EDINBURGH

JOURNAL

No. 3. NEW SERIES.

THE PARTICULAR AND THE GENERAL. It is very curious to observe the different ways in which Mr Smith, Mr Thomson, or any other impersonation of the English nation, regards the same thing in its two various forms of particular and general. Tell Mr Thomson that you are giving your son Frederick a practical sort of education, by which you imply a training in his own language, in writing, accompts, geometry, without neglecting elegant literature, dead or alive, or any of the weightier matters relative to morals, and he will listen to the detail with all the approving patience and interest that could be desired, and next day tell twenty people how sensibly you are managing the matter, and that he has a great mind to put his own George and Samuel through exactly the same course when they are ready for it. But let another person on some other occasion propound to Mr Thomson the opinion, that education should everywhere be made more of a practical kind, that it should not be unmixed Latin and Greek, but should include such elements as shall enable the new generation to enter life not quite ignorant of the laws of nature, and more particularly of those things which concern each of us in the career for which we are destined, and instantly doubt and alarm are depicted on the usually smooth and happy tablet of Mr Thomson's countenance. He is afraid you are disaffected to some of the good old institutions of the country, that you feel Jacobinically towards birch, and would disestablish the Grecian mythology. What in a single instance obtained the immediate sanction of his common sense, now, in the aggregate, meets a thousand objections from him. He cannot grasp the idea in this form, and therefore it oppresses and frightens him. What!' says Thomson, would you have us to be a mere nation of bargainers? would you exclude the ornamental and the refining? would you make all our youth cunning old merchants at once? No saying where we should all be in a hundred years, if you were to make education of so utilitarian a character. And so it is that, while in the case of his own George and Samuel, he would really like an education calculated to inform as well as improve the mind, and fit the lads, in some degree, for the world, he yet will take no means, nor sanction the taking of such means by others, to put all in the way of obtaining such an education. Had it formerly existed, he would have thought it-to use one of his favourite phrasesall right; but to alter an old system, and rear a new one, is quite another affair; he must think twice about it. In short, you see you are to have no support from Thomson.

When I was a very young person (George III. being king), a well-informed man was always respected. Even amongst the country gentlemen, any one who had read a good deal, so as to be able to solve a knotty point now and then at a county meeting or at table, usually enjoyed some extra consequence on that account. Fathers, however ignorant themselves, would tell their sons to seek the society of well-informed men, for the benefit which was to be derived from their conversation. It was generally held a sort of disgrace to be extremely igno

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rant. And even yet, when Mr Thomson happens to be thrown into the society of a man of large and various knowledge, he is quite delighted. 'What a head that fellow has, sir! No subject could be brought forward but he had some light to throw upon it. How much I would give to know a fourth of what he does!' Thomson really thinks and feels in this manner. He has been charmed, and he only speaks his heart when he says there is nothing he holds in greater respect than knowledge. But if you were to meet our national representative at some other time, and commence a conversation with him about the desirableness of taking some steps to remove the general ignorance, and diffuse useful knowledge amongst the people, very likely you should find him opposed to everything of the kind, and this not only from a disinclination to see intellectual light extended, but a disrespect for intellectual light itself. He would have some very sage remarks on the too exclusive cultivation of physical science in our age, its effects in causing us to worship the actual and the real overmuch, and its connexion with the mammon-spirit of the day. Perhaps a few jokes at men of science would season his discourse. He would quite overlook the mighty extension which modern science has given not only to many objects dear to humanity, but even to our conceptions of divine majesty and benevolence; he would forget the souls which its abundant dissemination snatches from corrupting influences, and places by virtue's decent fireside. And this simply because, while able to appreciate the superiority of knowledge to ignorance in a special case, or as far as the individual alone is concerned, he cannot conceive of a multitude of such cases with the same clearness; the idea escapes him, its vast and undefined lineaments terrify him, and he becomes an alarmist about a thing which he actually venerates.

We find this respect for the particular, and dread of the general, very prevalent with regard to the idea of the useful. There is not a respectable parent of three children in the country-no matter, almost, of what rank-who does not twice a-day tell his youngsters to see that they make themselves useful. There is not a careful housewife in the world, who does not deliver lectures daily to young women on the propriety of their making themselves useful. Be useful' is the general order dinned into the ears of all persons, from the first moment they have a brain to think or hands to work. Compliment the philanthropist with a dinner and panegyric, and he modestly assures the company he is always very happy when he can make himself useful to his fellow-creatures. Place the patriot at the head of the poll for Fussborough, and he declares from the hustings that it will henceforth be the pride of his life to be useful to Fussborough. One-half of the so-called highly-educated men of the country, if told of some remarkable discovery in pure science, will think themselves sure of a triumph in the remark, But of what use is it?' as conceiving immediate usefulness to be an infallible criterion of merit in such a case. Yet, if one were to happen, in conversation with any of these parties, to let fall some general approbation of utility, it is ten to one that they would all hesitate to concur with him. They would

not, perhaps, have any objection distinctly felt in their own minds, but they would fear that utility somehow was a wrong or bad thing in this form, albeit the guiding rule of all their ordinary actions. This is surely a most absurd delusion of the popular mind; for what is good on a small scale can never be otherwise than good on a more extended one, seeing that in the latter case we have merely a multiplication of single examples. If Tom, for instance, is benefited by turning all his natural and acquired gifts to use, how can it be bad for Harry, or his respectable brother Dick, to make themselves useful too? Or how can the usefulness of Dick and Harry be bad to Tom? And if usefulness has been found laudable in the cases of this venerable trio, how can it be worthy of reprobation with regard to mankind at large? The fact is, usefulness is good for each and all; but the public starts at what it calls theories, by which word it describes all concentrations of single facts into principles.

I have, for my part, no theory, properly so called, about utility, nor am I even fully informed upon some of the more remarkable theories of other men upon this subject. But I can very readily see that there is both a contempt and a dread entertained for it among thousands, whose character as good citizens entirely depends upon the fact, that their almost every action is of a useful kind. There is, in the first place, a prejudice against the general idea of the useful, as if it were something naturally in hostility to all that decorates and refines life, and would exclusively direct attention to what is gross and material. Now, there could not be a greater error than this; for the useful, in reality, comprehends all those decorating and refining, as well as all beneficial and moral things, within itself, and stands properly as a general term for whatever can promote the happiness of mankind, and that not merely here, but hereafter. The distinction of the ornamental and amusing arts from those productive of immediately necessary things, was but the transient error of one philosophical mind-that of Smith-and is now nowhere upheld. Why, then, should it any more be thought of? Even Bentham, who is usually considered as the most aberring spirit on this subject, was an admirer of both painting and music, and an amateur of the latter, and invariably advocated the liberal support of the cultivators of both arts, as persons useful to the community. Surely, then, it is a ridiculous mistake to suppose, as we every day hear men doing, that, because some particular person recommends utility to be studied in all things, and follows it much in his own daily conduct, therefore he is one who has no soul for anything beyond the sternest realities, and would willingly see all the fine arts and all the moralising agencies of the age put down and extinguished. The very contrary is often the fact; and we find nowhere such perseverance in good-doing and good-thinking, or such a liberal and enlightened taste for both the beautiful in art and the profound and abstract in science, as in some who endeavour, in humility of spirit, to mark their whole lives with usefulness. How could anything else have ever been presumed, when there are so many of the very highest of sanctions for this same usefulness? What is going about continually doing good,' taken by itself, but a course of usefulness? If, indeed, any one were to limit his idea of usefulness to a life devoted altogether to the realising of small and gross utilities, and which, from mere narrowness of spirit, excluded whatever might only be expected to become useful reflectively and after long time, there might be some justice in the opinion in question. But I am unaware of any men of reputation who take this narrow view, which rather appears to me a mere groundless imputation put forward by those who, from limitation of soul, can only see good in single cases, and start with instinctive trepidation from the assertion of everything like a principle.

In the scale of mind, the particular and the general might almost be considered as the leading marks. There are men who readily understand any single isolated

fact, and make it part of their stock of knowledge, but whose stock of knowledge consists entirely of such distinct facts. These men cannot lay a number of facts together, so as to draw some general inference from them. They are the children of the intellectual world. As we advance in the scale, we find the maturer and higher forms of intellect in those who readily generalise from single facts, and combine many small ideas into a great one. Analogous to, and intimately connected with the first class, are those men who exhibit all desirable benevolence towards their fellow-creatures in personal and individual respects, who are good masters to their servants, good landlords to their tenants, eager to commiserate and relieve every single case of distress that comes under their notice, but are totally unable to form any general scheme of a rational kind for the benefit of large numbers, or to sanction any such scheme which may have been formed by others. Analogous to the second class the intellectual generalisers-are those who, while perhaps more disposed to follow the course of a strict justice towards individuals, are competent, and at the same time eager, to form and follow out great principles and plans for the general good. There can be no hesitation in assigning to each of these classes their proper shares of praise: the former are respectable for their personal doings, but often form great obstructions to plans of the highest value; the latter are the less amiable, but by far the more useful. The former may be likened to the occasional gleams of good feeling which appear in the barbarian mind; the latter are comparable to the mild and benevolent maxims which govern the bulk of civilised society.

It will therefore be the mark of a great intellectual advance in mankind, when they are found to understand that all social and political things are but congeries, or clusters of things individual and familiar, and are liable to laws, and attended by maxims, precisely the same. A nation is but an extended family, as all mankind are but an extensive kind of nation, and whatever is for the interest of any one man or family, must be for the interest of the nation, as well as that of mankind. It is the pursuit by each man of his own calling, for his own benefit, that creates the wealth and greatness of the congeries of men called a people. Whatever mode of operation facilitates the industry, and promotes the benefit of the individual, without doing harm to his neighbours, that will be found an infallible rule of action for similar arrangements amongst class and class, and nation and nation; and, by parity of reasoning, whatever would be an impediment to the industrial operations and personal benefit of an individual citizen (always presuming that he aims at nothing which is not moral towards his neighbour), that will be found to be equally unfavourable to the interests of a nation, and of mankind generally. It requires only some degree of wisdom, and particularly some share of that best of all kinds of merely human wisdom, a genuine benevolence, or love of our neighbour as ourselves, to see these great truths; and it requires but seeing them, and acting upon them, to produce a vast increase of happiness upon earth.

AQUEDUCTS OF THE ANCIENTS. WE presume that most of our readers have heard something of the pools,' 'water channels,' and 'canals' constructed by the ancient Hindoos, Persians, Egyptians, and even by the half-civilised inhabitants of Mexico and Feru. To these people a copious supply of water was essential alike to their agricultural and domestic welfare. Situated under a burning sun and cloudless sky, where the dews of night are for months the only available moisture, their crops would have utterly failed, had not their ingenuity devised means to collect and disseminate the water which fell during the rainy season, or which flowed in streams from the distant mountains. Hence it is that the traveller finds in Ceylon, in Persia, and in Peru, the frequent ruins of dams, canals, and water-courses, which the former and

more advanced inhabitants had constructed for the irrigation of their fields and gardens. But it was not merely for the purposes of agriculture that the ancients constructed these expensive water-works; they were no less indefatigable in securing for their cities a plentiful supply of this indispensable element. Their histories are rife with allusions to digging of wells, excavating of reservoirs, and constructing of aqueducts; while the remains of these structures in Judea, Italy, and Mexico, testify how much those distant and dissimilar people alike valued a plentiful supply of fresh and wholesome water. What acquaintance they had with the principles of hydraulics, we have no direct information. This much we ascertain from an examination of their works, that they understood the principle, that water always seeks the level of its source, no matter how irregular and devious the course it may be made to pursue. In conducting streams across valleys and rivers, the Romans occasionally made use of the inverted syphon; but this method was seldom adopted, on account of the meagre skill they possessed in metal-working. The syphon pipes employed by them were of lead, a metal not well adapted to sustain a great degree of pressure; and when we state that it is only within the last century that cast-iron pipes were constructed for hydraulic purposes, it will be readily perceived why the ancients should have resorted to the laborious and expensive mode of conducting their water-conduits across valleys and rivers, upon vast structures of masonry. In this process they have been left unrivalled by modern nations the Croton aqueduct* for the supply of New York being the only structure of the kind which has been erected during the last hundred years. It may not be uninteresting, therefore, to present the reader with a brief sketch of their water-works; in particular, of the aqueducts which were more exclusively devoted to the supply of their towns and cities.

The word aqueduct is derived from the Latin aquæ ductus, and signifies merely a conductor, or conduit of water. In this sense, all leaders or channels of water would be aqueducts; but the term is restricted to those artificial structures by which streams were conducted from their sources, by a uniform and continuous descent across valleys and through mountains, towards the city they were destined to supply. The conduits were built of stone, rough or hewn, or of bricks, and cemented by the finest tempered mortar. Some were of a square form, paved and covered with flag-stone or tiles; others were arched over, or were throughout of an elliptical form. This conduit, or stone pipe, if we may apply such a term, was conveyed through hills by tunnels, and across valleys upon single arcades, or even upon double and triple tiers of arches. In general, these arches supported only one water-course, but occasionally each tier had its own conduit, so that an aqueduct presented a double or triple form. The channels were constructed with an imperceptible descent, that the current might be accelerated by its own weight; and where following a direct line would have given too great an impetus to the flow, they were conducted over many miles of country by frequent and winding mazes. This device not only reduced the impetus of the current, and thereby preserved the interior of the channel from a rapid abrasion, but allowed the water to deposit its sediment, and to become softer and better fitted for domestic purposes. For the latter purpose, tanks or cavities were formed in the channel in which the stream lodged, until it had precipitated its mud and feculence; and open ponds were constructed, in which it expanded, till purified and sweetened by atmospheric influence. There were also spiramenta at regular distances, by which a superfluous flow of water might be disembogued, and which also served for the discharge of the whole stream in the event of the channel being stopped by accident, or requiring repairs.

Parallel to the course of the conduit, in some of the more magnificent aqueducts, there were foot-paths, forming at once a novel and cooling promenade. Having arrived at their destination, the waters were generally received in reservoirs, and conducted by leaden pipes, or by stone grooves, into private cisterns, or dispersed throughout the cities by means of public fountains, which were often adorned with all the magnificence and allegorical allusion of ancient architecture. These structures were invariably under the charge of a public functionary; and it is from the treatise of Sextus Julius Frontinus, who was inspector of the aqueducts of Rome under the Emperor Nerva, that we derive most of our information respecting the water-works of the imperial city.

Passing over some imperfect traces of aqueducts in Hindostan and Ceylon, and advancing westwards, the first worthy of notice is that which Procopius records to have been built by Croses, king of the Persians, for the supply of Petra, in Mingrelia. This seems to have been a square conduit, covered by flags, and supported in part of its course upon three tiers of arches, each tier supporting a channel; so that no less than three streams were made available in Petra at different elevations. We have also accounts of aqueducts constructed under the reign of Solomon; and the remains of them still existing in Palestine, give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with the principles of hydraulics among the architects employed by the Hebrew rulers. The 'Pools of Solomon,' near Bethlehem, were evidently connected with a scheme for supplying Jerusalem with water, and their remains are to this day a theme for travellers. These large, strong, noble structures,' says Mr Stephens in his Incidents of Travel, in a land where every work has been hurried to destruction, remain now almost as perfect as when they were built. There are three of them about 480, 600, and 660 feet in length and 280 in breadth, and of different altitudes, the water from the first running into the second, and from the second into the third. The water from these reservoirs is still conveyed to Jerusalem (a distance of six miles) by a small aqueduct, a round earthen pipe about ten inches in diameter, which is sometimes above, and sometimes under the surface.' Again, Herodotus describes the mode in which Eupalinus, an architect of Megara, supplied the city of Samos with water. A hill 900 Greek feet high was pierced by a tunnel about a mile in length. This tunnel was eight feet high and eight feet wide, and in it there was cut a channel thirty feet deep by three feet wide, through which the water flowed in a covered course to the city.

It was among the Romans, however, that the construction of aqueducts was carried to the greatest magnificence and perfection. Masters of half the world, wealthy, and luxurious, it is not to be wondered at that they should have expended an enormous amount of labour in conducting streams into their cities; and less when it is considered that the capital of their empire was unfavourably situated by nature in regard to pure and wholesome water. The glory of a reign was in general perpetuated by the erection of a temple, palace, or other public building; what more fitting monument than an aqueduct a species of structure susceptible of architectural display, as it was essential to the public welfare? For 440 years from the foundation of Rome, the inhabitants contented themselves with the water of the Tiber, and of the wells and fountains in the city and its neighbourhood. But at that period the number of houses and inhabitants had so augmented, that they were obliged to bring water from distant sources by means of aqueducts. Appius Claudius, the censor, commenced this scheme of improvement 312 years before the Christian era; and after him, for several centuries, additional works were constructed, as the necessities and luxuries of the city demanded. Among those who signalised themselves in this department of public utility were Curius Dentatus, Lucius Papirius, Quintus Marcus, Agrippa, Augustus, and Claudius;