the man an intelligent friend in his wife, and the boy an efficient instructor in his mother.

The first chapter is on the characters by which living beings are distinguished from inorganic bodies, and animals from plants. It describes the phenomena of life.

The second discriminates between the apparatus and characteristics of the organic and the animal life, as combined in man; and traces their progress and decline. The natural history of death, with which this chapter concludes, has, as a composition, much of that singular and melancholy beauty wherewith a painter of genius would invest the personification of mortality.

The third chapter treats of the ultimate object of organization and life; shows pleasure to be the direct, the ordinary, and the gratuitous result of the action of the organs; and in turn, conducive to their developement and the continuance of their action. The whole of this chapter is an eloquent lecture on the morality of nature, which is alike remote from that of the ascetic and of the sensualist. It impressively portrays the superiority of intellectual over animal enjoyment, and of the sympathetic over the selfish propensities. We take a fragment of the former of these

contrasts:

But if the pleasures that arise from the ordinary operations of sense form, in the aggregate, an incalculable sum, how great is the accession brought to this stock by the endowments next in order in the ascending scale, namely, the intellectual faculties !

There is one effect resulting from the operation of the intellectual faculties on the senses that deserves particular attention. The higher faculties elevate the subordinate in such a manner as to make them altogether new endowments. In illustration of this, it will suffice to notice the change wrought, as if in the very nature of sensation, the moment it becomes combined with an intellectual operation, as exemplified in the difference between the intellectual conception of beauty, and the mere perception of sense. The grouping of the hills that bound that magnificent valley which I behold at this moment spread out before my view; the shadow of the trees at the base of some of them, stretching its deep and varied outline up the sides of others; the glancing light now brightening a hundred different hues of green on the broad meadows, and now dancing on the upland fallows; the ever-moving, ever-changing clouds; the scented air; the song of birds; the still more touching music which the breeze awakens in the scarcely trembling branches of those pine trees,-the elements of which this scene is composed, the mere objects of sense, the sun, the sky, the air, the hills, the woods, and the sounds poured out from them, impress the senses of the animals that graze in the midst of them; but on their senses they fall dull and without effect, exciting no perception of their loveliness, and giving no taste of the pleasures they are capable of affording. Nor even in the human being, whose intellectual faculties have been uncultivated, do they awaken either emotions or ideas; the clown sees them, hears them, feels them no more than the herds he tends: yet in

him whose mind has been cultivated and unfolded, how numerous and varied the impressions, how manifold the combinations, how exquisite the pleasures produced by objects such as these!

And from the more purely intellectual operations, from memory, comparison, analysis, combination, classification, induction, how still nobler the pleasure! Not to speak of the happiness of him who, by his study of natural phenomena, at length arrived at the stupendous discovery that the earth and all the stars of the firmament move, and that the feather falls to the ground, by the operation of one and the same physical law; nor of the happiness of him who sent his kite into the cloud, and brought down from its quiet bed the lightning which he suspected was slumbering there; nor of the happiness of him who concentrated, directed, and controlled that mighty power which has enabled the feeble hand of man to accomplish works greater than have been feigned of fabled giant; which has annihilated distance; created, by economizing, time; changed in the short space in which it has been in operation the surface of the habitable globe; and is destined to work upon it more and greater changes than have been affected by all other causes combined; nor of the happiness of him who devoted a longer life with equal success to a nobler labour, that of REARING THE FABRIC OF FELICITY BY THE HAND OF REASON AND OF LAW. The intellectual pleasures of such men as Newton, Franklin, Watt, and Bentham, can be equalled only by those who possess equal intellectual power, and who put forth equal intellectual energy: to be greatly happy as they were, it were necessary to be as highly endowed; but to be happy, it is not necessary to be so endowed. In the ordinary intellectual operations of ordinary men, in their ordinary occupations, there is happiness. Every human being whose moments have passed with winged speed, whose day has been short, whose year is gone almost as soon as it seemed commenced, has derived from the exercise of his intellectual faculties pleasures countless in number and inestimable in value.' p. 87-89.

Chapter IV. illustrates the relation between the physical condition and happiness, and between happiness and longevity. The author has here availed himself largely of the evidence from statistics in support of his position; and many very curious results are given from the calculations of Mr. Finlaison, the actuary of the National Debt, a gentleman who has turned his extraordinary command of numbers, tables, and statistical documents, to account, for a variety of interesting purposes; and thus elicited many unexpected illustrations of that connexion of all sciences, which mere men of science have been so slow to discern, but which is unspeakably important in the application of science to the affairs of life, so as to derive from it the largest quantum of utility.

We must refer our readers to the work itself for the many remarkable statements of this chapter. The general conclusion to which they point is the increased duration of life; its rapidly progressive value in this country especially, and the important and satisfactory truth, that whatever is added to human life is added to its best period-is the prolongation of its maturity.

Decrepit age, like infancy and juvenility, is a fixed term, and incapable, generally speaking, of extension.

In the fifth chapter commences the exposition of the processes of life and the influence of physical and moral agents upon them,' and continues to the end of the volume. The difficulty of making this exposition sufficiently clear without the actual demonstration of the objects, has been successfully grappled with, by means of numerous and well-executed drawings, which, although some of them are necessarily on a very reduced scale, are yet so distinct and well arranged as to accomplish all that was practicable.

The nature of the subject, and the scanty space we can assign to it, prevent our doing more than earnestly directing the attention of our readers to a work which, when completed, will give its author no mean place among the beneficent instructors of mankind. The subject of it is necessarily a study; but the combination of the manner in which it is here treated, with its universal importance, will, we hope, render it increasingly a popular study.

POETRY,

BY THE AUTHOR OF CORN LAW RHYMES.

1. A THUNDER STORM IN WINTER.

He spake to eye and ear! and, like a tree
Rooted in heaven, shot down the branchy flame,
While the blue moonlight vanished suddenly.
Brighter than light on snow the brightness came,
Filling the vales with forests of strange fire,

The streams with blood; and flinging o'er the cloud
Banners of crimson, laced with silver wire.

Down to mute earth the giant darkness bowed,

Giving the hill immeasurable height,

That propped the sky; then changed the troubled form,
While from his bosom fell the headlong weight

Of vollied hail; and whispering through the storm,
The thunder spake again: What fear'st thou? live, poor worm!

·

2. PROLOGUE TO THE CORN LAW RHYMES.

For thee, my country, thee, do I perform
Sternly, the duty of a man born free;

Heedless, though ass and wolf, and venomous worm,
Shake ears, and fangs, with brandished bray at me ;
Alone, as Crusoe, on th' all hostile sea,

For thee, for us, for ours, do I upraise

The standard of my song! for thine and mine,
I toll the knell of England's better days;
And lift my hated voice, that mine and thine
May undegrade the human form divine.

Perchance that voice, if heard, is heard too late;
The buried dust of Tyre may wake, and sway
Reconquer'd seas; but what shall renovate
The dead alive, who dread no judgment-day?
Souls, whom the lust of gold hath turn'd to clay?
And what but scorn and slander will reward
The rabble's poet, and his honest song?

Gambler for blanks! thou play'st an idiot's card;
For, sure to fall, the weak attack the strong.

Aye, but what strength is theirs, whose might is based on wrong?

3. FROM GOETHE.

How like a stithy is this land!
And we lie on it, like good metal
Long hammer'd by a senseless hand!

But will such thumping make a kettle?

4. ON AN ORIGINAL SKETCH DRAWN WITH A PENCIL ON A WALL BY MY

SON FRANCIS.

I saw a head, a young but lifeless face,

On its dark hair and two white wings, reposed,

As on a pillow.

Tears had left their trace
Down each sad cheek; beneath dim eyes, half-closed,
The calm lips smiled; and like a sky arose,
Amid thick curls, the forehead, armed for thought.
It lay, as if the soul-though worn with woes,
And bathed in parting tears-serenely sought
For strength in sleep, before it wing'd its flight
From darkness, doubt, and dust, to dwell with God in light.

5. LEGION, A PORTRAIT.

WALLOWING in wealth, and yet an almoner,
Shark goes not to the workhouse for his pay,
But wrings his bread-tax from the labourer;
Then to the treadmill takes his righteous way,
To see his victim-vagabonds display
Their British virtues-but he never treads!
In vain the merchant pleads for leave to sell;
In vain for leave to toil the labourer pleads;
In vain to Shark of ruined trade we tell!
Oh, for a law to purge this demon's hell,
And cast out fiends! o teach the nuisance vile
He must not make the general loss his gain!
Or whip him naked though the bankrupt isle!
That he may reap some portion of the pain
With which he sows our hearths, and so restrain
His devilish appetite for famine's tears!

No. 99.

N

6. SONG.

OH! why is gladness turned to woe?
And wealth to beggary, too?
John Payall, if thou dost not know,
Ask Blucher's Waterloo!

And why doth hope take wing and fly?
And why is conscience gone?
Ask Pitt, in hell-or, by and by,
Ask Famine's Wellington!

7. ANDREW JACKSON.

FROM sordid thraldom, and a shameful ban,
Who hath redeemed aspersed democracy?
King-loathed Columbia's brave and wise old man.
Rejoice, oh world! God said, Let Jackson be!'
And at his feet died swollen Monopoly !
Rejoice! his triumph saves no single state,
But every state; it saith, Let trade be free!'
Lone Washington! another good and great
Hath earned a deathless name-and every villain's hate.

AN EVENING WITH CHARLES LAMB AND COLERIDGE.

IT is a good thing early to teach children a veneration for those above them; above them not by the possession of derived honours, whether of rank or wealth, but of some inherent quality, developed in corresponding action, either of a moral or intellectual nature. It gives a beyond to the life of a child; it assists in promoting that onward and upward tending which is the soul of progression. And although, too often, in the warmth of the heart's religion, it may offer up incense at an unworthy shrine,-although the idol may fail upon nearer communion, and the deified man or woman be found but mortal,-yet it still retains its faith, not to be wasted in fruitless disappointment, but to be cherished, enriched, and preserved, a precious offering, awaiting the advent of a worthier object to whom it may be dedicated. This feeling of veneration, early cultivated, has a rich value in elevating the mind, and redeeming it from the bondage of that conceit of self, which is a great stumbling block to improvement; and beyond that, may be made a means of procuring some of the best and happiest sensations that mere recipiency can bring. It adds a charm to reality beyond itself; it prepares the way for that reality till it becomes reality better worth having through its influence. How often has this been proved! How often, when a name has been mentioned that has signalized itself either as poet, patriot, actor, artist, or