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tions of such a world of light. So that every element of mental obscurity, all that tends to the dark and dismal in temperament, and all that veils the nobility of an heir of God, is dissolved, and fades away in the superior glory. The 'saints' possess it, therefore their sanctification is complete. No taint of sin remains, no trace of previous corruption can be discerned. The language of prayer is superseded by that of praise, and the tongue shall be a stranger for ever to moaning and confession. None but the saints, as being light in the Lord,' can dwell without light. An unregenerate spirit would feel itself so solitary and so unhappy, especially as it saw its hideousness mirrored in that sea of glass which sleeps before the throne, that it would rather plunge for relief into the gloom of hell, and there for a moment feel itself at ease among others so like it in punishment and crime. Again, the one inheritance is shared by many participants, and they who are to enjoy it are made meet for social intercourse. Selfishness vanishes before universal love, the intense yearnings of a spiritual brotherhood are developed and perfected; for the entire assemblage is so united as if only one heart thrilled in their bosom, while one song bursts from their lips."

Greece and the Greeks of the Present Day. By Edward About. Translated by Authority. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable.

1855.

THIS is a recent addition to the excellent little series of Miscellaneous Foreign Literature which we have already introduced to our readers. It is written with great vivacity, and bears every mark of truthfulness. And if truthful, our worst suspicions respecting the Greek character would seem to be confirmed. The statements made by M. About constitute a serious bill of indictment against a people who recently possessed the good will and sympathies of Western Europe. The manners of even the educated portion of the community would appear to be extremely uncaptivating, to use the mildest word at our command. Their want of courtesy to the female sex, their faithlessness to engagements, their inhospitable behaviour to foreigners, their greed of gain, and their cowardice,-make altogether a tableau upon which the eye does not love to dwell. M. About is a man with a character to lose, and we presume would not have ventured to make such circumstantial statements, so damaging to the people amongst whom he has sojourned, unless prepared to maintain their correctness.

Of the public notabilities of Greece, the Queen only appears to possess a distinctive character, and of her M. About thus writes :

"The Queen is a woman of thirty-five, who will not grow old for a long time; her embonpoint will preserve her. She is of a powerful and vigorous constitution, backed by an iron health. Her beauty, famous fifteen years ago, may still be perceived, although delicacy has given way to strength. Her face is full and smiling, but somewhat stiff and prim; her look is gracious, but not affable; it would seem as though she smiled provisionally, and that anger was not far off. Her complexion is slightly heightened in colour, with a few imperceptible red lines, which will never grow pale. Nature has provided her with

a remarkable appetite, and she takes four meals every day, not to speak of sundry intermediate collations. One part of the day is devoted to gaining strength, and the other to expending it. In the morning the Queen goes out into her garden, either on foot, or in a little carriage, which she drives herself. She talks to her gardeners, she has trees cut down, branches pruned, earth levelled; she takes almost as much pleasure in making others move, as in moving herself, and she never has so good an appetite as when the gardeners are hungry. After the midday repast, and the following siesta, the Queen goes out riding, and gets over a few leagues at a gallop to take the air. In the summer she gets up at three in the morning, to go to bathe in the sea at Fhalerum; she swims, without getting tired, for an hour together. In the evening she walks, after supper, in her garden. In the ball season she never misses a waltz, or a quadrille, and she never seems tired or satisfied."

The volume affords many quotable passages, but it is small and cheap, and we must send our readers to cull for themselves.

The Intellect, the Emotions, and the Moral Nature. By the Rev. William Lyall, Free College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Edinburgh: Constable and Co. 1855.

THE scientific character of this work will bear comparison with other modern works on the same subject, and is all the better for the author's not having been carried from his proper course, as certain others of considerable name have been, "by the prestige of the German philosophy and its outlandish nomenclature." And, what is a still higher recommendation, it renders to the authority of scriptural truth, as well as to that of common sense, a deference not always apparent in modern systems of philosophy. An analysis of the work, in this place, is impracticable. But the following are specimens, under each of its three divisions, of the style and spirit of the author.

Under the division of the Intellect, in reference to our earliest ideas of an external world, after stating, at some length, the theory of Dr. Brown upon that subject, in answer to it, he says, The process by which we pass from an external feeling to an external object as its cause, must ever remain unaccountable, but on the ground of an original and intuitive law of the mind. We believe in our own consciousness, as intimating a personal existence, according to the same kind of law. We might have had that consciousness for ever, and never passed to the idea of personal existence, without such a law or tendency of the mind, a tendency, like all its original tendencies, wisely stamped upon it by the Creator. The will of God, and the constitution which God has stamped upon mind, and that in its relations to an external world, is the only way of accounting for the idea or belief in question." He adds, with respect to the various theories which have been put forth from the time of Plato downwards, "They all proceed upon the necessity of accounting for what should have been left unaccounted for from the beginning," attempting an explanation of what is inexplicable, except by admitting the will of the Creator as a sufficient cause. Again, after mentioning the "greater intellectual and spiritual yearning of this age, he proceeds, "Mental philosophy must strike in

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with this hopeful characteristic. The productions of the pulpit (also) must excel the tendency. The tone struck must not be lowered in the teachings from the sacred rostrum; and it is interesting to think that, the more spiritual the ministrations of the pulpit are, they will the more meet both the intellectual and the spiritual wants of the age. Spiritual truth will always be found in advance of intellectual, or it will embrace it. Literary beauties, too, will always be found not far off from genuine spirituality, as flowers grow spontaneously in Paradise. Let us be assured of even the uncultivated mind uttering spiritual truths, and we are certain it will compel the most uncultivated to listen, and draw forth the homage of the highest intellect."

And how just, as well as beautiful, is the following supplement to Dr. Brown's enumeration of the secondary laws of the Association of Ideas! "There is an influential association principle which should not be passed over in connexion with this subject; we mean spirituality of mind, or that state of mind produced by the reception of the Gospel, and the regenerating grace of God. This gives a peculiar direction to all the thoughts. Where there is true spirituality, it will exert a more powerful influence than any other associating principle whatever. It will take all the rest into its own direction. It will be above and around all,-form the element of all. Science will not be contemplated but in connexion with the more astonishing display which God has made of His perfections in the scheme of redemption. The plurality of worlds will be reviewed, as the theatre of God's moral attributes, and in its connexion with the superior honour conferred upon this earth, as the scene of redemption. The song of the angels will be re-echoed, "The whole earth is full of His glory.' Nature will not be contemplated apart from-not merely God in nature, but-Christ, or faith within; and the life of faith will find every thing capable of reminding of Him, or yielding some lesson connected with the spiritual life which is hid with Christ in God."

In the same strain of reverence for Scripture and common-sense, under the division of the Emotions, he says, "Philosophy has contented herself with an incomplete view, is limited to the present state of man, and is not carried up to one of superiority and perfection. Man is not now what he once was. It is from a very different point of view, that we now contemplate his whole mental and spiritual constitution. We see it deranged, or broken into fragments, or an element in it, which introduces an entirely new set of phenomena. Whenever we enter the emotional department of our nature, this element must be taken into account. We cannot otherwise properly deal with the phenomena that are presented. It is not with this department, as with that of mind simply. There we had the phenomena simply, without any disturbing element to take into view. Now we have this element continually to have regard to. Writers on this department have, for the most part, had no regard to this element."

Under the division of the Moral Nature, we would hardly say, as he does, on the subject of the eternal and immutable distinctions between right and wrong, that "we may put the law of those distinctions in a place of authority in which it can be regarded apart from Him." We yet concur with him in the following observations: "Now," at least, "in our fallen state, God gathers up the prin

ciples of moral rectitude, and imposes them as a law upon us. He has now authoritatively promulgated it, while before He had written it only on the heart. He has challenged it as His law. He has put His will directly in the case. It is His law now pre-eminently. He has published the rule of life. He has put it on the tables of stone. He has given His imprimatur to it."

We regret our inability to make further extracts, and, without intending to commit ourselves to all his opinions or expressions, very heartily introduce it to the attention of our readers, as a work of more than ordinary interest and value.

The Wonders of Science: or, Young Humphry Davy (the Cornish Apothecary's Boy, who taught himself Natural Philosophy, and eventually became President of the Royal Society). The Life of a Wonderful Boy, written for Boys. By Henry Mayhew. London: David Bogue. 1855.

He

Of the numerous Christmas gifts, suitable for young people which are now offered to the public, we can conscientiously recommend the above. The subject is well chosen, and the style decidedly above what is generally thought requisite for the purpose. The career of Sir Humphry Davy is not followed with chronological accuracy; but its main portions are wrought into a very pleasing tale, and the interest it excites is likely to be of permanent benefit to the young. It is intended to create a taste for that self-education which is sure to follow a strong tendency to any particular branch of knowledge. Mr. Mayhew, while adapting his book to the present state of science, has deviated as little as possible from the biographical facts, and has striven to be true to the character of his hero, which, after all, is the great thing required in "story-books." has endeavoured to show youths that they have it in their own power to do as the Cornish apothecary's boy did, if they will but set about the work, quickened with the same determination to succeed. To prove our assertion, that the book is written in a style beyond what is customary in books of this class, (and we have constantly protested against writing down to the capacities of young people,) we give a portion of the description of the scenery of the Land's End: "Despite the blocks of granite that protruded through the land, like the bones of the earth itself, the ground round about was rich in parts with flowers. Now the soil was purple with the richest heaths, and now it was yellow as a plate of gold with the bloom of the dwarf-furze, the latter filling the air with a perfume like apricots, while the green patches of grass were almost iridescent with the various wild flowers that peeped with their delicate blossoms from out the blades. The air, too, was savoury with the odour of the sea, and fresh with the spray that, like a dew, brushed against the cheek. Still, amidst the solemn convulsion of rocks, and the vast belt of water which encompassed the beholder as far as the sight could stretch, a feeling of overpowering loneliness-a sense of one's own insignificance and helplessness, such as travellers are said to feel in deserts-oppressed the mind there,-there, at the very brink, as it were, of one's native country,-the last bit of the land with which

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all one's affections and associations were linked,-and wrapped in a ghastly silence, that was broken only by the moan-like booming of the monster sea, as it beat into the cavities of the cliff far beneath the feet, or, now and then, by the shrill shrieking of the cormorant, or the whirr of some passing sea-mew's wing." The scientific descriptions are lucid, and well illustrated by diagrams, and the volume is beautified by some excellent woodcuts.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and kindred Papers relating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman. By Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Jewett. 1855.

WE have been greatly disappointed in this volume. It is the expansion," truly, of an article which originally appeared in a Boston paper, entitled, "The Great Lawsuit,-Man versus Men; Woman versus Women." What that might mean, is not very intelligible to us on this side the water; but it seems it was a vindication of "woman's rights," as they are called. Whatever power that article may have possessed, it seems to be lost by being dilated into a volume, which is a medley of middling and very indifferent things, put together with little judgment, and without any obvious plan. The style is a sort of cross between German and American, which confounds us. To say that it is un-English, might not, by the friends of the authoress, be thought much condemnation; but we believe neither reader nor writer can understand some portions of the book. The opening sentences of a goodly volume ought certainly to bespeak the favourable opinion of the reader; yet the following are from the first page:

"If, oftentimes, we see the prodigal son feeding on the husks in the fair field no more his own, anon we raise the eyelids, heavy from bitter tears, to behold in him the radiant apparition of genius and love, demanding not less than the all of goodness, power and beauty. We see that in him the largest claim finds a due foundation. That claim is for no partial sway, no exclusive possessions. He cannot be satisfied with any one gift of life, any one department of knowledge or telescopic peep at the heavens. He feels himself called upon to understand and aid nature, that she may, through his intelligence, be raised and interpreted; to be a student of, and servant to, the universe-spirit; and king of his planet, that, as an angelic minister, he may bring it into conscious harmony with the law of that spirit."

We have given the punctuation as it is given to us. This may be fine writing, for any thing we know; but we decline the task of stating what it means, especially the last sentence, with its jumble of images. The book is written mainly in the same style.

Its aim, as far as we can judge, is to advocate the cause of woman; and much do we desire to see her claims earnestly, but judiciously, pleaded. But it is not by urging that she should mount the rostrum as well as wield the pen; or by such unscriptural dogmas, as that "the husband is not the head of the wife, because God has given her a mind of her own;" by which reason no mother can rule her children, because God has also given them "a mind of their own." The province of woman, and her capabilities and sympathies, agree; and a truly "strong-minded woman" is rejoiced to meet the obligations of her position, and to find her meed in her own conscience, and the

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