that we know better-what the past really was. We draw comparisons, but rather to encourage hope than to indulge despondency or foster a deluding reverence for exploded errors. The order of the ages is inverted. Stone and iron came first. We ourselves may possibly be in the silver stage. An age of gold, if the terms of our existence on this planet permit the contemplation of it as a possibility, lies unrealized in the future. Our lights are before us, and all behind is shadow. In every department of life-in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual convictions -we thank God that we are not like our fathers. And, while we admit their merits, making allowance for their disadvantages, we do not bind ourselves in mistaken modesty to our own immeasurable superiority. Changes analogous to those which we contemplate with so much satisfaction have been witnessed already in the history of other nations. The Roman in the time of the Antonines might have looked back with the same feelings on the last years of the republic. The civil wars were at an end. From the Danube to the African deserts, from the Euphrates to the Irish Sea, the swords were beaten into ploughshares. The husbandman and the artisan, the manufacturer and the merchant, pursued their trades under the shelter of the eagles, secure from arbitrary violence and scarcely conscious of their masters' rule. Order and law reigned throughout the civilized world. Science was making rapid strides. The philosophers of Alexandria had tabulated the movements of the stars, had ascertained the periods of the planets, and were anticipating by conjecture the great discoveries of Copernicus. The mud cities of the old world were changed to marble. Greek art, Greek literature, Greek enlightenment, followed in the track of the legions. The harsher forms of slavery were modified. The bloody sacrifices of the pagan creeds were suppressed by the law; the coarser and more sensuous superstitions were superseded by a broader philosophy. The period between the accession of Trajan and the death of Marcus Aurelius has been selected by Gibbon as the time in which the human race had enjoyed more general happiness than they had ever known before, or had known since up to the date when the historian was meditating on their fortunes. Yet during that very epoch and in the midst of all that prosperity the heart of the empire was dying out of it. The austere virtues of the ancient Romans were perishing with their faults. The principles, the habits, the convictions, which held society together were giving way, one after the other, before luxury and selfishness. The entire organization of the ancient world was on the point of collapsing into a heap of incoherent sand. If the merit of human institutions is at all measured by their strength and stability, the increase of wealth, of production, of liberal sentiment, or even of knowledge, is not of itself a proof that we are advancing on the right road. The unanimity of the belief, therefore, that we are advancing at present must be taken as a proof that we discern something else than this in the changes which we are undergoing. It would be well, however, if we could define more clearly what we precisely do discern. It would at once be a relief to the weaker brethren whose minds occasionally misgive them, and it would throw out into distinctness the convictions which we have at length arrived at on the true constituents of human worth and the objects toward which human beings ought to direct their energies. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. THIS eminent scholar and classic poet was born at Berlin, Connecticut, September 15, 1795, and graduated at Yale College in 1815 with high honor. After leaving college he entered the medical school connected with the same, and received the degree of M. D. He did not, however, engage in practice, but devoted himself chiefly to the cultivation of his poetical powers and to the pursuits of science and literature. He first appeared before the public as an author in 1821, when he published a volume containing some minor poems and the first part of his "Prometheus," which was very favorably noticed in the North American Review. In 1822 he published two volumes of miscellaneous poems and prose writings and the second part of "Prometheus," a poem in the Spenserian measure. In 1824 he was for a short time in the service of the tion of Malte-Brun's geography. In 1835 he was appointed, in connection with Professor C. U. Shepard, to make a survey of the geological and mineralogical resources of the State of Connecticut. Dr. Percival took charge of the geological part, and his report thereon was published in 1842. In 1843 appeared, at New Haven, his last published volume of miscellaneous poetry, entitled The Dream of Day, and other Poems. In 1854 he was appointed State geologist of Wisconsin, and his first report on that survey was published in January, 1855. The larger part of this year he spent in the field. While preparing his second report his health gave way, and after a gentle decline he expired on the 2d of May, 1856, at Hazel Green, Wisconsin. However much distinguished Mr. Percival may be for his classical learning and for his varied attainments in philology and general science, he will be chiefly known to posterity as one of the most eminent of our poets, for the richness of his fancy, the copiousness and beauty of his language, his lifelike descriptions, his sweet and touching pathos, as well at times, his spirited and soul-stirring as, United States as professor of chemistry in the EDWARD COATE PINKNEY, son of Military Academy at West Point, and subsequently as a surgeon connected with the recruiting-station at Boston. But his tastes lay in a different direction, and he gave himself to the Muses and to historical, philological and scientific pursuits. In 1827 he was employed to revise the manuscript of Dr. Webster's large dictionary, and not long after this he published a corrected transla Hon William Pinkney, of Baltimore, Maryland, was born in London in October, 1802, his father being at that time minister at the court of St. James. On the return of the family he entered St. Mary's College, about 1812, and at the age of fourteen was appointed midshipman in the navy. After a varied service of nine years he resigned his place in the navy, was married, and was ad dence at Perugia bears the name of Perugino. With him Raphael remained from twelve years old to twenty. His first orig mitted to the bar in 1821. But his previous | the boy was sent as a scholar to the painter habits of life were not favorable to the steady Pietro Vannuci, who from his later resiand earnest pursuit of legal investigations, and his poetic temperament did not suit well with the contentions of the court-room; consequently, he had but little success as a law-inal work, "The Marriage of the Virgin,' yer. His health, too, had been for some time feeble, so that he had hardly the physical powers necessary to attain distinction in any profession. He had been for some years known as a poet to his circle of friends, and in 1825 a small volume appeared, entitled Rodolph, and other Poems. "Rodolph " his longest work-has not much merit, but some of his minor pieces are very beautiful and richly merit preservation. Had his life been spared, he would doubtless have trodden a higher walk; but he died on the 11th of April, 1828, at the early age of twenty-five. THE CHARLES D. CLEVELAND. RAPHAEL. HE answer to the question, "Who was the greatest painter that ever lived?" is clear and prompt: Raphael, or, in his Italian name, Raffaello Sanzio d'Urbino. In a comparatively short life, and with little aid from others, this great genius wrought his beautiful visions on canvas and wall in great numbers, and achieved the fame of being first in his art in all the periods from the beginning of Art to the present time. He was born on the 28th of March, 1483; this day was Good Friday of that year, and he died, curiously enough, on Good Friday of the year 1520, being the 6th of April. Especially renowned for his matchless delineations of the new-born Christ, he is thus strangely associated with the day of his death upon the cross. The father of Raphael was an artist, and was quite in the style of his master, and was given to the world in 1500. Four years later he went to Florence, where he was incited to his best efforts by the works and example of Michael Angelo. He made some drawings illustrative of the Florentine wars. He became the warm friend of Fra Bartolomeo. The list would be long of his various works. Many of them were on religious and Scripture subjects; a few were of Grecian and Latin mythology, among which is noted "The Triumph of Galatea." For Leo X. he decorated with fine works of art the "loggie," or galleries, of the Vatican. In 1513-1516 he produced those beautiful Cartoons which have so often been reproduced, to the delight of all lovers of art, and which present the best specimens of distemper in color. To the Madonna and the Holy Family he chiefly devoted his pencil, and thus we have in the many galleries of Europe notable and well-known types of his conception of the virgin mother. Among them, the most famous are "The Madonna di San Sesto," a lovely standing figure now in the Dresden gallery; the "Vièrge au Diademe," in the Louvre; the very familiar group known as "Della Sedia, or Seggiola," in the Pitti gallery of Florence. There are also pictures of his on this subject in the Museo at Madrid and in the Escurial. He painted many portraits, among which the most valued are those of Popes Julius II. and Leo X. and the Fornarina, his mysterious relations with whom lend a romance to his life. He is said to have made one statue, and his powers as an architect are manifest from the fact that after the death of Bramante he was chosen to carry on the building of St. Peter's at Rome. Raphael died of a malarious fever caught while superintending some excavations at Rome. After accomplishing so much, the wonder is that he had attained the age of only thirty-seven years. The greatest of his paintings is doubtless "The Transfiguration." It taxed his utmost power to present that marvellous meeting of Christ with Moses and Elias and the resplendent glory of the mysterious change. He succeeded, and then dared the incongruity of placing another group below the figures on the mount the demoniac child and the power of the transfigured Christ to cure him when the disciples failed. We present in the fine engraving of Mr. Lightfoot one of his most living and moving Madonnas. IF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? F I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could what a university was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a studium generale, or "school of universal learning." This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot-from all parts, else how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and in one spot, else how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description, but such a university seems to be in its essence a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse through a wide extent of country. There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea thus presented to us; and if this be a university, then a university does but contemplate a necessity of our nature, and is but one specimen in a particular department, out of many which might be adduced in others, of a provision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations of human society, carried on partly with set purpose and partly not. One generation forms another, and the existing generation is ever acting and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members. Now, in this process, books, I need scarcely say that is, the littera scrip ta -are one special instrument. It is true, and emphatically so in this age. Considering the prodigious powers of the press and how they are developed at this time in the never-intermitting issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in serious, and light literature, we must allow there never was a time which promised fairer for dispensing with every other means of information and instruction. What can we want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and persevering a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sybil wrote her proph |