as authoritative within their province. The fairness of mind and breadth of vision, together with the literary merit, displayed in this address, make it one of the most remarkable deliverances upon science by a scholar of the time. Professor Tyndall died at Haslemere, Surrey, England, on December 4th, 1893, from an overdose of chloral accidentally administered by his wife. Ο THE MATTERHORN From Hours of Exercise in the Alps' N THE Thursday evening a violent thunder-storm had burst over Breuil, discharging new snow upon the heights, but also clearing the oppressive air. Though the heavens seemed clear in the early part of Friday, clouds showed a disposition to meet us from the south as we returned from the col I inquired of my companion whether, in the event of the day being fine, he would be ready to start on Sunday. His answer was a prompt negative. In Val Tournanche, he said, they always "sanctified the Sunday." I mentioned Bennen, my pious Catholic guide, whom I permitted and encouraged to attend his mass on all possible occasions, but who nevertheless always yielded without a murmur to the demands of the weather. The reasoning had its effect. On Saturday Maquignaz saw his confessor, and |