MACLEAN MACR1E. 



629 



ritories. Long trains of cars, moving on wheels 

 so peculiarly constructed, that their friction is 

 scarcely perceptible, are placed on them. The 

 horse is unharnessed. He is too slow and too weak 

 to perform the required service. At command, the 

 whole moves, hurrying on, under the strong impulse 

 of an invisible power, with a velocity that defies 

 description. The lover need no longer pray for 

 wings to bear him through the air. A railway 

 car will bear him swifter than the swiftest 

 wing. The exclamation of the poet no longer 

 startles us. His description of the physical achieve- 

 ments of man's " genius, spirit, power," are no 

 longer extravagant. It falls far short of the re- 

 ality. 



"Look down on Earth! What seest thou? Wondrous tilings! 



Terrestrial wonders that eclipse the skif s! 



What lengths of laboured lands! What loaded seas'. 



Loaded by man for pleasure, wealth or war! 



Seas, winds and planets, into service brought, 



His art acknowledge, and subserve his ends. 



Nor can the eternal rocks his will withstand ; 



What levelled mountains! and what lifted vales! 



High through mid air, here, streams are taught to flow ; 



V hole rivers, there, laid by in basins, sleep, 



H-ie, plains turn oceans ; there, vast oceans join 



Through kingdoms, channelled deep from shore to shore. 



Earth's disembowelled! Measured are the skies! 



Stars are detected in their deep recess! 



Creation widens! Vanquished Nature yields! 



Her secrets are extorted! Art prevails! 



What monument of genius, spirit, power!" 



This was a just description when it was written ; 

 and it describes splendid triumphs of the intellect 

 over matter. Let our readers add it to all the won- 

 ders which have been achieved by steam, and they 

 will have a tolerably accurate idea of what the 

 mechanical powers have done, and are doing for 

 man. 



MACLEAN, MRS. See London, Letitia Eliza- 

 beth. 



MACNISH, ROBERT, LL.D., better known to 

 Magazine readers by the cognomen which he as- 

 sumed of " A Modern Pythagorean," was born in 

 Jamaica street, Glasgow, on the 15th Feb., 1802. 

 After receiving the elements of education partly 

 in his native city, and partly at a classical academy 

 in Hamilton under the charge of the Rev. Alex- 

 ander Easton, he entered upon the study of medi- 

 cine (both his grandfather and father being at the 

 time respectable practitioners in Glasgow,) and at 

 the early age of eighteen, having undergone his 

 examination before the college of surgeons, he 

 obtained the degree of master of surgery. He first 

 practised in Caithness, for about eighteen months, 

 as assistant to Dr Henderson there, and afterwards 

 went to Paris, where he remained about a year, 

 with the view of completing his medical studies. 

 On his return to Scotland in 1825, he obtained his 

 diploma from the faculty of physicians and surgeons 

 of Glasgow, giving in, as his inaugural thesis, an 

 essay on the Anatomy of Drunkenness. Two 

 years afterwards, this essay was published at Glas- 

 gow in an extended form, and very favourably re- 

 ceived. It was still further enlarged in subsequent 

 editions, arid has been translated into the German 

 and French languages. Dr Macnish's first essays 

 in literature were contributed to " The Literary 

 Melange" and " The Emmet," two Glasgow peri- 

 odicals, in the latter of which especially, though a 

 publication of humble pretensions, some of his best 

 pieces appeared. In 1826, he first opened up a 

 communication with Blackwood's Magazine, by 

 sending to it a tale entitled " The Metempsy- 

 chosis," which appeared with the signature of "A 

 Modern Pythagorean," a title which he continued 



to affix to all his after productions in that Magazine 

 and other periodicals. In 1830, he published at 

 Glasgow, a treatise entitled " The Philosophy of 

 Sleep," which was equally well received with his 

 Anatomy of Drunkenness, and has gone through 

 several editions. In 1834 he published " The 

 Book of Aphorisms," a number of which had ori- 

 ginally appeared in Eraser's Magazine. In the 

 same year he paid a visit to the continent, a visit 

 which he repeated in the following year, embracing 

 Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Hol- 

 land in his tour. His last publication was a small 

 treatise on Phrenology, to the doctrines of which 

 he had become a zealous convert. Dr Macnish 

 died of influenza, an epidemic then raging in Glas- 

 gow, on the 16th Jan. 1837, in his thirty-fifth year. 

 In the following year a series of his tales, essays, 

 and sketches, were published at Edinburgh, in two 

 volumes, with a memoir of the author, by his friend, 

 Dr Moir of Musselburgh. In private, he was much 

 beloved for his happy temper, pleasing manners, 

 and kindness of disposition. Though not tall, he 

 was strongly formed, and greatly addicted to ath- 

 letic exercises, carrying his attachment to these 

 even to the point of eccentricity. Of his works, 

 his treatises on Drunkenness and Sleep have been 

 unequivocally stamped with public approval. His 

 tales, sketches, &c. have also been well received, 

 but of these it may be said generally, that, while 

 they display considerable fancy and humour, the 

 germ of them may be traced in the writings of his 

 more distinguished contemporaries. Many of his 

 stories, for example, are constructed on the princi- 

 ple of exciting a morbid curiosity regarding some 

 unknown personage, which is not justified by cir- 

 cumstances, nor in the end even gratified. This, 

 having been once done by Washington Irving, in 

 his inimitable " Stout Gentleman," was one of 

 those pieces of humour of too delicate a nature to 

 bear repetition. 



MACRIE, THOMAS, D. D., a distinguished his- 

 torical writer, was born at Dunse in Berwickshire, 

 in the year 1772, and died, after a short illness, in 

 his house at Newington, Edinburgh, on the 5th of 

 August, 1835. He received his academical edu- 

 cation in the university of Edinburgh, and studied 

 divinity under Mr Archibald Bruce, minister at 

 Whitburn, theological professor in connection with 

 the General Associate (or Antiburgher) Synod. 

 Having been licensed as a preacher by that body, 

 he was at an early period of life ordained minister 

 of a congregation in Edinburgh, in which he con- 

 tinued to labour ten years, applying with great 

 assiduity to the discharge of his professional duties 

 and occasionally publishing able pamphlets on 

 some of the gravest and most difficult subjects of 

 theological inquiry. In the year 1806 he felt 

 himself conscientiously impelled to separate from 

 the General Associate Synod (and indeed he was 

 deposed from his charge by the authority of that 

 judicatory), after having joined with Mr Bruce 

 and others of his brethren in a protestation against 

 the prevailing party "for having departed from 

 some important doctrines of the Protestant 

 churches, of the Westminster Confession of Faith, 

 and of that particular testimony which they had 

 subscribed." The chief ground of separation re- 

 lated to the powers and duties of the civil magis- 

 trate with respect to the public interests of reli- 

 gion. On this article, Messrs Bruce and Macrie, 

 with the other ministers, who formed themselves 

 into what was called the Constitutional Asiociate 



