much love of God, the other, from too little love of his neighbour-to which may be added, that the one had a strong head, the other an excellent heart-that the one was more skilled in the rugged paths of positive theology, the other, in the elegant pursuits of polite literature; but that though Bossuet was more haughty and retired, Fenelon more affable and condescending-both in the midst of study and incessant meditation were active and attentive ministers of religion. In this, and in every view but one, they may be commended as examples to their brethren in our own church.

We take leave of the subject by repeating that the purpose with which these elegant little volumes have been given to the world, at this particular crisis, is sufficiently obvious, namely, to represent, by two illustrious examples, the doctrines and the practices of his own church, in the most amiable and attractive point of view. But, alas! decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile.' With equal effect, that is with none at all, we might oppose in their church the names of Maury or Talleyrand to those of Fenelon or Bossuet; and in our own a long catalogue of illustrious prelates, from Cranmer, whom Bossuet has calunniated, to Bull, whom he praised.* The merits of the cause, however, depend not upon examples. Popery, by the confession of all who understand it, contains the essentials of Christianity, and a few such men as these great prelates will ever be found by toilsome perseverance in removing the incumbent mass of rubbish, to reach the vein of pure and shining ore at last while the bulk of the people content themselves with poring on the surface, mistaking every grain of marcasite for gold, and contented to accept as such every substance on which their superiors have impressed the stamp or bestowed the denomination.

Meanwhile, as Protestants, we appeal to the law and to the testimony,' the only assay by which the ore of Christianity can be distinguished from the rubbish, the metal from the dross.

ART. VI.-Zur Farbenlehre. On the Doctrine of Colours. By Goethe. 2 vol. 8vo. Tubingen, 1810, pp. 1510; with 16 coloured Plates in 4to.

OUR

UR attention has been less directed to this work of Mr. von Goethe, by the hopes of acquiring from it any thing like information, than by a curiosity to contemplate a striking example

In a work of so conciliatory a nature as the present, we are at a loss to conjecture why the biographer should have suppressed Bossuet's letter to Bishop Bull, in the name of the Gallican church, to compliment him for the Defensio Fidei Nicænæ.

of

of the perversion of the human faculties, in an individual who has obtained enough of popularity among his countrymen, by his literary productions, to inspire him with a full confidence in his own powers, and who seems to have wasted those powers for the space of twenty years, by forcing them into a direction, in which he had originally mistaken his way, for want of profiting by the assistance of a judicious guide. Having failed of exciting the attention, and obtaining the approbation of mathematicians and philosophers, he has revenged himself for their neglect, by obloquy and invective: and calling in his powers of versification to the aid of his weakness in argumentation, he has overwhelmed the young gentlemen and ladies, who have been in the habit of reading the almanack of the muses, with epigrams and satires, equally demonstrative with the present elaborate work; equally instructive, and equally poetical.

We shall exhibit the symptoms of this curious case of hallucination,' in the words of the patient's own very amusing Confession,' after premising a sketch of the plan and contents of the work, which forms so prominent a feature in the malady.

In the first, or didactic' part, the author professes to consider colours, with respect to their physiological, their physical, and their chemical properties. Physiological, or subjective' colours, are ocular spectra, coloured shadows, and, as he is inclined to believe, the halos seen round candles, especially when the eye is weak; but to us, these coronae appear to depend on particles floating on the surface of the eye, and derived from the secretion of the eyelids, and not to be immediately connected with the physiology of the nervous system. As allied to affections of this kind, Mr. von Goethe mentions the morbid state of the organ, which he calls acyauoblepsia, or the incapacity of perceiving blue light, by which he explains some cases of the confusion of colours, in a manner somewhat analogous to the hypothesis of our countryman Mr. Dalton on the same subject. Physical colours our author thinks little more real than physiological colours, and often merely apparent and transitory. He divides them into dioptric, either by simple transmission, or by refraction; paroptic, sometimes called colours by inflection or diffraction; and epoptic, or depending on the properties of surfaces, as the colours of thin plates. Chemical colours, he observes, are the most permanent; and here he considers the chemical effects of different colours, as ncarly related to the subject, together with the chemical properties connected with dying and bleaching. The other divisions of this part contain a 'connected sketch of the doctrine of colours;' a discussion of the relation of chromatics to other departments of

science

science; and an examination of the effect of colours, with regard to the fine arts.

Colours, in Mr. Von Goethe's opinion, are intimately connected with the phenomena exhibited by the magnet, the tourmalin, the electrical machine, the galvanic battery, and the processes of chemistry. In all these phenomena, as well as in those of colours, there exists, he says, a hither and thither, an inductive separation, a discharge by reunion, an opposition, an indifference, and in short, a polarity; in an elevated, a diversified, a decided, an instructive, and an improving sense.'-Anz. p. 2.

But if we may venture to interpret his opinions into intelligible language, the most elementary of them seems to be, that red is generally and essentially derived from the perception of light, and blue from that of darkness, viewed through a semitransparent medium; a fact by no means universally, admissible, and which, where it actually occurs, may be referred to a combination of much simpler causes.

Our author asserts, that colours are the joint production of light, and of the substances exposed to it, or an effect of the modification of light, produced by partial darkness; a modification which, he says, has been overlooked by the authors of the received theories.

The polemical' part, which follows the didactic, is a minute and detailed examination and discussion of the optics of Newton, which our author considers as grossly deficient in satisfactory demonstration, and wholly inadequate to prove the compound nature of white light. In this discussion, he has certainly shown no small portion of courage, though little of the better part of valour. He gives us, for instance, in his third plate, a number of coloured objects to be viewed through a prism; in his fourth, a representation of the same objects, as seen through the prism: one of the objects is a space, of which one half is coloured red, and the other blue; and in the representation of the prismatic appearance, the two halves are still placed side by side, and terminated by the same rectilinear outline. This is an experimentum crucis:' we have looked through a prism, at the identical figure of the third plate, and it does NOT appear as Mr. Von Goethe has represented it in the fourth; but the blue image is manifestly more displaced by the effect of refraction, than the red.

The second volume of the work is occupied principally by a historical abstract of the discoveries and opinions of all philosophers, ancient and modern, respecting light and colours; in which the author has exhibited some industry, but little talent, and less judgment. He does not fail to triumph over the detestable Newtonian doctrines,' on occasion of the discoveries of Dollond; and although he is disposed to admit, that an accident may have

VOL. X. NO. XX.

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given rise to the experimental error of Newton, he still very truly infers from the circumstance, that a great philosopher may have a phenomenon completely within his view, and yet suffer it to escape his observation.' He attempts a moral solution of the problem, how so extraordinary a man could have been so egregiously mistaken, as Newton was, with respect to light, and should have continued to labour on the subject of his error, until the end of his life, with self-complacency, with diligence, and with obstinacy, in spite of all warnings, both internal and external; to establish its popularity, and to carry with him, in defiance of reason, so many men of distinguished talent and celebrity.'

We will not compliment him so far, as to hint that his own case may afford anything like an illustration of the supposed paradox; but we shall exhibit his feelings, respecting himself, in an abstract of his Confession.'

The public is not unwilling to allow any man the credit of possessing talents, which he has employed with industry, and with a certain degree of good fortune; but if he wishes to diversify his occupations, and multiply his powers, by the pursuit of different objects, he appears to violate the right which he has allowed the public opinion to acquire over him, and his exertions, in a new capacity, are therefore very seldom received with favour and approbation. There may be some foundation for this disposition, in truth and reason; since every beginning must be imperfect, and so far is one man from being able to make improvements in a multitude of different departments, that the united labours of many men are required, in order to bring any one to perfection. On the other hand, it is certain that some branches of human knowledge are in absolute need of assistance from others, and that a man must possess, within himself, a combination of various faculties, and of various virtues, in order to advance, as far as possible, in the pursuit of intellectual cultivation.

My poetical attempts had been received with partiality, though I had followed no rules of art: I meditated long, and executed rapidly; a habit which has perhaps given some animation and energy to my productions. But wherever I attempted to seek assistance from the existing rules of art, I found them either wholly wanting, or absolutely useless. I was therefore desirous of finding some other department, connected with my immediate pursuits, in which technical precepts had done more to assist the progress of a student; and I made choice of the fine arts, and of painting in particular; for which, having no natural talent, I was the more in need of rules, and was even the more zealous in the study of them: for it is perfectly certain, that a false taste will often incite a man to more passionate exertions, than a true one; and that he often takes much more pains in a pursuit which must unavoidably fail, than in another which might easily succeed.

From a wish to improve myself in the study of painting, I was induced to undertake a journey into Italy. Here I had to unlearn all

that

that I had before learned, relating to the arts, and to begin from the most elementary principles; and by the time that I was obliged to return from my travels, I found myself just far enough advanced to begin to be able to profit by them.

'Respecting the theory of colouring, however, I could form no distinct idea: I found that the practice of the best painters was governed by their taste only; their taste, by custom; their custom, by prejudice; and their prejudice, by a peculiar turn of mind or of study. I heard indeed of cold and warm colours, of colours that relieved each other, and the like; but all this was confined within very narrow limits, and even within them was very imperfectly understood. In order to relieve the monotony of my conversations with my friends on the subject, having observed the feeble effects of blue tints, I undertook to maintain a paradox, that blue was no colour; and I had the pleasure of having my assertion universally controverted. Angelica only, who had before obliged me by executing a painting in the old Florentine manner, completing the chiaro oscuro in grey, and covering it with transparent tints, which produced an uncommonly pleasing picture, though the eye could not discover the manner in which it was painted; Angelica now approved my paradox, and promised me to paint a little landscape, without a particle of blue; and she executed accordingly a very agreeable and harmonious composition, nearly resembling the appearance which the objects would assume to an acyanobleptic eye; and the picture may possibly still be in the possession of some amateur, who may be interested in the anecdote.

The experiment however served only to furnish a transitory subject of conversation, and I felt the necessity of considering the nature of colours, as an object of physical research; never doubting the truth of the common opinion, that they were all contained in light. I had indeed formerly attended courses of lectures on natural philosophy, and well remembered the experiments exhibited in them; but for want of sunshine at a proper time, I had not seen those which are commonly employed for the illustration of the Newtonian doctrine of colours.

In order to supply this deficiency, I had borrowed some optical instruments of Mr. Büttner, of Jena; but having long neglected to pursue the investigation, I was about to return them in great haste. I determined however to look once through a prism before I sent it away. When I took the prism into my hand, I expected, from the impression that I had received of the Newtonian theory, to see the whole of the white wall of the room coloured in different degrees, and the light, returning to the eye, divided into a multitude of coloured lights. But with no small astonishment, I perceived that the wall remained white as before, and that the colours only appeared in the neighbourhood of a dark part. I was immediately convinced that a limit was necessary, in order to the production of colours, and asserted without hesitation, that the Newtonian doctrine was false. I then determined to keep the apparatus, and pursue the experiments.

Having no experience in researches of this kind, I requested a natural philosopher, who resided in the neighbourhood, to examine the

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results