JAN. 12, 1884.-No. 610.]

streams of the River Plate as far as Asuncion on the Paraguay, some 1,300 miles from the coast. In these wild sub-tropical regions, never before visited by an English yachtsman, some novel experiences are met with, as in Gran Chaco while navigating a large lagoon near Paraguay, when the vessel became, not ice-bound, but "lily bound." As it lay at anchor during a calm, the camelotas floating down in myriads got foul of the chains, and gradually accumulating, formed round about the yacht

"one great island of beautiful lilies in leaf, in flower and fruit. Finding that these were causing us to drag our anchors, we left off hanging over the bows, living up to the precious things,' and, waxing unaesthetic, commenced to ruthlessly cut them away with cutlasses and hatchets, a long and tedious process." Here also an opportunity was afforded of verifying the statement that the curious pavo birds will remain quietly perched on a tree to be shot in detail, if the sportsman is fortunate enough to knock one over before the flock takes wing.

An interesting account is given of the present social and political state of Paraguay and its heroic Guarani inhabitants, who appear to show no signs of recovery from the disastrous war waged by Lopez against his powerful Brazilian and Argentine neighbours. But, although the country seems to have no future, "her people dance and sing and weave garlands of flowers in the sunshine; like the practical epicureans that they are.”

cluding this episode, and a diversion to British than when dealing with literary ladies.
Guiana and Barbados, where the yacht was Opportunities to do so were few, and were as
laid up, the cruise and land journey, extend- welcome as a holiday. To him, as to most
ing over a period of twenty months, from men of the age, it was a surprise that women
August 1880 to April 1881, covered altogether should write so well; and he expressed his
a distance of some 22,000 miles, a sufficiently surprise, not in Johnsonian style, to the effect
noteworthy performance for a yawl of eighteen that the marvel lay not in their writing so
tons register, manned by a crew of four well, but in their writing at all, but with the
A. H. KEANE. charming extravagance of a school-girl.
amateurs and a cabin-boy.
From the choral tribute of contemporary

""
"Eminent Women Series.
Allen.)

(W. H.

Maria Edgeworth. By Helen Zimmern. hyperbole it is well to turn to Byron's judg
ment of these works, expressed with his
usual searching insight: "they excite no feel-
ing, and they leave no love-except for some
Irish steward or postillion. However, the
impression of intellect and prudence is pro-
The value of
found, and may be useful."
the moral tales is discussed with much keen
sense by Miss Zimmern. Her final remark
on their popularity contains an excellent

FEW literary women have possessed more genuine pretensions to eminence than Maria Edgeworth, and her right to a place in Mr. Ingram's series may not be disputed. For many years of her long life she was indeed pre-eminent. From nearly all her contemporaries her works received unmeasured applause, while she herself was prodigiously caressed by society. This success was owing in no slight degree to her social gifts, her powers of observation and conversation, her admirable good sense and serene geniality. The story of her life has never before been told with such completeness. Miss Zimmern's style is in accord with her subject; and her work is commendably free from digressions, skilfully arranged, and well-proportioned. There is much that is interesting, even more that is attractive, in Maria Edgeworth's life. Her strong life-long affection for her father is very charming. It is something even deeper Several well-written chapters are devoted and more pathetic than the love Mdme. de to a graphic account of a long ride across the Staël bore towards her father. Miss Zimmern Argentine States to the remote province of instinctively recognises in this ruling passion Tucuman, the "Eden of South America," a biographical fact of primary importance, the over 1,100 miles from the coast. During this key-stone of a life not less exemplary in itself expedition good opportunities were afforded than fruitful in influencing others. The right of studying the present condition of the estimation of this fact may seem a slight Pampas lands and their wild Gaucho inhabit-matter, yet it is on some such fundamental ants. But it requires no small amount of credulity to accept some of the astounding instances of the preternatural sagacity of these semi-nomad children of the prairie. Two Englishmen, we are told, were once sleeping in a lone hut, when one of them, hearing a noise in the bush, hurriedly put on the wrong boots in the dark, and went out with his gun in the hope of getting a shot at some nightly prowler. In the morning his Gaucho servant said to him, "What did you think there was in the bush when you went out last night, Señor?" "How do you know I went out ?" "I saw the marks of boots in the ground, not your boots, but your friend's; but it was your tread!"

But space will allow no more than the briefest allusion to the venal judges, disreputable clergy, visiting saints, mediaeval systems of torture still in vogue, the teeming insect life, the "Colorado bichos and locusts, the weird forests of giant cacti, the Quichua-speaking Spanish communities, the clever Bolivian "collas" or medicinemen, the concave roads, crazy ferry-boats, and other varied sights and scenes of this strange borderland between civilisation and barbarism.

On the return voyage, a visit was paid to the almost unknown islet of Trinidad east from Rio de Janeiro, abounding in tame fish, still tamer water-fowl, and horrible land-crabs, but destitute of all other animal life. In

truth that all biography, worthy of the title,
rests. To it may be traced all that is valuable
in Miss Zimmern's book, its consistency and
unity and truth.

It is to be feared that the present genera-
tion does not read Maria Edgeworth. There
is, perhaps, little cause to regret that her
fashionable novels and prolix moralities are
now relegated to the limbo of fossil fiction.
It is greatly to be deplored, on the other
hand, that her delightful stories for children,
so full of happy, artless grace and exquisite
fancy, should give place to writings in every
One would hope, too, that the
sense inferior.
humour of Castle Rackrent was as evergreen
as the shamrock, that the fame of the one
work of Maria Edgeworth that has never been
overrated would last beyond our time, and
that it was still read. Yet it is not easy to
meet with this admirable book, and few novel-
readers can give much account of it. Perhaps
both it and the children's stories are suffering
their unmerited share of the retribution of
time and the reaction from the extreme
It
laudation of Almeria and Manoeuvring.
must be confessed that Miss Zimmern's criti
cism of those works is not so sound as her
excellent estimate of the juvenile series.
She quotes Macaulay's well-known commenda-
tion of The Absentee with the remark, "No
mean authority and no mean praise!" and
without the faintest reprehension. Like most
literary men, Macaulay was never less critical

aperçu :

"Like all Miss Edgeworth's writings, they found instant favour, and were translated into from their merits, we cannot avoid the inference that this circumstance points to a great lack of contemporary foreign fiction of a pure and attractive kind."

French and German. With no desire to detract

Miss Zimmern is a little prone to exaggerate the importance of women's work in literature. It is difficult to restrain a smile when we are told that, "When the literary history of the nineteenth century is written, its historians will be amazed to find how important a part the contributions of women have played therein; and this is observed à propos of Maria Edgeworth and her contemporaries. Surely the fact that they played a part is more important than the part they played, and the amazement of the future historian will be duly tempered with the proverbial justice of posterity. Miss Zimmern's natural appreciation of nineteenth-century literature is combined with a little injustice towards the eighteenth century. In allusion to the worldliness and somewhat low morale of Maria Edgeworth's heroines, who are ever looking out "for a good establishment," Miss Zimmern remarks:

But, after all, she was teaching only in accordance with the superficial philosophy of the last century, which led people to found their doctrines entirely upon self-interest." In what respect, it may be asked, did they differ from the practice of the present century? In another place we read of "the crude mechanical school of Rousseau," and feel it hard that Rousseau's theories should be involved in Mr. Edgeworth's and Thomas Day's clumsy application of them.

These little blemishes, however, do not affect the general excellence of Miss Zimmern's book, which will do good service to literature if it only assist in a revival of Maria Edgeworth's writings and a reconsideration of her place in literature. It also furnishes some capital little pictures of the home-circle at Edgeworthstown and the interesting Lichfield society presided over by the amiable and accomplished Anna Seward.

J. ARTHUR BLAIKIE.

THREE BOOKS ON JURISPRUDENCE.

The Institutes of the Law of Nations: a
Treatise of the Jural Relations of Separate
Political Communities. By James Lorimer.
Vol. I. (Blackwood.)

The Nature of Positive Law. By John Light-
wood. (Macmillan.)

To

has been gradually becoming more and more
clearly defined, but now the fog threatens to
settle down once more. say that juris-
prudence should be confined to the study of
existing laws, argues Mr. Lightwood, "seems
seek to improve the current text-books in
equivalent to saying that we may, indeed,
dynamics, but must not seek to alter their
substance." The analogy is sound on neither
side. There are hidden phenomena in existing
systems of law, as there may be hidden forces
in nature; to discover them, or to give a
new true explanation of known phenomena,
is within the province of the jurist, as it is
within that of the physical philosopher to dis-
cover existing but unknown facts, or to give
a new and true explanation of known facts;
but beyond this neither may go. We cannot
allow a jurist finally to decide whether the
rules of succession to personal property and to
real property should be made identical, any
more than we should take the opinion of a
professor of applied mathematics on the ques-
tion whether steam engines have benefited the
human race. Of a hundred things which
must be considered in deciding whether a law
is good or bad, such as the temper of the
people, or the economical effects of the law, the
jurist, as jurist, knows nothing. Mr. Light-
wood himself recognises this when he says
that where there is a conflict of interests the
source of law must be legislation, not science.
He ignores the fact that in the making of new
laws, which is not merely formal, whether it
is made directly by Parliament or indirectly
by judges, there is always a conflict of in-
terests.

The History and Principles of the Civil Law of
Rome: an Aid to the Study of Scientific
and Comparative Jurisprudence. By Sheldon
Amos. (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.)
THE first volume of Prof. Lorimer's Institutes
is devoted to international recognition and to
the normal, or peace, relations of States; the
second will treat of their abnormal relations-
of belligerency and neutrality. The portion
of the work which has already appeared has
all the merits of his former books: it is
written in a clear and vigorous style, it dis-
plays a wide knowledge of his subject, and it
is full of bold and independent thought. If
he could only convert us to his own sturdy
belief in the law of nature-of which he
holds all true and valid laws to be the realisa-
tion-we should feel that he had swept away
half the difficulties of the subject. His aim
is "to place International Law on deeper and
more stable foundations than comity or con-
vention." In his view, recognition is not an
act of courtesy or comity, but is a right which
cannot be jurally withheld; there is no such
thing as purely conventional law; unnatural
laws are not laws, extradition is a natural
duty. The point of view from which Prof.
Lorimer regards law is in many ways so
remarkable that we must defer a fuller con-
sideration of his book till the appearance of
the second volume. We refer to it at pre-
sent in connexion with a book of a very
different character-Mr. Lightwood's Nature
of Positive Law. At the outset Mr. Lightwood
and Prof. Lorimer are as far apart as two
thinkers can well be. The former criticises
Austin by the light which Sir Henry Maine
has furnished; in the eyes of the latter the
progress of the historical method is the rising
of the tide of empiricism. Yet, travelling by
different roads, they both arrive at very nearly
the same conception of jurisprudence. Mr.
Lightwood defines it "as a science which has
for its ultimate aim the ascertainment of rules
which shall regulate human relations in ac-
cordance with the common-sense of Right;"
the Law of Nations, according to Prof.
Lorimer, is "the law of nature realised in the
relations of separate nations."
Both agree
that it is within the province of jurisprudence
to determine the goodness or the badness of
laws. And their tests are alike. Mr. Light-
wood's test is public opinion, or, where this
opinion cannot be directly ascertained, utility;
and Prof. Lorimer's law of nature is only a
glorified utility. They carry out their prin-
ciples, indeed, with unequal boldness. While hood. We do not lose sight of the ability
the one would say that a law which is neither with which Mr. Lightwood supports his
popular nor useful is an exceptional pheno- theory of law, when we say that the best
menon, the other courageously holds that "a parts of his book consist of his sketch of the
private law founded on an erroneous growth of Roman law (selected as the best
interpretation of natural law, however for- example of a system whose development has
mally enacted, is not a law at all in the sense been little affected by external circumstances),
which attaches to law as falling within the and his exposition of the different views of
scope of the science of jurisprudence." When the English and the German schools of juris-
so much is being done to improve on Austin, prudence. Is it due to Mr. Lightwood that
it is surely to be regretted that such a back- another English translation of Thering's Der
ward step should be made. Jurisprudence Kampf um's Recht has recently appeared?

...

Of Mr. Sheldon Amos's Roman Civil Law we cannot speak very warmly. His aim, indeed, is excellent. Before the study of Roman law can become of real service in legal education, we must be ready to go direction was made by the publication of beyond the Institutes. A step in the right Holland and Shadwell's Select Titles from the Digest. But there is still need of "a trustworthy guide to those who propose to study the Corpus Juris, or parts of it, exhaustively." Mr. Amos, however, does not play the part of Blackstone very well. It is in the study of such titles as Possession that the student has real need of preliminary guidance; but as to the nature of Possession and the growth of the conception Mr. Amos has not made up his own mind, and he gives an account of it which is both hazy and incorrect. But the most serious defect of the book is its failure to fulfil the promise of its title. We have a sketch of the external history of the law before Justinian, and a sketch of its external history in modern times; and between these sketches is sandwiched a summary of the principles of the law as it existed in Justinian's time. There are plenty of existing text-books which relate to external history; but what the student needs more than this is an introduction to the history of the principles themselves. Of the history of contract or of the rules of succession Mr. Amos has little to say. The student, moreover, will have to read with some suspicion such history as Mr. Amos is content to give. The account of the jus gentium is so obviously unsatisfactory that perhaps it will lead nobody astray; but he perpetuates a mischievous error when he says that Roman law preponderates in Bracton. We must not, however, do Mr. Amos's work injustice. His aim, as we have said, is excellent; and, in default of a more scientific work, the student will find that a summary of the whole law, such as is given him here, will be of very considerable service. G. P. MACDONELL.

TWO SPANISH MYSTICS.

Juan de Valdés' Commentary upon St. Paul's
First Epistle to the Church at Corinth.
Now first Translated by John T. Betts.
(Trübner.)

Golden Thoughts from the Spiritual Guide of
Miguel Molinos. With Preface by J. Henry
Shorthouse. (Glasgow: Bryce; London:
Fisher Unwin.)

In other respects Mr. Lightwood's book is full of interest. It is an attempt to arrive at such a conception of law as recent historical research demands; and both he and Prof. Clark, working independently, have arrived at nearly the some result. What is the true characteristic of law? It is not the sanctioning force, though that may exceptionally be the only support; it is rather public opinion. And he defines a law as a rule explanatory of a rule of morality, ascertained by proper authority, and resting upon the assent of the community." The terms of the definition may be improved; but probably no more precise statement would apply to all societies. (It may be observed, in passing, that by his own definition Mr. Lightwood is guilty of an illegal act in publishing a book without an index.) He is less successful in the distinction which he draws between law and morality. He says that "all the rules of morality may be assumed to be known, and THE "Considerations" of Juan de Valdés and yet that the best disposed individual may the works of Miguel Molinos found English often be in doubt as to how he is to observe admirers and were translated in the seventhem "-and the law gives him the infor- teenth century by men whose general opinions mation. Yet to the natural mind perjury were singularly in contrast with the theois not less obviously immoral than false-logical views of the originals. Valdés, whose opinions more nearly resemble those of the Friends or of the Plymouth Brethren of our day, than those of any other sect, was englished in 1638 by Nicholas Ferrar, one of the noblest of those High Churchmen who have attempted to graft a modified monastic rule upon the Church of England. The works of Molinos, the Quietist, who carries absorption to its highest pitch, and sublimates Christianity till its essence has well-nigh evaporated, were collected, turned into French, and published at Amsterdam in 1688, under the care of the

ance.

a remarkable sobriety and accuracy of judg ment. The importance of Beyle in French literary history is something of a modern discovery, and M. Bourget has a right to claim a position as one of its chief expositors, but he is not carried away by "discoverer's mania.' Altogether the book is a very good one, and may be said definitely to increase Par by one the for some time past dwindling list of contemporary French critics of a high class.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Red Deer. By Richard Jefferies. (Longmans.)
Everything that Mr. Jefferies writes about
wild nature is worth reading, for he pos-
sesses both an observant eye and a descriptive
pen. But we had begun to fear that he had
yielded to the temptation that besets every
successful man of letters nowadays of repeating
ad nauseam those effects by which he first won
breaks new ground-for him, though the
reputation. In the present little volume he
ground is not so entirely new as he would have
his readers think. He takes us to Exmoor, the
one part of England where deer are still found
wild, and the one part of the United Kingdom
where they are still hunted with hounds and
horses for the legitimate object of slaughter.
He describes the hunt, though apparently not
as one who has taken part in it. His main
purpose, however, is to describe the red deer
themselves, and the peculiar tract of country
which is, as it were, consecrated to them. From
the huntsman and the "harbourer" he has
picked up many wrinkles; but he has also
much to tell from his own keen experience. The
readers of his other books-and who has not
read them?-will find the same elaboration of
details that would be tedious if each detail were
not true and expressed in such choice English.
The book, it must be confessed, is a slight one,
and somewhat lengthened out with poachers'
stories. Still, it is one not to be overlooked by
those who love nature and the literature of
nature.

was the true title of the work referred to in the Preface as a "Year in a Lancashire Garden". yet the treatment is all the author's own. Mr. the poets; E. V. B. draws her chief charm from Milner indulged in bountiful quotations from the personal associations she is able to weave

round her flowers, her shrubs, her trees, and her birds. In addition, she has used with much effect for head- and tail-pieces that graceful pencil with which the world is already familiar. It must be a grievous thought to some who were themselves brought up in a garden, that their children cannot have the same privilege. Half the pleasures of the country are due to the revival of old memories.

John Bull and his Island. By Max O'Bell. Translated from the French under the supervision of the Author. (Field & Tuer.) It is unnecessary now to recommend this book to anyone. It deserves to have the same sort of success as had The Fight in Dame Europa's School or The Battle of Dorking. We will only remark that the translation has been unusually well done, and that the geniality of the satire is undergone this process. attested by the success with which it has John Bull's best

defence is that "Max O'Rell" knows little of the inside of an English home, and still less of English country life.

It is impossible not to regret that M. Bourget has deferred, or appeared to defer, to contemporary fashion (unkind folk might call it contemporary cant) by calling his book "psyehological" essays. Who will deliver us from psychology and physiology and all the rest of the pseudo-scientific jargon in matters literary? M. Bourget would be at least as well qualified as another to attempt this deliverHe has in reality given us five excellent literary essays-on Baudelaire, on M. Renan, on Flaubert, on M. Taine, and on Beyle. But his title, or rather the aim which prescribed his title, has induced him to dwell chiefly on the mental peculiarities of his authors as displayed in their works, and on the effect which these peculiarities exercise on the mental development of their readers. For our part, we frankly own to a preference, in matters literary as in others, for dealing with the ding an sich; but that is, no doubt, a personal preference and an arguable point. However this may be, M. Bourget has, as a matter of fact, been led very little, if at all, astray by his desire to elevate or to degrade (let us give the fullest choice of terms) literary criticism into a branch of experimental science. His five essays are all remarkable pieces of work. The first, on Baudelaire, is the shortest, and not, we think, the best; for M. Bourget hardly gives sufficient expression to Baudelaire's remarkable faculty of irony, and to the strong and sound sense which lay behind his affectations and extravagances. Unquestionably the critic is aware of these things, and more than one remark of his suggests his knowledge. But a reader of his essay who did not know Baudelaire's own work, and had not corrected the Fleurs du Mal by La Fanfarlo and the critical essays, might go off with the same entirely erroneous notion of the with a glossary to his other books. Quite apart which we have not had access, purports to be

poet which has deceived not merely the common herd of Philistia, but even such a writer as Mr. Henry James. On M. Renan M. Bourget is copious and extremely interesting; as a characterisation of the man, his paper is the best critical study yet published. That on Flaubert is also very good, and M. Bourget does yeoman's service in showing how

Sailors' Language: a Collection of Sea-Terms
and their Definitions. By W. Clark Russell.
(Sampson Low.) Mr. Clark Russell, like Mr.
Jefferies, has got the ear of the public; and, in
a matter of this kind, the public are never
entirely wrong. In this book he provides us
from the attraction the sea will always exercise
on Englishmen, there is a special attraction in
sea-slang, which is not so entirely unintelligible
to landsmen as Mr. Clark Russell seems to
imply. There are, of course, a large number of
purely technical terms which can only be ex-
plained by experience, or, perhaps, by illustra-
tion. But most of the metaphors and proverbs
would, we venture to think, be sufficiently
understood by all who have kept their eyes and

An Infallible Way to Contentment in the Midst of Public and Personal Calamities. First published in the year 1638. (Religious Tract Society.) This is the third of the society's "Companions for a Quiet Hour." We have read it with much interest, and can testify that it is judicious and sober in tone, singularly free from all trace of sectarianism, uniformly well written, and that it attains often to a considerable degree of eloquence, which is well sustained, and shows but little tendency to sink into the bathos that is the pitfall of minor writers of the seventeenth century. Scattered through it are interesting historical allusions, such as the metaphor from the closing of the Exchequer at p. 109. From the references to Hobson, the carrier, Hieron (here spelt Heiron), and Luther, and, among others, the concluding passages referring to "reproaches, oppressions, into prisons, draggings before tribunals," we and persecutions; false accusations, halings had suspected that the author was a Cambridge man, and a Nonconformist of the school of

Baxter. But we are indebted to the courtesy
of the secretary of the Religious Tract Society
for the information that the original edition, to
by the author of The Devout Communicant-i.e.,
Abednego Seller, then rector of a parish in
Devonshire, and afterwards a non-juror. Par-
ticulars of his life and works are given in
Wood's Athenae; and Hearne makes mention of
him in 1705 as recently dead, and as having
supplied Cave with materials for his Historia
Literaria. Perhaps the attribution may be
open to some doubt; but there can be no doubt
on another point-viz., the writer's indebted-
The latter's Art of Contentment was published
ness to the author of The Whole Duty of Man.
in 1675, and a comparison of the two shows that
the later author was indebted to the earlier not
only for the general scheme of his treatise, but
also for many illustrative details. It may be
added that Fell, at the end of his Preface to
plains of another imitation of the Contentment
published in the form of an Appendix to it
and entitled The Art of Patience under al
Afflictions.

that great novelist was a romantic, and not a naturalist, in creed and method. With the fourth essay, that on M. Taine, we confess somewhat less satisfaction; not that it does not contain much good literary criticism, and, like that on M. Renan, some acute analysis of character. But M. Bourget seems to us to put the brilliant author of Thomas Graindorge a little Of the many matters in it that have arrested the anonymous author's collected works, com

too high in the scale. To most English readers the last essay, that on "Stendhal," will contain most that is new, for the author of the Chartreuse de Parme is anything but 80 well known here as he ought to be. Besides this accidental attraction, the paper (which, though its length is considerable, we could wish longer and increased by a detailed notice of all Beyle's work) is distinguished by

ears open. To say (p. ix.) that "sailors' talk is
a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as
Hindustanee is, or Chinese," is certainly a gross
exaggeration. Still, we are far from wishing to
grumble (nautice "growl") at what Mr. Clark
Russell has here given us. It is undoubtedly
the best modern sailor's dictionary in existence.
our attention we will only mention "crinkum-
crankum whales"-those that can't be cotched;
and, with much deference, ask Mr. Clark
Russell to reconsider whether "on the beam"
is satisfactorily defined as "said of an object
right abreast."

Days and Hours in a Garden. By E. V. B.
(Elliot Stock.) A beautiful book in a beautiful
dress. Though the idea is admittedly taken
from Mr. Milner's Country Pleasures-for that

The Marriage Ring. By the Right Rev
Connor, and of Dromore.
Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Bishop of Down an
Fourth Edition of his ENIATTO published in 167
A Reprint from th
Edited, with a Preface, Appendix, and Notes
by Francis Burdett Money Coutts. (Bell.)

AT the meeting of the Clifton Shakspere THE fourth volume of the Old Testament Com-Society held on December 29 the following mentary for English Readers, edited by Bishop communications were read:-"The Writers of