Chapter XXXI: Part 31

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 foetal 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

'Let him, the wiser man, who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape.'
'But we are born to other things.'

_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 manoeuvre 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--

'What sawe thou there?' than sayd the Kynge,
'Telle me now, yiff thou can:
'Sertes Syr,' he sayd, 'No thynge,
'But watres depe and waves wanne,'

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:--

Bright as the moon, when all the pomp of cloud
Reflects its lustre in a rosy ring,
The worthy centre of a glittering crowd
Of youth and beauty, shone the British King:
Above that group, o'erarched from tree to tree,
Thick garlands hung their odorous canopy.

'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 [Greek: Dios d' eteleieto boulê]: 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'--

'Sing, goddess, of Achilles, Peleus' son
The wrath that rose disastrous, and the cause
Of woes unnumbered to Achaia's host,' &c.

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.