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ledge subservient to beneficence. Social antipathies will henceforth be proscribed, and co-operation be the Koh-i-noor of future generations.

Among other things in connexion with the same subject, it is very encouraging to think what different feelings are growing up with the children of the present generation from those which their predecessors are painfully throwing off. On this point it may not be amiss to throw out the following hint. We see on every side a strong desire on the part of educators to follow the lead taken in the works above referred to. We cannot take up a newspaper without seeing that attempts are being made to inculcate the truths of physical geography in the school-room. It is becoming the fashion, we believe, to advertise 'physical geography' as being one of the subjects specially taught in certain schools; but let it not be forgotten that social geography (if we may coin an expression) should never be separated from the former. It is not only the most important of the two branches into which cosmical knowledge may be divided, but it is far the most interesting to children. Indeed, to every one physical geography is chiefly interesting by reason of its connexion with human beings, and should especially be cultivated with reference to them. And surely if an acquaintance with foreign countries and foreign communities is an important part of education, the fullest acquaintance with our own country in all its aspects, physical and social, is not less, but more necessary. very little is done in our schools towards the latter object. It has been remarked by a recent writer on our public schools, that were you to ask nine out of every ten of the pupils at a 'public school who was prime minister? Whether bread and 'broadcloth were cheaper than they used to be when their 'fathers were at school? Whether white and brown sugar came 'from the same plant? Whether tea grew in the west and tobacco in the east, or vice versâ?' they could not tell. And if this ignorance in regard to the most common matters of fact prevails, still greater ignorance exists in regard to facts of social importance. Ask a boy or a girl what is the population of the United Kingdom, of London, Edinburgh, or Dublin? What is the number of those who can read and write who live by cultivating the soil, or by trades and professions? What is the number of those who pay income-tax? and they will not even hazard a guess. Still more ignorant would they be found of the principles which regulate public prosperity and the social condition of the people. We have recently† pressed upon our readers the importance of this last kind of knowledge, and we shall lose no opportunity of * Johnston's England as it is. † British Quarterly for May, 1851.

Yet how

repeating our strong convictions on this point. Social economy, political economy, or the conditions of well being' (for they really mean the same thing when properly interpreted), must be learned either through hard experience or books, by the mass of our population, before they can rise into a position of full independence and dignity. There never yet has been any nation, even tolerably well off, which did not practically obey the laws pointed out by this science; and wherever those laws are defied, there misery and degradation must exist. The difference between England in the present day, and in certain former periods of her history when the need of a science of well being was less felt, is the difference between England well and England sick. The science of hygiene and the art of keeping in health, only arise when persons become sick. When the sick man is ordered to attend to his diet, he is apt to say, peevishly, 'But I never minded all these rules when I was in good health.'True,' replies the physician, and that is the very reason you have come into my hands.' Just as the invalid cannot be raised again to his former vigour without being taught the rules of health, and cannot be preserved in that state without observing them, so it is with England. She must not only learn, but keep the rules of well being.

We have been naturally led into the preceding train of remarks from the one idea with which we started-which was, that there exists at present in England an unusually strong tendency to become minutely acquainted both with the social and physical aspects of the globe which we inhabit. The more immediate theme of our present paper embraces a small part only of the topics into which we should be led by a general development of this idea; but though a small and comparatively unimportant part of the whole, it will not perhaps be found uninteresting to the general reader, especially as at the present time it has a peculiar prominence in the public eye. We shall have other opportunities of discussing the more important parts of the same subject.

The subject in hand is to give some account of the various attempts which are made to represent to the eye the external features of the earth. We shall preface our remarks on this topic with a slight sketch of the progress of geographical knowledge.

Of course, the correctness of all attempts to represent the earth, whether in maps or otherwise, has increased with the progress made in exploring the earth itself, but to make a first attempt implied much knowledge, not of the earth only, but of the heavens. Thus there are two periods in the history of geography. The latter period begins from the time when the

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spherical form of the earth was known, and astronomical observations were employed to fix the position of places on its surface. It commenced with Eratosthenes, one of the earliest and most distinguished of the astronomers of the Alexandrian school. For though the true form of the earth had been taught before his time, he first attempted to fix the position of places by their latitude and longitude; and it was an idea originating with him to measure the length of a degree of latitude, and thence infer the size of the earth; showing thus that the belief in its sphericity, which until then had floated only in men's minds, had at length taken a firm hold. The period previous to this was a time of darkness compared with that which commenced as soon as astronomy lent her aid to the geographer. In geography, as in other things, we learn that, if we would understand the scope of that which is before us, we must raise ourselves above it. We can easily see that little progress could be made in cosmical knowledge until the idea of referring to something external to the earth was gained. Two elementary difficulties stand in the way of such knowledge: first, the difficulty of travelling over the earth's surface, and next that of connecting the facts thus learned with each other. Of course we cannot know much of any point of the globe which has never been visited; but the most perfect topographical knowledge of every inch of it leaves us in great ignorance, unless we also know the relative bearings of different parts, and can place them together in their proper position. An apt illustration of this is a dissected map. We may be perfectly acquainted with each fraction of such a map, and yet have no conception as to how it should be put together, nor what appearance it would then present. Knowing the relative position of different parts of the earth is more than half the knowledge of the whole. If we know that the earth is a sphere, and have connected different positions on it with the heavens, we have more useful knowledge than if we knew every fraction of its surface topographically, but knew not where to find any part which we might wish to reach. For many ages the inhabitants of the earth were somewhat in the latter predicament. Travellers went and returned, bringing back stories of distant countries, but they could not tell within perhaps eight points of the compass where any particular country was to be found. Accordingly the information they acquired was left floating without any fixed habitation, and was sometimes lost and sometimes settled in the wrong place. Even as late as the 15th century an instance of this occurs. Travellers had reported the existence in a distant country (it is now supposed Tartary) of a Christian potentate whom they called the Priest John.' This report appears to

have particularly excited the interest of the Portuguese court, by whom two persons were sent to find him out. The fate of these persons was singular. One was murdered at Cairo, and the other, Covilhan, having penetrated into Abyssinia and made the acquaintance of some prince there, never more returned to his country, but settled in that place, either charmed by the society or detained by force. It is known that he lived to an advanced age. The Portuguese curiosity was not to be thus discomfited; for, having shortly after doubled for the first time the Cape of Good Hope, they began to look for Prester João' on the eastern side of Africa, and they succeeded in hunting up a sovereign in Abyssinia who answered to the idea they had conceived of this personage, by which name too he afterwards went.*

Now it was the traveller Carpini who first started this Christian game, about the commencement of the thirteenth century, so that for the Portuguese to suppose that they had run it down at the commencement of the sixteenth shows by what rational conceptions their minds were possessed. But in early times ideas got into men's heads as boys get into bed, and slumber there till something comes to pull them out by the heels. Nor is it always the half-fictitious, half-real, but misunderstood occurrences which get so lodged. Sometimes truths, known through observation or reasoning, which, extensively promulgated, would have been fertile in practical results, meet with the same fate. The knowledge of the compass is a good example of this, as we shall notice more particularly below. Perhaps nothing shows more impressively the advantages of modern over ancient times, than a comparison between the rate at which, in different times, useful knowledge is spread from one place or person to others. Any important discovery in China even, would now be sure to reach Europe before long. In Europe, when a new idea (particularly if it be of a scientific or practical kind) flits across the field of vision, it is pursued, laid hold of, and its merits ascertained before it is let go. There is no such thing as useful discoveries dying out. Not so formerly. Even in geography, though the true principles had been discovered by Eratosthenes, and were followed out by his immediate successors in the Alexandrian school, the distinguished geographers of the Roman empire disregarded their methods, and adhered to itinerary maps. This kind of map appears to be the only kind

* Mendez Pinto describes an interview which he had in Abyssinia, in 1538, with the mother of Prester João.' The person thus designated was an Abyssinian princess holding Christian doctrines, and who appears to have been in the safe keeping of a small body of Portuguese adventurers. It does not appear whether the son of this lady was the same person who had obtained possession of Covelhan. † A specimen of these itineraries, known as the Pentingerian table, exists in the

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of which the Romans were possessed. They made no attempts to depict the different parts of the world known to them as a whole. Strabo, who wrote his geography in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, and posterior, therefore, both to Eratosthenes and to Hipparchus (who had advanced far beyond Eratosthenes in the application of astronomy to geography), distinctly asserts that geographers have nothing to do with what is out of the earth. The drawing of maps was not then part of the business of the geographer. The practical wants of the Romans, in regard to geography, could be supplied without them. Maps, indeed, are not a practical want in the present day. We can not only find our way to Rome, Vienna, or St. Petersburg, very well without Butler or Arrowsmith, but we never think of employing them for such a purpose. When a traveller, in the present day, does guide himself by a map, it is such a map as the Romans had, namely, a survey, and generally of a small portion of country. In other words, it is a map in which the relative position of places is determined with reference to landmarks, in which astronomy does not necessarily play any part. Such surveys could not, without immense labour, have been extended so as to embrace in one view the whole Roman empire; but, we repeat, general maps supply rather an intellectual than a practical want. Accordingly, geographers might have persevered for ages in the track of Strabo, if astronomical observation had not been a practical necessity in another art than that of the geographer, in that, namely, of the navigator. No doubt the way of determining position by the stars was first discovered by the mariner, and was adopted from him by the geographer. The geographer might have been long in inventing such a method. We cannot tell, indeed, how long the progress of geography might have been retarded if astronomical observation had not been required in the sister art. We may reasonably suppose, that astronomy would not have been used for geographical purposes alone, before the properties of the magnetic needle became known to Europe; and the acquisition of this knowledge would have still farther postponed its use, because reference to the heavens would then have been more easily dispensed with. Indeed, an earlier acquaintance with the compass, which would have Imperial library at Vienna, and shows the extent to which mapping was possible without the aid of astronomy. The drawing is executed on parchment, and is twenty-one feet long by one wide. It may be compared to the maps of rivers which have lately been exhibited in London; but in the table, instead of rivers, the chief roads of the Roman empire are depicted, and these are arranged one above the other in parallel lines; principal towns and other particulars of the routes being denoted by appropriate signs. The space embraced in what exists of the table extends from Spain to the mouth of the Ganges. A portion of the table is supposed to have been lost.