try. Security is scarcely more important than a sense of security. Fear paralyzes the bodies and minds of men. It is the worst of tyrants. Under its iron rule, "all virtue sickens, and all genius dies." It smites the sturdy arm of toil with paralysis, and the teeming earth with blight.

Nor do men labor merely because they love to gloat over the glittering heaps which they accumulate. The sanctities of the wedded state, and the tender love of offspring, are the mainsprings, the vital and perpetual forces of enterprise and industry. We lay up wealth to secure comfort and consideration for our heirs. The house which we rear is to shelter our children after we are gone, and the tree which we plant at our door shall give a welcome shade to the posterity which inherits our blood and perpetuates our names. Nor is this a mere individual concern; for, affecting all men, and in substantially the same way, it affects through their aggregation the whole people and state. It thus operates upon national industry and wealth; visiting every stream, engine, and forge; every forest which resounds to the stroke of the woodman's axe, every field which whitens to the harvest, every road, lake, river and ocean, on which commerce, land or water borne, is busy in maintaining the intercourse of the world, by exchanging the products of every clime; armies and navies-the glories of nations, in literature, arts, and arms, stand in this close relation to industry, and owe a perpetual allegiance to justice.

We thus see the importance of constituting our Judicial Institutions upon a principle which will make them worthy of, and secure to them, universal confidence. It is our boast, indeed it is a noble virtue, that we are a law-loving and law-abiding people. The judge should be the living voice of the law. The judicial is the highest of all magistracies; elevated by its tenure beyond the vicissitudes of other official stations, having no fear but the fear of God, no aim but to administer justice, above all natural and "supernatural solicitings," it strikes the mind with almost the awfulness of Eternal justice. From its high seats upon the Zion of our Constitution, and girt about by all the subject land, it administers the principles of that univer

sal law "whose seat is the bosom of God, whose voice is the harmony of the world." Submission to the law, and security under the law, are mere correlatives. Universal confidence alone can secure that universal obedience in which lies our perfect security. Can we have that general confidence, obedience, and security, under a system so necessarily calculated by the very principle on which it is constituted, to make corrupt and vacillating judges, and to excite suspicion against their purity? No character in ancient story makes a deeper or more uniform impression on the mind than that of the elder Brutus. He is an image of stern, inexorable justice. He rises upon the judgment-seat, and with unaverted face, pronounces the deathdoom of his son. The heart of the father bleeds, but the stern judge knows no relenting. How many Brutuses will Tammany Hall, National Hall, the Antirent districts, or any other districts, give to our annals to interest and ennoble distant generations ?

What necessity calls for the proposed change? Have the people lost their confidence in an independent judiciary? Has their independence made the judges tyrannical or unjust? Nothing of the kind is pretended. The reason given, is, that adherence to our present tenure and mode of appointment, violates the principle of representative government. But forms were made for man, not man for forms, and should, be subordinated to his best interests. Those interests require an adherence to popular elections as to certain officers, and a departure from them as to others. What the people should desire is, the best means to effectuate the ends of society. Justice is the particular end; by what means can it best be secured? Justice is not a matter of will, of numbers, or majorities. Numbers constitute no element in judicature. The people, through their representatives, make the laws, and will; and numbers, and majorities, enter into that process; but the law once made, it ceases to be a matter of will, and its administration should be sacred from all interference, whether by minorities or majori ties. The idea, therefore, is perfectly fallacious and absurd, that the appointment of judges should be brought nearer to the people, and that the judges should

hold for temporary periods, to make them dependent on the popular will, be cause our institutions are representa

tive.

Political judges have always been distrusted and despised: is it wise for us to make them political? To render them objects of suspicion and contempt? Is the character of a Scroggs or a Jeffries so admirable, that we wish to see it imitated in this country? Should the judicial mind be stained with the dust of the political arena, and the emblematic ermine of his sacred office draggled with the filth of party politics? The judge is emphatically the Egis of the Constitution and the rights of the people. He stands aloof from the contentions of parties; instead of representing a faction, he represents the whole people; with a placid dignity he surveys the wide fields of human action: the rich man and the poor, the widow and the fatherless, the oppressed struggling against power, and legitimate authority struggling against popular excess, all appeal to him with confidence. With a voice unmoved by passion, and a heart which renders a perfect allegiance to the law, he interprets the sacred charter, and stands a ministering priest at the venerable altars of the Nation's justice. In this pure and impartial administration of jus. tice lies the sweet sense of security; life, liberty, reputation, the fruits of our toil, painfully gathered for those we love and who may enjoy them after we are dust, seem to us to be safe. Take away this sense of security, by destroying its best guaranties, unpolitical courts, unpolitical judges, unpolitical

justice and life becomes one lingering apprehension, and our death-beds would be tormented with the most agonizing anxieties for the fate of the dear ones. who should survive us. We could no longer bequeath our children to the justice of our country, but only to that Eternal Mercy which "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."

To recapitulate our objections to the proposed judicial system; It will prove inadequate in force to the necessities of the State; it will destroy the independence and purity of the judges, and confidence in the administration of justice; and, destroying respect for the judges, the courts, and the laws, it will tend to overthrow the best securities of life, liberty, reputation, and property.

We commend to the people of this great State, the following observations of that profound statesman, and early, and fast friend of America-Edmund Burke:

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It has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation; that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself; I mean justice: that justice, which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us as our guide with regard to ourselves, and with regard to others, and which will stand after this globe is burned to ashes, our Advocate or our Accuser before the great Judge, when HE comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life." J. M. V. C.

JENNISON'S

THE recent invention of a cheap and simple contrivance for the purification of aqueduct waters in cities, by which the impure element is made to assume in part the properties of spring or natural fountain water, has been noticed by this Review, as an event of universal importance, as it promises an increase of health and comfort to a large part of the human family. By the abundance of good and wholesome water, great cities are made habitable, and from being hospitals of disease, become abodes of longevity, But water is not merely accidental to us, in the matter of health and disease; we

FILTER.

exist in it, and are, in large parts, composed of it. Indeed, during the first nine moons of our lives we lie submerged in it; and for a period of twice that length, after our delivery from the home of our genesis, nature provides for us an aliment suspended and dissolved in water. By water alone the liquidity of our mobile organism is maintained, and the parts made pliable, free, and apt for the nutritive processes of life.

To water, then, as much as to the earth and more than to the air, we are obliged for our existence; if the spirit of the nature worship were still in us we might

well revere it as a deity, and crown Neptune the Water, with no less honors than Jupiter, the Air, or Pluto, the Earth. Mystically, water is the type of purification, and of the genesis, or process of creation. The waters of the great deep, on which the Spirit brooded, represent the incipiency of all things, when the universe was in solution, waiting for the creative will to precipitate from it suns and worlds: The blue expanse of ether, a seeming watery floor, represented to the ancient astronomy those waters above the firmament, or crystalline sphere, within which, as in an egg, the world was hatched by the brooding of the Spirit.

From the mystical, it is but a step to the scientific meaning of water; for in science it is the universal solvent, and holds all the simple elements in suspension. Water is the grand material of the chemist; to bring all substances into solution is his art, and by water he does it; for even those famous solvents, the "royal waters" of chemistry, aqua regia, aqua fortis, vitriol, and spirit of salt, not excepting the most potent of all, the biting devil of fluor spar, that digests more than an ostrich, and melts down hard glass like a white heat-owe all their potency to a combination with water, and without it are quite dry and inert.

Philosophically considered, water is the type of the liquid state in general, and by its boiling and freezing points, is the limiter of the conditions of life. Because water is the liquid from which the parts of the bodies of animals receive their softness and mobility, no organism can exist on either side the temperature of ice and steam.

The mechanical properties of all liquids are therefore studied in water, as those of all gases are in air. Though there be no element that is not as capable as water, of the three conditions of matter, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous; yet because of its relation to organic life, being the very element in which that life originates, and possessing the properties of a liquid in a higher degree than molten earths, or metals, or than condensed gases, and remaining so, within the limits of life, it has the preference; so that to think of liquidity, is to think of the properties of liquid water; as to think of eriformity is to think of air.

It is composed of two elements, one of which is the most active and susceptible,

the other the most passive and insusceptible of bodies. Both are gaseous, at the temperature of water, in their free state; and no one has yet been able to condense them into a liquid; though when united, they form the most liquid of liquids. One of these, oxygen, the nutritive part of the air we breathe, always forms solids when it unites simply with metals, or other bodies, at the common temperature. The other, hydrogen, a gas much lighter and more aerial than the first, always forms, or, if we may so speak, strives to form, liquid or gaseous compounds with other elements; its tendency is aeriform, it has but little affection for heavy bodies, and will hardly join with any of them. It is the least susceptible, too, to effects of heating and cooling, and will not permit itself to be tightly bound to anything; it is very proud, transcendental, airy, cold, thin, and neutral; a demon of the Ariel sort, with great gaiety and spirit, and but little affection.

Now by the marriage of sober, weighty earth-loving oxygen, with light, giddy, and repugnant hydrogen, is formed water; a body perfectly the mean, or midway of these opposites: for its affection for the metals is only equaled by its affection for the lighter elements and gases; it enters into every sort of combination with a ready good will, and a happy adaptiveness, which, though it diminishes our respect for its individuality, excites our admiration for its utility.

That water contains elements of an active, fiery nature, may be easily shown by throwing a few drops of it into a fire of coals; it is converted first into steam, as might be expected; but no sooner is this steam produced, and in contact with the burning coals, than it is separated into its two elemental spirits, or elements. The oxygen discovers his affinity for heavy matter by uniting with a portion of the coal, and adding to the fume of choke damp, or carbonic gas, which ascends the chimney; while the light hydrogen, escaping at the same instant, mingles with the air of the draught, and finding oxygen mixed in it, (as usual,) is instantly married to it again, the beat which they receive from the fire being the ardor which brings them together; for in all unions of different natures there is an ardor to be the cause of it; while, in common aggregations of multitudes, there is a mere selfish cohesion, which any mechanical accident may dissolve.

Thus, by a very trifling experiment in

a coal fire, we see a divorce and two material marriages, happening as quick as thought; water is unmade; carbonic gas is made, and water is re-made, notwithstanding all the efforts of high-flying hydrogen to remain a maid; fire has bound them together, the heavy and the light, and only by a fiery opposition and the aid of a third party, can they be redivorced.

Chemistry, by the use of certain tubes, bottles, and glass jars, has determined very exactly the quantity of the two elements in a measured quantity of water; this quantity is about 8 of the heavy to 1 of the lighter gas, in pounds or ounces, or any measure you choose to employ. They seem to have no weight, because they are gases, and are buoyed up by the air; but if you will weigh certain quantities of them in bottles, in a space from which all the air has been sucked out by an air-pump, and then weigh the empty bottle, and compare the result, you will find, that all the gas that can be got from 9 grains of water, weighs also 9 grains; and that one of these grains is hydrogen and the other eight oxygen; this proportion never varies-it is fixed, as Lavoisier first proved. Now, if 1 grain of hydrogen is in a bottle, and just fills it, 8 grains of oxygen would only half fill the same bottle.

Chemists have a way of reasoning from a large bulk to a small one; this is the analytic, or scientific method; the reverse is the constructive, or philosophical; that is, from the small to the large; now, reasoning in this former way, we infer, that if the smallest possible particle of each of these elements, (that is to say, an atom of each,) could be measured, the oxygen atom would be only half as big as the hydrogen one, but would weigh 8 times heavier; so, we compare the souls of an airy transcendental and a solid old churchman; one is only half as big to the popular eye, but is vastly weightier.

So much for the unsophisticated element. But this very pure and absolute water, like a faultless character in a novel, is quite insipid and devoid of spirit. It must contain something of the earthy and something of the gaseous, to be sapid and palatable. When pure water, made by a chemical process, is exposed to the air, it is immediately penetrated, and saturated, by it. The gases whose mixture we call air-namely, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbonic, gas, are

greedily soaked up by the water, as by a sponge; and on precisely the same principle; unless we except the carbonic, which is an acid, and has a chemical affinity for water; tending to form with it a carbonate of water, which is our miscalled “ soda-water." Nitrogen and oxygen are soaked up in small quantities; but all together unite in giving the water that lively taste which is so delicious to the palate.

The most perfect contrivance in the world, not even Jennison's filter, though it resemble the head of a metaphysical radical, is not able to exaërate it. Nothing short of boiling can do this.

The points of analogy between Jennison's filter and the metaphysical thing alluded to, may not be instantly obvious, but a careful comparison discovers a wonderful parallelism of properties between them: for 1. The filter is inclosed in a brass case, made smooth externally by a rotating machine; now brass is the emblem of a certain transcendental virtue, and the thory of rotation is, that every man shall be just like his neighbor. 2. The case is stuffed full of a very hard and crude material, resembling live rock; so is the other thing. 3. The water flowing through the case, lets go by all the fine spirit and flavor of the water, but detains every kind of sediment and wrig gling impurity; so does the other thing. 4. The filter chokes itself after it has been screwed on a while, and then you have but to turn it, and it instantly is washed clean by the water, and presently gives a clear stream as before; so, the thing alluded to, when it has stood infidel for a time, gets choked with mud and grubs; you have then but to give it an adroit twist, with an eye to utility, when, presto, all the trash gushes out, and the stream runs the other way. Lastly. The filter is cheap and universal, and does as well by the side of great Lakes, as on the Mississippi, or on an aqueduct; so the other thing, go where it will, is ready for the dirty work of the people, and is cheap and easily fitted to all occasions.

The waters of great lakes, agitated by the wind, become saturated with aerial spirit. Those which drain out of marshes and creep over shallows, have a flatter taste because they lose some of their air by the exposure. The rays of the sun, shooting through shallow waters, heat the soil or sand over which they flow, and this heat is communicated to the water from the sand, and by expanding