Brief Notices. HUMANITY. A Poem of Sympathy. London: Published for the Author, by Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co. NOTWITHSTANDING the very formidable cave canem "Sympathy the possessing tendencyAs earth tendency-is mind sympathy." printed on the outside and again on the frontispiece of this so-called poem, we ventured further, and have explored the several parts into which it is divided. We assure the gifted author of our intention to surrender at discretion all claim we have ever made to the possession of poetical taste and faculty, on the simple condition of his finding any man who is neither in an asylum nor a candidate for admission, who will pronounce our judgment of it unjust or unfounded. That judgment is, that these fortytwo pages of lines are devoid not only of all the higher qualities essential to poetry, but of all the lower in addition; that they do not contain even grammatical meaning; that they consist, in fact, of the most utterly incoherent rant and balderdash that ever disgraced good paper or honest type. The following is a fair specimen of the rest. It has no discoverable connection either with what precedes or follows it; and what this Anticyrean poet means us to gather from it unless it be that three Anticyras would not cure him-we are unable even to conjecture. "Air inclining-possessing sympathyWater gushing-possessing tendencyTendency the possessing sympathySympathy the possessing tendencyAnd as the car has-life has harmonyThe life is the possessing harmonyThe life is the possessing sympathyThe life is the possessing tendency&c. &c. &c. From east-west-north-south-rising sympathy SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE NOT AT VARIANCE. By Archdeacon Pratt. London, 1859. THE Scope of this pamphlet is to show that the further advances we make in science, the more the apparent discrepancies between it and Revelation disappear. There is no new argument in view; and what are called the "difficulties" of Revelation are not solved. We firmly hold that Scripture requires no such defences as this. To the candid inquirer the truth is obvious, viz., that there is no real discrepancy; to the difficultyseeker these small polemics are insufficient and inconclusive. BOHN'S SERIES. HISTORICAL LIBRARY: Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence. 4 vols. SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY: Carpenter's Vege table Physiology. Edited by Dr. Lankester. STANDARD LIBRARY: Schlegel's History of Literature. COLLEGIATE SERIES: New Greek Testament and Lexicon; Griesbach's Text, with the various readings of Mill and Scholz. Marginal References to Parallels, and a Critical Introduction. THESE are the four last issues of the different libraries which Mr. Bohn has so nobly taken upon himself to found in this country. They are worthy of all praise, not only in the careful editing bestowed on them, but in their clear type, and excellent binding-no little recommendation in this age of cheap slop-work. Of the first volumes, Evelyn's Diary, we hope to present our readers next month with an ample digest. All who know Dr. Carpenter's method and style will pronounce him the clearest teacher of rudimental science in our language. He has acquired that lucid, didactic, nervous mode of arrangement and expression of which French text-books are the models. His Vegetable Physiology is not, perhaps, equal to the Animal Physiology, which belonged to his own special department of study. The style, however, is inimitably his; and Dr. Lankester has supplemented whatever was formerly lacking in the way of minute erudition. We should say the first translation of Frederick Schlegel's lectures on the History of Literature was exceedingly periphrastic and tumid; the work of a green hand. His translation, however, has been twice revised; and so the tasteless sap has been converted into somewhat of the fibre and idiomatic verve of our English tongue. The lectures themselves are esteemed in Germany as forming "a great national possession." They are tinctured too deeply by the mediæval mysticism, the unsound imaginativeness which distinguished their author and made him a slave to the traditional authority of the Church of Rome. Nevertheless, they are wonderful productions, and will stimulate a healthful English mind by the very morbidness and erraticism of some of the views propounded, while the colossal learning they display will fill up the granaries of much poorer men. We trust Mr. Bohn's novel experiment in his collegiate series may meet the success it deserves. We have ourselves adopted his Greek Testament for regular reading, because of its handy compendiousness. Its accuracy is perfect. new LYRICS OF LIFE. By Frederick W. Farrar, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and author of " Eric," &c. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1859. "ERIC," a school-boy romance, following somewhat in the wake of "Tom Brown," having almost a year ago brought Mr. Farrar a certain reputation, he has been emboldened thereby to put forth the present "Lyrics of Life." Although the poems are for the most part brief, and of considerable variety as to subject, they are evidently intended by the author to bear a subtle connection, and to suggest by their fitful, irregular musical flow something of the mystery of existence. They are ranked under the following headings: Childhood, Poems of Love, Love's Sorrow, Poems of Love, the Happy Love, Poems of Death, End of the History. Unhappily the occult meanings and subtle chain of connection are nowise apparent to the reader. "Lyrics of Life" do not make a poem in the sense that the lyrics of "Maud" make a poem. As a whole the book is unsatisfactory; and when testing it from another side, we take up the lyrics singly and examine them, we do not find much to move admiration. These little poems are pretty enough, amiable enough, but they are one and all characterised by intellectual weakness, shallow alike in music and in meaning. Mr. Farrar has a bad practice of ekeing out his lines by an abominable reduplication of sound, as, speaking of summer, Or in the splendorous drowsiness of noon, Sunburnt, a-slumber in the yellowing corn. We certainly never expected to see a Fellow of Trinity College making use of "splendorous." In this little volume there are certain Greek translations; one of these we subjoin : SKOLION. Said the crab to the snake, with a cordial shake of the clapper-claw most kind, Straight should a comrade be, my friend, and not of a crooked mind. This is hardly worth translation; but what will the judicious reader think when he is informed that the couplet occupies a whole page of the volume. Verily, a marvel of book-making! The tiniest rivulet of print running through the widest meadow of margin ever seen in the experience of the present reviewer-perhaps, on the whole, the only new thing in Mr. Farrar's book; a novelty, unhappily, on which we cannot conscientiously bestow commendation. The following poem will give the reader a taste of Mr. Farrar's quality:- MY FIVE FRIENDS. As on the summer flowret's bell When o'er the past's blue distance glows Ah! while my simple thanks I write, And worthier verse, say we. The perusal of the present volume does not raise our estimate of the ability requisite to become a Fellow of Cambridge; and we are amazed that Mr. Farrar ever rushed into print with these pretty amiable, but decidedly weak-minded effusions. If he did not respect himself he ought to have respected his College. THE PRINCIPLES OF BEAUTY: AN ESSAY ON THE TEMPERAMENTS. By Mary Anne Schimmel Penninck; edited by her relation, Christiana C. Hankin. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts. 1859. A CERTAIN interest of an autobiographical kind appertains to this clever and important volume. It appears that the authoress, while yet a little child, lived with an invalid relation, and in the stillness of her hushed home was thrown pretty much on her own resources as regarded amusement and the filling-up of her time. Fortunately books were at hand, and still more fortunately she was in possession of a thinking brain and of an observant eye. Amongst her books was that French edition of Lavater which contains the physiognomical drawings. The sketches the child conned over, and having made herself mistress of them, began to carry her researches into the domain of the human face divine. She sketched profiles, made observations "on the subject of pleasing expression in general, and of beautiful human expression in particular. These occupations and speculations extended over a series of years, and the issue of these appeared in 1815, in the shape of a work entitled A Theory of Beauty and Deformity.' It would seem that the views therein propounded did not long satisfy the growing mind of the author, for during the last years of her life she was busy collecting materials for the present work, and she urged its publication after her death; in her last illness expressing herself to the following effect: I wish to discharge my trust as an author, in its full extent, to Him who gave it. And I believe that trust to have been to aid in the interpretation of the symbolic teaching of God in his visible creation, and to show to others what He has taught me of the manner in which we may make everything around us instinct, as it were, with the anointing of that spirit which has been bestowed upon ourselves; how we may imprint on our own domain of taste and domestic scenery, those very same characters of beautiful moral expression which God has written on the face of nature.' We have not the space-and it would, besides, be something out of our province to enter into any extended inquiry as to how much of new or true there is to be found in the pages of the book before us. Suffice it to say that the author writes with a beautiful charity of spirit, that her language is clear, graceful, and sometimes picturesque, and that on every occasion she recognizes God as the giver of every good and every perfect gift. She teaches us that we ought to be grate ful to Him for the amenities and elegances of social life, as for the more necessary corn, wine, and oil, and that the best life is one of constant remembrance of Heaven, and that a very little is sufficient reason for thanksgiving. One or two extracts we append, as landmarks to show the course of the argument: "We have given, as the definition of beauty, that it is that which gives pleasure to the mind in objects of sense; but it is obvious that nothing but mind can give pleasure to mind. If beauty, therefore, gives pleasure to the mind, it must be because it expresses some quality which belongs to the mind. But it is requisite that beautiful objects should not only express a mental quality, but that the mental quality expressed should be such as to call forth agreeable emotions." Beauty is distinguished from the non-beautiful, in that it conveys the reflection of the Divine character from the works of God to the feelings of the human heart; whereas the nonbeautiful either does not present that moral image to the heart with equal definiteness, or else presents no such image. Beauty is distinguished from deformity in that deformity, while it does present an actual and determinate moral expression, yet presents not that of the Divine perfection; but that of the worldly, the fleshly, or the diabolical image of the human heart as corrupted by the Fall. A PANORAMA OF THE NEW WORLD. By Kinahan Cornwallis. In two volumes. London: T. C. Newby, 30 Welbec-street. 1859. MR. CORNWALLIS has been a great traveller, and dashes off impressions of the countries he has visited in a gay rattling manner. He has been in Australia and Peru; and the record of his wanderings to and fro upon the face of the earth is amusing if it is not particularly instructive. He does not look on foreign lands with the eye of a philanthropist, or a political economist, or a Christian, but simply as a gay observer of manners, with a quick eye for the picturesque and the odd, and with a strong proclivity to the funny. We cannot speak highly of Mr. Cornwallis's style of writing. It is forced, jerky, and atrociously smart. Whatever he loses, he cannot lose his poor joke. He pays more attention to his manner than to its matter, and, as is frequently the case with writers of that stamp, his laboured passages are invariably his worst. No one will resort to these pages for facts or information, yet despite their bad tastes, levity, and that peculiar turn of wit sedulously cultivated by the sub-editors of country newspapers, any one may agreeably enough spend an hour or two over the gay, rapid chapters. We cannot praise the book, although we award it the possession of interest. Vulgarity and self-conceit are often amusing, although the amused is not bound to recommend vulgarity and self-conceit. CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY; as exemplified in the Life and Character of the late Joseph Sturge, Esq. A Sermon, delivered in Carr's Lane Chapel, by John Angell James. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. ONE of Mr. James's most characteristic sermons, and one of his best. The veterans of the Pulpit, like those of the Senate, scem emulous of the obituary of the Jewish Lawgiver. Certainly Mr. James's "eye is not dim, neither is his natural force abated." It was fitting that Birmingham's greatest philanthropist should have his merits embalmed by her greatest preacher, also one of his oldest friends. Mr. Sturge was one of those men who are the quiet and exclusive product of an advanced and matured Christianity, at once the outcome and the cause of its strength. His memory is blessed. THE ECLECTIC. SEPTEMBER, 1859. I. REVOLUTIONS OF RACE. Revolutions in English History. 1 Vol. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. London: J. W. Parker and Son. 1859. FROM the days of Herodotus and Tacitus, down to the times of Machiavel and Giannone, of Comines and Davila, of Hume and Gibbon, of Müller, Hegel, and Heeren, there have not been wanting lengthy and learned disquisitions on the many ways in which history may be most fittingly written. Precepts, illustrated by the practice of ancient, mediæval, and modern times, exist in tolerable abundance, as to the comparative advantages of this or that style, or of this or that peculiar mode of treating historical subjects. On topics of this kind it is neither our intention nor our business to dwell at any length; for we hold that whatever may be the opinions of critics, the writers of history will follow pretty much their own bent and genius, and adopt the style and treatment of historical topics most conformable to their own peculiar views. Chauteaubriand has said, in one of his most eloquent dissertations on history, that each historical manner has its own advantages, provided it is based on truth and naturalness. "Toute manière est bonne pourvu qu'elle soit vraie," are his very words; and the author of the "Etudes Historiques" himself sometimes excelled in the sententious style, sometimes in the florid, sometimes in the pathetic, occasionally in the philosophical, and almost uniformly in the picturesque mode of writing history. In whatever manner, however, history may be written, if it possess the basis of truth, of which we have spoken, it must be equally valuable and interesting. The speculations of the philosopher, the monitions of the preacher, and the disquisitions of the moralist, are shaped and pointed by historical examples; and dramatists and essayists have generally drawn their best characters, VOL. II. P |