matters, from our own stores. This we shall, certes, do; and then we shall not forget to refer to the valuable work before us. Important, however, is it to record, even here, that, in our author's opinion, the syllogism of Aristotle implies a previous reasoning, upon the correctness or incorrectness of which every thing depends; itself, it is scarcely a process of thought, it is merely an arrangement of terms; and withdrawing the attention from what is important to what is unimportant, it is not futile, but hurtful. The true logic (which is one with the Logos) is yet to be published.

Concerning the emotions, we are also told, that final causes are more easily discerned than proximate ones; while the rise of the appetites, desires, and affections is obscure, the end for which they were given is obvious, and has been placed in a variety of lights, to display still more distinctly the traces of Divine benevolence and wisdom. The first moving cause, in many instances, is pain, as that which is most effectual in rousing the mind from its lethargy, and in hurrying it on to the task to be accomplished; but what deserves remark is, the economy with which pain is to be inflicted-only meted out where necessary, and in the necessary proportions, and immediately remitted when the end is gained; and then turned into pleasure: for example, the sensation of hunger is dull and obscure at first, and is only augmented in proportion to the danger of injury from want of sustenance; and it is rather the fear of it than the actual experience, which impels the majority of the world to an ever renewed course of labour and self-denial in procuring a subsistence; and that which is at first a pain, and which attaches to mankind a greater labour than that of slavery, is changed into a pleasure, and that, according to some, one of the most important in life-the expectation of the return of our regular meals. The principle of hoarding, converted into reasonable love of property among the many, or into the insane and avaricious love of money in the few, changes men from the consumers of the entire produce of their own labour into voluntary and frugal stewards for a distant futurity. And so on in other instances. The emotions of novelty, beauty, and sublimity, are the elements of the ideal world; yet, wild as it is, legislators arise, in the shape of critics, to prescribe its laws; and metaphysicians, like the Tuscan artist, apply the optic tube to descry its diversities and describe its shadowy realms. The whole sphere of emotion is thus stated. That which pleases is liked; that which intensely pleases is loved; that which is universally loved is the supremely beautiful. Love rises by admiration and devotion to the One Sublime, and sinks by pity and terror to the Other-that is the sublime of enthusiasm and the sublime of terror.

In the pleasures of taste, it is not alone the subject of the poem, but our sympathy with the master-mind that has produced it, which delights. The ideal world is not only the anticipation of an improved condition of society, but it is the passage from the earth on which we tread to the illuminated regions beyond it. To mere sense, all is narrow and contracted; but imagination throws down the narrow boundaries of our terrestrial existence, and enlarges us into a middle state, whose limits are ever receding, till its confines appear to be lost in the expansion of the interminable heavens. They who are on earth, and whose notions are derived from the earth, seem to have no common medium of intercourse with the dwellers in heaven, who have ever abode in the light and breathed the air of immortality; but poetry and imagination serve as an interpreter between them and God, through the vehicle of images, and uniting the character of prophet and poet, has lifted up our minds by His heavenly messages and inspired messengers, from this "dim spot which men call earth," to behold the skirts of his far glory, and to elevate our thoughts and affections to the highest heavens; imagination serving not only as a vehicle of communication, but also as a preparatory instructor, withdrawing us from immersion in matter, to a world which is akin to spirit, and the native abode of mind.

Our author's theory of free-will seems to be embodied in these few words :N. S.-VOL, I.

F F

"God governs matter by necessity; brutes by the simplicity of their instincts; man, amidst the multiplicity of his desires, by his reasonable and moral choice. All action supposes freedom." As to the determination of the will, we would be permitted to add, that the will is determined either by the conscience, or by itself, or by nature: if by the first, it is God-determined; if by the second, it is atheistically spontaneous; if by the last, it is materially enslaved.

With our author's theory of morals and religion we are not so well pleased. Here it is that his instrument of induction, as it ever must, fails him egregiously. His scheme ends where it ought to begin; and he seeks to illuminate that by his theory which should illuminate the theory itself. He quotes the sun as darkness, and then proceeds to illustrate it by a vain attempt at vision. It is here that on some future occasion our services shall be rendered.

A singular confusion occurs in this treatise in spelling the name of Dugald Stewart in the first half of the volume it is spelt Stuart, in the second, Steuart, -both being wrong.

III.-POLITICS.

I. On the Constitution of Church and State, according to the Idea of each.— II. Lay Sermons.-1. The Statesman's Manual. 2. "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." By SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. William Pickering. 1839.

THIS is a reprint, edited from the author's corrected copies, with notes by his nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq. M.A. When we review these, it will be by a paper in chief.

IV. SCIENCE.

Observations on the Preservation of Health, in Infancy, Youth, Manhood, and Age, &c. By JOHN HARRISON Curtis, Esq., Author of “Observations on the Preservation of Sight," &c. Second Edition.

Ir has been very acutely remarked by a celebrated Frenchman, that " L'auteur se trie à allonger, ce que le lecteur se trie à abbréger." Most writers, in order to render their employment at all profitable, in order to make a book, as it is called, mix up the real information which they are able to afford with a vast quantity of extraneous matter, which, however amusing in itself, is certainly more or less unconnected with the subject. We do not pretend that this plan is altogether without advantages, in particular instances, as it often serves to render a dry and heavy subject pleasing and interesting; and by affording relief to the tired mind, enables the more careless reader to get through his task with ease and pleasure. But the real searcher after truth requires not these inducements to study. He wishes to grapple at once with his opponent, and to overcome him with sheer mental exertion. To this man all these ex

traneous matters are annoyances. They appear to him like Jack-a-lanterns and Will-o'the-wisps, which, by a delusive appearance of light, lead him from his path. He struggles through them, and wades through ponderous volumes, approximating, with all his powers of memory and reason, the facts which lie scattered abroad, and separated by these quicksands and tempting hiatuses. For, in proportion to the beauty and attractive character of these digressions, the greater is the danger of the unwary reader becoming abstracted from the proper line of thought. The book-compiler on this score deserves the thanks of the public. He does, or ought to, collect the scattered data from the thousand sources of their birth, and arrange them with skill and discretion. Thus, by his individual exertion, he saves the labour of others; and if, in addition to this he possesses the ability to discriminate between the true and the false, and does not, in excluding the extranea of others, introduce his own, he produces a work which is probably highly useful and praiseworthy. These remarks are suggested by the neat little volume before us, which is of the character just alluded to. It contains little or nothing new, certainly; but the fountains from which it has been drawn are of the highest and most authentic character.

The arrangement is good, and, taken altogether, the "Observations" do great credit to Mr. Curtis, and will deserve the extensive circulation which invariably attends his productions.

V.-LITERATURE.

The Women of England-their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits.

By Mrs. ELLIS. London: Fisher, Son, & Co., Nov., 1838. Of all the influences exercised in civilised countries over society, with the exception, of course, of the direct influence of the Deity, that which woman possesses is undoubtedly the greatest. To woman is committed all the early education from which the future ruler, the future statesman, the future man, receives his character:-to woman is committed all that powerful influence which her greater mildness, gentleness, and beauty give her over those same persons as youths :-to woman is committed the duty of cheering the fire-side, of sharing the cares of, and administering the balmy consolation of kind words to, those same persons when the solicitudes of life are pouring thick upon them, and when the finger of care is writing his name upon their troubled brow in all too legible wrinkles, and manifesting his abiding presence in their slow and heavy footfall. To the education, therefore, of women, in all the departments of life, in their dress, manners, domestic habits, conversation, character, intellectual attainments, &c., as being the influences by which society is, in the main, regulated, Mrs Ellis calls the especial attention of the educators of the women of England.

The apology offered by her for writing on this subject at all is, if true, a fearful one: she says, that

-"the women of England are deteriorating in their moral character, and false notions of refinement are rendering them less influential, less useful, less happy, than they were. And can we doubt the truth of this? Let us visit the ball-room, and there behold the pitiable languidness of some, and in others, the desire of attracting admiration by any means, however degrading: let us behold the arts of a mother to attract a nest of idlers round her daughter, holding up that daughter to be purchased by the highest bidder :-see that countenance, swelling with feelings of petty pride, when the artifices of its owner, mostly seen through and despised, have succeeded in throwing into the shade a less accomplished rival; and see the defeated candidate for the admiration of-perhaps a despicable rake-her face distorted by mingled feelings of jealousy, mortified pride, and dejected ambition-the bosom heaving with rage-every action expressing the height of mortification-and your conviction must be, either that the standard of female excellence was formerly too low to be farther lowered, or that the women of England, as a body, are, indeed, less influential, less useful, and less happy than they used to be. Let us change the scene; let us go to the favourite resorts of another class of ladies, those who aspire to higher excellence than their neighbours; let us visit the meetings of temperance societies, of Bible and missionary societies, of Protestant associations, and the like. We do not wish to depreciate such societies, for we know that there are many who attend them from a sincere desire to do good; but we also know, that, by the majority, they are attended to gratify a morbid eagerness after excitement; and we can see the causes reproduced in the effects, in the ranting unchristian speeches so often indulged in by the speakers, and apparently so much admired by the hearers at these meetings. Is the excess of drinking the theme? The burying of the mental faculties in the sensual appetites? How do the audience inwardly exult on hearing of men and women voluntarily depriving themselves of their reason, when they pity so sincerely the persons spoken of, consult so cordially for their improvement, and thank their God so piously, that they are not even as these men ; yet, perchance, into their hearts the canker of the world is eating,-in their bosoms Mammon may have his loftiest shrine,-the beam is in their own eye, and they know it not, but they are ready to pluck the mote from their brother's eye. Fools! they know not that it is first needful to pluck the beam from their own eye, and they will then see more clearly to take the mote from the eye of another. With relation to such persons who are ever striving to improve the world, while in their own bosoms a hell of uncharitable passions is raging, we would apply the beautiful

saying of the German poet-'First become better thyself, soon will the world become better.' Is the theme the vice of the Roman, and the excellence of the Protestant, Church, or vice-versâ? How delighted do they seem when they are told, on direct assertion, how wicked are the members of the opponent church, and, by inference (always readily drawn), how very good they themselves are:-they weep bitterly over the faults of their neighbours, but they forget to weep for themselves and for their children."

Such are some of the many confirmations of Mrs. Ellis's assertion, and to remedy the spreading evil is her book directed. Mrs. Ellis has sounded a trumpet of warning, of which the echoes are still ringing, and which must be sounded again and again, until the warning be heeded. She tells us,—and to those who have lived long enough in the world to feel its sorrows and afflictions, we leave to judge how truly, that

-"the cry of utter helplessness is of no avail in rescuing from the waters of affliction, and the plea of ignorance unheard upon the far-extending and deep ocean of experience; and the question of accountability perpetually sounding, like the voice of a warning spirit, above the storms and billows of this lower world."

She tells the "women of England" that they have "deep responsibilities and urgent claims; that a nation's moral wealth is in their keeping." In this the philosopher, of whatever creed and school he be, will agree with her. In this the disciple of Locke must agree; for woman is the first to write upon that sheet of unstained paper, which, in his theory, represents an infant's mind. In this the followers of Coleridge or of Wordsworth must agree, for it is in the power of woman first to stunt, or to promote, the growth of those innate ideas with which they have peopled, even from the hour of birth, what was formerly considered the vacancy of the human mind. In this, all who take the trouble to think must agree, for all know that with woman rests the first culture, by precept and example, of the mind of man. And what ought to be the education of those to whom such an important duty is committed? Should it be the frivolous, foolish, piano-playing, embroidering, husband-seeking, miserable, petty education which they now receive? We do not mean to say that music, or embroidery, or drawing, are useless attainments: on the contrary, they serve to vary the wretched monotony of life. But should they be these alone? Assuredly not. If the blind lead the blind, shall not, nay, do not, both fall into the ditch? A moral and truly Christian education, not consisting in learning or writing out verses of the Bible, but in a real perception of the beauties, of the virtues, inculcated by our Saviour, should be the education of every woman in England. The influence a woman possesses is great, -great, in proportion, is the responsibility attached to the exercise of it. The question with every woman should be, "Do we perform all the good in our power?" If they perform less, they have much to answer for. If they abuse that power, how dreadful their responsibility! Poets may rave of the beautiful visions which their fancy incarnates, painters may point out to us the transcendant beauties of a favourite landscape, lovers of an admired face, historians of an heroic action, but we will defy them all to show us a sight more beautiful than that of a family of females, whose duties of charity and benevolence, commencing with the morning sun, end not till he sinks behind the horizon, who do not think it necessary that all their efforts should be expended abroad, but keep some of their charity to make their own home agreeable to their brothers or their friends- some of their gentleness to comfort those who have to breast the rougher waves of life-some of their influence to lead their friends from the almost necessary scepticism and despair induced by the toils of life to the sublime truths of Christianity set forth by their gentle lips, and cor. roborated by their powerful persuasion, some of those sweet smiles to refresh those who look for them in vain among the iron countenances who worship daily at the Mammon-shrine of business.

The influence women have over men in drawing their thoughts to religious subjects, is too great to need our expatiating. Would it were better

used! Instead of the tales of petty gossip and scandal with which a tired husband is saluted on entering that place, where, if any where on earth, rest might be most expected, how many useful points of conversation are there with which a well-educated woman might entertain and benefit her husband; how many things are there which the strong might learn from the weak. Above all, women should avoid, in their conversation, all expression of ill-will to others. There is malevolence enough in the world without, and it needs not to be introduced to the fire-side. All women have not the power of effecting a remarkable quantity of good, but all have it in their power to avoid giving pain.

"O! let the ungentle spirit learn from hence,
A small unkindness is a great offence;
Large bounties to bestow we wish in vain,
But all may shun the guilt of giving pain."

Lastly, in recommending to all our readers the very eloquent and Christian book before us, let us join with Mrs. Ellis in demanding, that not a passive but an active assent should be given to the principles laid down in it, so that we may soon see its effect in the superior moral and intellectual education of women, and, therefore, almost necessarily in the superior morality of men. We are sure that we cannot conclude this review better than in the eloquent language of Mrs. Ellis, whose most important work we heartily recommend to all our readers.

"It is not (she says) through a lifetime only, though that were sufficient for our follies-it may be through the endless ages of eternity, that our good or evil influence shall extend. I have pointed out to my country-women, as I pursued this work, the high ambition of preserving a nation from the dangers which threaten the destruction of its moral worth; but beyond this view, wide and exalted as it unquestionably is, there opens out a field of glory, upon which to enter might seem blessedness enough. Yet, when we contemplate the possibility of being the means of inducing others to enter with us, and those the most beloved of earth's treasures, surely it is worthy of our best energies, our most fervent zeal, our tears, our prayers, that we may so use our influence, and so employ our means, as that those whose happiness has been committed to our care, may partake with us in the enjoyment of the mansions of eternal rest.”

The Genius and Wisdom of SIR WALTER SCOTT, comprising Moral, Religious, Political, Literary, and Social Aphorisms, selected carefully from his various Writings. With a Memoir. London: W. S. Orr & Co.'

1839.

Ar the commencement of the year, parents and friends are seeking from among the long list of glittering and highly-ornamented Annuals, fitting offerings to present to the rising generation. These are certainly, this year, beautifully got up, and are rich in the best specimens of the artist and engraver; but they rarely contain any thing calculated to instruct the mind of youth, or to lead to serious and improving meditation. Those who wish to supply something more than mere amusement, would do well to purchase this neat little volume. We can confidently recommend it as one of the most fitting and handsome little books which have appeared this season. There is, probably, no name in literature better known in this country than that of Sir Walter Scott, and none which has been more popular. It would be absurd, therefore, to recommend it to his admirers, for all readers are such. The Editor, in his Preface, says, "that it occurred to him, whilst perusing one of Sir Walter Scott's inimitable works of fiction, that the passages in which are developed the novelist's peculiar notions of morals and philosophy, escape the attention of the generality of readers, in consequence of their minds being absorbed in the contemplation of the different varied incidents of the deeply interesting narrative they were perusing." The selection of these, and the addi tion of some of the most beautiful passages, of both prose and poetry, together with a well-written Memoir of the Great Unknown, form, altogether, as interesting and delightful a volume as could be offered to the public. It deserves to be circulated, as freely as the works from which the well-selected passages are taken.