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Though still -without character as a political organa the North British Review is regaining something of its old vigour in literature and science , the last number having several articles of interest in these departments . The scientific articles , howevetj are the best ; and in these the substance is much better than the style . The first paper , for example , entitled " The Philosophy of History —Niebuhr and Sir G . 'C . Lewis , " discusses the early history of Rome in a thoroughly scientific spirit ; but the style is so stiff , pedantic , and affected , that few general readers will peruse it to the end . The writer speaks of his paper as an " epigraph . " Beferring to XTiebuhr ' s assumption that the unknown in . early Roman history may be interpreted by the early history of modern nations , he says : — - "It is assented to , nay urged , by even the latest of his adversaries , of whose work ( which heads our epigraph ) the avowed ohject is antagonistic . " Take another sentence in which , as throughout the article , sensile is used for sensuous : "For idol-worship is the merely sensile veneration of that moral nature , which those who feel it not within them must set in matter before their senses . " Here the philosophy is as bad as the construction . Further on he uses " impulsions" for impulses ; " recognizance " for recognition or perception ( "recognizance of sense" ); " exigence" for
extreme : " The real import of the perv erse exigence is here again antagonism , the reaction of empiricism against illusory hypothesis . " Again , he delights to use old verbs in obsolete senses , as " edifying" for material building , and to fabricate new ones , such as "to despotize , " "to synthetize" at will . These are but a few specimens of the pedantic phraseology which the writer affects , but the construction is worse than the diction . The style is often purely execrable , many sentences being , for want of a little straightforward syntax , unintelligible . In addition to the specimens already given , take the following : — " It must be obvious that in any subject the explanation of the interior presupposes and depends upon a knowledge of the exterior . The latter aspect is exhibited spontaneously and to the senses : the other is
accessible but to the intellect and by art . But as those courses of inquiry run adversely to each other , the exterior along the surface , the introverted athwart the body—the speculations are reciprocally thought to be repugnant . The extremes of oscillation are easier noted in their contrariet y ^ than they can be in their community of subject and impulsion . " One other specimen will suffice : — " We now affirm confidently that the thesis could he proved by mere induction of the Teuton , as it has been of the Roman side . The task would even be much easier , as the documents are here more ample and are dissembled by no pedagogical prepossessions of classicality" Despite the style , however , the article is well worth reading . It expounds the central characteristics of the Latin , Celtic , aiid Teutonic races in a manner which , though not so new or original as the writer supposes , is both philosophical and suggestive .
The second article on Professor Owen , in a brief outline of his life and works , pays a . just tribute of admiration and respect to the first scientific tliinker of the day . Among the remaining articles is a sensible one on the Scottish Universities , a subject just now of some Parliamentary interest , to which we may probably return . The last number of the new British Quarterly Review contains an excellent criticism of Mr . Fxoude ' s History of England , in which many of his conclusions are combated with great force both of evidence and logic 5 an interesting paper on "Gustave Planche . and French Fine Art Criticism , " and a very readable one on a well-worn subject—" Horace "Walpole . "
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An English translation of M . Alexa ^ dre Herzen's remarkable pamphlet , which we noticed , as it appeared originally in French , in a recent number , has , we observe with pleasure , been published by Messrs . Trubner and Co . We have received from M . Hebzen the following note respecting the mistranslation of an important sentence in his text : — In an English translation of my pamphlet inscribed " La Franco ou l'Anglcterro ?" amongst other misprints one has stolen in -which disfigures tho meaning of a thought . In page 17 it is said : — _ " It is nothing to lack sympathy -witii the day of St . Bartholomew ; what is wanted is sympathy with the days of September . " Now , this is quite the contrary of what I said in page 40 : " C ' est peu do no pas avoir de sympathio pour la St .-Barthdlcmy . il faut atusi nepas avoir de sympathio pour les journdes d « Scptembre . " You will oblige me , air , by giving publicity to these lines in yonr widely circulated paper . Your obedient servant , A . Herzbn , Editor of tho -Pofotr Star .
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MERITALE'S ROMAN HISTORY . A History of the Romans wider the Empire . By Charles Merivale , B . D . To ! VI . Longman and Go . Mb . MerivAl ^' s work approaches its completion . He has traversed the great Julian and arrived at the Flavian era ; he has described the turbulent and convulsive ' origin of the Roman Empire , and written the biographies of the emperors , from the first Cassar to Titus , and his sixth volume , closing upon the humiliation of Judaea , perfects the picture of an epoch extending through a hundred and twenty years of Roman history . Two hundred and fifty years form the next cycle , but here the scale of narration will necessarily be smaller , so much so , indeed , that Mr . Merivale proposes to conclude his labours in two more volumes , for lie has lost the help of Tacitus ; Suetonius will shortly fail him ; Dion has already dwindled into an epitomist , and a few pages will exbaust the genuine historical suhstance contained in
the Herodian and Augustan annals . He has amply described , not only the line of emperors from Csesar to Vespasian , hut the statesmen and warriors , the philosophers , poets , and princes of their times . He cannot do the same ¦ with Trajan or Hadrian ., with Marius or Sulla , yet he can analyze the social and political organization , the military and . legislative codes that grew up during the last epoch of imperialism , from the day when the ArcU of Titus rose to commemorate tlve fall of Jerusalem to the collapse of the Flavian dynasty ; he can depict the manners , the morals , the ideas of mankind , when heathenism was at its zenith ; lie can restore to the eye the laws , institutions , and rituals of Paganism when jt wore the Roman purple ; he can trace the dispersion of the classic myths and the rise of Christianity , and , although from the fact that the labour required will be out of all proportion to the space to be filled , a considerable interval must elapse before the two remaining volumes can make their appearance ; we hope that Mr . Merivale will not withhold longer than is absolutely necessary the remaining portions of that which , in its completeness , will be a truly great work .
m . The sixth volume includes the reigns of Nero , Galba , Vitellius , Vespasian , and Titus—filling a period insignificant if measured by years , but unparalleled in its illustration of imperialism as carried to its climax : in Rome . We have never seen so- full or lucid a presentation of Nero ' s career . It formed no part of Gibbon ' s plan to draw the full-length efligy of Unit tyrant . Suetonius , garrulous as he is , supplies only a fragmentary account ; but Mr . Merivale , drawing from every source of authority , tempering traditionary statements by criticism , and working his materials into a consistent shape , has written the best "biography of Nero in existence . This alone would confer upon ihe new volume of his history a conspicuous and permanent importance ; but there arc other episodes of deep interest upon which ho has thrown a strong and clear li ght of learning and judgment—tlie Claudiun policy in Gaul , the suppression of the Druid hierarchy , the subjugation of Britain , the insurrection of Bondicea nnd the Iceni , as preliminaries to tho operation of that great curse which gave the Romans to Nero during
fourteen infamous and miserable years . After his fall , tho stormy reign ot Galbft , the brief struggle of Otho , rouacd from voluptuousness to empire , the supremacy of the glutton Vitellius , the civil war led by Vespasian , tlie provincial revolts , tho Flavian conspiracies , and the . concentration of the Roman power against Jerusalem , fill many weighty pages ; but the moral of the narrative is nowhere developed in a form so imposing as in the record of Nero . The scene of his death is described in one of the most remarkable chapters wo Imvo read for many years . Mr . Merivalo has not only traced the hto of tho Domifciaw despot—whoao name has furnished a term of execration to
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We have received the following letter from New Zealand , in reply to a suggestion thrown out by the Leader nine months since . We cast the bread of thought upon the waters , and it returns to us after many days : A review in tho Leader for July , 1857 , page 6 « 6 , of « Memorial , Scientific and L-itorary , of Andrew Crosso , tho Electrician , " concludes with tho significant quoationa Are tho facts as he states them ? If so , what ia their interpretation ? " ' Tho facts could not have heen otherwise than aa he had atated them , inasmuch as they are explicitly described , « s well aa detailed with tho utmost possible candour and with overy evidence of tho moat unquestionable truthfulness . Their interpretation i » a problem requiring certain predicates as a commencement to its true solution
1 . Inorganic matter is acknowledged to be specific as regards both permanent relative weight and the number and arrangement of its atoms in a given space . 2 . Organic matter is known to be generated from a cell , and not to possess , during its progress from life to death , any specific permanent relation to space , either as regards weight or the number and arrangement of its atoms . Discarding the doctrine of chances and the infinite series of probabilities , let us proceed thus : — No one description of inorganic matteT has ever been found subsisting upon another or converting any other into its own substance , so a 9 that it might grow in magnitude
and increase in weight . Every supposition to the contrary of this is a gratuitous assumption , wholly incapable of pToof . from any well-grounded facts . On this subject the union of two or more inorganic bodies with each other , as in chemical Combination , so as to produce a compound body resembling neither , need not be stated as an acknowledged truth . All synthetical inorganic processes , however , whether "b y means of an instantaneous chemical combination or by a slow and imperceptible metamorphosis , as in the silent operations of nature , yield only substances that may again be reduced . to the same quantities of their primary elements if subjected to a careful analysis- The so-called organic chemistry cannot , in this place , be taken kjto consideration . ' .-.: .
Organic matter is admitted to be the product solely of organization , namely , a result which can only arise out of a pre-existing type ; generation , in some form , or by some union or mode of vital process being essential to its propagation no less than to its continued origination and multiplication . Organic matter , moreoveT , is universally acknowledged to undergo certain phases , commencing with the primitive vital cell , and thence passing throTugh an innumerable series of mutations , until , either from age or accident , individual vitality becomes extinct . As , however , organic bodies , without any exception , prey upon each other and derive their subsistence from the consumption and assimilation of each other , their vitality being preserved by such means , with : the aid of air and water as adjuncts , and by light and lieat , electricity and magnetism , as auxiliaries ; so , also , it follows that vitality terminates in inertia , and , therefore , that tlie final state of all organization is deorganization , followed by decomposition , through the agency of a series of living destroyers , from the worm , downwards , to the final undistinguisbable atom .
The interpretation , then , is , that the principle attempted to have been promulgated by " Andrew Crosse , the Electrician , " namely , that organic matter can be originated otherwise than as herein described—out of inorganic matter—wholly fails of being established ; the reverse principle , therefore , clearly having to he admitted as the true one , namely , that the eliminations of organic bodies tend in a uniform continuity towards centring in , and that they do finally terminate in , the mineral , the metallic , or the inorganic state . Wellington , New Zealand , John " Wallace . February 18 , 1858 .
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472 T ^ E LEADER . _ ___ ^ P ^ PiJg ^ M ^^ g ^ 1858 .
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. ——«— ¦ Critics are not thelegislators , tout the judges and police of literature . They do not makelaw 3- —they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review . ¦ ? : . ¦ ¦' . ' :
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1858, page 472, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2242/page/16/
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