# Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1624/Miscellany

​The Intellectual Life. — The intellectual life should be a life of patience — patience in gathering knowledge, patience in drawing conclusions, and patience in waiting for results. It may be hard sometimes to reconcile enthusiasm with patience, but they may be reconciled, and they must be, if the best results are to be achieved. The patience of the believers in a cause is no less a presage of victory than their enthusiasm; indeed, of the two it is the fuller of promise. Let cynics or fatalists say what they will, the hope of a rational ordering of human society, the hope of some future harmony of human beliefs, does spring eternal in the human breast. And the life is one that maketh not ashamed; those who possess it must avow it, and must work towards its realization. Not only in the prophet-minds of every age has it asserted itself, but in the minds of the people at large ​there has ever been a dim foreboding of some great good in store for humanity. We see not as yet the outlines even of the future edifice of civilization; but we see errors and falsehoods which it is a manifest and immediate duty to combat, and the destruction of which we cannot but believe will hasten the advent of the better time. What the world lacks is faith; it has long been taught that it is very evil, and the lesson has been learnt so thoroughly that it is hard now to make people believe that in themselves there are infinite capacities for good, and that nearly all the good they do is done independently of laws or enactments of any kind. The persuasion of an evil often has as serious effects as the evil itself; a malade imaginaire may be the most hopeless of invalids. The world is at this moment, to some extent, a malade imaginaire; but unfortunately the great multitude of its physicians are exerting themselves only to prolong its delusion. A great mark of the true intellectual life is simplicity. How can a man who is devoting himself with singleness of purpose to the discovery and diffusion of truth, or whose mind has in any way received the stamp of intellectual elevation, burden himself with refinements of luxury, affectations of pedantry, or any of the multiplied forms of vainglorious pretence? The more closely a man's attention is concentrated on abstract or general questions, the more his own personality sinks out of sight. It cannot, indeed, be maintained that literary men and savans are always exempt from vanity; but it is undoubtedly true that this failing has very seldom been exhibited by the greatest among them. It is also true that just in proportion to a man's intellectual eminence, to his capacity for high thinking, are we struck by the incongruity of any exhibition on his part of vanity or affectation. It is satisfactory to note in this matter a marked advance in public sentiment. The literary men of to-day would be ashamed to indulge in personal quarrels such as their predecessors of a century or more ago paraded before the world. They studiously avoid (of course I speak generally) all personal issues, rightly conceiving that their proper business is to throw light on the questions they undertake to treat; not to demand attention for themselves.
Canadian Monthly.
Icebergs on the Atlantic Route. — The dangers, remarks Iron, to which the American liners are exposed from the ice borne by the Arctic current which runs along the Newfoundland coast, and to which are due the banks, the fisheries, and the fogs for which that coast has long been famous, are well known and dreaded by mariners at certain seasons of the year. It ought to be generally known that all this peril is unnecessary, and that ships, passengers, and crew — the two latter not underwritten — are risked to save a few days in the voyage. What that risk amounts to is vividly shown by the log of the Hamburg steamer "Cimbria," which left that port on the 10th of March for New York, with 483 passengers and the German mails. On the afternoon of the 19th, an irregular and brilliant mass bore in sight to the southward, and at the cry of the look-out, "Mountains of ice ahead," all the passengers hurried on deck. A magnificent iceberg rapidly approached, until it displayed its stupendous proportions, its sparkling peaks and slopes covered with snow, at three miles' distance. The skipper, of course, gave it a wide berth; and when the sun had disappeared, fortunately to give place to the moon in a clear sky, the scene had changed. For miles on every side the ship was surrounded by a field of ice, only broken at intervals by the swelling of the waves. The captain turned her head to the south; but after some time, despairing of opening away in that direction, issued orders to penetrate west-ward, and the "Cimbria," until two o'clock in the morning, went gallantly on, her iron prow crashing along the ice, which varied in thickness from two to three feet. Blue water at length appeared, and the danger was past, but the ship had first traversed sixty miles southwards, and then seventy miles in a westerly direction, before getting rid of the floe. Had her course been shrouded in one of the fogs so common in these latitudes, or even had there been no moon, the result might have been very different. It is a pity that these risks should be run in any case; at all events, passenger ships should be compelled to take a lower and safer route.
A large deposit of amber has been discovered in the Kurische Haff, near the village of Schwarzort, about twelve miles south of Memel. It had been known for many years that amber existed in the soil of the Kurische Haff, from the fact that the dredgers employed by government for the purpose of clearing away the shallow spots near Schwartort that impeded navigation had brought up pieces of amber, which, however, were appropriated by the labourers; and no particular attention was paid to the matter till recently. Some speculative persons, reports our consul at Memel, made an offer to the German government, not only to do the dredging required at their own expense, but also to pay a daily rent, provided the amber they might find should become their own property. The proposal was accepted, and the rent fixed at twenty-five thalers for each working day. The dredging was commenced by four machines, worked by horses, which have increased in number and efficiency till eighteen other dredges and two tug-boats, with about 100 lighters or barges, employing altogether 1,000 labourers, are now engaged in the industry. The ground covers an area of about six miles in length, and a yearly rent of 72,000 thalers is paid by the company to the government.
Nature.