English term itself offers no possible resemblance to support his opinion:

'Allow me to offer you another instance or two. The more.common etymon for death, among all nations, is mor, mort, or mut; sometimes ther, and sometimes the t, being dropped in the carelessness of speech. It is mut in Hebrew and Phoenician; it is mor, or mort, in Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin; it is the same in almost all the languages of Europe; and it was with no small astonishment the learned lately found out that it is the same also in Otaheite, and some other of the Polynesian islands, in which mor-ai is well known to signify a sepulchre; literally, the place or region of the dead; ai meaning a place or region in Otaheitan, precisely as it does in Greek 'Vol. ii. p. 290.

Legible language, imitative and symbolical, next occupies our author (lect. x.); and from letters he then, unhappily for his credit, ascends to literature. Beginning with an inquiry into the education of former times,' he divides the literary history of Europe into three distinct periods,—' an era of light, of darkness, and of light restored :' meaning, of course, to symbolize classical antiquity, the middle ages, and the revival of letters. And here, we are persuaded, that every real friend to Dr. Good's reputation, who reads these three flimsy common-place papers (xi., xii., xiii., vol. ii.) with which he concludes his second series of lectures, will sincerely lament that he has appended them to the excellent dissertations of the volume. They are really altogether unworthy of the rest of the work, and we know not any class of educated readers to whom they can offer a particle either of instruction, interest, or novelty. The introduction of these insufficient and trifling views of literary history is the more to be regretted, because they formed no necessary part of his course, and were not demanded for the completion of his subject.

Dr. Good's third volume, and third series of lectures, is devoted to the consideration of the 'nature of the mind, and its general faculties and furniture.'

This series offers only an abridged treatise on a department of science, which, if not better understood than other branches of natural philosophy, is at least far more familiar to students at large. Following the usual outlines of the subject, Dr. Good has here only presented us with a very good elementary course of metaphysics, or essay on the philosophy of the human mind; and we may, therefore, be contented, after a careful perusal of this third volume, with recording our laudatory conclusion, that it is, in general, worthy of the two preceding, and ably completes the whole work on an uniform and satisfactory plan.

There is, however, one lecture in this volume (lect. vi.) on what he vaguely entitles the 'Hypothesis of Common Sense,' which requires our notice. In that paper his aim is to decry and ridicule the appeal which some of the Scotch metaphysicians of our times, in their philosophical discussions, have made to common sense as a criterion of truth. With a strong disposition to call names, the

doctor commences by contemptuously classing Beattie, Reid, and Stewart together as 'the common sense school' of metaphysicians; and he thence finds no difficulty in confounding the three in a community of error. Of Dr. Beattie (in the language of Byron "a great name but a little authority") any one who should in this day speak with deference as a metaphysician, would deserve to be laughed at; and there is a strange unfairness in mixing up the names of Reid and Stewart with his, as if to make them answerable for all his loose, slight, and erroneous reasonings.

In several places (pp. 165, 166, 177, &c.) Dr. Good is himself obliged to confess that Beattie is for the most part in contradiction with Reid and Stewart; and certainly, if a school is to be imagined for our northern metaphysicians who have appealed to common sense as a criterion of truth, Reid only, and not Beattie, is to be regarded as its real founder, and Stewart as its more perfect architect. Stewart is not chargeable with the cruder speculations of his predecessor; and if he is to be judged as an authority of a school, his reputation should be made responsible only for the improved doctrines which he has advocated.

But it really appears to us that Dr. Good has much misunderstood and misrepresented the tenets of the 'common sense school.' He is very eager in undertaking the defence of Locke, as if that great and good man had been injuriously treated by the modern northern metaphysicians. Stewart (and we shall not go farther back) laments the use which has been made of Locke's system of ideas by the French philosophers of the last century, and others, to establish their pernicious doctrines: and we will venture to affirm that the often cited passage in the second chapter of the second book of the Essay on Human Uunderstanding has, in fact, done more mischief from the misconstruction to which it is open, than whole elaborate treatises on materialism from inferior authorities. Stewart, indeed, fully admits that the intentions of Locke differed widely from the purposes to which his essay has been wrested; and he declares expressly that the French materialists have misunderstood "the import of his conclusions." Such is the injustice which the common sense school have committed against Locke! And how has Dr. Good defended him? Why, verily, by admitting and repeating (vol. iii. p. 162) exactly the substance of these reflections of Stewart!

With respect to the term itself, which Dr. Good has made the

* Methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left to let in external visible resemblances or ideas of things without. Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them."-Locke on Human Understanding, book ii., chap. ii, § 17.

watch-word for his ridicule of the school of Reid and Stewart-'that newly discovered and sublime principle,' as he ironically calls it, of common sense, which they have loaded with as many names and titles as a Spanish grandee or a Persian prime minister'-he has certainly forced a very different interpretation upon it from the meaning of the latter writer. Any candid enquirer who reads the first chapter in the second volume of Stewart's Elements, will at once perceive that common sense is used only by him to express the common reason of mankind :—that faculty which is exercised in the fundamental laws of belief, which at once enables the man of the world to detect the absurdity of denying, with Berkely, Hume, and other idealists, the existence of a material creation around us, and which teaches us, what no demonstration can possibly establish, to expect the certain continuance in future of the ordinary course of day and night, summer and winter, and a thousand other physical phenomena. Yet it is the assertion of this faculty, of which every reflecting man must be conscious in the operations of his own mind, that has provoked Dr. Good's petulant disputations and splenetic attempts to be sarcastically pleasant.

The question, which Dr. Good proposes, with a sneer of triumph, for an experimentum crucis-where is the seat of this boasted faculty of common sense?'-appears to us little less than absurd. If its power be evinced in results, it is no objection to its existence that we cannot fully explain its exact nature and constitution. For our own parts, we have no doubt of the existence of such a faculty in the mind, and we believe, with Dugald Stewart, that Locke's theory of the exclusive origin of all our knowledge from without will not, by any means, account for it. But we are not wedded to any speculative doctrine, however commanding the authority by which it is maintained. If the Scotch metaphysicians be visionary in their views, and mistaken in their principles, they are not inexpugnable with fair weapons: in the name of reason and truth, let the soundness of their doctrines be freely canvassed, and their errors broadly condemned. But in metaphysical controversy the rejection of all pert, flippant levity is the least part of serious attention and fair dealing that may be expected; and in no scientific enquiries are candour and forbearance more imperatively demanded than in the discussion of a branch of knowledge which is busied in grasping the most subtle distinctions, and utterly dependent upon the arbitrary signification and mutable understanding of words.

ART. IX. Some account of the Life and Character of the late Thomas Bateman, M. D., &c. 8vo. pp. 228. 78. 6d. London. Longman

and Co. 1826. THIS is a zealous, though a somewhat overlaboured, tribute to the memory of the late Dr. Bateman, a physician who had earned a considerable reputation in his profession, and who assisted not a

little towards its improvement in the branch of cutaneous diseases. Most of the medical articles in Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia, are also acknowledged to have proceeded from Dr. Bateman's pen; he was besides an active contributor to some of the best medical journals of his time, and though the tenor of his life may, therefore, be supposed to exhibit no great variety of incident, yet we shall have occasion to see that in one respect it deserves the brief notice we mean to bestow upon it.

The materials for his biography have evidently proceeded from the hands of his relatives; but they appear before us extended considerably beyond their original size, by some friend of the family, who seems only to have looked upon each of even the most trivial circumstances in Dr. Bateman's life as a sort of text, or motto, upon which he was to write a dissertation. Thus we have a series of essays upon the education of youth in the early part of the book, sufficiently justified, as our author imagines, by the simple fact that young Bateman went first to one grammar school, and then changed to another. There was nothing particularly erroneous in the constitution of these schools, or in the mode in which the subject of this work was brought up, to call for the dissertations which our biographer has inflicted upon his readers. At a later period of Dr. Bateman's life, he indulged himself one evening in reading some book of poetry, and this simple accident gives rise to a long and tiresome discourse upon poetry in general, from the time of Homer down to the present day.

How it is that a writer who evinces on some occasions a fund of good sense, could be guilty of such violations of good taste, it would be useless to conjecture. It is evident, indeed, that he wished to give his slender materials as much importance as possible; but in making the attempt he has rendered his volume almost unreadable.

The thread of Dr. Bateman's life, when separated from the irrelevant matter by which it is encumbered, is remarkably plain. He was born at Whitby, in Yorkshire, on the 29th of April, 1787, and at four years of age was placed under the care of a dissenting minister, with whom he remained-seven years. We are told that his progress at school was very considerable; yet his biographer records, that when eleven years old, being permitted to spend the summer with his family, it was his constant practice to sit on the top of a gate near the house for a great part of the day, lost in thought, without seeking any other occupation.' His father observing this indolent habit, continually lamented to his mother that "that boy would never do any good;" and here the author passes into a long digression, in order to demonstrate that boys at such a tender age are not to be too rashly judged of!

Young Bateman was soon after removed to another school, and after acquiring the rudiments of Latin, and some taste for botany, he was apprenticed to an apothecary at the age of sixteen, and

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after spending three years in that situation he was removed to London, for the purpose of attending Dr. Baillie's lectures. It is an incident worth mentioning, that upon leaving his mother he asked her how often she wished him to write to her. She answered, once a fortnight;" and it is a strong proof of his filial piety, that through all the subsequent years of his absence, and in the midst of his most active engagements, he never, in one instance, exceeded the given period, even by a single day.' Had the biographer left the subject with this remark, and proceeded with his narrative, we should have had less reason to find fault with him. But the bare allusion to a correspondence, in the first place, incites him to dwell upon the general style of letter-writing in modern times; and in the next place, having mentioned Dr. Baillie's name, he feels himself bound to enter at length into the history and character of that very eminent lecturer and physician. These discursive exhibitions, however, form but a small portion of our author's absurdity.

After spending a year in London, Mr. Bateman proceeded, in the autumn of 1798, to Edinburgh, where he gained a high rank among his fellow-students, and graduated in 1801. These plain facts we collect with some difficulty from about one dozen pages, which are devoted chiefly to an inquiry which the author deems a curious' one, namely what is, in point of fact, the ultimate effect of the high incitements to mental exertion which are offered in some public seminaries?'-an inquiry that may, with equal propriety, be foisted into every piece of biography that ever was or eyer will be written. He lights, however, upon one observation with respect to natural philosophy, which is not altogether unworthy of the attention of those who have the care of children.

With the facilities provided by so many valuable elementary books in natural history as are now to be found in all its branches, and the delight with which such knowledge is received, even by children, when judiciously communicated, the positive good which it must always bring with it ought not to be disregarded. A pebble, a shell, a flower, an insect, or a bird, there is no corner of the earth without. It is easy to deal familiarly with them all, and imperceptibly to imprint upon the memory-very wonderful being its capacity in the young-a world of pleasing facts, beautiful images, and the sweetest moral sentiments. To whatsoever walk in life the youth may be destined, such attainments will be sure to be in unison with it, and to afford him a congenial satisfaction even to the end.'-p. 54.

Soon after Dr. Bateman took his degree at Edinburgh he settled in London, and in the course of a short time was elected physician to the Public Dispensary, and also to the Fever Institution. He gave himself up with great diligence to his duties, and spent all his leisure hours in adding to his professional knowledge. Upon this part of his life his biographer is sufficiently intelligible.

It would be hardly too much to say that he never wasted a minute. His pen was always in his hand the moment he came down stairs in the