I. Salt made by solar evaporation at Geddes and Syracuse, average of five of Dr. Beck's analyses.

II. Salt made by boiling at Salina, common barrel salt, average of three of Dr. Beck's analyses.

III. Turk's Island salt, from sea water by solar evaporation.

IV. Liverpool fine salt.
V. Cheshire crushed rock.

A more extended collection of analyses confirms what this limited table shows; that the solar salt of Syracuse and Geddes is the purest salt manufactured in the world. Of seventeen of the principal kinds of salt of the markets of the world, the " Liverpool fine salt" ranks next to the one already referred to; and but two of the seventeen, except the ones already referred to, are so much as one per cent. better than the salt made by boiling at Salina, the ordinary barrel salt, numbered two in the table of analyses, and six are found inferior to this species. Indeed, it is evident that with proper precautions this salt might be made equal to any. The process of manufacture is good enough-it only needs reasonable care in carrying it out.

Respecting the origin of these, and other salines, there are two prevalent theories.

1st. It is supposed they derived their salt from quantities of that mineral disseminated through the marly and other soft rocks, which form to the depth of as many as six hundred feet, the geological strata of the whole region in which the salt springs occur. How the existence of these small patches or particles of salt, disseminated through the rock, is explained, is not easy to be understood. Still some very plausible arguments are adduced in favor of its truth. For instance, it is a fact, that throughout the strata which constitute the Onondaga salt group, there are found numerous cavities of a hopperform shape, and also marly crystals of the same form. Now, this is a form in which salt sometimes crystalises, and it is contended that from the solution of the once contained salt, these cavities have their origin; when these cavities became filled with marl, there were formed the hoppershaped marly crystals just alluded to. It is urged, too, that the longer these and other salt springs are worked, the

weaker they become, and that sinking them to a lower depth invariably strengthens them.

2d. Dr. Beck has offered another, and to our mind, more plausible theory -one which, if we mistake not, is generally entertained. It is, that there exists in that portion of the state, abounding in salt springs, large beds of fossil salt. His position is fortified by several considerations, to which we may be allowed to refer. He objects to the other theory as insufficient to account for the fact, and as poorly sustained by observation. He contends that a similarity of geological position with the beds of salt, of various parts of the world, confirms his idea; and moreover, urges in behalf of his opinion, the existence of what are called " sink holes," which have been observed to be suddenly formed, and which are seen already formed in great numbers about the borders of Onondaga lake. These "sink holes " are funnel-shaped cavities of various sizes, from four or five feet wide, to ten or twelve, and from sixteen to twenty or more deep.

These are claimed to be caused by the solution of blocks, or masses of some soluble mineral as salt, thus leaving cavities, which are filled by the subsidence of the earth above. These "sink holes," or brim slips, as they are called in England, exist very similar in appearance in Cheshire, England, where beds of salt have been discovered, and they are there, as here, known to be occasionally formed.

Other arguments are adduced on both sides of the question, and it is altogether impossible to decide which is correct. If the latter supposition be true, doubtless some future boring will reveal the existence of these beds, as similar ones did in Cheshire, and in Washington county, Virginia, where a boring of 235 feet revealed a bed of fossil salt of fifty or sixty feet thickness. It need not be objected to the value of such a discovery, that the cost of sinking a shaft and raising the mineral salt, would make it worthless; water might be let down upon it, and when saturated with salt, pumped up. The value of such a method of procedure may be partially estimated, when it is understood that the strong Syracuse brine lacks from 25 to 30 per cent. of saturation. It may be mentioned as a

fact, also, that similar means are resorted to at the Cheshire mines, where more salt is manufactured than at any other salines in the world. We may add, that deep borings may reveal, as they already have revealed, the existence of stronger brine, if not such beds as those of which we have spoken. At any rate it seems to us, as it does to Dr. B., that it might be well to prosecute a system of improvements, which has already resulted in so much benefit to the springs.

We cannot take leave of this branch of our subject, without bearing to the report of Dr. Beck the strongest testimony of our high opinion of its merits. Whether valued for accuracy and copiousness of description, or fullness of detail, it is the vade mecum of the student of New-York mineralogy. But we pass to a brief consideration

of the geological portion of the survey.

The New-York geologists have divided the rocks of the state into 29 to 31 divisions, the names and super-position of which are exhibited in the following table. We attempted, at considerable labor, to append to our table the thicknesses of the various rocks. The truth is, however, that it is altogether impossible to state them with any degree of accuracy. Many of the strata, which, at the Helderberg Mountains, possess considerable thickness, have disappeared at the Niagara river; and others, still, which do not exist at all east of Oneida county, have likewise disappeared at the Niagara. The names of these groups of rocks, commencing with the lowest, are as fol

lows:

tem follows.

ported materials, and 2d, local mate

66

WE regard this work as one of the most valuable contributions recently made to English literature; and it is, indeed, surprising, as the editor remarks in his Preface, that a Life of himself, by the most eminent of German poets, should never before have been rendered into English. It is true, that a work purporting to be a version of the famous Truth and Poetry" was once put forth, but it was such a wretched and disgraceful affair that it deserves no further mention. The persons, therefore, who have undertaken this new translation are the first to put us in possession of the real thing. But before speaking of their success, we have a few remarks to make on the subject of the autobiography, viz. JOHN WOLFGANG GOETHE.

In approaching a contemplation of this man, the two things that strike one are, first, the exceeding diversity of the opinions men, every way competent to judge, hold concerning him; and secondly, his singular impassiveness to the external influences of his age, and at the same time his singular fidelity to the deeper spirit of that age.

The critics, both learned and small, are sorely puzzled what to make of Goethe, either as an author or a man. That he has talent of a very high kind none of them deny; that he was able to influence his fellow-men in a way that few ever have done, is a fact of history which they are as little disposed to deny. But what troubles them is, to assign him his true place in the literary Olympus-to measure the height of his throne, and to lay down the metes and bounds of his rightful jurisdiction. Was he a god, a demi-god, or only a well-dressed and specious-looking devil? Was he a poet in the true sense? Were his conceptions of art of the loftiest kind? Had he any meaning in those clear yet enigmatical-those transparent but most profound fifty volumes of his? And above all, what manner of man was he-a good man or a bad? -a Christian, or only a gigantic Heathen? Was he sensualist or pantheist,

or atheist, or nothing at all?-behind his age or in advance of it ?-the most immovable of conservatives or the deepest of radicals ?-one who lived exclusively for his own selfish glory, or who bad some touches of humanity in him? Was that majestic calmness the calmness of the dead marble statue, or of the serene sunny sky which embraces all in its warm bosom? And finally, what effect is the Goethean literature yet to have on the destiny of mankind or the world?

These are the questions which the critics to whom we have referred answer so variously. They have fought battles over his remains, with the vigor and ferocity of religious fanatics. It has been estimated that what has been written about him these last fifty years would of itself form no inconsiderable library. Anecdotes, conversations, biographies, essays, criticisms, reviews, lampoons, poems and elegies are poured forth with frightful profusion. Single dramas of his have been made the basis of whole courses of lectures. Only Shakspeare has been more voluminously discoursed of, and only Dante the occasion of fiercer controversies.Between Menzel ard Riemer, or Heine and Carlyle, how wide the difference! Yet it does not appear that the general mind has arrived at any clearer conception than it had at first. In the face of all attempts to elucidate him he excites as much doubt and dispute as ever he did; and in spite of all detraction he sits aloft, sublime and luminous as ever. There is surely something in a nature which can arouse such never-ending admiration and aversion to justify the ado of the world.

He

Then, again, there is a most perplexing mystery in his very aspect. seems the hardest and yet the most susceptible of men. He strikes some as the perfect embodiment of his times, and others as one most selfishly indifferent to his times. He lived during the most tumultuous period the world has ever seen, and he stands out as the calmest and most steadfast object that is to be met with in that whole period.

Consider only what great men and what great events moved before him on the field of Europe and America, and then consider how few of them are so much as even mentioned-not dwelt uponin his half hundred volumes of various writings! His lifetime saw the seven years' war of Germany, so fruitful in disastrous incidents and bitter hatreds; it saw the portentous eruption of the first French revolution, when the whole of European society was shaken to its centre, as the begrimed giant of maddened Democracy shook its bloodred fists in the face of Oppression; and it saw, also, the last French revolution, the "glorious three days" so dear to Frenchmen; it saw the calm triumph of the American patriots, and a mighty nation spring up in the deserts, almost in a single day; and at the same time it saw many of the grandest achievements of modern science, with the wondrous growth of German literature, from its puling infancy to its complete and noble manhood. During that lifetime, too, the greatest celebrities of the nineteenth century, in war, in intellect, in action, made their entrances and exits. Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, Cuvier, Byron, Schiller, Kant, Lessig, Herder, Wieland, Manzoni, Swedenborg, and a host of similar men, were all contemporaries, and in one sense, familiar friends of our poet. He was an attentive watcher of their doings and sayings in this world. He professes to have been signally influenced by most of them in his own developement. It is clear that their lives affected the destinies of mankind strongly, either for better or worse. Yet when we look through the many writings of the German, we find scarcely a distinct trace of their existence. A character so singular in its position, and so variously judged of, is worthy of our study.

Mr. Emerson, in a recent series of lectures on great men, is reported to have spoken of Goethe, not as a poet or artist, but merely as the Writer. This, like all the other literary judgments of this accomplished talker, is novel, but superficial and adequate. There is that in Goethe which places him infinitely above one who can skilfully handle his pen. If we might refer to men who better illustrate Mr. Emerson's notions of the writer, we should

say that Lope De Vega, with his thousand plays, with his ceaseless literary fertility, with his mechanical method of turning off books, as the spinner will turn you off bobbins, was a writer: we should say that Kotzebue, who once filled the world with his dramas, novels and voyages, was a writer; or to take a higher instance than either of these, that Sir Walter Scott, with his hundred volumes of verse, essay, history, biography, criticism and romance, every page of which once held thousands entranced, was a writer, (though Scott too was not without a touch of the poet and artist.) But Goethe takes rank high above these restless and all-accomplished penmen. He would have been great, had the goose-quill never been invented-great with the pencil of the painter, or with the eye-glass of the naturalist, because in his inmost soul he was formed for the loftiest walks of intellectual action. His place is in the same region with our Dantes, Calderons and Shakspeares. He was born poet and great man, whose flight was among the stars of the clearest empyrean.

Let us, however, speak more accurately, and say, that in our view, Goethe was the ARTIST OF HIS AGE. We do not mean by this that he was not a thinker, for art always implies thought. He was, too, a ripe scholar, a statesman of no mean capacity, a philosopher of patient research and profound generalizations, a man of various and general ability, and of the noblest character; but we cannot, by considering him in any of these lights, explain his whole being, or get at the inmost central principle of his enigmatical and manifold life. When, however, we regard him as "the artist of his age," the contradictions of his career become plain; the riddles of his works are solved; the peculiar characteristics of his conduct as a man are justified.

Yet why do we call him an artist? Because he in any way enlarged the original domains of art? Because he has discovered new principles by which the results of art can be produced? Because he has hit upon a philosophy of art which lays bare the wondrous secrets of that enchanted region, and explains to man the highest of his natural gifts-his power to create? By no means: for, in these respects, Goethe is not in advance of