(5th S. xii. 170, 259, 279.) WM. H. PEET. "The greater the truth, the greater the libel." This appears to be a misquotation from an epigram of Burns. When on a visit to Stirling, during the time of his connexion with the Excise, the poet wrote some verses reflecting rather unfavourably upon the reigning dynasty as compared with the exiled Stuarts. Upon being admonished by a friend for his imprudence he said, "Oh, but I mean to reprove myself for it," and thereupon wrote the following: "Rash mortal and slanderous poet, thy name Shall no longer appear in the records of fame; Says the more 'tis a truth, sir, the more 'tis a libel." The Mansfield referred to was no doubt William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and fourth son of Viscount Stormont. He was born at Perth in 1704, and survived till 1793. Being SolicitorGeneral in 1746, it fell to him in this capacity to prosecute Lovat and the other Jacobite lords, who were tried, for their connexion with the rebellion of the previous year. At a later period of his life he was subjected to many bitter attacks by Junius, being on the unpopular side in politics. He is described as having been a fluent and graceful speaker, but does not rank high as a lawyer. The above epigram appears in all the editions of Burns I have seen. Miscellaneous. J. RUSSELL. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. The Etched Work of Rembrandt, a Monograph. By Francis Seymour Haden, F.R.C.S. A New Edition. (Macmillan & Co.) actually before us a great amount of the observations would be of no avail, and Mr. Haden therefore adopts what he calls the "fiction" of an exhibition, "in lieu of a display of Rembrandt's works in chronological sequence visible to the eye." But what is now a fiction was once a reality, because in the year 1877 such an exhibition was visibly established at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and many of his readers have therefore only to appeal to their memory. Having marshalled all the so-called Rembrandt etchings in chronological order, Mr. Haden proceeds to prove that they are not all the entire work of Rembrandt's own hand. He shows that the master had established a school of etchers, who worked with him and under his direction. "His house," according to Sandrart, "was constantly full of pupils of good family, who paid him 100 florins annually, without counting the advantage he derived from their painting and engraving, which For this puramounted to 2,000 or 2,500 florins more." pose, in 1630 or thereabouts, Rembrandt had taken a large house on the Breedstraat of Amsterdam, the upper portion of which, according to Houbraken, was divided into cellules or small studios for the reception of pupils, who, by this kind of segregation, were to preserve their individuality. Among them the following names are prominent: Jan Van Vliet, Ferdinand Bol, Philip Koninck, Philip Virbeecq, and Solomon Savry. Generally speaking, they worked not only from Rembrandt's own designs, receiving his corrections and imprimatur (p. 18), but also from their own inventions as well as the designs of others. The strangest fact of all is, as Mr. Haden tells us (p. 19), that "several of these artists came to be, in the estimation of Rembrandt's contemporaries, of greater account than he. If a public work or historical fact, such as the visit of Henrietta Maria to Amsterdam, had to be illustrated, it was Lievens or Bol, not Rembrandt, who was called upon by the authorities picture, it was Flink who was the Millais of the day. If to immortalize it. If a large price had to be paid for a verses in honour of painting had to be composed, it was to Koninck, not Rembrandt, that the bays were awarded." "It was to no purpose that Rembrandt, then in the Rozen-gracht, was painting and etching with a splendour hitherto unequalled. A reaction had set in. His prestige had departed." take their place in chronological order, Mr. Haden By dint of reading the etchings themselves, as they arrives at some new and distinct conclusions respecting the great artist's movements after the death of his first wife, Saskia, in 1642. He observes first of all, during this "middle period," the sudden appearance of landscape, to which, indeed, his work is almost wholly confined. He says: "We enter upon the middle period with, as it were, a new sensation. Rembrandt had made a great name, he had married, and his wife was dying; and we know that after her death things did not go well with him. We also remember that about this time less began to be heard about him. Is there anything about the work of this period to throw light on this obscure part of his career? We have said, as an apology for our new method of approaching the subject of Rembrandt, that the accidents and events of a man's life are the immediate incentives and regulators of his work. Inversely, then, ought not the work to tell us something about the man?" (p. 32.) MR. SEYMOUR HADEN, whose eminence as a practical etcher is universally acknowledged, has here put forth in a brief and concise form his conception of the manner in which the entire series of Rembrandt's etchings ought to be arranged for study. Like Vosmaer, the principal Looking, therefore, at the preponderance of landscape, biographer of Rembrandt, and Mr. Middleton, whose and of subjects personally associated with his friend Jan work we specially noticed in March last, Mr. Seymour Six, Mr. Haden (p. 33) conjectures that "Rembrandt Haden advocates the adoption of a chronological system. had found refuge and solace at this time with his symBy this course there is no doubt that the works of pathetic and powerful friend at Elsbroeck; and that the artist and many of the events of his outer life these things and all these landscapes-and possibly the become still more intelligible. Without the etchings' Hundred Guilder Print' itself-were thought out and finished in his companionship and under his sheltering roof." To works, therefore, pertaining to this period our author henceforth proposes to assign the denomina tion, "Elsbroeck Group." To these views, however, Mr. Middleton does not yield an unqualified assent. In the remaining pages the technical details of Rembrandt's two grand works, the "Descent from the Cross" and the "Ecce Homo," which, although bearing very different dates, are regarded as companion compositions, not unnaturally occupy a good deal of Mr. Haden's attention. Looking at this work as a whole, we are glad to have in a succinct form, and with so much technical authority, a statement of the true condition of Rembrandt's work; but it would have been still more valuable and agreeable for future reference if these contributions had not been encumbered by allusion to petty squabbles in which the public at large could never be expected to feel interested. The Light of Asia. By Edwin Arnold. (Trübner & Co.) THOSE who hold that poetry should either be a "milkwalk for babes," or concern itself exclusively with the "Worm-drilled vellums of old-world revenges," will be somewhat puzzled to account for a work so much hors ligne as a blank-verse poem narrating, from a Buddhist point of view, the life of the great Gautama, "Prince Siddartha styled on earth race we meet with many difficulties, M. de Quatrefages would be the last to deny, but when he cannot explain them he is content, now as in 1868, like a true man of science, to say, "Je ne sais pas." Apart from its special scientific value, there is much matter of historical and general interest in the present volume, which ought to ensure it a wide circle of readers. CHRONICLES AND MEMORIALS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS.-The following volumes are in the press:-Chronicle of Robert of Brunne, edited by F. J. Furnivall; The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, edited by W. Aldis Wright; A Collection of Sagas and other Historical Documents relating to the Northmen, edited by Sir G. W. Dasent and M. Gudbrand Vigfusson; Thomas Saga Erkibyskups: a Life of Archbishop Thomas Becket, in Icelandic, vol. ii., edited by M. Eirikr Magnússon; Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, with Trevisa's translation, vol. vii., edited Istories de la Grant Bretagne a present nomme Engleterre, by Prof. Lumby; Recueil des Croniques et anciennes par Jehan de Waurin, vol. iii., edited by W. Hardy Matthæi Parisiensis, Monachi Suncti Albani, Chronica Majora, vol. v., edited by Dr. Luard; Lestorie des Engles solum Geffrei Gaimar, edited by the late Sir T. Duffus Hardy; Historia Anglorum Henrici Huntendunensis, edited by Thomas Arnold; Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. iv., edited by Canon Robertson; Henrici de Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, vol. iii., edited by Sir Travers Twiss; Registrum Malmesburiense: the Register of Malmesbury Abbey, vol. ii., edited by the late Rev. J. S. Brewer; The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, vol. ii. The Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I., edited by Prof. Stubbs. We note with pleasure the gratifying marks of respect paid to our old and valued correspondent Mr. J. A. Picton, on the occasion of the formal opening, by the Earl of Derby, of the Picton Reading Room, at Liverpool. Notices to Correspondents. In Earth and Heavens and Hells Incomparable, All-honoured, Wisest, Best, most Pitiful; The Teacher of Nirvâna and the Law." But to the lovers of India, to whom the author principally appeals, and to the lovers of poetry too, Mr. Arnold's latest effort will amply justify its existence. His page unrolls itself like some deep-folded Eastern tissue, woven with long-eyed dusky women and many. armed gods, and glancing with bright-hued figures of unknown bird and beast. To quit metaphor, The Light of Asia is a noble poem, Tennysonic at times, no doubt, in its measure, but full of sustained power and epic impulse, rich in magnificent description and imagery, and opening quite a new field of sonorous nomenclature and Oriental accessories. Indeed, we fear that Mr. Arnold may have to answer for far more "Lines to an Indian Air," and hap-hazard decoration with "ganthi-" and "môgra- flowers," "rose-oaks " and "gambu-trees," than we shall care to recognize in the magazine verse of the period. But in any case his work deserves, as it H. C., G. S. B., T. J. R., are thanked, but their sugshould command, a large and appreciative audience. gestions, as will be seen in our present number, are scarcely applicable to our correspondent's requirements. International Scientific Series.-The Human Species. M. E. C. W.-" No. 50 has obtained a great notoriety By A. de Quatrefages. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.) In the days of the Second Empire, among the "confé--Hare's Walks in London, vol. ii. p. 87. in late years as the haunted house in Berkeley Square.' rences for the people, or, as we should say, popular science lectures, delivered at Vincennes under the patronage of the Empress, was a course on the " History of Man" by the distinguished French savant M. de Quatrefages. The volume now published in the "Inter national Scientific Series" embodies the substance of the Vincennes conferences, the arguments of which have but been strengthened, in the writer's opinion, by the advances made in our knowledge during the past decade. What M. de Quatrefages said in 1867-8 he repeats in 1879. Man alone is truly cosmopolitan," found all over the habitable globe, and there is but one species of He is distinguished from the (lower) animal by his intellectual superiority, and by the possession of the moral sense and religion. Anatomically and physiologically, of course, man is an animal, but for scientific purposes the features above described differentiate him from the lower portion of the animal kingdom. That in our researches into the history of the human man. We must call special attention to the following notice: address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but ON all communications should be written the name and as a guarantee of good faith. H. F. 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