Volume 53 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY APRIL 1871 (continued 8)

The value of the volume is considerably enhanced by a glossary that might be extended with great advantage, and especially so if made to include the French and Anglo-Saxon words, as well as the Latin ones, which are employed in the body of the work. It would also be well if in some cases the definitions were to be accompanied by references and quotations after the manner of Ducange. The learned Professor would, moreover, render good service to students and teachers alike, if he were to add such explanatory notes to some of his excerpts as he well knows how to compile. The volume ought to be no stranger in any of our colleges, and well deserves a place in the 'curricula' of our public schools. It will not be without its interest and its value also to the general reader.

The War Correspondence of the 'Daily News.' 2 vols., Macmillan and Co.

Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris. Hurst and Blackett.

Journal of the Siege of Paris. By the Hon. Captain Bingham. Smith, Elder, and Co.

Letters on the War. By T. Mommsen, D.F. Strauss, F. Max Müller, and T. Carlyle. Trübner and Co.

The Great Duel. By W. R. Greg. Trübner and Co.

When the history of the war of 1870 comes to be written, it will furnish scope for genius the most various and the most profound. A greater Jomini will be needed to elucidate the tactics that decided greater battles than Borodino or Austerlitz; to unweave for us the intricate web of the great strategist's plans; to solve for us the problem whether he is a superstition and a fetish, reaping the glory sown by the organization and morale of his troops, or the silent centre from which was directed the regulated play of such tremendous forces. But though the time for the military critic or the philosophical historian has not yet come, the events and scenes of the war, as they photographed themselves in the eye of the spectator, are full of immediate interest, and demand for their adequate description the highest order of picturesque power. Probably no accounts of the recent campaign so amply satisfied our modern thirst for the picturesque as the letters written to the Daily News. The moving panorama of the battle-field, the scientific deploying of vast masses, the heroism of attack or repulse, were brought close to our eyes. The description of the battle of Gravelotte reads like a page torn out of Tacitus, and for awful vividness might stand by the side of Thucydides' narrative of the plague. So swiftly have events passed out of chronicle into history, that the accounts of the early battles of the war—Weissenburg, Wörth, Forbach, will even now bear reperusal, and contain much that in our hungry desire for the salient facts was omitted at the first reading. Till a spectator of the entire course of the war shall fuse his impressions of the moment with his mature reflections, and produce a continuous living narrative of the whole, these letters will probably remain the best compendium of the history of the last eight months. We may add that the republication comprises many of the letters of the veracious 'Besieged Resident.' They are at least amusing, and give the proper seasoning of farce to the tragedy.

The 'Besieged Resident' remained in Paris during the siege 'to enjoy a new sensation.' He had new sensations in abundance; and generously gave the British public, through the medium of the Daily News, the benefit of his experiences. They were sufficiently varied, for he went in search of them—grotesque, for fidelity to fact is not his strong point—and amusing, for he is the liveliest of persifleurs. The personal element in these letters was unquestionably that which gave them their charm; the siege as it affected the 'Besieged Resident,' rather than the 'Besieged Resident' reporting on the siege, seemed to be the subject of them. How his clothes were held together by an infinity of pins, how his boots had burst in half-a-dozen places, and how horse did not assimilate with his inner man, were facts which made the Philistine's breakfast an interesting meal during the siege. Now that the letters have been published in a complete form, these important facts seem less prominent, and we are able to recognize the real value of the narrative as a history of opinion—journalistic, Bellevilleite, and bourgeois, during the four months of the investment. The description is not flattering. The 'Besieged' plays the part of valet to the Parisian heroes, and sees very little of heroism but a great deal of braggadocio. A somewhat cynical temper perhaps lends some exaggeration to mere common-place folly; but it seems certain that the despicable traits and unworthy actions of which the 'Besieged' is the chronicler will have to be taken into account in any truthful narrative of the great siege. On the whole, it does not seem likely that the 'Besieged' will be superseded in his self-assumed function by any subsequent chronicler.

Captain Bingham is a more prosaic narrator than the 'Besieged Resident,' but there was so much to be seen that he has many incidents to relate without touching on ground already occupied. His book is a consecutive narrative of facts, which are all the more trustworthy that they take no colouring from the individuality of the writer.

The 'Letters on the War' are of no evanescent interest, but are a permanent contribution to the literature of the subject. The writers of them are the Titans of the Teutonic race, whose clear duty it is to speak out, as the prophets of old spoke out, in a great crisis of history. Those of Dr. Strauss and Mr. Carlyle are the most important historically, as they are also the most interesting. Mr. Carlyle's historic retrospect reaches back to Louis XI., and is meant to show what a terribly bad neighbour France has been to Germany for the last 400 years. He describes the grand 'plunderings and incendiarisms of Europe' by the French, and he believes that Germany would be a 'foolish nation not to think of raising up a secure boundary fence against such a neighbour.' And why should not Alsace and Lorraine be restored to their original owners? The only titles of France to them are the 'cunning of Richelieu and the grandiose long-sword of Louis XIV.' He has pity for France but no sympathy; acknowledges her services to civilization and the grandeur of her 'Insurrection against shams,' in 1789; but believes that the German race is now to be protagonist in the 'immense world-drama.' Dr. Strauss's argument is, like Mr. Carlyle's, historical, but with diminished perspective, and from a different point of view. He traces the history of the movement towards national unity, travailing towards birth through the obstructions of the reactionary despotisms, planted by the diplomacy of Vienna, the abortive revolution of 1848, and the apathy or despair of all but the enthusiasts. He accepts the creed of Bismark; unity could only be obtained through force, as Hegel saw seventy years ago.

In Mr. Greg's pamphlet and letters we admire the dexterity of the practised swordsman, whose convictions are chiefly a matter of logic.

Her Majesty's Tower. By William Hepworth Dixon. Vols. III. and IV. Hurst and Blackett.

We might as well surrender at discretion to Mr. Dixon. He is as confirmed in his ways as we in our critical canons. What the late lamented George Robins was among auctioneers—what M. Jullien was among musicians—what Dumas père was among novelists—what the 'besieged resident' is among newspaper correspondents—Mr. Dixon is among historians; what it is not easy to say. He alike provokes and interests us. Our taste is offended; our critical conscience protests. Murdered Clio, like Banquo's ghost, sits in Mr. Dixon's place and 'shakes his gory locks.' The meretricious style—the superb magniloquence—the broad statements—the highly coloured pictures—the irrepressible affinities for what is coarse, make us fume with impatience and exclaim with anger: but we must read on; in spite of ourselves we are interested, although with the uneasy pleasure of a sin. We must, however, be just. Whether it be that our taste has adapted itself, or that Mr. Dixon has improved, we are bound to say that in reading these volumes our pleasure has been less alloyed, and has secured a larger measure of our good conscience than in reading any of his previous works. Some of his descriptions are well toned in their brilliancy, there are fewer catapult sentences, good taste is less frequently violated, extravagances of assertion are less daring, and altogether he inspires greater historic confidence, and excites more literary pleasure. Happily, however, we are released from all reasonable obligation to apply historic tests. Mr. Dixon tells us that he has not 'cared to fret the reader by a dozen references in every page to pipe-rolls, doquets, warrant-books, and council registers.' Such things, we admit, are encumbering; they are vulgar, moreover, and altogether unworthy the dignity of history, and are only temptations to irreverent readers. It is pleasant to read a well-printed page, undisfigured by a single reference, to be unable to distinguish too nicely between a 'doquet' and 'the caricatures' which Miss Burdett Coutts has lent him. We read 'Her Majesty's Tower' as we read 'Kenilworth' or 'Richard III.' If it be neither history nor fiction, it is something better than either, and it is well by the absence of all references to be released from the responsibility of determining which. Mr. Dixon certainly does possess considerable narrative and descriptive ability. His literary art is great. He cannot be dull. Whether he also possesses patient power of historical research, and a judicial faculty of exact presentation, we have no means of judging; but it is conceivable that with these, combined with adequate scholarship, he might have trodden not unworthily in the footsteps of Macaulay. We regret that he has chosen to write after the fashion of the Daily Telegraph—to lay himself out for sensations—the result of which is a series of volumes which might have been brilliant history, but which are only sensational articles.

In the range of these volumes Mr. Dixon is essentially a free lance. The first of the two is almost entirely occupied with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the infamous favourite of our British Solomon, and with the base intrigues and dirty scandals of his court,—why it is impossible to say, inasmuch as, except that some of his victims were imprisoned in it, Villiers had no more to do with her Majesty's Tower than Macedon had with Monmouth, nor so much, for Villiers does not begin with a T. It is, in fact, a romance of Whitehall, of which Villiers is the hero. And it is by no means a clean one; that under any circumstances it could hardly be, but, as Mr. Dixon tells it, it is like a bad dream. Throughout we feel the evil suggestion. Mr. Dixon seems to delight in keeping us on the verge of nastiness, and to have peculiar unction in reiterating such offensive epithets as the one he applies to Dean Williams. We think that the dirty intrigues and unsavoury stories with which the author of 'Spiritual Wives' has filled this section of his work might, without much detriment to our knowledge of either history or social manners, have been left in the obscure records from which they have been culled. The career of Villiers, the son of a poor knight, who began life as an amateur comedian, and in that character pleased the pedantic voluptuary James, and was rapidly elevated through a succession of offices and dignities until, when he fell beneath Felton's knife, he was Duke of Buckingham and the most potent courtier in England, is an inseparable part of the history of England; and the shameless corruption and profligacy of James's court, of women like the 'parent,' as Mr. Dixon chooses to label the mother of Villiers, and indeed of almost every circle of fashionable life, are as vitally connected with the convulsions that followed, as the Courts of Louis XIV. and XV. are with the French Revolution. But what connection there is between the details of Buckingham's rascality and of his mad escapade into Spain with Prince Charles, and the Tower of London, passes our comprehension. The only pretence of a connection is, that on the safe arrival at home of Buckingham and the Prince certain prisoners in the Tower were liberated. Williams, who was first a Welsh curate, and then, as the reward of being a hateful pander, was exalted to be first Dean of Westminster, and ultimately Archbishop of York, is a despicable character, and history will not qualify Mr. Dixon's portrait of him. 'Little Laud' was made use of by 'the parent' as his successful rival. He was destined to play a part in the tragedy which followed that he little dreamed of.

In Eliot, Mr. Dixon has a genuine hero of the Tower. His account of him is almost unexceptionable, only, one remembers that here he had the advantage of the previous labours of Mr. Forster. Eliot, for his fearless and incorruptible patriotism, endured a long imprisonment in the Tower. He died in it—one of its noble army of martyrs. For seven years after his death, as is well known, no Parliament was called in England. Mr. Dixon in trying to be magniloquent is almost profane when he tells us that of this period 'Wentworth was the State, Laud was the Church, and Charles was God.'

The fourth volume is much more relevant to Mr. Dixon's theme. We could have spared the catalogue of names with which, after the manner of Homer's list of ships, it opens, and which is an amusing instance of the sonorous effects which Mr. Dixon delights to produce; but the volume is, on the whole, satisfactory. The instances are well selected. The dramatic skill with which his heroes are presented is great. The interest is legitimately sustained, and we are really gratified to be able to speak highly of the whole. We cannot follow him in detail. Our sympathies are most interested in the visionary politico-philosopher James Harrington, the author of 'Oceana,' the sorrowful victim of idiotic fears, whose political prevision, Mr. Forster's Ballot Bill, after two centuries, is just about to realize. Mr. Dixon rapidly sketches, as heroes of the Tower, the second Buckingham—the Duke of Richmond, who was guilty of falling in love and eloping with the king's mistress—the Earl of Castlemaine, who connived at the unfaithfulness of his wife, and died a monk—the two Penns—the romantic story of Colonel Blood—the mysterious tragedy of the Earl of Essex—the martyrdom of Lord Russell, and of Algernon Sydney—the execution of the Duke of Monmouth—the lurid tragedy of Judge Jeffreys—the death of Laud—the fate of the Scottish Jacobites—the romantic escape of Lord Nithsdale—the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett—and the finis to the prison history of the Tower in the anti-climax of the Cato street conspirators.

We wish Mr. Dixon had treated his really great epical subject with more dignity and with better taste. His powers of picturesque narration and of vivid portraiture are great: is it too late to ask him to employ them upon better themes, and to subdue them to great purposes?

Annals of Oxford. By J. C. Jeafferson. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

There is, perhaps, no subject on which a book of pleasanter and more instructive gossip could be compiled than the English universities. Their origin and early constitution are excessively vague and uncertain, and are therefore a source of perpetual interest to the antiquary. It is known that they came into existence as part of that intellectual revival which is coupled with such names as Anselm and Abelard, and that the first notices of their activity represent them as vigorous institutions. As soon as the colleges, which are special characteristics of English academical history, are founded, information as to the domestic life of these ancient corporations begins, and is continued uninterruptedly to our own time. The materials for the annals of Oxford and Cambridge are copious, and such annals, were the facts carefully selected and well arranged, would be an exceedingly valuable addition to the social history of this country. Few people, for example, are aware of the very important part which Oxford played in the incipient reformation of Wyckliffe in the fourteenth, and in the revival of tithes under Erasmus, More, and Colet at the conclusion of the fifteenth, centuries; or of the refuge which both Universities, but especially Cambridge, afforded to the leaders of Puritanism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor are there many persons who are alive to the fact that the legislation of the Restoration, which tied both these great institutions down to a political system, under which the Established Church was made the slave of the State and the gaoler of the mind, degraded and demoralized both Oxford and Cambridge.

Mr. C. Jeafferson has some pretensions to the reputation of a good gossip. He has compiled certain amusing books about the professions of law, physic, and divinity. In an evil hour he was tempted to risk this reputation, and to write a book about Oxford. He has succeeded in producing one of the worst specimens of book-making which has ever been put before the public. To call these two volumes the 'Annals of Oxford' is a gross abuse of words, for they are not annals in any sense whatever. A few facts are culled from very familiar authors, such as Anthony Wood and Gutch, and are diluted with a prodigality of verbiage to which no experience of ours can find a parallel. The most important parts of academical history are omitted, as for example the contest between the University and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which Oxford supported Wyckliffe against prelate and pope, and succumbed only when she was threatened with the loss of her franchises. The reader is treated to an account of the origin of the University, for which there is neither authority nor probability, for throughout the two volumes the author is utterly without any information of what the University has been or is, notwithstanding his boast that he 'knows nearly everything about Oxford in the dark ages.'

But the most serious offence which the book commits is not its omission of important facts, or its intolerable dilution of unimportant ones, or its misapprehension of the whole subject, but its incessant vulgarity. There is hardly a page in the two volumes where we do not find examples of that slangy familiarity of expression which passes with some people for wit or humour, and which in pretending to avoid dulness is the dullest of all sins against good taste. Mr. C. Jeafferson's contribution to the history of Oxford is wholly without value, and for the sake of the writer's reputation as a collector of gossip and anecdote, the kindest wish which a reviewer can make him is that the 'Annals of Oxford' may be speedily forgotten.

The Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer. By Isambard Brunel, B.C.L. Longmans. 1870. pp. 568.

Very few men in the history of the world have at the same time said so little and done so much as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was eminently the worker as distinguished from the talker. Not that he had, as was the case with the illustrious Hunter, a difficulty as to expressing his thoughts in appropriate language. His mode of expression, on the rare occasions when he did speak, was pointed and happy. His reports and professional correspondence were models of clear perspicuous terseness. But he felt that his works were the true witnesses as to his character; and to their silent and enduring testimony he was content to commit his fame. Though he was made as often as any public man of his day the object of frequent and unsparing attack, he rarely offered any verbal reply, restrained by that proper pride in his own profession which forbade him to appear before the irresponsible and uneducated tribunal of the political press.

What those works were on which rests a reputation that will increase while the fame of many others fades and disappears, his son, in a modest volume, brings briefly to the notice of the public. There is evidence that Mr. Isambard Brunel has been a pupil in his father's school. He has confined his work within limits only too narrow for the actual magnitude of the subject. Very often, by the simple form of abstracted chronicle which he uses, as in describing the launch of the Great Eastern, he does more to silence slander and to terminate controversy, than could have been effected by the most eloquent advocacy. Still, we could wish he had allowed his pen fuller scope. We should like to have heard more of the inner life of so remarkable a man, to have had the taste gratified by illustrations of his refined and graceful fancy, and to have had the magnitude of his works brought into fuller relief by a more minute description of his unsleeping toil, his unflagging and audacious originality, and his conscientious effort to bring all his designs and every detail of their execution to the sternest test.

It is easy for those who have a mere newspaper acquaintance with Mr. Brunel to sneer at the education attained by the engineer at the expense of his shareholders. At the commencement of the railway system in this country something of the kind was inevitable in the case of every leading engineer. The great features on which the success of the railway system mainly hinged were not arrived at by scientific deduction. The speed which George Stephenson estimated at sixteen miles an hour—viz., the velocity attained by some of the most rapid coaches of the period—was raised to from twenty to thirty miles an hour, in the first instance, by Captain Ericsson (the inventor of the Monitor), in conjunction with the late Mr. John Braithwaite. During the experimental trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Novelty, the engine built by these engineers, passed by the Rocket, that of the Messrs. Stephenson, like a shot. The ill-constructed four-wheel engines of Mr. Bary, with which the London and Birmingham line was opened, were constructed for a moderate rate of speed. From those which, of his own design, Mr. Brunel put on the Great Western Railway, he obtained a speed equal to that of the flight of the swallow—from sixty to seventy miles an hour. A level portion of line between London and Slough was daily traversed by the express trains at this high speed.

While the forethought of Mr. Brunel—which added fifty per cent. to the accommodation afforded by his lines of railway for the future traffic of the country—doubled the speed of his own trains, it further compelled the narrow-gauge lines, by the use of the long six-wheeled engines, materially to increase theirs. The sagacious genius of the engineer was evinced yet more splendidly in the services he rendered to navigation. Of oceanic steam traffic Mr. Brunel may justly be called the father. In July, 1837, the Great Western steamship was launched at Bristol, and in April of the following year she arrived at New York, after a journey of nine days, with a fourth of her coal unconsumed. The Sirius was built by the St. George's Steam Packet Company expressly to anticipate the Great Western, so that by sea as well as by land Mr. Brunel effected almost as much by the emulation he awoke as by his own energy and toil. The Sirius arrived at New York a few hours only before the Great Western, having consumed every combustible on board, down to a child's doll! The measured tonnage of the Great Western was 1,340 tons; that of the Great Britain, launched at Bristol in July, 1843, was 3,443 tons; that of the Great Eastern, launched in the Thames on 31st January, 1858, was 13,343 tons. It was thus that the cautious shipwright felt his way before developing the full magnitude of his conceptions.

For the account of his further works—his docks and harbours, his bridges and viaducts, his investigation of projectiles and of screw propulsion, his admirable military hospital for the Crimean expedition, his general professional practice—we must refer our readers to the volume now before us. All those who regard the civil engineer as a sort of typical or central workman, and who therefore are prepared to measure our future progress in applied science and industrial art by the scale afforded by the condition of this profession in England, will do well to read with care this very interesting book.

Memoir of George Edward Lynch Cotton, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta; with Selections from his Journals and Correspondence. Edited by Mrs. Cotton. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1871.

In this volume Mrs. Cotton has given to the world a memorial of the late Bishop of Calcutta, which by those who personally knew him, and also knew English life in India, will be read with peculiar interest. The scattered nature of their dioceses, the varieties of claims which they have to meet, the consecration of churches, and the confirmation of candidates, compel the dignitaries of the English Church in India to travel frequently and far; and, as metropolitans over the entire empire, the Bishops of Calcutta journey more frequently and to greater distances than their colleagues. A large portion of this memoir is devoted to the details of such journeys; and the descriptions of places, persons, and incidents, coming fresh from the ripe, scholarly, and cheerful mind of one who saw Indian scenes and manners for the first time, give to it a peculiar charm. The extracts from the Bishop's journals and letters are numerous, perhaps too numerous and extended; and the connecting links, now detailing important facts, and at another time discussing the bearings of some great question, are written with clearness and power.

The vein of humour which ran through Bishop Cotton's mind enabled him to discern the lively and especially the burlesque aspect of the scenes through which he passed, whether in school and college days, or amid the serious labours which closed his life. At Rugby he named the fat denizen of his sty Vitellius; at Cambridge he would class his personal friends in an imaginary tripos, and award them medals and honours which expressed his estimate of their worth; and his letters to his children and old friends are full of the amusing side of native life.

With many things to interest him, the reader cannot but be disappointed at the book. It is almost entirely confined to the few years of Bishop Cotton's episcopate. At page 68 he has already left England for his Eastern diocese at the age of forty-nine; and the story of the next eight years occupies five hundred pages. All we can learn of the mental and moral growth of his English life, of his distinguished career as an educator, and of the remarkable position which he early attained among the foremost clergy of the English Church, is contained in the first three chapters of the memoir by Dean Stanley, with the beautiful notices of his work and influence by Professor Shairp and the late Professor Conington. Yet his early career deserves to be described as fully as that of Dr. Arnold, who loved him so well, whom he so greatly resembled, and to whose position as an educator he practically succeeded. These early years made him what he was—a careful scholar, a man of active, earnest piety, an intense lover of truth, a man of large mind and broad sympathies.

We took occasion, soon after the bishop's death in October, 1866, to express in these pages our high estimate of his worth and usefulness, and his views on the important questions with which in his brief episcopate he had to deal are fully set forth in Mrs. Cotton's narrative. His long but most interesting travels; his concern for the isolated English communities in India; his care for the spiritual interests of the English soldiery; his opening the consecrated Episcopal Churches to the use of the Presbyterian regiments; his charges to the clergy; his deep interest in the Episcopal missions, in the raising up of a native ministry, and in measures for the relief of native converts, such as their Re-marriage Act; his efforts to establish schools for East Indian children, are fully and carefully discussed. But while illustrating in many ways Bishop Cotton's large-hearted sympathies and the broad views which he took of men and things, the memoir fails to show how in religious matters he looked with deep interest on other Christian communities than his own, was prepared to do them full justice, and held the most kindly and unpatronizing intercourse with prominent members among them. A man of deep, sterling piety, an evangelical preacher, a faithful minister and bishop of his Church, a lover of good men, he well deserves the high position now accorded to his name by the members of the Church of England; and long will he be remembered with esteem and regard by men of many communions who outside her own pale are striving to evangelize India.

Some Memorials of Renn Dickson Hampden, Bishop of Hereford. Edited by his daughter, Henrietta Hampden. Longmans, Green, and Co.

Time brings its revenges, but not always repentance or wisdom. The Dissenters are to be admitted to the University, and the intelligence and good sense of the country—the dogmatic intolerance of such men as made Dr. Hampden a martyr alone excepted—heartily approve. He is justified as a man more foresighted and just than many of his contemporaries, and his persecutors are relegated to that limbo of conscientious intolerance into which all claimants of arrogant prerogative and all obstinate conservatives are cast. Dante should have devised a retribution for non-jurors, or Vathek should have represented them as melancholy ghosts with their hands upon their hearts and ceasing not to sigh out their non possumus. Opponents of every liberal advance in Church and State rudely swept into eddies by the stream of time, their characters are most heterogeneous and their labour very great. The forty bullet-headed Protectionists of the Free-trade reform, the Bourbons who 'forgot nothing and learned nothing,' the bereaved patrons of rotten boroughs—to say nothing of Laud and his school of divine right, of the good old times of the Star Chamber, of the Five-mile Act, of the Test and Corporation Acts, of Roman Catholic disabilities, of Church-rates, and the Irish establishment—must surely bemoan themselves very bitterly either because they maintained right in vain, or because they opposed it in vain. And yet inherent Toryism will not learn wisdom. The opponents of the Test Repeal Act are, in the present Parliament, repeating as blindly and as fatuously the follies of their predecessors. Miss Hampden tells the story of her father's noble testimony, for really while his actual life was much more than this, there is little more about it to tell. Learned, pious, candid, orthodox, conservative, reverently, and, as we should now say, almost timidly jealous for revealed truth, anything but a man of advanced opinions generally, Bishop Hampden was the object of a virulent and most unscrupulous persecution, such as must ever be the dark reproach of any Church or party whose polemical passions can make them capable of it. His sin was that he was strongly opposed to the Tractarian movement. He was too honest and honourable to be moved by this hostility from his position, although his scholarly and benevolent and sensitive life was embittered by it. He lived to see himself vindicated, and now the public opinion of England is about to endorse the clear-sightedness, candour, and justice of his advocacy. Of his great theological learning and catholic heartedness, there is no need to speak. The memoir, although not very skilfully put together, is an interesting and touching memoir of a very noble man.

The Life and Times of Lord Brougham. (Written by himself.) Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.

Though the space of time covered by this first volume of Lord Brougham's Memoirs was one of the most interesting in his own life, and one of the stormiest in European history, the narrative is languid, and contains no facts that are at once new and important. Indeed, his Lordship had been already forestalled by notable contemporaries, who had been seized more or less strongly with the autobiographical passion, and also by the fact that the earlier portion of his life had long passed into the region of history. What novelty the volume possesses it derives chiefly from musty journals of travel and political correspondence of evanescent interest. To be admitted to the spectacle of Opposition wire-pulling three-quarters of a century ago, and to be favoured with the rapid observations on transitory things of a hasty traveller, are benefits that were perhaps overrated by Lord Brougham. Had he been a philosophical observer, or possessed the power of picturesque description, he might have left behind him an enduring record of great and historical events, quorum pars magna fuit, which he had the double advantage of seeing, as it were, in the making, and also after they were reduced to their natural proportions by the perspective of many added years. That, however, we have no right to expect from Lord Brougham. As it is, there are some minute personal touches in the narrative which are at least curious. He attributes his enormous energy and success to the Celtic blood in his veins; very probably it accounts for his instability. He gives a shocking account of his grandfather's funeral, as an instance of the barbarous manners of the time, though, unhappily, it is far from having died out. He redescribes the origin of the Edinburgh Review, declaring that Sydney Smith's account of it is entirely imaginary, although he substantially confirms it; and he gives as his own, a satirical tale, which, it has been pointed out, is translated from the 'Candide' of Voltaire. We shall have more to say about both the autobiography and the man when the publication is complete.

The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, M.A. By James Paterson Gledstone. Longmans and Co.

The character and power of Whitefield must ever be a study of interest to persons who either as religious men or as historical students attach importance to the evangelical revival of the last century; and in proportion as it recedes into the past, as contemporary passions and their inspirations die out, and especially as the arrogant assumptions of a dominant Church are discredited, the study will have increased interest and recognised importance.

Several lives of Whitefield have been attempted, some of which we would rather not characterize. Mr. J. P. Gledstone is generously reticent concerning them. He makes no allusion to the labours of his predecessors, but simply tells his story with all the lights that are available. Nothing in Whitefield's character or history or work turns upon the discoveries of the antiquarian. The broad facts are adequately known, and the work of the biographer is to recite and interpret them. Mr. J. P. Gledstone has produced what, we think, will prove the standard life of Whitefield. His sympathies are catholic, and he does justice to the noble soul of Whitefield, who was the 'brother of all who in every place, and under every denomination, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have striven to put the man rather than his creed upon the pages of this book.' Whitefield was no theologian; he was simply a great preacher. His Calvinism was passionate rather than dogged, and in an inappreciable degree influenced his preaching. His great soul yearned for the salvation of men, and the more arduous the service the more attractive to him it was.

Into the merit of his great preaching power, however, we cannot now enter, and yet both now and at all times it is a study of the most vital moment to the Church. Mr. J. P. Gledstone's book throws upon it all the light that circumstance and fact can furnish, and intelligently suggests most of the deeper psychological and spiritual causes. We very cordially commend this carefully-studied and admirably-written life of the Chrysostom of England.

Twenty-two Year's Missionary Experience in Travancore. By Rev. John Abbs, of the London Missionary Society. John Snow and Co.

The Land of Charity; a Descriptive Account of Travancore and its People, with especial reference to Missionary Labour. By the Rev. Samuel Mateer, F.L.S., of the London Missionary Society. John Snow and Co. 1871.

The Pioneers; a Narrative of Facts connected with early Christian Missions in Bengal. By the Rev. George Gogerly, late Missionary in Calcutta. John Snow and Co. 1871.

Here are three more of the numerous and excellent works which in recent years have sought to illustrate in full detail the course and the fruits of missionary labour in India. They are valuable additions to the missionary library, and each will occupy a position of its own. Instead of dealing with the Indian empire at large, both Mr. Abbs and Mr. Mateer restrict themselves to the single province of Travancore. The work of Mr. Abbs recounts the missionary experience of twenty-two years, and is characterized by sound sense, extreme modesty, and deep religious feeling. Much valuable information is given on the relations between the mission in Travancore and the native government, and some fresh light is thrown on the whole question of caste as encountered by Christian missionaries in Travancore. In the same region Mr. Mateer spent nine years, and endeavours to render his little work a complete handbook of all necessary information respecting that district and its people. This information has been drawn in part from authoritative records, and in part embodies the results of the writer's own observation and inquiry during the period of his daily life within the province. The book is written in a simple unpretending style, and will amply repay perusal.

Travancore, called by the Brahmins the Land of Charity, or Piety, is a secluded province in South-western India, peculiarly devoted to Hinduism. Though occupied to a very large extent by aboriginal tribes, some of which must be of very ancient origin, many centuries ago it was religiously conquered by some prominent members of the Brahminical caste, and they have ever since retained the firmest hold upon its rulers and its people. All the wealth and prosperity of this well-watered and fertile corner of India have been poured into their lap, and the lower castes and aboriginal races have been their devoted serfs. Closely walled in by mountains and by the sea, it has had comparatively little intercourse with its immediate neighbours, and scarcely any with the more distant districts of South India. Its reigning family has long been seated on the throne; and Mr. Mateer describes the religious position occupied by its princes, and the strange ceremonies which both establish their sanctity and secure to the priests and Brahmins abundant rewards. Mr. Mateer also pictures the numerous races and classes which make up its million and a half of inhabitants, and explains the immoral causes and condition of things under which, in one caste especially, all property is made to descend to nephews and not to sons.

While describing fully the physical features and productions of the province, he dwells especially upon its religious aspects, and gives much information concerning the life and customs of the Shānar and Ilavar races, who in religion are devil-worshippers. It is amongst them that Christianity has made special progress during the present century. While the princes and nobles have been growing in knowledge and experience of their English rulers, the lower tribes have in great numbers accepted the Gospel. The story of the mission planted among them is given at length, and illustrations are presented of the fruits which they have produced in individual converts, in strong and liberal churches, and an indigenous native ministry. The Gospel has also leavened the population generally, and introduced many remarkable innovations among the hard and cruel customs of former days. The Brahmins have fought hard for their supremacy, but it is steadily passing away. 'Sir,' said a Sudra one day to a Brahmin, 'have you directed your attention to a wonder of the present age? Listen: the Brahmin has become a dealer in oil and fish, while the Shānar or pariah goes about as a Brahmin or teacher of the country. The Brahmin woman spends her day in cooking, eating, and sleeping; while the Shānar or pariah women are found in the streets with their Scriptures in their hands, pretending to teach their neighbours. Is not this a wonder? Verily the world is turning upside down.'

Mr. Gogerly, the well-known missionary of the London Missionary Society, has given a graphic and most pleasant account of the early leaders of the missionary enterprise in Bengal and of their work. Mr. Grogerly quitted the mission of which he was a member thirty years ago, and might long ere this have presented to the world the striking facts with which he became acquainted in the course of his Indian career. But he has reserved the story till the present day, when some of those facts have been gradually forgotten, and when the younger members of our missionary societies hear only of the modern aspects of Christian work, and of the larger fruit of conquered difficulties and converts gathered into the Church of Christ.

Mr. Gogerly's notices of the pioneers in the Church—Baptist, Free Church, and American Missions in North India—are brief, but some of them convey original information drawn from his own experience. He naturally gives fuller details of the mission to which he himself belonged, and in which many remarkable events occurred worthy of a permanent place in our missionary histories. Later residents in Bengal will read with wonder of a state of things in regard to the manners of the people, their views of idolatry, the honour rendered to devotees, and the satisfaction felt with the ancestral religion, which has long since yielded to the knowledge and light which for forty years have been changing the Bengal race, and making them a new people. The numerous anecdotes given by the writer illustrative of former days, of domestic habits, of village education, of native amusements, and of ancient customs, are extremely interesting. Some institutions referred to, like suttee, have disappeared. In regard to others, such as female education, the position of things has wholly changed.

Mr. Gogerly's book is well illustrated with numerous engravings, and we heartily commend it to our readers.

The Duke of Edinburgh in Ceylon. A Book of Elephant and Elk Sport. By John Capper, Times Correspondent, &c. Provost and Co.

It is Mr. Capper's great merit that as a court chronicler, who of necessity must magnify the most ordinary incidents, and carefully chronicle the smallest event in any way connected with the movements of a Royal Prince, he never violates good taste. He is neither flippant nor flunkeyish, but does his work in a simple, straightforward way. No one, we presume, will read his official record of receptions, addresses, dinners, and balls; but this can be skipped, and bits picked out descriptive of Cingalese hunting experiences sufficiently novel and dangerous to be gently exciting. The Prince seems to have borne himself as a manly, unaffected English gentleman. The volume is a thin imperial octavo, and is adorned with some six or eight very excellent chromo-lithographs.

A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand; together with some Account of the South Sea Islands. Being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Lieut. the Hon. Herbert Meade, R.N. Edited by his Brother. John Murray.

Mr. Meade's untimely death, by a recent explosion at Portsmouth, invests this volume with special interest. It does not, however, need any adventitious attractions. It is fresh with information and bright with genial feeling. It makes light of difficulties and hardships, and is full of the enterprise and optimism of youth. Whether the author had any thought of publishing his journals or not, they have the great charm of simplicity and unaffectedness. The former part of the volume describes a journey through the disaffected districts of New Zealand. He was captured by the Kingites, and narrowly escaped with his life, and gives an exciting account of the Aokatoa or preliminary religious rites, and of the Rungana, or parley-parley to decide upon his fate; the executioner with the tomahawk standing close by him during the debate. He escaped at length only by the wind of his horse. He was the first white man who had fallen into the hands of the enemy. The second, a missionary, they hanged, and ate his eyes and brains.

POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART.

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S. John Murray.

The pleasure of reading Mr. Darwin's long-promised volumes, which has been keenly anticipated, is at length gratified. Both the subject and the man exercise a strange fascination upon the public mind. As an experienced naturalist, a speculative philosopher, and a keen logician, Mr. Darwin would command the attention of men of science under any circumstances, but he has the secret of personal power and popularity quite apart from the accomplishments which allow him to be classed with other naturalists and philosophers. It is not the lucid clearness of his style, nor his power of collecting, selecting, and grouping facts, nor the shrewdness and breadth of his generalizations, alone, which give his readers their exquisite sense of delight as they follow him through his descriptions, his arguments, and his speculations. Beyond all this, he has that sensuous delight in the real, the beautiful, and the truthful—that appreciation of the grandeur of universal law, visible in the minutest details, and that union of the receptive and active faculties which constitute the artist and the genius who owes more to Nature than to culture. If an argument may be derived from what man is, and from the mental excellence which he is capable of exhibiting, to rebuff the theory that he is of so humble a parentage as Mr. Darwin represents, the author himself would be a refutation of his own theory. In contemplation of his own powers he might say with Hamlet, 'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! and yet, what to me is this quintessence of dust!' The lineal descendant proximately of 'a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits and an inhabitant of the old world; remotely, of an animal more like the larvæ of existing ascidians (lining sacks), than any other known form!'

Mr. Darwin's volumes treat of two subjects of profound but not of equal interest. The difference in the interest felt in man's descent and in sexual selection is well shown in the numerous reviews and notices of this work which have already appeared. More than two-thirds of the work is devoted to sexual selection, and this subject is treated, not exhaustively, it is true, for that is quite impossible in the present state of our knowledge, but methodically and comprehensively. A vast number of fresh facts are presented; a great array of old ones are marshalled in due order; the phenomena are traced as they appear throughout the whole animal kingdom, and historians and travellers are adduced in evidence to elucidate problems physical and metaphysical. Yet reviewers have not taken notice of this, which is really the most valuable part of the work; guided by a popular instinct they revert to the subject of man's descent. They do this although there is not nearly so much freshness, either in the facts or arguments presented in this portion of his work. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' is a dictum which men who are no students will readily adopt, because the subject is not far to seek. That man, the orang, and the gorilla, have a common ancestor is so fascinating an idea that none can resist its weird influence. The clergy repeat it from their pulpits in scornful utterance, as though the simple statement carried its own refutation. Transcendental philosophers like Vogt assume it as a demonstrated fact. Wits joke about it. The ears of ladies blush, not at the praise of their own loveliness, but because of the pointed and telltale evidence these bear of their own origin. The fascination of this idea was evident from the first appearance of 'The Origin of Species.' The public insisted on seeing in it nothing but evidence that man had sprung from a lower form. Yet in that work it was evident that Mr. Darwin purposely avoided the discussion of this point. No one will be surprised to learn, from the introduction of the present work, that during many years the author had collected notes on the origin and descent of man without any intention of publishing on the subject—but rather with the determination not to publish—that he might not add to the prejudice against his views. Yet the multitudes who talk about the book they have never read, as if they had done so, have all along supposed and assumed that the one question thus designedly avoided was the subject of the whole treatise. No doubt most of the arguments in favour of the derivation and origin of species, told with equal force as proofs of the like derivation and origin of man, but there was yet room for a supplemental theory, founded on the vast elevation of man's moral and mental capacity, which would make man an exceptional species with an exceptional origin. That such a view was possible, may be inferred from the concluding chapter in Mr. Wallace's book on the same subject, in which a peculiar Providence is made to preside over the evolution of man. There can, however, be no mistake now about Mr. Darwin's view of the question. His assertions about the origin of man from a lower form are not only confident, but he has become dogmatic upon the subject. The attitude of dogmatism is new to him, and we must say does not become him so well as the cautious candour of his earlier work. Mr. Darwin writes:—'The main conclusion arrived at in this work, and now held by many naturalists who are competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly-organized form. The ground upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken.... It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of Nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation.'

In his speculations as to the genealogical descent of man and the way in which it emerges from the ancestral tree of the animal creation, Mr. Darwin is almost wholly guided by the rudimentary organs found in man. Mr. Darwin is quite consistent in this method. No doubt rudimentary organs which are functionless in our species and have dwindled almost to nothing, but are developed and have a palpable use in other allied forms, present the greatest difficulties to those who do not believe in a derivative origin of species, and also afford the strongest support to the selection theory. After enumerating the aborted organs, the transient and fœtal structures, and the often-recurring abnormalities found in man, which are some seventeen or eighteen in number, the author works out his theory of origin almost strictly in accordance with the plan of associating the ancestors of man proximately with those species which possess the most of these analogous structures, and so on to the larger divisions in which a fewer number of them have a wider distribution. This plan is, no doubt, philosophical, but it leads the author into some strange speculations. By similar reasoning it is demonstrable that our ancestors were hermaphrodite, and thus long after they had ceased to be so both sexes yielded milk to nourish their young, and perhaps carried them in marsupial sacks.

A doctrine thus dogmatically stated, of course involves problems and theories hard to solve and demonstrate, but this arises, in the opinion of the author, from the fact that the solutions and demonstrations are hard to find, and not from the doctrines which involve them being in the least doubtful. The existence of the moral sense in man is one of these problems, and one of the most interesting chapters in this portion of the work is devoted to an explanation of the evolution of human conscience. The moral sense is traced to those social instincts which man has in common with all gregarious animals. The strengthening and growth of the memory and judgment would enable man to compare his past actions, and the mere abiding satisfaction of the process would create that distinction between the higher and lower law or motive which is all that modern moralists require. 'Ultimately a highly complex sentiment having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in the latter times by deep religious feeling, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense in conscience.'

The second portion of the work is a valuable contribution to science. It is far more philosophical in its tone. It is a repertory of facts. The theories to which these facts point are indeed discussed, but the method is inductive, while the method of the first portion appears to us to be deductive. Beauty as distinguished from use has always been a stumbling-block to the disciples of the natural selection school. That which, in any species, pleases our minds by immediate agency of the senses, as distinguished from that which is of service to that species in adapting it to external conditions, is quite unaccounted for by the survival of the fittest, at least so far as wild and untamed species are concerned. Some evolutionists would cut the knot by denying the evidence of beauty apart from fitness. Suitability, symmetry, conspicuousness, and an imposing appearance are, no doubt, desiderata which natural selection may seize upon and secure, and these may incidentally and necessarily involve that which is beautiful in our eyes. But after all these have been eliminated or satisfied, there yet remains in a large number of species an element of beauty the contemplation of which brings pleasure to all human beings, whether educated or uneducated, refined or unrefined. This is especially the case throughout those large, numerously represented and dominant classes taken from two separate sub-kingdoms and called insects and birds. These two classes occupy a great deal of the attention of Mr. Darwin. If we assume any evolutionary theory, and abjure the doctrine of final causes, all the varied beauty of butterflies and humming-birds has but one probable explanation, namely, that of sexual selection. To make even this explanation possible, we must assume a keen, discriminating æsthetic faculty in animals which is like in quality with our own, as that faculty is possessed by the most refined of our species. Moreover, this faculty must be intimately connected with the sexual appetency in each species. Such a connection is, judging from analogy, not improbable. In forming an opinion how far these views are correct, it is important to isolate the operation of sexual selection from that of natural selection. Nature has throughout almost the whole animal kingdom afforded to us the means of isolation. For, as a general rule, the sexes in species are not absolutely alike, and often there is great difference between them. All sexual peculiarities therefore which cannot be explained on the principle of division of labour, throw light upon the æsthetic faculty of animals as a selective, and therefore by the theory of a creative agency. Mr. Darwin has collected a vast mass of facts about sexual peculiarities, which being in no way connected with the sexual function, he calls secondary sexual characters. Of course, sexual secondary characters so limited point to a difference in the modification of the sexual desire by æsthetic appetite in the two sexes. Generally speaking, the adorned sex is the male. Have, then, the females a greater appreciation of beauty than their males? Mr. Darwin thinks the ardour of the male destroys his discrimination. Some facts produced, however, seem to run directly counter to this supposition. On all hands the peacock is considered the most splendid of birds, and the difference between the sexes in this species is carried to an extreme point. Yet, one of Mr. Darwin's best authenticated facts is, that the pea-hen differs from most birds in being the ardent wooer.

One of the happiest and most satisfactory episodes in the book is the account of the genesis of the eye-spot in the plumage of birds, and specially of that of the ball and socket ornament in the secondary wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant. The treatment of this subject reminds us, by its clearness and beauty, of the author's treatises on coral islands and the fertilization of orchids. How simple a phenomenon may disclose a world of interest and wonder when in the hands of a man of genius! It seems to us, however, that that wonderfully faithful representation of a round ball lying in a hollow socket, expressed on the flat of the web of a feather, offers a striking example of the inadequacy of either natural or sexual selections to explain such phenomena. 'That these ornaments,' says Mr. Darwin, 'should have been formed through the selection of many successive generations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball and socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long succession of artists, not one of whom intended to draw the human figure.' Exactly so! We must attribute to the hen Argus pheasant the æsthetic powers of a Raphael in order to account for the decorations of her mate, or, more properly, we must assign to a succession of multitudes of generations of birds a correctness of appreciation of the draughtsman's art, such as is a rare excellence among men. This may be a fact, but if so, it opens up a new realm to our imagination. It must be admitted that the tendency of modern thought is to obliterate the fast line drawn by old authors between reason and instinct, and to assign the former less exclusively to man, and the latter less exclusively to animals. This tendency and the incidental light thrown by these considerations on these interesting questions are well exemplified in Mr. Darwin's work.

A curious disagreement in opinion between Messrs. Darwin and Wallace is brought out and treated of lengthily in the chapters on birds. Mr. Wallace thinks that in the case of splendid cock-birds who have plain hens, who sit on open nests, the tendency for both sexes to become brilliant has been checked by natural selection. On the other hand, Mr. Darwin thinks that secondary sexual splendour was from the first developed only in the male; and in the converse case, where the female is also gay, natural selection causes her to build a covered nest for protection. We think Mr. Darwin has the best of the argument. The question of whether the standard of beauty among men is uniform in its essentials or not is ably discussed, but no conclusion is arrived at; so contradictory is the evidence of travellers and observers.

We heartily endorse Mr. Darwin's dictum that false facts are highly injurious to the progress of science; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm. We are therefore content to

Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions. By James Hinton. Smith, Elder, and Co.

This volume contains by no means a dry discussion of the conditions of health. It hardly professes to be methodical or exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. It is rather the production of a man who is full of original ideas such as lie around the subject of health and life, and who has adopted this title in order to give them to the public. The details of the subject have evidently no charms for the author; nevertheless, those which are given or referred to show him to be quite abreast of the foremost file of the army of science. He is quite poetical in his similes, and is fascinated by sublime ideas, yet his chapter on 'Nursing as a Profession' shows him to be a practical reformer. The book will be read with interest by those whose mental bias leads them in that direction, while it gives vivid conceptions of abstruse ideas. The one fault of the book is, that the author allows his imagination to build up speculations upon a basis of known facts, which fresh facts yet unknown may very possibly show to be mere speculations. Thus the speculations about the functions of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus, when forming complex compounds in the organism derived and built up upon our knowledge of their properties as elements, are doubtless interesting, but they are not backed by chemical knowledge, and are opposed to the analogies of that science. This fault, however, is so allied to the virtues of freshness and force of thought which are everywhere found in the volume, that it ought not to prejudice the reader against the author, though he certainly ought to be on his guard against the seduction of that author's enthusiasm.

The American Colleges and the American Public. By Noah Porter, D.D., Professor in Yale College. New Haven, Conn. 1870.

This volume would be invaluable to us if we had a system of high-school and university education at all corresponding to that of the United States. No one is more competent than Dr. Noah Porter to describe the operation of the American system, to detect some of its weaknesses, to contrast it with English and German tuition, and to point out where America might learn something from England, and in what respect England might be benefited by following transatlantic customs. Far away from the circumstances and experimental innovations which have excited so much general interest in America, we can hardly enter into any minute criticism of the old customs or the recent changes. Some of the discussions—such, for instance, as that on the relative advantage of college lectures and text-book-recitations, on the system of private tutoring, on the propriety or otherwise of very frequent examinations, on the dormitory system, on the advantage of the resident and non-resident systems, and on the extent to which laws and supervision on the part of the college authorities should extend—will interest the supporters and professors of English colleges for the ministry, though many of the conditions under which we should have to apply them are so profoundly different that not much light would be attained for our guidance. The calm, candid, lucid manner in which our author has investigated the whole subject, and held the balances in all these discussions, is worthy of all respect. In advocating greater freedom from clerical influence, and more breadth in the relations between the authorities and the graduates in the government of the colleges, we presume that he is treading on delicate ground. In our smaller institutions we have long since adopted the principle he recommends. Our national universities will become before long the property of the nation, and not of a sect, and be governed in deference to law, by their own alumni, without any privilege but that which is earned by distinguished ability. This, however, is not the place to discuss a question like this.

The Ancient Geography of India; the Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang. By Alexander Cunningham, Major-General, Royal Engineers (Bengal, retired). With thirteen Maps. Trübner and Co. 1871.

The author of 'The Bhilsa Topes' has once more brought his great learning, and his rare advantages of travel and of residence to bear on the elucidation of the Buddhist period of Indian history and thought. On this occasion he has, however, shown his antiquarian, topographical, and etymological skill in deciphering and harmonizing the geography of the Greek historians and the Chinese pilgrims. Few things are more important to the comprehension of any history—sacred, classic, modern, or contemporary—than a clear exhibition of the physical features of the country on which the destinies of generations have been determined, and a sound identification of the sites of famous cities, fortresses, temples, and battle-fields. When the history of great nations covers thousands of years, the physical features may be recovered by personal inspection of sites that are distinctly described by early writers; but the confusing resemblance of neglected and buried cities to each other has been the fruitful source of false identifications, and when once on a wrong scent, the geography of large districts of country has often been thrown into hopeless entanglement. The geography of India, with its history, maybe conveniently divided into three periods. The Vedic or Brahmanic period would cover the entire prehistoric section of the history, and trace the extension of the Aryan race from their first occupation of the Punjab to the rise of Buddhism. The Buddhist period would extend from the era of Buddha—whensoever that may be determined, say between the fourth and sixth century b.c.—to Mahmoud of Ghizni; and the Mohammedan period will extend from the rise of the Mohammedan power to the battle of Plassy. Major-General Cunningham has devoted a volume of nearly six hundred pages to the investigation of the geography of India during the Buddhist period, which may be said to cover from fourteen to sixteen hundred years. He has personally travelled over the entire country, and carefully scanned its features with a curious, archæological eye, and has thus succeeded in fixing the line of Alexander's campaigns, and in bringing into geographical completeness and unity the itineraries and allusions of the Chinese pilgrims, Fah-pian, Chung-yun, and Hwen-Thsang. Though the campaigns of Alexander were confined to the valley of the Indus and its tributaries, yet the information collected by his companions, and the records of subsequent embassies between the Seleucidæ and the Maurya and other princes, include abundant references to the whole valley of the Ganges. We think we may confidently assert that no student of the works of Rémusat and Lassen, Stanislas Julien, or Vivien de St. Martin, will now be content without having General Cunningham's maps and expositions at his side. It would be difficult to do justice to such a work in a brief notice; still, some of the identifications are of general interest. The merest tyro in Buddhist lore knows something of the legend of Kunâla, the beautiful-eyed son of Asoka, the great Buddhist king, who was sent in his youth and unsuspecting innocence to quell a revolt in the great city of Taxasila, and who there suffered the loss of his lustrous eyes in consequence of the malicious designs of his stepmother. Everyone has heard that in the neighbourhood of this city, Buddha is fabled in a previous state of existence to have made the sacrifice of his head in alms, and to have offered himself in another existence to a dying tigress, having first fed her with his blood that she might be strong enough to devour him more effectually. The city was admired by Alexander himself; it was described by Pliny and Arrian; it was visited by Apollonius of Tyana, and referred to by his celebrated biographer, Philostratus. It was visited with enthusiasm by Fah-Hian 400 a.d., and by Hwen-Thsang in 630 and 643 a.d.; and a variety of particulars are mentioned which have enabled our author by personal inspection to identify the exact spot, to make out the ruins, the lines of walls and roads, and the site of the stupa placed by the great King Asoka over the scene of the act of self-sacrifice to which we have referred.

Our author identifies the celebrated city Srâvasti with the ruined city of Sâhet-Mâhet, where he discovered a colossal figure of Buddha, with an inscription having on it the name of this city, immortalized by Buddha's most successful preaching. He has shown that when Hwen-Thsang visited Srâvasti it must have been in utter decay, and that he mistook the ruins of the city for those of the palace; but Cunningham has brought the divergent statements of the Chinese pilgrims as to the distance of Srâvasti from other points into sufficient accord to be satisfactory, and he draws by a clever etymological manœuvre the modern name Sâhet-Mâhet into harmony with the Pali form Sâwatthi and the Chinese name She-wei. We have, moreover, in the volume strong reasons given for fixing the site of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, at Nagar, in the northern division of Oude; and the site of Nalanda, the monster Buddhist monastery, at Baragaon near Gaza; and so with hundreds of other places which are interesting from their mention in Buddhist legend or authentic Buddhist biography. We heartily thank General Cunningham for his elaborate work.

Walks in Rome. Two vols. By Augustus J. C. Hare. Strahan and Co.

This is only a guide-book, but it is one of a very superior description. As Rome is to all cities, so is this guide-book to all other guide-books. Fully informed with the spirit of the past, and yet not wanting in the facts of the present, it is at once an historical monitor and a topographical companion. The poetry and sentiment and delicate observation of various writers, bred of cultured gazing upon the ruins which almost make twenty centuries synchronous, have been carefully gathered together; but the requirements of the mere sightseer have not been forgotten. The volumes are full of useful information. We should think that only those to whom Rome is familiar with more than the familiarity of a natal city could afford to dispense with them.

POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.

The Works of Alexander Pope. New Edition, including several hundred Unpublished Letters and other new Material, collected in part by the late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker. With Introduction and Notes by Rev. Whitwell Elwin. Vols. 1, 2, and 6. Murray. 1871.

Two things are evident on the most cursory inspection of Mr. Elwin's work; first, that he has spared no pains in probing every corner of a most complicated story; secondly, that he finds a pleasure in making the case against Pope look as black as it possibly can be made. In a long and minute investigation of the circumstances attending the publication of the successive volumes of Pope's letters, he exposes the petty trickery and vanity of the poet. We are ashamed of Pope as we read this merciless exposure. But we are somewhat relieved when we recollect that after all these frauds and concealments there was nothing to gain by it. Like the magpie hiding a silver spoon, Pope took nothing by his trickery but the pleasure of deceiving. He could not help doing as he did. Whether from his Catholic education, or from whatever cause, he had contracted a dishonest habit of mind, which came out in all his dealings. But Mr. Elwin gets so heated with the chase after Pope's stratagems, that he discovers them even where they do not exist. When he sets up the theory that the 'Essay on Man' was a treatise of infidelity palmed off on the public under the disguise of a vindication of optimism, he overshoots the mark.

So far three volumes of the edition are before us—two of the poems, and one of the correspondence. We hope in some early number to devote an article to an examination of Mr. Elwin's editorial work.

Napoleon Fallen. A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan and Co.

Mr. Buchanan is a brilliant improvisatore, and could doubtless produce dramas and epics to order on any subject to which the revolutionary mind is akin. We do not doubt the genuineness of his lyrical passion; it is white-hot and screaming, but it seems as if it were easy to kindle, not quite rational in its foundation, and certainly not classical in its expression. As a rhymed pamphlet, special-pleading a cause, and echoing the cries of the hour, 'Napoleon Fallen' is unquestionably powerful; as a dramatic representation of events in the shape in which they will descend to history, it is too violent to be true. It was a happy device to incorporate the Athenian chorus with the modern drama; the expedient provided expression for the eager feelings with which the world witnessed the stupendous struggle. But to import into the statuesque forms of poetry the frantic passion and inarticulate rage of the vanquished, in their naked amorphous violence, removes the poem out of the sphere of art. If the representation of a thing is meant to be permanent, the thing itself must be not only real, but also permanent in its nature. Lessing laid down this canon, and one would have thought that it was now established. But if 'Napoleon Fallen' is not perfect as a poem, there is very much fine poetry in it. The lyrical fire which an age in travail with revolutions produces is perhaps not rare in our days; Mr. Buchanan unquestionably possesses it. He also possesses that belief and faith without which no man has a right to sing at all—belief in the divine end of human life, and faith in the future. With poetic indefiniteness it is rather an aspiration than an articulated creed, but he is at least no emasculated Pagan. His dramatic power is less obvious, and perhaps it is only the dramatism of the lyrist—the mere modulation of passion into a different key.

King Arthur. By Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton.) Tucker.

Lord Lytton's variety and pertinacity of effort must command the admiration of even those who do not deem him great. Amongst those churlish critics we fear we must be ranked. He is not quite a poet, yet we cannot help sympathizing with his firm resolve to place himself among poets if the thing could be done by endeavour. In that way it cannot be done. Marsyas shall never equal Apollo. Lord Lytton's place among novelists is not at this juncture our affair; his place among versifiers is high, as 'St. Stephen's' shows; but we can give him no place among poets. His 'King Arthur,' which has now been some years before the public, is a complete proof of this. Even Mr. Tennyson himself has not made quite the best of the son of Uther Pendragon. We prefer the old version of 1460—

to the neoteric Sir Bedivere's 'long ripple washing in the reeds.' We strongly object to the misconception of the wondrously beautiful story of Vivian. We cannot comprehend why nobody dare tell us how Launcelot of the Lake killed Agrawayne. If these old myths deserve poetic treatment, treat them fairly; it is absurd to modify them to suit the indelicate delicacy of a modern society whose most refined journals are fond of essays upon questionable topics. This, however, is a slight digression: let us return to Lord Lytton. He has managed to transform the Arthurean romance into melodrama. Gawine and his raven remind one of a burlesque by Burnand or Byron. Indeed, the poem shows poverty of invention, and a complete want of mastery over rhythm and rhyme and style. Here is a hexastichon:—

'Pomp of cloud'—'reflects its lustre'—'worthy centre'—'odorous canopy'; these are just the phrases that nobody would write who took the trouble to think. And why in the world should poor King Arthur be compared to the moon? He has been much misrepresented by many poets; he was a semi-barbarous Welshman, whom our Somersetshire men drove into the sea down by Tintagel: but he has had a sacer vates, and we do not see why he should be subjected to inferior treatment. Is there anything in the contemporary Arthurean verse that approaches Sir Ector's lament over Sir Launcelot of the Lake—Achilles of the Arthurean Iliad?... 'Ah Sir Launcelot, thou wert head of all Christian Knights.... And thou wert the courteousest knight that ever bore shield. And thou wert the truest friend to thy lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword. And thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights. And thou wert the meekest man and the greatest that ever ate in hall among ladies. And thou wert the truest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest.' So says the old poet. Can Lord Lytton or Mr. Alfred Tennyson approach him? Can Homer beat him? The illustrations of this edition are scarcely worthy of the poem.

The Iliad of Homer. Translated by J. G. Cordery. Rivingtons.

Englishing Homer has of late been a general occupation with men of letters, and we should be the last to object to it. We delight in Homer. We rather dislike the effeminate treatment which some of his myths have met at the hands of one or two eminent modern poets. We hold that there is more in the sonorous swing of those demiurgic dactyls than the contemporary writers of blank verse can quite comprehend. Erratic enough are we to hold that there was one Homer, not many—that no purpurei panni of Peisistratus were interwoven with his cloth of gold—that he was an isolated leader of thought. Certain also are we that his influence is in these days much needed, and that his Greek ideas are of great service to modern Englishmen; his strength and simplicity are things we possess and admire; many an Achilles has led the forlorn hope for England, and many an Odysseus has been a F.R.G.S. There is nothing more remarkable in Homer than what we shall venture to call his Englishness. Hence, from one point of view the late Earl of Derby translated him well; for the Earl was an Englishman every inch, and, as we have heretofore said in these pages, the Hector of the Tory Troy. But as the Earl was not a poet, he could not exactly render as he ought to be rendered the supreme poet of the pagan past. Lord Derby saw in him the part which is visible to the English legislator and landowner. There is a good deal more than this in Homer scarcely comprehensible by the race whose motto is sans changer. There are unfathomable depths of poetic philosophy in those two oceans of thought which we call the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' The key-note is struck in Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή : throughout Homer we find the will of the supreme Divinity always manifested.

It is, we believe, this coincidence of English with Hellenic ideas which causes so many men of different types to find pleasure in Homer. Think of the chasm between Pope and the "sick vulture," or even between Lord Derby and the poet Worsley. The theme is tempting, but space avails not; we must say a word or two on Mr. Cordery's 'Iliad.' He seems, so far as we have followed him, to know his Greek excellently well; but he assuredly does not know the power and capacity of English blank verse. The rhythmic weapon, the most difficult we know, is not within his power to wield. Thus he commences the 'Iliad'—those lines which, as Lord Macaulay would say, 'every schoolboy knows'—

The first few lines suffice. Here is a writer who cannot wield the metre he has chosen. This being so, we find it undesirable to enter farther into any discussion of the merits of his version, and shall content ourselves with giving conscientious praise to his loving and patient attempt to do a great work which is beyond his height of attainment. This is not contemptuous nor careless criticism. Not yet has Homer been done into English. Will any future translator give us Homer's unutterable music, Homer's unfathomable thought?

Ierne. A Tale. By W. Steuart Trench. 2 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co.

If Mr. Trench's 'Realities of Irish Life' was something more than a history, 'Ierne' is something more than a romance. It is full of vivid pictures of Irish life, and is inlaid with historical information, political disquisitions, and didactic comment. We are not sure which presents the truer portraiture, the history or the romance, probably the latter. It appears, in spite of the extravagance and impossibility of its incidents, to reproduce with the fidelity which long personal familiarity enables, various aspects of Western Irish life, its fine culture, enthusiastic genius, and heroic patriotism in the higher classes; its wild passions, its half-savage instincts, and its no less noble patriotism in the lower. The representation is not a very hopeful one; at least, whatever hope there is in it must be found in the gross inconsistencies of thought, and in the unaccountable impulses of feeling which made Ireland such an enigma to Lord Killarney; the blind, deep-rooted infatuation about the ownership of land, and the notion that all improvements by Saxon possessors are inimical to its reversion, so that the better the landlord, the worse the feeling of antagonism excited, is profoundly perplexing. Mr. Trench has so thorough a knowledge of Irish feeling that we must accept this representation as true. Even the excellencies of a Saxon landlord, and his solicitude for the improvement of his estate and for the comfort of his peasantry, are specific reasons why he should be shot. Mr. Trench writes in full sympathy with the people in their sense of wrong. Few nations have been so oppressed and peeled, and no generous or even just Englishman will deny that, however unreasonable and fanatical Irish treason is now, when for nearly a century everything that could be done to redress the tyranny of the past has been done, it has traditional justification which almost exalts it to patriotism; and Mr. Trench feels the difficulty of so adjusting his sympathy as that while he justifies the national resentment of the past, he may condemn the continued treason of the present. Of course he sees no possibility in the dreams of repealers, and wishes every wise friend of Ireland would denounce repeal as the worst thing that could befall her. He can only, with ourselves, hope that the measures of redress of the last two Parliaments which leave Ireland almost literally without a grievance, will gradually discredit political agitation, and engender loyalty. He does, indeed, half suggest that a royal residence in Ireland, occasional visits from the Queen, or the Prince of Wales, would, as an appeal to Irish sentiment, be more potent than even the disestablishment of the Irish Church, or the enactment of the Land Bill. If so, it is a pity the experiment is not tried. As a romance, Mr. Trench's book is scarcely worthy of criticism. Ierne's personation of the ghost and her marvellous movements and achievements generally are simply preposterous. We tolerate the romance for the sake of the pictures of Irish life interwoven with it. Inveterate novel-readers will get through this, others will skip the tale, but even then the book will, by its information concerning national feelings and prejudices, and its delineation of various scenes of national life, faction fights, midnight drills, meetings of conspirators, and wakes, and especially by its racy delineation of national humour, and its careful description of noble scenery, amply repay persual.

Véra. By the Author of 'The Hôtel au Petit St. Jean.' Smith, Elder, and Co.

The Charm of 'Véra' is twofold; first, it introduces us to the interior of Russian life, and excites our interest by the delineation of modes of thought, feeling, and life, very different from our own. Next, it is written with great literary skill; the author's first work, which delineated Provençal life, will have prepared its readers for excellent workmanship in this. It is a story of character rather than of incident. Véra is a Russian Princess, affianced in marriage to Count Alexis Yotoff, her cousin, but the contemplated marriage is one of convenience rather than of affection, and when Alexis falls at Inkermann, he is wept with tenderness but not with passion. Colonel St. John, the nephew and heir of Lord Kendal, who lies wounded on the field of Inkermann, is assailed by some Russian stragglers, Alexis interposes to save him, and accidentally falls a victim to St. John's pistol, which he is in the act of discharging. He receives from the dying Alexis some souvenirs which he engages to convey to Véra and his family. His wounds affect his memory, and years elapse without his being able to redeem his pledge, and recall the names of either Alexis or his friends. In the meanwhile he becomes acquainted with Véra, and, although twenty years her senior, they are mutually in love. Their love, however, is sadly marred by cross purposes. At length St. John discovers, under critical circumstances, that Véra was the intended recipient of the souvenirs, and that his was the hand that deprived her of her lover. For awhile the discovery is fatal, but a fortunate railway accident affords an opportunity for explanation, and all comes right at last. The artistic excellence of the work is in its delineations, and the undertone of thoughtful sentiment, if not philosophy, that runs through it. Its text is the inevitableness of destiny; and the way in which the story illustrates this is as original as it is clever. It is a very charming novel, one of the very few which we wish longer.

Episodes in an Obscure Life. Three vols. Strahan and Co.

This is one of the few books that leave the critic no alternative but simply to heap together words of eulogy. Its least and lowest merit is its literary workmanship, and yet we scarcely know where we could look for more vivid pictures of accurate observation, of chaste simplicity, and unpretentious power. The large-hearted geniality, manly piety, and unwearied benevolence of the anonymous writer inform his eye and guide his hand, throwing gleams of radiance, aspects of humour, and visions of hope over the sad conditions of squalid misery which he describes, without a particle of Dickens's falsetto. He exhibits the noble kindly-heartedness and heroic self-denial that are often to be found in combination with rough exteriors and chronic misery. 'Little Creases,' 'Mr. Jones,' 'the Matron of the Refuge,' 'Emily, the crossing-sweeper,' 'Bessie,' 'Sam and his wife,' 'Peter and his wife,' 'Blind Stevens and his wife,' and half a score others, are illustrations not only of the kindly and often heroic human nature that there is among the poorest, but of the benevolent patient optimism in the writer that sees and exhibits it. It is long since 'Annals of the Poor' were recorded with so much genial sympathy and unconscious art.

The conditions of life described in these sketches are a humiliation and a sorrow. Never before have the underlying evils and miseries of our gilded civilization been so vividly portrayed. Legislators and philanthropists have a Herculean task before them in the amelioration of the physical and moral evils of such districts as the East of London—the overcrowding, the adulterated food, the festering disease, the moral corruption, the extreme penury, the lawless vice, the wretched ignorance, the impassable gulfs, not one but many, between the rich and poor. East-end ministers of religion know them, ragged-school teachers and City missionaries know them, few else have any conception of them. Little do travellers who arrive at the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway know that within a stone's throw of the platform scenes such as are here described are any day to be witnessed. The good and the evil both—the good in spite of evil that is simply appalling—conditions of poverty, lawlessness, vice, and suffering are nowhere in the wide world to be surpassed. Legislation may do something to remedy this state of things; commercial prosperity may do something; but it is, we fear, chiefly the result of an indolence and vice that neither can touch. In every village there are drunken, idle vagabonds; in great cities this element is fearfully multiplied and intensified, and it brings misery upon hundreds who are not of it.

All honour, then, to brave, patient, Christ-like men like the author of this work, who are content to live their obscure life, if they may but do something to alleviate it. Theirs is the only influence that can regenerate vice, or in any way effectually deal with it. We know something of the district which the writer describes, and happily we can testify to scores of young men and women of the upper classes who visit it, and cheerfully give evenings and Sundays to teach ragged children, instruct their mothers, and, so far as it is wise, afford them substantial help. No one can doubt that a clergyman, gifted as is the author of this work, has chosen his lot, abjured the ease and elegance of refined life which might have been his, that after the example of his Master he may seek and save the lost. How simply, sincerely, and wisely, as well as with what unconscious self-sacrifice, he does it, this noble book will show. With characteristic self-abnegation the author does not give his name. Every reader will heartily say, 'God bless him;' and if our recommendation could avail it should carry his book into every rich man's house and every comfortable home in the land.

Earl's Dene. By R. E. Francillon. In Three vols. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.

'Earl's Dene' has too obviously been written for the critics to satisfy a critic. The course of the narrative is interrupted by appeals ad clerum, which disturb the sense of illusion without convincing the judgment. The tone of the book is apologetic and explanatory, as if the author were under terror of the critic's lash, and were conscious that the movement of the story would seem so capricious as to require justification. This is a mistake in art, which seldom carries any compensation with it. The ordinary novel-reader is the most unexacting of human beings, and has unlimited capacity of digesting improbabilities; while the cultivated and analytic reader will be too conscious of the complexity of motives to be scared by superficial inconsistencies in the delineation of character. Thackeray was guilty of frequent 'asides,' but they were only outbreaks of cynicism or of pathos; incessant eruptions of psychology are less pleasing, if not more inartistic. But in all respects, this very defect included, 'Earl's Dene' is far above the level of common-place fiction. Though not strikingly original, it is evidently a transcription of life at first hand, and as seen through the medium of a refined and delicate intellect. The atmosphere of the book, though now and again disturbed by storms, is pure rather than bracing, and is fragrant with the aroma of refined reflection, which must be the outcome of long and intense experience. Decidedly feminine, we should say; overflowing with observations on the sex that look like self-revelations, and with sketches of the male animal which are inexpressibly grotesque when they are not weak. If anyone wants to see how Bohemia and its denizens picture themselves in an alien mind, he should study the portrait of Dick Barton, a cross between Caliban and Porson, an absurd and utterly impossible monster. But the characters are for the most part carefully drawn, by slight repeated touches, however, rather than by bold and luminous strokes. The dialogue sparkles with French esprit. There is obvious shrinking from common-place, as when the author refuses to describe first love; and, lastly, the novel is a novel with a purpose. It shows to men the ways of that great god 'Circumstance,' who seems a very Moloch, and winds up the tragedy by a general holocaust of his victims.

My Little Lady. Hurst and Blackett.

This charming novel, evidently by a female hand, is written with much grace and variety. The idea on which it is based has the advantage of perfect novelty. The 'little lady' is the child of an inveterate aristocratic gambler called Linders, who lives at Spa and Baden and other places of the same class, and who has a marvellous capacity for 'breaking the bank.' Whether he has a 'Martingale' we are not told, and indeed the authoress occasionally shows that she is quite properly unfamiliar with rouge et noir and roulette. But the conception is that this fellow, though on the whole a scoundrel, loves his little daughter Madelon, and that she, following him everywhere, becomes acquainted with the games he plays, and innocently regards gaming as quite a proper mode of making money. The complications herefrom arising are manifold, and are told felicitously: but the writer, who is probably a beginner, is apt to spin out her description and narrative to a rather wearisome length. Rapidity of narration is becoming one of the rarest qualities of modern authorship. That authors are paid for quantity instead of quality sufficiently accounts for this: and the great novel-manufacturers of the day, who turn out a volume a month and find readers for them, must, we suppose, be tolerated: but we cannot help regretting this unsatisfactory prolixity when, as in the present case, there is a pretty and piquant and original story to be told. However, it will be largely read, since it is high above the average of tales of the same order. Of the characters, the best drawn is the great gambler himself; hardly a possible personage, we suspect, but if possible curiously interesting. Madelon in her utter simplicity is very lovely; and she is quite conceivable, since there is no reason why a young girl should see any harm in gambling. Nine people out of ten would be puzzled to say on the instant why gambling is wrong: and the state of society shows that very 'honourable men' (as Mark Antony hath it) can see no harm in the doings at Tattersall's and the Victoria Club. So that a little girl whose father was an astute patrician gambler, should innocently take to rouge et noir, is quite intelligible—and a very pretty story is based upon it, with some strongly dramatic scenes therein. By the way, the names of flowers should be properly spelt, especially by lady writers: Westeria (vol. ii. p. 185) ought to be Wistaria, as it was named after Caspar Wistar, professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania.

Harold Erle. By the Author of "The Story of a Life."

The author of this poem reveals his high and delicate culture, and not unfrequently a true poetic grace. There are lines, passages, and entire scenes, which suggest the blank verse of Wordsworth. We are not reminded of the introspection and subjective might by which Wordsworth brings under the microscope of his 'inward eye' the beauties of nature and the mysteries of life, but of his bald simplicity, of his religious use of common-place, as well as of his partial inability to appreciate the difficulty which the great majority of the human race experience in perceiving a poetic side of 'common things.' 'Harold Erle' is a singularly painful theme, and one which will not readily lend itself to the Muses. The dangers incident to the marriage of blood relations, and the Nemesis which hereditary insanity imposes on some who enter into the lists of love, are not refreshing matters for contemplation. Blighted affections, the madhouse, and the grave, certainly provide material for high imaginative treatment, but when these strong colours are used chiefly with a view of entrapping us into a philosophic generalization of a universal law of marriage, we are disposed to feel that poetry itself has here degenerated into social philosophy. 'Harold Erle' is a powerful story, but the moral and the motive of it seem insufficient, and the dénouement is decidedly prosaic. The l'envoie of the poem seems to be: 'Young people, do not marry your first cousins; should your parents have been so foolish as to have done this, then, by all the nine Muses, do not marry at all.'