Where the rarest gems of truth from richer Of the little children heaven denied,

Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, apparatus, be it ever so concise, such aids are

author of an excellent work on æsthetics, and

notes, which would, we are certain, be most favor- Dr. Vaughan's was a very happy, a truly philoably received.-Saturday Review. sophic idea, which he has well worked out through three fourths of its scope. Le Spiritualisme dans l'Art. Par CHARLES LE- he has virtually abandoned the thought of workWe regret to find that VEQUE. Paris: Baillière. M. Charles Lévêque, ing out the last, and in many respects, the most Professor of Philosophy at the College de France, interesting, though possibly not, for the present has discussed, in a few eloquent pages, the image, the most important portion of his plan. He portant question of spiritualism with reference to Race; he has traced and exhibited the Revolu has explained and illustrated the Revolutions of works of art. His introduction, written for the tions in Religion; he has well set forth the causes purpose of vindicating the place of aesthetic sci- and history of the great Revolutions in Govern ence in the general scheme of philosophy, is a ment, synchronizing with the Stuart period; but very lucid and correct demarkation of the realms he has very scantily sketched the Revolutions in of metaphysics. It shows, moreover, that for Social Power, embracing the progress of toleramany readers æsthetics has proved the guide and tion since 1688, the expansion of the constitution the preparation to more abstruse topics. As during the same period, the development of our there is a science of what is right, what is true, national industry, the founding of our colonial and what is useful, so there is a science of what empire, and the later growth of our intellectual, is beautiful, which is not a whit inferior in im- moral, and social life. In our notice of the second portance to the others. The three chapters which volume of this work, we expressed our opinion compose the volume treat respectively of spirit that "this last section of revolutions, if it is to ualism in sculpture, of the same subject as illus- be treated effectively, must occupy as many voltrated in a sketch of the French artist Simart, portionately disappointed to find that it actually umes as all the preceding history.' takes up but seventy-eight pages in this largetyped volume of six hundred and forty-two pages. The foregoing five hundred and sixty-four pages contain the history of the great era of "Revolutions in Government" which began with the struggles between Parliamentarians and Royalists under Charles I., and ended with the revolution of 1688.

and of spiritualism in painting, exemplified by the pictures of Nicolas Poussin. An inaugural address delivered at the College de France forms the appendix, and treats of the Platonist origin of aesthetics.-Saturday Review.

We are pro

As containing the well-considered and wellwritten views of a learned, intelligent, and liberal Nonconformist, respecting the political aspects of Puritan and Nonconformist controversy, this work possesses a special value, and must take a high and standard place. Dr. Vaughan has been a devoted student of history for something like half a century; few men are better informed as to the history of our own country. His views are ripe and comprehensive, and have been matured in intercourse with men of large culture and large minds. He gives us here his settled conclusions respecting the period when the principles of religious liberty were settled. Few studies of history can be better worth the attention of the statesman or philosopher. Here and there, however, we observe something like reserve. In his estimate of Cromwell's character he seems to have stood in some fear of expressing a critical and adequate judgment; fear, we apprehend, quite as much of not fully satisfying Cromwell's indiscriminating partisans as of provoking the criticism of the contrary party. We much prefer the manner in which Henry Rogers deals with the case and character of Cromwell in his Life of John Howe.-London Quarterly.

The Epochs of Painting. By R. N. WORNUM, Keeper and Secretary, National Gallery. London: Chapman & Hall. This meritorious work bears witness to uncommon research and labor, but the plan on which it is constructed is one, as it appears to us, involving difficulties that could hardly be conquered. Mr. Wornum has attempted, for the whole range of painting, from Egypt to modern England, what Kugler's two well-known volumes attempt in regard to a portion of the Italian school. He has aimed at giving a catalogue raisonné of all known artists of any kind of merit or celebrity, including a sketch of their lives, notices of their chief works, and an indication of their place in the world of art; and, at the same time, he has endeavored to set forth those wider generalizations of the whole spirit and method of each school which shall embrace the individuals described. The book is at once to be a dictionary of art and a philosophy of art. So far as the leading biographical facts are concerned, we think it deserves considerable credit. Of course, in so vast a field, a large proportion of the details must be due to Mr. Wornum's predecessors. But he has obviously taken great pains; he has used, carefully and judiciously, the excellent materials which the national librarics of art have afforded him; and although here and there we have met with slight inaccuracies in fact, the volume must be regarded as a valuable contribution, on the whole, to the English handbooks of art. The specimens of each master contained in our National Gallery have been carefully pointed out; and if we are occasionally amused by the liberal praise bestowed on that really admirable collection, which owes, we believe, no little to the author's intelligent curatorship, we must regard these references to what of science. Our author remarks, in the first they can readily see as peculiarly useful to Eng-place, that the poirs he has taken for discussion is one which has only within a comparatively Revolutions in English History. By ROBERT recent time occupied the thoughts of philosoVAUGHAN, D.D. Vol. III. Longmans. 1863. phers. Occasional hints on the subject may, in

lish readers.

Etude sur l'Association des Idées, Thèse pour le Doctorat. Par P. M. MERVOYER. Paris: Durand.

M. Mervoyer's substantial treatise on the Association of Ideas was published as an exercise for the doctor's degree; but it shows a metaphysical acumen, clearness of style, and range of reading which would reflect credit on one of the veterans

deed, be found scattered throughout the works of Plato and of Aristotle; Zeno and Epicurus have likewise stated a few of the laws which modern thinkers lay down in connection with it; but antiquity stopped at the first conditions of reminiscence, and, during the middle ages, no efforts were made either by the champions of scholasticism or of free thought to examine thoroughly the phe-tunately, impossible to do so; to rob history of nomena of the association of our ideas. It was reserved for an Englishman to take the earliest steps in that direction, and Hobbes was the pilot on a sea where afterwards Locke, Hume, and Hartley in England, Herbart in Germany, Condillac, Maine de Biran, and Jouffroy in France, have made interesting discoveries. M. Mervoyer has therefore the advantage of occupying a position in the wide field of metaphysics where new truths are most likely to be brought out, and his volume is full of very suggestive thoughts and of observations which must have been the result of a severe course of study. His fundamental axiom may be thus stated: All human knowledge depends upon two great laws: 1st. The law of continuity, essentially objective, which constantly penetrates and modifies both the outer world and man himself. 2d. The law of resemblance, subjective in its character, by which the mind discerns, composes, and associates, in the various orders of phenomena, the more or less tangible features which nature has placed within its reach. The quotations frequently made by M. Mervoyer throughout his volume prove that he is well acquainted with the great English metaphysicians. Dugald Stewart, Sir W. Hamilton, and Mr. J. S. Mill seem to be his favorite authors. Saturday Review.

Lectures on the Science of Language. By MAX MULLER, M.A. Second series. London: Longman & Co. In this volume Professor Müller further develops his theory concerning the science of language. That it is a science, to be classed as such along with physics, he has before attempted to prove. But the field is vast, and in the present publication another portion of it is brought under cultivation. In this effort the investigations of the learned author are restricted to languages of the Indo-Germanic family. Brutes and infants may have a sort of mental activity, but according to the theory of Professor Müller, men never have ideas without sounds to express them, and never make articulate sounds without ideas allied with them. Mind and language are in a sense identical, and the growth of one is the growth of both. No intelligent man can read this volume without amazement. The learning and sagacity which the lecturer has brought to his theme are wonderful, Words in his hands come to be full of history.-British Quarterly.

Cleopatra, Von ADOLF STAHR. Berlin: Guttentag. London: Williams & Norgate. Cleopatra is a general favorite with the writers and readers of history; the accepted type of a character remote, indeed, from perfection, but redeeming its errors by a display of brilliant qualities to which these only serve as foils, and which could hardly have existed without them. The general judgment of posterity is condensed in Shakspeare's magnificent delineation, with which the Egyptian queen herself

would hardly have quarrelled, and which Dr. Stahr seems quite willing to accept. Nevertheless, his work is conceived in the spirit of a vindication, and is a continual wrangle with Plutarch and other writers, whose language seems to give him constant offence, while he makes no serious attempt to impugn their conclusions. It is, forthe traditional Cleopatra would be a desecration of which Dr. Stahr would be the last to be guilty. The cardinal error of his book probably arises from his partiality for Antony, whose need of an advocate is indeed more evident than Cleopatra's. We cannot concur with our author in imputing any especial malignity to the ancient historians in their dealings with the unfortunate competitor of Augustus, but they certainly do not conceal their opinion that he lost the empire of the world by his own fault, and Dr. Stahr's partiality only serves to set this fact in a clearer light. The leading features of the story are too boldly marked to be much affected by any rectification of minor details; and the narrow contentious spirit in which Dr. Stahr has attempted Antony's vindication has damaged his hero almost as much as his book. Much may, no doubt, be of fered in extenuation of Antony's failings, but it is impossible to avoid regarding them with something of the same feeling which made them appear so despicable in the eyes of his contemporaries. The softness and profusion which well became the Egyptian queen were deformities in the Roman soldier. In adopting Oriental manners, Antony had voluntarily descended from the level on which he was born; his victory would have been the triumph of an uncouth bar barism over whatever of antique dignity and severity was yet left to the Roman world, the genius of Virgil and Horace would have found no encouragement, and the Oriental extravagance of the age of Elagabalus would have been anticipated by three centuries. The contest between him and Augustus was a conflict of principles, not, like many contests for empire in later ages, a strife between two pretenders equally destitute of desert. With Dr. Stahr's preposses sions, it is of course impossible that he should render justice to the conqueror. The demerits of his delineation are, however, purely negative. He faithfully exhibits the selfishness, the bad faith, the cool subtlety of Augustus, and ably contrasts these with the opposite characteristics of Antony; but he fails to render justice to the serene enthusiasm with which the consciousness of representing the spirit of Roman civilization inspired a breast naturally devoted to self, leaving fortitude and magnanimity where it had found cruelty and fear. The prosperity which intoxicated Cæsar and Napoleon only enCould Dr. Stahr but have conceived the same riched the originally barren bosom of Augustus.

interest in him as in his rival, this book would have been nearly perfect. As it is, it is a most spirited and readable biography-admirably arattention continually awake without resort to ranged, clear, condensed, graphic, keeping the rhetorical devices, and, as a narrative, exemplary in its steady advance and rejection of everything superfluous.-Saturday Review,

Sacred and Legendary Art. By Mrs. Jameson.