words, that, with a given brain, a man who has strong and high desires will arrive at more and truer results of reflection than if, with the same brain, his desires are comparatively mean and low."

I think that a very little reflection on our common daily experience will suffice to convince all of us that Dr. Bucke is right. He has indeed only thrown into a more developed form the well-known sentiment of Pascal that great thoughts come from the heart; but it is well that the idea should be developed, for we are thus enabled to judge more adequately of its scope and value. We see now

why it is that some men whose heads are mines of facts, and who have, in their own way, a great thirst for knowledge, produce so little impression on their fellows, and count for so little in the world. Having no distinct moral aims, or never rising above conventional conceptions of morality, they do not aspire to moral influence, they are not impelled to any enterprises of moral conquest, they do not appeal to the emotional side of any one's nature; and consequently, though we know them as industrious, well-informed men, we take nothing from them in the shape of moral direction or impulse. We know other men not so studious, not such absorbers of book-knowledge, not such insatiable collectors of facts, yet whose intercourse is to us a source of the highest profit. They awaken thoughts in us which men of the other class have no power to stir. They give us a deeper insight into ourselves and into the world. They enrich and invigorate our minds by the broad disinterestedness of their views. The men of facts may sometimes be sur

prised at the influence exerted by comparatively unlearned men, or by men who perhaps only get credit for a little" culture;" but it is not easy to see how they are going to help it. The truth is that the men of culture and of broad humanity see what the others do not see, and, have a learning which the others can never grasp. They see into themselves, and, seeing into themselves, they see into others. They are at home, so to speak, in the region of the soul. Minds of the other order, being habitually occupied with external objects, may be said to be always abroad. You can only catch them in the field, or on the highway, or in the market place, and then your talk must be of outward things. The chief source, I am inclined to believe, of the power exerted by modern men of science is that the leaders amongst them are men of strong emotional nature, men who are alive to all the poetry of the universe, and who are thus enabled to speak to the hearts as well as to the heads of men. Such a man is Tyndall; such a man, in spite of a little harshness of manner, is Huxley; such a man was the late lamented Clifford; such a man was Sir John Herschell. Dr. Bucke's book shows in a very striking manner how natural is the connection between "sweetness and light;" and it ought to make certain hard calculators and reasoners consider whether the very keenness and hardness of their intellect does not imply, on one side, a serious limitation of power, and furnish an explanation of their comparative lack of influence in the world.

W. D. LES.

Ruskin on Painting. Appleton's Handy Volume Series; New York, 1879: Toronto Hart & Rawlinson.

This is perhaps the most valuable number yet issued of this pleasant little series. It consists of a selection of extracts from the great work on 'Modern Painters,' with which Ruskin took the artistic and critical world by storm. All the faults of a collection of excerpts it naturally possesses; we would rather have seen half, or a third, of the original work printed verbatim, than have to endure this jotting from one fine passage to another. The publishers, however, aim to please the general, and not the critical, public, and they deserve our thanks for what they have done in this direction. Ruskin's works are almost a sealed book to many, on account of the English editions, originally high-priced, being, in some cases, out of print. All proposals for cheap authorized editions have been steadily declined by him, on the avowed ground that he does not wish that his works should be obtainable without an effort of sacrifice that will make their value afterwards appreciated the more. While acknowledging the ground-work of sound sense in this view-for who can deny that the men who wrought hard and lived scantily, to scrape together the means to buy a copy of Tyndale's or Coverdale's Bible, loved and prized it with a more ardent feeling than we experience now-adays for our Bible-Society's editions, sold under cost price for eight pence? we think that it is well for the many to read Ruskin in a cheap form, such as this, in order to acquire the taste that may lead them to wish to have all his works on their shelves, in the shape of editions which have been prepared and published (for he is his own publisher) under his

takes us along with him, not after a struggle, but by a species of winning clarity of thought, that makes us surrender our volition to his guidance. We may be convinced that he is wrong. Garbett, in his delightful' Rudimentary Treatise on the Principles of Design in Architecture,' does so convince us in one instance. We rise from his pages convinced that Ruskin was in error in attributing the value of ornaments in architecture to the amount of manual la bour expended on them. We see that the true test is the quantity of mental labour embodied, and that it is essential that this shall not be exceeded by the manual labour bestowed, or the latter will appear to be thrown away. Yet all the same we feel an inward misgiving, lest the next time we come across the heresy in Ruskin's pages, the spell of that mighty enchanter enchain our senses and lest our mental powers fall into a slavish obedience to his behests. Luckily enough, these behests are always purely and honestly intended, and are almost always artistically correct.

Ruskin wrote well on pictures, because he had learnt to look at Nature with his

own eyes. Not all the world bowing down before Poussin's landscapes could hinder him from seeing and proclaiming aloud, that these so-called treetrunks were, in fact, carrots and parsnips. He appreciated Turner, because Turner also had drawn his inspiration direct from the sky-depths and the sea-distances. How fine is his explanation of the reason, a reason perhaps which Turner would have found it difficult to put in words, of the peculiar position, some twenty or thirty yards from the shore, which was chosen as Turner's standpoint in his great sea-pieces. Looking from the beach out to sea, he well observes that each succeeding wave appears a new entity and the curl of the breakers somewhat monotonous. Seen from behind we recognise the fact that each new wave is the same water constantly rising, and crashing, and recoiling and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh

fury, we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its unwearied rage.

This little book is full of such lessons as this. The description of the sea in Turner's Slave Ship,' upon which Ruskin would have preferred to rest the painter's claim to immortality, if driven to select one single work, is as masterly a piece of word painting as its subject is, or alas, was, of oil painting. We must leave the book here. But at the close we may refer with some amusement to the absurd remarks of the Literary World, a Boston critical paper of some reputation, which in reviewing this same passage discloses its utter ignorance of the fact that Ruskin took the last words of his description 'incarnadines the multitudinous seas from a celebrated passage in Macbeth!

Tabor Melodies, by ROBERT EVANS, Hamilton. Toronto Samuel Rose, 1878.

This little book contains some two hundred and fifty sonnets, chiefly on religious subjects, written with very considerable care and showing occasional tokens of a real poetic spirit. As a rule, religious poetry does not rank high in the scale. Correctness of feeling and orthodoxy of thought usually predominate in it over the more etherial and essential elements of poetry. The result is that while each sect and school of thought has its peculiarly favoured book of religious verses, there is seldom, if ever, apparent in such works the glow of genius that would make the whole world, regardless of theological differences, resort to them for pleasure and instruction. It is not so with all religious prose works. The Pilgrim's Progress, for instance, does not and never will depend for readers upon the peculiar sect to which its author belonged. Something of the genius of Bunyan must be acquired before the numerous writers of sacred poetry can aspire to be known beyond the pale of their own churches.

Mr. Evans does not escape from the force of this rule. Too many of his sonnets are merely the records of an ordinary, some of a very commonplace, religious experience, couched to a considerable extent in the usual technical lan

Such type of

guage of English Protestantism. expressions as 'mediator,' Christ,' ,''Sabbatic year,' &c., which we find used in this book, are very proper phrases for sermons or theological works, but are not and never can be fit material to build into the delicate structure of a sonnet. Nor are these the only blots in the pages before us. The line

'Tis nature's spirit photographed in art,' betrays the fact that Mr. Evans is not. an artist, or even a connoisseur in art. He would not otherwise have used an expression the reverse of eulogistic when the context shows he intended it as the highest praise. The ideas conjured up by the word 'photograph' moreover, are too raw and modern, and withal too 'base and mechanical' to be fitted for use in poetry.

We should also advise Mr. Evans to change the title of a rather pretty sonnet on p. 13. The idea is a fine one, namely the ample space and absence of crowding on the upper rounds of the golden ladder It reaching between heaven and earth. is a truth that holds good of all the many golden ladders raised before us into the lofty domains of virtue, of art, of science, of religion. But to call this sonnet 'There's Room On Top,' is to desecrate the subject by calling up ludicrous recollections of omnibus conductors hailing a fare on a wet day.

We do not propose to pursue the thankless task of fault-finding any further. It is with much more pleasure. that we turn to those passages which we can indicate with praise. This is a fine line,

'As the loud thunder tramps adown the night,' and in the sonnet entitled 'the Meteor,' we find much beauty, marred however by the absurd conceit of calling the falling star

A Shadrack flashing out, then hid from view.' This is a very typical sacred poet's fault. There is no object to be attained in calling the star a Shadrack, beyond giving the sonnet a quasi-Biblical flavour, and no reason that we can see why Shadrack, rather than Meschach or Abed-nego should have been singled out for this dubious honour. But for this blot we should the more admire the poet's aspiration after the meteor's transient brightness and his desire to emulate it in some one grand act-'

E'en though I knew when its quick gleam was gone That high in heaven the stars would still shine on.'

Such occasional passages as these, or again a happy expression such as

'Truth in the bold minority of one,' induce us to encourage Mr. Evans to continue his pleasing labours. As it stands, his book deserves a welcome from the many families whose reading-leisure is to a considerable extent confined to Sundays. But if, as we should hope, he aspires to a wider audience, he must be proportionately more severe upon himself. His choice of the sonnet proves him to be somewhat ambitious, and is favourable inasmuch as it will permit him to remove whatever sonnets are condemnable as mediocre without injuring the rest. Let him in future be careful to select for publication only such poems as embody a novel thought, or an important truth clothed in a new and happy form, and we can almost promise him that recognition which he must not expect although to his present two hundred and fifty sonnets he had added twice two hundred and fifty more.

Hours with Men and Books, by WILLIAM MATHEWS. LL. D. Toronto, RoseBelford Publishing Co. 1878.

Those who love a chatty book, full of interesting and quaint facts, couched in an easy style and that lead to no unpleasant agitation of mind or unwonted exercise of brain, will admire this work of Mr. Mathews. We may not feel inclined to turn to his pages for a deep criticism on even the style, to say nothing of the matter, of DeQuincy's writings, but any one who relishes a pleasant farrago of anecdote, quotation, and biography will enjoy a dip into his opening paper on that great essayist. Certainly, no lover of De Quincey will find cause to complain that a grudging meed of praise has been there dealt out. He may, probably however, remark that there is little in the writer's observations beyond the feeling of an ordinary fairly appreciative reader, put into rather better shape than such a reader formulates his thoughts in.

This lack of insight and originality is, in fact, Mr. Mathews' besetting sin. No doubt it is hard for an essayist of this stamp t be original. He wants to

)

show his reading, and forthwith lugs in quotations from every side, more or less appropriate, and more or less humorous. This leads to a jerky style, inverted commas rule the roast, and you never know, when commencing a sentence, whether the sting in its tail is going to be the authors own, or someone else's. But worse consequences flow from it than this. To quote may be thought an easy task, but your real quotation is not a bird to be caught with salt. The most refined taste is required for the highest class of quotations; a taste that selects its material from the treasuries of a wellstored memory. Such delicacy, however, cannot be expected in essays or papers of a fugitive nature, often consisting of a string of foreign passages slightly connected together. The temptation in these cases to refer to other men's collections on the same subject is almost irresistible.

In the days when classical quotations were in vogue Montaigne's Essays' and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy' were the stock books of reference. This pillaging is often done very innocently. The essayist looks out for one to start himself with, and, while copying it down, another on the opposite page catches his eye and really is so appropriate that our author can't help appropriating it. The salve he applies to his conscience is this, that after all it really is a true quotation and he has only saved himself the trouble of a hunt through the original book, just as a reference to a directory aids us in the search for a house in some street we are not acquainted with.

Now, with all respect to the essayist, his salve only serves to hile his fault, and his illustration is a vicious one. His true position is more akin to that of the man, who, knowing that there is a good directory of such and such a town, issues a pirated edition with some arbitrary alteration in the arrangement and some trifling additions of his own. We must accuse Mr. Mathews of this conduct. The greater part of the paper in this volume on Literary Triflers' has been transferred neck and crop from the elder Disraeli's 'Curiosities of Literature,' without one word of acknowledgment. This is not fair. Those who do not happen to know the previous work will naturally credit Mr. Mathews with a labour and a research which are in no sense his This is not the only instance in

own.

which Disraeli suffers. We venture to say that every illustration, on p. 60 of the paper on Robert South, was taken from the same scource as the bulk of that on Literary Triflers.

That this method of working would lead to a careless style of argument might be expected. Among the graver errors we would point out one at the commencement of the paper on 'The Morality of Good Living.' According to our author' the theory of Hippocrates that the mental differences in men are owing to the different kinds of food they consume, has been very plausibly illustrated by the late Mr. Buckle.' A more misleading sentence has seldom been penned. We do not mind confessing that we have no more acquaintance at first hand with Hippocrates than Mr. Mathews has, but we do know that the foolish old fancies to which he refers, such as the eating of hare's flesh having a direct and immediate effect on a man's mind and rendering him timid and prone to sudden, panicky terrors, are nothing akin to any theory which Mr. Buckle ever illustrated. He would have laughed to scorn the notion that he ever credited such old wives' tales. All he said was that the available quantity, the price and the quality of a national food affected the question of population, which, in turn, acted upon the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and might therefore be said to form a remote and primary element in the building up of a national character. Not less extraordinary is the statement, on p. 176, that 'Sallust says that a periwinkle led to the capture of Gibraltar.' It is some time since we read our Sallust, but it strikes us forcibly that he must have been some. what of a prophet to have accounted so neatly for the success of an attack on a place which did not exist in his time. But what are we to say of the man who is so densely obtuse as to think that because he demonstrates the extreme difficulty which Archimedes would have experienced and the very long lever he would have required to move the world, even if he had the desired fulcrum, therefore he has exposed the philosopher's saying as a colossal absurdity'! The absurdity remains with the man who is unable to perceive that Archimedes was merely enunciating a principle, and who imagines that by translating that principle into a concrete form he has successfully refuted it.

6

Under One Roof. By JAMES PAYN. Toronto: Rose-Belford Publishing Co., 1879.

There seems to be but one opinion in English literary circles as to the success of Mr. Payn's latest story. The Academy praises it both for its story and the manner in which that story is told. The Times speaks in laudatory accents of the 'indefinable freshness' which exists in all Mr. Payn's works, and which 'no fertility of production seems to stale.' We can unfeignedly give in our achesion to these opinions, as far as concerns Mr. Payn's framework of plot, which seems to us to be carefully constructed. As the Academy points out, he is one of the first in the field in taking advantage of Spiritualistic belief as a potent motive power for his machinery. Since he exposes the worldly and deceiving conduct of the chief Spiritualist, and shows up the complete state of blindness into which the other believer falls; it would, perhaps, be amusing if we could get hold of some of the reviews of his book which will probably appear in those nondescript newspapers which affect to espouse the Spiritualistic faith. Such notices will, in all likelihood, fall foul of his novel altogether, and in particularly point out some blemishes in the elaboration of the plot. Mr. Ferdinand Walcot, known to the readers of the tale as a finished hypocrite of the most consummate depth of design, certainly commits some slips in his villainy which appear inexcusable from a detective's point of view, inasmuch as they tend to make one consider him in the light of an overrated villain and one who has some considerable share of the bungler (as well as the burglar) in his composition. It would not do for us to expose these slips in detail, as it would require an explanation of the dénouement which would be manifestly unfair to those readers who are now following the book through our pages. We will leave it, therefore, to their discernment to discover these blots in due course for them-selves.

Geier Wally, a Tale of the Tyrol, by WILHELMINE VON HILLERN. Appleton's Handy Volume Series, 1879. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson.

This is a pleasant little tale, with a decidedly fresh flavour of its own about it. Wally, nicknamed the Vulture, is