being a general review of epic poetry and the epic poets of Europe-bears the title of Aoidos, and treats on various points in the poetry of Homer, his Plot, his sense of Beauty, his Perception, and Use of Number and of Colour. Throughout this section the reader will find many observations of an acute and interesting character; but they are observations which he will have to test and weigh for himself. Mr Gladstone has the inveterate habit of drawing large conclusions from very narrow premises; or rather, having embraced some conclusion, he hastily constructs ingenious arguments for its defence. But the critical remarks of Mr Gladstone, if they require, are always worthy of examination. There is much that deserves attention in his little treatise on Homer's Perception, and Use of Number and Colour. We can have no doubt that Homer uses the names of high numbers, hundreds and thousands, merely to convey the general impression of multitude-he has not the least idea of giving accurate statistics. Most early writers, and poets of all periods, use nouns of number in this vague manner. A hecatomb doubtless meant, as our author suggests, merely a large sacrifice, a group of oxen, not absolutely a hundred. The thousand watchfires that the Trojans light mean some number larger than a hundred, not precisely ten hundred. Mr Gladstone doubts whether Homer's arithmetic would have enabled him to give us more precise statistics, even if this had been his object; he doubts whether Homer knew any rule in arithmetic beyond addition, whether that more rapid mode of addition which we call multiplication was known to him. Homer avoids, he observes, giving us the sum total, even where he has supplied us with the several items. This may result only from the general manner with which, as a poet, he would deal with numbers. His object being to convey the sense of multitude, he would do this most effectually by enumerating the lesser numbers, which can be brought more distinctly within the

apprehension; and this being done, the impression would hardly be increased by adding the sum total of these lesser numbers. We, however, think it very probable that, above a certain point, Homer would have found it very difficult to make an accurate arithmetical calculation. It the art of writing was not known, the art of ciphering must have been generally very little cultivated.

On Homer's appreciation of colour, as separable from brightness, we have here some curious speculations. Very few are the colours that he specifies; and when he describes objects whose colour we very well know, the terms he uses are to us quite inexplicable. If we lay the defect here upon his language, we have still to ask, how came the language to be imperfect? Men find or coin words when they have perceptions to express. Mr Gladstone limits Homer's range to white, black, yellow, red, violet, and indigo. Thus orange, green, and light blue* would remain without any distinct expression. Orange might be well embraced under red or yellow; but green and blue-the colour or the trees, the colour of the sky!—it is impossible to think that Homer had not words for these. And our lexicons used to give them. The Homeric words for green and blue may also have other meanings, and yet mean, sometimes, green and blue. One sees that the idea of green, shades into that of pallor; and also, because it is the colour of spring, the same word may come to signify freshness. Let chloros signify both paleness and freshness, it may also signify green; and glaukos may be both bright and blue. Mr Gladstone thinks that our "blue-eyed Minerva" ought to have been translated "bright-eyed Minerva." Perhaps he is right; but there are other occasions on which the epithet blue may stand its ground. Nor should it be driven from the sea (glauke thalassa) simply because the sea may be both bright and blue.

We have some good reasons given us, however, why Homer should not have had his eye so well trained and cultivated to the perception of colour

as a more modern poet. The art of dyeing, so we are told, had not been invented, or was very little practised. Paints, and all artificial colouring, were but little known; the yellow of gold and brass, and the ruddy hue of copper, were perhaps the brightest colours known in dress or household decoration; and it is not easy to say how much of our ready and apt distinctions between colours is due to the teaching the eye receives from near and artificial objects-objects that can be easily embraced and compared in the field of vision.

There is a noticeable superiority in the modern over the classic poet, and of times later than Homer, in this love and appreciation of colour, which is well worth inquiring into. Here, as elsewhere, Mr Gladstone is hasty in his deductions. He lays considerable stress on the "remarkable verse of Albinovanus, an Augustan poet, which applied the epithet 'purpu

reus' to snow

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'Brachia purpureâ candidiora nive.' The poet is comparing, we presume, a woman's arm to snow, and he has before his imagination the snow with that purple or roseate hue upon it which it receives, not only at sunset, but often at noon. For not unwisely does our poet Shelley speak of " the purple noon's transparent light." The comparison, as we often meet with it in poetry, of a woman's neck to snow in its own proper local colour, is a very cold affair, and one which frequent repetition has never reconciled us to. We think Albinovanus was very right, and regret that we have so little opportunity of making better acquaintance with one who earned amongst his contemporaries the title of Elegantissimus.

Mr Gladstone opens his whole work, commences his Prolegomena, as it is learnedly called, with some general observations on the defective study of Homer in our English schools and universities. These observations are expressed with such a logical precision, and so grave an air of plausibility, that we rose from them with the conviction that some reform was urgently called for in our academical studies. But further consideration and a second perusal

as is not unfrequently the case with Mr Gladstone's observations-somewhat dissipated this conviction. He finds that Homer is not sufficiently studied in a philosophical and historical point of view. A boy at our public schools reads him for his battles, for the resounding line, for the poetry of the old Grecian-if he reads him for anything else than to construe and translate; whilst at our universities Homer is passed over for Eschylus and Sophocles, and the Greek language and Greek thought are studied in later writers. Homer seems thus deprived of his legitimate share of attention. But when we reflect for a moment on the kind of study of Homer which Mr Gladstone finds neglected, we are led to ask ourselves whether this is a study which youths at the university are expected to be engaged in, or can, with any profit, be engaged in. "There is," says our author, an inner Homeric world, of which his verse is the tabernacle and his poetic genius the exponent, but which offers in itself a spectacle of the most profound interest, quite apart from him who introduces us to it, and from the means by which we are so introduced. This world of religion and ethics, of civil policy, of history and ethnology, of manners and arts, so widely severed from all following experience that we may properly call them palæozoic, can hardly be examined and understood by those who are taught to approach Homer as a poet only." Very true; and beautifully expressed. But it happens that there is no book, except it be the Germania of Tacitus, which has been so industriously explored as the Iliad, for the intimations it gives of an existing state of society; and the Greeks of Homer, and the Germans of Tacitus, have not been unfrequently compared. What may be safely gathered of this kind lies open to every student, to every intelligent reader. In every commentary on Homer, and in every history of Greece, in Mitford, Thirlwall, Grote, a picture of the Homeric age is drawn too interesting in itself to escape any but the dullest of readers. It cannot be this that is neglected by our studious youth. This inner

world of Homer must mean, in Mr Gladstone's apprehension, those more subtle and very disputable deductions which he, and the like ingenious men, may still draw from the verses of the poet. Such subtle matter is not, and cannot be, the subject for academical study. We assign no limit to genius or to learned labour; there may be much yet to be seen in Homer which the eyes of scholars and historians have not hither to detected; but academic institutions cannot outstrip, or keep pace with, the man of genius. That only which has stood the test of examination can be made the groundwork of scholastic training. The only study of Homer which Mr Gladstone, on reflection, would find to be defective, is that study which must be pursued by the solitary individual, bringing all the knowledge he has acquired from other sources, all his philosophy, his theology, his history, his critical faculty, to bear on the poems of Homer. It is the study of the mature mind, it is the study of the author. Along this path we must go one by one. We have acquired all we can from schools

and academies before we venture on it.

A university education, which ends at the age of twenty-one, cannot undertake to lead men through all the high and intricate discussions which may very easily be gathered round the poems of Homer. It can only prepare them for such discussions, if they should have the requisite ability or leisure to pursue them in their mature years. And that only which has already obtained some measure of general assent is fit for scholastic teaching. If a professorial chair were endowed at Oxford to expound this inner and innermost world of Homer, whom should we invite to fill it? Whoever filled it, he would have continually to discuss and contend, rather than to teach. Certainly, for our part, it is not Mr Gladstone himself that we should invite to occupy such a chair. We much prefer that he should still remain the learned Member for the University of Oxford, than that he should transfer those talents which render him so eminent in the House of Commons to a chair of philosophy and historical criticism.

DID Harvey discover the circulation of the blood? To many, the question will sound like an impertinence. To those who have crítically examined the historical evidence, the question wears another aspect, and the answer will run somewhat thus: Harvey did, and he did not, make the discovery; he made a very great discovery, which has given an imperishable glory to his name, but it was not precisely that which is popularly attributed to him. In endeavouring to mark clearly out that which he discovered, and that which he did not discover, no attempt will be made here to diminish the fame England is justly proud of, by ransacking the archives of science to detect stray passages of meaningless vagueness, wherein older authors may have indicated something like the truths which Harvey established on the firm basis of experiment and reason

ing. Erudite prejudice has done its worst in this direction, and its worst has only set Harvey's merits in a clearer light.

Harvey discovered the fact of the circulation; but he did not discover the course of the circulation, nor the causes of the circulation. He knew that the blood was carried from the heart through the arteries to the tissues, and from the tissues through the veins and lungs back again to the place whence it started. But he knew not how the blood passed from arteries to veins; he knew not why the blood thus moved. In our day science is in possession of the exact course of the circulation, but the exact causes are still under question. We know that the circulating system consists of heart, arteries, capillaries, veins, and lymphatics. Harvey knew not the capillaries and lymphatics; so that his knowledge of the course

taken by the blood was necessarily incomplete. To put the reader in possession of what is now known on this subject, and to enable an estimate to be formed of what Harvey discovered, we will first take a rapid view of the circulation.

The heart, as the great centre, shall be our point of departure. It is composed of four cavities: two antechambers, or auricles, and two chambers, or ventricles. Into the right auricle the blood is poured by the veins; it passes thence into the right ventricle, and is driven therefrom, by a strong contraction, along the pulmonary artery* into the lungs. Here it comes in contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere, and changes from venous into arterial blood. It now passes along the pulmonary veins into the left auricle of the heart, thence into the left ventricle, from which it is driven, by a powerful contraction, into the arteries. The pulsing torrent rushes through the arteries to the various tissues, where it passes into the network of capillary vessels, described in our last Paper. Having served the purposes of Nutrition, the blood continues its course along these capillaries into the veins. Here the stream is joined by that of the lymphatics, which, like the roots of a plant in the earth, absorb lymph from the organs in which they arise. This confluence of streams hurries on till the blood is emptied into the right auricle, from which it originally started; and thus is the circuit completed.

The story of this discovery is one of the most interesting and instructive in the whole range of science, and it has recently been re-written by M. Flourens in a very agreeable style. He declares that before him no one had accurately narrated it. In some sense this is true; but there are important omissions in his own account; and while availing ourselves of his labours, we shall endeavour to complete them. It is a

story whose episodes extend over not less than seventeen centuries; and the two centuries that have elapsed since the discovery, have not sufficed entirely to complete it. Seventeen centuries is a vast span of time for the elaboration of the discovery of a fact which, now we know it, seems so obvious that our marvel is why it was ever unknown; and the moral of the story lies precisely there, teaching, as it does, the remarkable servility of the mind in the presence of established opinions, and the difficulty which is felt, even by eminent men, in seeing plain facts, so hoodwinked are we by our preconceived notions. To those who are unfamiliar with the practical parts of science, it seems singular that men should continue acquiescent in errors so baseless that they vanish immediately they are challenged and to men who have never trained themselves in the difficult and delicate art of Observation, it seems singular that facts, extremely simple when observed, should continue to be overlooked. But the truth is, observers are at all times rare, because new observation requires singular independence of mind; and, unhappily, those who never made an observation themselves, are always ready to dispute the accuracy of new observations made by others.

In the case now before us, there were three capital errors, which for seventeen centuries masked the fact of circulation; and the reader will probably learn with surprise what those errors were. The first error was, that the arteries did not contain blood. The second error was, that the two chambers of the heart communicated with each other by means of holes in the septum dividing them. The third error was, that the veins carried the blood to the various parts of the body. How was it possible that errors so flagrant as these could have maintained their ground a single day after men began seriously to examine the subject? It was obvious that air did enter the body, and

entered it by the trachea, or windpipe. The conclusion was natural, in the early days of science, that the air, thus entering by the trachea and bronchial vessels, should continue its course through other vessels. When the arteries of a dead body were examined, they were found empty, and consequently the arteries were chosen as the veritable channels: hence their name (" air-containers," from anp and Tnpew). It never occurred to the philosophers that air and blood might both be carried along the arteries; and when Galen demonstrated the fact that the arteries did carry blood, he felt bound to deny the presence of air. What, then, becomes of the air inspired? Galen said it did not enter the parts of the body, but was thrown out again after performing its office, that office being to cool the blood. If you open an artery, said Galen, blood will issue, but not air: whence the conclusion seems inevitable, that the arteries do not contain air, and do contain blood. Modern science has proved that atmospheric air is not contained in the arteries, but only the oxygen thereof, with a slight amount of nitrogen, and a certain amount of carbonic acid gas. But as the composition of the atmosphere was not suspected in the days of Galen, the presence of blood, and the absence of air, were facts so firmly established by him, that, in spite of all antagonists, they finally assumed the place of incontestable truths.

Here, then, we see one error removed. The others still remained. Galen, and all his successors, maintained that the two chambers of the heart communicated directly by means of holes in their septum; an opinion perfectly intelligible when we learn that it rested on a theoretical assumption. Theory wanted the fact, and men saw the fact they wanted. Theory distinguished between venous blood, and spirituous or arterial blood. The venous blood nourished all the coarser organs, such as the liver. The spirituous blood nourished all the delicate organs, such as the lungs. In our day we should demand some proof, before accepting such a theory; but

the ancients had a very vague idea of the necessity and the nature of proof: so long as an opinion was logical and plausible, it was held to be irresistible. The spirituous element was supposed to be formed in the left ventricle of the heart; but inasmuch as even venous blood requires some of this spirit for the purposes of nutrition, it was necessary that the two bloods should mingle; and, to meet this necessity, holes were assumed in the partition dividing the two ventricles. So deeply impressed were anatomists with reverence for what Galen had said, and what theory required, that they one and all saw the holes--which do not exist. Berenger de Carpi had, indeed, an uneasy doubt on the subject, which he naïvely expressed in the admission that they were only to be seen with great difficulty-cum maximâ difficultate videntur; but, by straining the eyes sufficiently, he doubtless saw what Galen required him to see-as thousands daily see what they believe they ought to see. The first man who had sufficient strength of mind to use his eyes, and say what he saw, was Vesalius,* the father of modern anatomy, for whom Titian drew the figures which illustrate his work.

Thus was the second error overthrown in 1543. The third errornamely, that of the veins carrying the blood to the tissues-was somewhat more complex. If the venous and arterial bloods do not mingle in the heart, where do they mingle? We know it is in the lungs that the one passes into the other; but it was an immense discovery to make; and there is something piquant in the fact that it was first divined by a restless and daring theologian, whom Calvin burned, with affectionate zeal, for speculations of another kind. Michael Servetus was the first to announce the existence of the pulmonary circulation; and he announced this in the Christianismi Restitutio, a work which was burned by the theologians. Two copies of this work exist: one, still reddened and partly consumed by the flames, is in the Royal Library of Paris; and copious extracts from it are