to say a word about the amazing care and pains with which the French engineers and astronomers measured that famous base-line from Dunkirk to Barcelona, traveling straight onward till they had raised or dropped a given star by a given number of degrees, and then, by examining the distance traversed, computing the distance from pole to equator. But all this can be found-to say nothing of other scientific works in the excellent translation of Arago's Popu Jar Astronomy. Much might be said, too, about the immense gain in facility of commercial transactions to be reached by adopting the new system all over the world, as also about the patent objections and difficulties which it presents. All this, with the history of the movement, so far, the States which have already become metric, and the like interesting matter, will be found admirably set forth in President Barnard's Address to the Convocation of the University of New York, recently published by the Trustees of Columbia College, and to that we earnestly refer all our intelligent readers.

"The Masque of the Gods."

THE chief merit of this poem seems to us to be the idea of it. It was a very happy thought, worthy of a poet, when Mr. Taylor conceived the plan of bringing thus together the various national deities that have been worshiped among men, and making them the persons of a drama. A stricter literary conscience, and, we must say, too, a more dominant moral sense, joined to such genius as Mr. Taylor possesses, would have inspired a great poem on a theme so great. There was place, however, for a more severe and more generous culture also than it has been Mr. Taylor's fortune, in the extremely Ulyssean life that he has led, to acquire. Milton's learning would all of it have found its use in enriching the treatment of a subject like this, which, we insist, it is very high merit in Mr. Taylor merely to have chosen. Milton's disciplined art, too-what a fine field of exercise it would have enjoyed in ordering the wealth of illustrative material that his learning would have levied from every tributary realm of history! But above all, what a living coal of fire his noble Hebrew conscience would have laid on the lips of his genius to kindle its speech! How the masking gods would have fled in a magnificent rout of dismay before "Jehovah thundering out of Zion," when He appeared in Milton's poem.

There is a most disheartening contrast between the total impression made by Mr. Taylor's purposeless poem and that made, for instance, by Milton's Hymn on the Nativity. Mr. Taylor touches no strain that reminds one, except by the difference, of such poetry as this :—

The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving:

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. Compare with a mood of music, of meaning, and of moral majesty like that, the fantastic pirouetting, Goethean movement of verse which follows, from Mr. Taylor's poem. The Caverns speak :—

With murmurs, vibrations,
With rustlings and whispers,
And voices of darkness,

We breathe as of old.

Through the roots of the mountains,
Under beds of the rivers,
We wander and deepen

In silence and cold.

But the language of terror,
Foreboding, or promise,
The mystical secrets

That made us sublime,
Have died in our keeping :
Our speech is confusion:
We mark but the empty
Rotations of time.

The immense gulf between Milton and Mr. Taylor here, is of course in part due to a difference in endowment of genius. But it is still more due to a difference of moral inspiration. Milton knew no better than Mr. Taylor knows that it was Christianity that dissolved the spell of old religions, and disenchanted the oracular caverns. But Milton believed it better, and rejoiced in it more. Milton could never, in a poem of his, have suffered Jehovah to be jostled among the vulgar rout of demon gods, as if Jehovah, too, was one of the dispossessed divinities. His art would probably have saved him from so fatal an artistic mistake. But his conscience would have prompted his art, if his art had offered to forget. Mr. Taylor's art forgot, and his conscience was not present to prompt him. He furnishes one more instance, where instances were already but too plentiful, of the need that literature has of moral convictions.

The poem is devoid of interest. It is mainly barren of ornament. It has no action, no progress, no dénoûment, no motive and no meaning. It is called a mask, but it is the dimmest possible illusion of drama. It is rather a phantasmagoria. We say that it has no meaning. But it does vaguely imply a dilute and insipid paganized Parkerism in religion. We say that it moves toward no goal. But it does offer us something in the way of a dreary theological prospect. The "gods many" that mask here, the Hebrew Elohim and Immanuel among them, are adumbrations, it would seem, of a deity, who is dramatized in the poem only as a Voice from Space, to be hereafter completely revealed. It is a "forlorn and wild" anticipation, having in it neither the comfort of piety, nor the beauty of poetry. It has not even the certainty of science—or at least we suppose not.

SURVEY OF GOVERNMENT LANDS AT WEST POINT IN 1839. sense of its utterance. "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace. The United States ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of human events, they will forever keep at a distance those painful appeals to arms, with which the history of every nation abounds. . . If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are, at all times, ready for war."

So Washington formulated the maxim in his fifth Annual Message to Congress, for experience and observation had taught him its precepts most impressively during the old War for Independence.

Upon the principles of this maxim the National Legislature acted, when it passed a law for the establishment of a Military Academy at West Point in the bosom of the Highlands of the Hudson River.

Before further noticing this act and its consequences, let us take a brief view of the antecedent history of West Point and its vicinity, that we may better comprehend the motives for the establishment of a military academy there.

The mountain region in which the Academy is situated was once a part of a tract of land thirty by forty miles square ranted by Governor Fletcher, o. New York, to his favorite, Captain John Evans, of the Royal Artillery, and known as the "Evans Patent." Evans was one of a corrupt ring, of

which Fletcher was the center, and by which he robbed the government and oppressed the people--if we may believe his successor, the Earl of Bellomont, who, with King William and Captain Wm. Kyd were partners in the business of "privateering" as they called it, though Kyd, their scape-goat, was hanged for piracy. Perhaps we had better not look too closely into the conduct of these old governors, or we may discover that New York was no better ruled 200 years ago, in the boasted "good old times" than now, and so we will pass on.

Evans's patent was vacated by an act of the Provincial legislature in 1699, and new proprietors came into possession in course of time.

From these, partly by purchase, and partly by a grant from the State of New York, in 1826, the present domain of 2,105 acres belonging to the Military Academy, became the property of the Republic. A resurvey was made in 1839, and the boundaries of the tract permanently settled.

Down to the period of the War for Independence, there appears to have been no dwelling or settler here excepting such as were necessary to secure the patent, by a compliance with its terms. It is a region of primary stratified rock heavily covered with drift-boulders of from a few pounds to many tons in weight. Like the rest of the land immediately around, it was mostly unsusceptible of cultivation.

The American reader need not be told in detail the history of this locality during that old war, and I will only draw a simple outline of the more prominent events which have rendered the whole region classic ground.

From the earliest period of the Revolution, the British government sought to obtain possession of the Hudson River, through military occupation of its entire valley and

REMAINS OF FORT CONSTITUTION.

REMAINS OF BIG CHAIN AND MORTARS.

that of Lake Champlain, in order, by means of a cordon of posts extending north and south from the St. Lawrence to the sea, to separate the Eastern from the other States, and so weaken the confederacy of revolted provinces.

The importance of controlling the Hudson was as evident to the colonists, especially those of New York, as to the British ministry, and to that end great exertions were put forth by the former. In a report to the Provincial Congress of New York early in 1775, it was declared that securing possession of the river must necessarily be a capital part of the plan of the British government for subduing the colonists. So thought the Continental Congress, and accordingly it resolved, on the 25th of May, 1775, to establish a military post in the Highlands. The Provincial Congress of New York took immediate action in that direction, and, in August following, ordered fortifications to be built on the banks of the Hudson River, in the Highlands," immediately.

These fortifications were commenced upon Martelaer's Rock Island, immediately opposite West Point, under the direction of Colonel Bernard Romans, as engineer, who arrived there in August, 1775, with Commissioners Bedloe, Grenell, and Bayard, appointed by the Provincial Congress of New York, and an escort of twenty-four

men.

They built Fort Constitution, of which some remains are still left; and from that time the island (called after a French family named Martelaire) has been known as Constitution Island. They also built redoubts on the lofty hills east of West Point, and Forts Clinton and Montgomery below.

When, in the autumn of 1775, a committee, appointed by the Continental Congress to inspect the works in the Highlands, performed that duty, they discovered that Fort Constitution was on lower ground than West Point opposite, not well located to command the reach in the river southward, and might be made untenable by an enemy gaining possession of the adjacent shore. That committee recommended the occupation of West Point by a fortified camp, and the establishment of batteries on the east side of the river, near the present Garrison's Landing and railway station. This was the first official recommendation for fortifying West Point. They also advised the planting of batteries at Poplopens Kill about six miles below, and there forts Clinton and Montgomery were soon afterwards erected.

In compliance with a resolution of Congress, the Committee of Safety of New York sent Colonel Nicoll to take command of these fortifications in the Highlands. That was the first establishment of a garrison there.

Romans, the engineer, who was working expensively but not very scientifically, was dismissed, and another was put in his place. Under the directions of a Secret Committee of the Provincial Convention of New York, a boom composed of heavy logs and a heavy