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it makes you hear and see the waves. As a whole, the volume is such as cannot but sustain and increase the reputation of its author.

The Roua Pass; or, Englishmen in the Highlands. By ERICK MACKENZIE. 3 vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.-Should any of our readers have purposed visiting the Highlands during the past month, and been prevented, we know how difficult it will be to suggest any compensation for such disappointment. But what we can do, we will. We We propose to them to read the Roua Pass. Words are weak, we know, compared with things; but here, at least, are word-pictures of Highland scenery, drawn from nature, graphic and life-like. Let imagination set to work, and essay, thus aided, to realize the wild forms and brilliant hues of loch and waterfall, of wood and mountain. Highland customs, too, as well as Highland scenery, have a prominent place in the tale. The personages of the story, too (three charming young ladies especially), are for the most part such as readers learn to know with pleasure, and part from with regret.

Poems and Songs. By JAMES MCDOUGAL. Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co.-These poems possess the merit of nature and simplicity. With the exception of the first in the book, they are the spontaneous expression of poetic feeling, unwarped by imitation, and free from all pretence. A Lesson' is right and healthful in sentiment, but heavy and verbose. In Mr. McDougal's theological blank verse there is nothing of that presumption or irreverence which disfigures some such attempts. But themes of this description, however befitting his meditations as a man, should make no part of his handiwork as poet. 'Summer Scenes' are far better. Here are faithful, unaffected pictures of our English country life, such as always please. The author succeeds better, generally, in rhyme than in blank verse. The latter tempts him to diffuseness and rhetorical common-place. His descriptions are his best parts, and they show that he has not loved and studied nature in vain. The last of the sonnets is excellent. Confession,' and 'Go, look, Love, on the Sea,' may be mentioned, among several other spirited songs, as animated by a true lyrical afflatus. As a whole, these poems are perfectly free from everything morbid or sentimental. They are the utterance of a manly and modest nature, of a mind well balanced, and a heart alive to every kindly sympathy. Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men. By FRANCOIS ARAGO. Translated by Admiral W. H. SMYTH, D.C.L., F.R.S., &c., the Rev. BADEN POWELL, M.A., F.R.S., &c., and ROBERT GRANT, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., &c. Longmans.-It is a common complaint that the lives of men of letters and men of science are deficient in variety and incident. The deficiency complained of is real, if by incident we mean some striking change in outward circumstances. The great events of a studious life are commonly found in the inward world of thought, of experiment, of research. Its epochs are the dawn of a discovery, the change of an opinion, the final realization of some longcherished surmise. Its internal movements may be such as to change or to enlarge a thousand channels of industry; to perplex or to animate a generation with new problems or with unimagined hopes.

Its external movements may consist of little more than a migration from the blue room to the brown-a journey to the metropolis-a removal from one university to another. This comparative monotony will probably characterise such lives still more decidedly in the future. As the fields of scholarship and science widen, their cultivation demands more imperatively the entire devotion of a peaceful, almost solitary life. When the sciences were fewer, their range narrow, their traditions contained in a few old folios, it was possible, and very common, to combine the scientific with the active life-with a political or military career. In the sixteenth century, the ardent lovers of knowledge would drive abreast several sciences and several arts. The dependent position of scholars sent them from place to place in search of patronage, and involved them in the rise or ruin of the great man with whom they took service. The lives of the Cardans, the Agrippas, the Campanellas, abound in vicissitude and adventure.

Most of the eminent Frenchmen whose lives and services are so ably sketched in this collection, are striking exceptions to the rule of which we have spoken. Devoted as they were to a secluded pursuit of science, modern times afforded them little more rest than fell to the lot of their predecessors three hundred years ago. The wars of the sixteenth century left unharmed many of the retreats of learning. The convulsions which closed the eighteenth suffered no asylum to survive throughout the length and breadth of France. A revolution which allowed to no man concealment, to no man repose, drove the savant also from his retreat. A whirlwind which left nothing where it was, swept him away als, he knew not whither. Yet if science lost something by such interruptions, philanthropy was the gainer. We see a Bailly taken from his astronomic observations and his historic studies, and made Mayor of Paris, at a crisis full of difficulty and danger. But it is a satisfaction, as we behold the terrible scarcity of food, aggravated by confusion and by panic, to know that such a man is at such a post. So much humanity, so much perseverance, so much conscientious devotedness, will do all that can be done to bring the chaos into order, and save the perishing multitude. This Revolution, which uses him for awhile, will presently destroy him, as a savage breaks a curious instrument in a fit of superstitious fear. But before the blade of the guillotine can fall, Bailly has won himself a name among those not less eminent for greatness of heart than for greatness of intellect among those whose devotion to the cause of science was rooted in devotion to the cause of humanity.

If revolutionary France, assailed by united Europe, owed a debt to those heroic recruits who bled on all her frontiers, not less indispensable was the administrative skill of her men of science. Some, indeed, like Meunier, forsook the laboratory for the field. Others, like Carnot, rendered inestimable service at home-the presiding minds of a marvellous organization, improvised amidst universal suspicion and alarm. Carnot forgets his experiments on balloons and his essay on machines, to become a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety, and in spite of the jealousy of Robespierre, retains his head,

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because such attainments cannot be spared. It was he who, from a tumultuous mass of brave but undisciplined men, produced fourteen armies; selected, with the intuition of genius, the ablest men for command; and directed by his indefatigable despatches a succession of victorious campaigns. Truly was it said of him-Carnot has organized victory.' Fourier and Costas were placed at the head of Bonaparte's exploring commissions in Egypt, and between skirmishes with the wild horsemen of the desert, observed the stars, collected plants, investigated the soil, studied inscriptions. Arago's own life, abundant in adventure, has already appeared in English.

It will be obvious from what has been said that those who read for amusement only, as well as the students of science, will find abundant interest in the biographies contained in the present volume. When time presses (and when does it not?) it is pleasant to read a life within the compass of an essay; and these essays are vivacious, graphic, sometimes eloquent. In addition to the names already mentioned, the series comprises those of Herschel, Laplace, Malus, Fresnel, Thomas Young, and James Watt.

Below the Surface: a Story of English Country Life. 3 vols. Smith, Elder, and Co-A more pleasant story we have not read for many a day. The author desires, as the title implies, to look a little beneath the surface of English society, and tell us what he finds there. But his scrutiny is never that of the cynie, or mere fault-finder. His scenes and personages are really those of English country life, and he so presents us to ourselves that, without losing a jot of our good humour, we are ready to set about amending what is wrong as speedily as wisdom warrants. The conversations are pointed and sparkling without unnatural effort.

Married life, even with true affection on either side, will sometimes have its misunderstandings. A young couple in this tale suffer much in this way, from trivial causes. The story, as it dips beneath the surface, teaches (a lesson which some learn only too late) that such difficulties are easily removed by speedy and candid explanations between the parties first concerned, but grievously aggravated when friends and relatives interfere with their condolence, their suspicions, or advice.

The scenes at the Swampshire Arms' are faithful pictures of many a piece of public business, as managed in the country. We would hope that actual parallels to abuses such as the Clawthorp Asylum' are now becoming rare. But they can become extinct only as visiting committees, and bodies of inspectors, shake off their corporate callousness, and listen, each man for himself, to the voice of conscience. Sundry parties among us, theological and social, are introduced into the picture. Leading phases of thought and policy find living representatives. But no party can say that their portrait is drawn with an unfeeling hand, or that they are insulted by caricature. The pleasure of the book consists in its happy rendering of daily life, in this busy, prosperous, grumbling England of ours: its profit, in the tendency it has to increase our honest dislike of half work, of all pre

tence and surface-patching, and to urge the reader to resolve that whatever he, at least, professes to do, shall be honestly and thoroughly done.

This is, we believe, the first fiction the accomplished author has given to the world. We trust it will not be the last.

The Rose of Ashurst. By the Author of Emilia Wyndham,' 'Two Old Men's Tales,' &c. 3 vols. Hurst and Blackett.-There are still to be found some worthy individuals who apprehend all sorts of danger when they see a young person reading a novel. It is waste of time. Novels enervate, rather than exorcise, the mind. Nay more, they convey views of life totally false. They extricate people from their troubles by impossible strokes of good fortune. They teach the young to sigh for some such wonderful escape from duty or from difficulty, instead of themselves surmounting obstacles by patience, energy, and skill.

Such charges are serious. Once they were generally just. But to very few of our recent works of fiction are they applicable. The purport of very many of them is directly opposed to the tendency complained of. Two might be singled out at once (among a multitude of worthy competitors) as specific correctives to the false pride of indolence, and the selfishness of sentimentalism. Both are by ladies. One is entitled John Halifax, Gentleman. The other is this Rose of Ashurst. Let the most careful parent most carefully read these books. It will be strange if he is not convinced that their influence on the mind of his children can be only healthful and bracing. The reader who allows such fictions to do their work upon him, rises from their perusal persuaded anew of the beauty and the power of kindness-of the dignity of duty, however apparently humiliating of the blessing that lies in humble, strenuous, self-helping labour. He will be more ready to smile the smile that makes those about him happy-to suppress the word that would give them pain-to deny himself for another, and to conceal the self-denial; and will grow capable of a larger happiness within, as he diffuses more widely happiness without.

City Poems. BY ALEXANDER SMITH. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. It has been observed that the prose of Gibbon excels in the sentence, the prose of Macaulay in the paragraph. Similar distinctions are to be found among the poets. One is distinguished for the harmony and oneness of his poems as a whole. A severe self-control subordinates ornament to action, and constantly gives law to imagination. Matthew Arnold is eminent among our young poets in this respect. Another, like Dobell, displays a masterly skill in the building up of separate passages of blank verse, which answer to the paragraph in prose. Marlowe, again, among our old dramatists, inferior in some other respects, was surpassed by Shakespeare only in the melody or the might of individual lines. And in this kind of excellence Alexander Smith is no mean proficient. His longer poems owe their claim to admiration not so much to any skill of construction, dramatic force, or compass of thought, as to the frequent felicity of single lines, or of

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couples and triads of lines. 'Horton' is a poem dramatic only in form. Squire Maurice' is dramatic in reality, understanding by the word, successful impersonation.

But what has been said concerning the isolated or irregular character of these beauties is applicable only to the blank verse poems. The stanzas are wrought throughout with a truly artistic hand. Poems like 'Glasgow,' and 'The Change,' are Mr. Smith's masterpieces. They vindicate completely his poetic claims, for in that kind of poem only the genuine gift can achieve success. The last stanza in the song to Barbara is perfect of its kind. Admirable, too, is the description which opens the second part of 'A Boy's Poem.' Mr. Smith should seek, still more earnestly, choiceness, rather than abundance of metaphor. A great number of his metaphors and similes are of the right sort legitimate and sterling beauties. But some of them should be consigned by the poet to the rhetorician. Much nonsense is talked about the necessity for a sparing use of such ornament. If the metaphor be worked into the main substance of what is said, be neither cumbrous nor over-laboured, it is always a delight to the mind. If, however, metaphor be much used, it should very frequently be such as lies in a word, rather than a clause-an epithet, rather than a sentence. There are compressed figures and telling touches of this kind, which show that Mr. Smith is not wanting in the faculty; let. him only address himself to its farther cultivation.

The Education of Character, with Hints on Moral Training. By Mrs. ELLIS. 8vo. John Murray.-This is a good book-a better book than we have seen from the same pen. It treats of education private and public, higher and lower; of the causes which do so much to render it ineffective and even mischievous; and of the means by which it may be made more what it ought to be. The term 'Education' is used by Mrs. Ellis as embracing the culture of the whole character of the moral, at least as much as of the intellectual powers. The style of the book, indeed, is much too diffuse and attenuated for our taste, and there are a good many religious world phrases in it which had better have been substituted by others; but most readers will account the book pleasantly written, and few persons engaged in any way in the training of youth can read it without advantage.

History of Civilization in England. By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. Vol. I. 8vo. J. W. Parker and Son.-We should judge from this volume that Mr. Buckle is a person of good means and much leisure; that he is possessed of a good library, and is most assiduous in endeavouring to make himself master of its contents. But whether the result will be such as to realize his own wishes, or those of his friends, is, we think, more than doubtful. Mr. Buckle thinks that among all the subjects with which the intellect of recent times has been occupied, there is hardly one that has been left in a state so little scientific and so little satisfactory as history. The qualifications which he exacts from the man who would treat this subject adequately, are enormous. There is nothing, it seems, in the domain of physics or metaphysics