tractive portion, though replete with valuable information. The same paper exhibits, to our apprehension, a rather marked tendency to put its author forward as the editor of the Veda, instead of an editor of a Veda. The same tendency appears here and there in other essays. That the Rig-Veda is by far the most important work of its class, no one will deny; but this does not justify the assertion that the rest are all of a merely liturgical character, and have no value independent of this one. And if he had made the good people of Leeds fully understand that the bulky quarto which he was at the pains to carry along and exhibit to them contained only about one part Veda and four parts modern Hindu commentary, of disputed worth, they might not have opened their eyes quite so widely with admiration.

Professor Müller informs us that the present volumes contain only a selection from his fugitive writings on the two classes of subjects indicated. The first includes at least one essay, which we greatly regret that he did not class with those destined to oblivion. We mean that upon the Aitareya Brahmana of Professor Haug. It is in all respects unworthy of him, being an unreserved and uncritical encomium of a work which, along with great merits, has some striking defects, shows signs of hasty preparation, and unduly depreciates the labors of others in the same field. Nor is its inclusion recommended by any interesting discussion of points of general importance contained in it, or by sound and instructive views upon the period of Hindu antiquity to which it relates, while it is especially objectionable on account of the note which its author has added at the end.

In the article as originally published (Saturday Review for March 19, 1864), Professor Müller had been ill-advised enough to insert an attack upon his fellow Sanskritists, the collaborators in the great Sanskrit lexicon published at St. Petersburg, as having formed a mutual-admiration society with the intent to "sing each other's praises in the literary journals of Russia, Germany, and America," and to "speak slightingly" of all outside of that circle. What had happened to call forth this accusation, it is difficult to see; unless perhaps that more than one of the scholars referred to had recently (without any apparent or known concert) joined in defending the lexicon and its authors from a very violent and unjust attack made upon them. At any rate, Dr. Haug (who has quite enough merit to stand alone, and can afford to invite searching criticism instead of indiscriminate commendation) was patted on the back, and assured that, if his book should be spoken of unkindly "in the journals of the Mutual-Praise Society," this should have no effect upon the opinion of anybody whose opinion was worth having. In the Chips, now, Müller has omitted the offensive paragraph;

but he has appended to the essay a note which, instead of mitigating, has trebled the original offence. He first explains the omission, intimating the nature of the accusation made, and averring that he did not originate it, but merely repeated it from others, being convinced that there was foundation for it. He represents it as having been met "by a very loud and boisterous denial." He is sorry if he has given unnecessary pain by what he has done, and hopes that in future no reason for similar complaint will be given; if that result is produced, he will try to bear like a martyr the wrath and resentment which he has provoked. We are at a loss for words to characterize the cool effrontery of this paragraph. Its tone of magisterial assumption is not easily to be paralleled. Müller says, in effect, that a parcel of naughty persons have been caught in their naughtiness; that he has administered to them deserved correction, under which they have cried out lustily; that he is grieved at having had to hurt them so much, and make them so angry; but comforts himself with the belief that it is for their good. And this to men some of whom can show services to Sanskrit literature superior to his own, and whose reputation for single-mindedness and candor is, to say the least, not less than his !

As regards, indeed, a reputation for fairness and candor, there are implications and insinuations in this note which are not calculated to be of service to its author. Look, in the first place, at the "very loud and boisterous denial." It is a pity that we are not informed where such a denial is to be met with; we suspect it to be a figment of Professor Müller's lively imagination. An anonymous criticism in a periodical so little famed for impartiality and leniency of judgment as the Saturday Review was not likely greatly to disturb the peace of whomsoever it might be aimed at; and to those who recognized in it the hand of the Oxford Professor it was doubtless more worthy of attention as an illustration of personal character than in any other way. We are not aware that any one ever took public notice of it, excepting Professor Weber of Berlin. This eminent scholar, being himself the butt at which both Haug and Müller had chiefly aimed their arrows, could hardly remain silent without seeming to confess inability to repel the accusations laid against him; accordingly, in his Indische Studien (IX. 2, 1865), he reprinted the article, side by side with another very able and trenchant criticism of Dr. Haug's book, written by a Hindu and first printed in India, for the purpose of contrasting the learning and spirit of the two critics, much to the disadvantage of the Anglo-German; and then, after a few strong but dignified words in answer to the latter's insinuations, he proceeded to a very detailed and careful examination of the work which Müller had volunteered to guarantee especially against any

attack he might make upon it, discussing it with a fulness of erudition certainly not at the command of any other European scholar, doing justice to its solid merits, but also pointing out, without passion and without carping, its errors and defects; thus furnishing a running commentary upon it of the highest value, and without the assistance of which no unpractised student should venture to use the work at all. This was Weber's" denial": from the way in which Müller describes it one would infer that it must indeed have rung terribly in his ears.

Again, the charges of "literary rattening" which our author says that he merely alludes to, and of which he shifts the burden to Dr. Haug's shoulders, are not to be found in the latter's pages at all; they appear rather to emanate from no other person than the scholar whose attack upon the St. Petersburg lexicon was the occasion of all the after-trouble. So that the plain history of the affair seems to be this: some one falls fiercely upon the work of a company of collaborators; they unite in its defence; thereupon the aggressor reviles them as a mutual-admiration society; and Müller repeats the accusation, giving it his own indorsement, and volunteering in addition that of another scholar.

Once more, Müller refers his readers, if they are curious to see the expunged paragraphs, to the Indische Studien, where, he says, the review may be seen "reprinted, though, as usual, very incorrectly." is strange that, writing especially for Englishmen, he does not send them rather to the place of original publication; apparently, he could not resist the temptation to cast in passing an additional slur upon the man whose denial had seemed to him so boisterous. In this, however, he was too little mindful of the requirements of fair dealing; for he leaves any one who may take the trouble to turn to the Indische Studien, and compare the version there given with that found among the Chips, to infer that all the discordances he shall discover are attributable to Weber's "incorrectness"; whereas they are in fact mainly alterations which Müller has made in his own reprint; and the real inaccuracies are perfectly trivial in character and few in number, such printer's blunders as are rarely avoided by Germans who print English, or by English who print German. We should probably be doing Müller injustice if we maintained that he deliberately meant Weber to bear the odium of all the discrepancies which a comparer might find; but he is equally responsible for the results, if it is owing only to a careless spitefulness on his part.

We regard this note as by far the most discreditable production of Professor Müller that has ever come under our notice; the epithet outrageous" is hardly too strong to apply to it. If this is to be his

style of carrying on a literary controversy, he cannot much longer claim to be treated with the ordinary courtesies of literary warfare.

It is also not quite fair and above-board that in the body of his article he notes with complacency, as supporting his own view of the matter, that Dr. Haug "calls absurd" the theories of those who hold that the lunar asterisms constituting the old Hindu zodiac were probably devised in some other country than India. For if he had dared to quote Haug's own dictum, his readers would have seen how weak a staff it was to lean upon. Haug is speaking of the observation of the solstices recorded in the Jyotisha, and remarks: "To believe that such an observation was imported from some foreign country, Babylon or China, would be absurd; for there is nothing in it to show that it cannot have been made in the northwestern part of India, or a closely adjacent country." That is to say, it is absurd to believe anything the contrary of which does not admit of being proved impossible! Moreover, it will be noticed how far Müller has stretched the bearing of the allegation of absurdity brought by his authority. After these two examples of his ill success in reporting the latter's opinions, we should almost be justified in adding to any further statement of his, made, as usual, very incorrectly."

66

In fact, we would call attention to one more very incorrect statement made in the course of the same review. He says, respecting the date of the observation above referred to, that it "has been fixed by the Rev. R. Main at 1186 B. C." (altered in the reprint to "has been accurately fixed," etc.). But this gentleman did nothing whatever toward fixing the date in question except to take a calculation made by Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta, and very slightly change the value of one of the factors in it, namely, the precession of the equinoxes. Mr. Pratt had estimated the precession approximately, as is usual in calculations of this character, at one degree in seventy-two years; greater precision than this does not comport with the general conditions of the problem; and the other, by insisting upon its absolute mathematical value, committed a piece of mathematical pedantry, very much as one who should insist on a fraction of a mile in estimating the distance of the sun from us. The whole calculation, to be sure, is little better than worthless, and has been so proved; but if any one is to have credit for it, it is Archdeacon Pratt, and he alone.

Astronomy is not one of Professor Müller's strong points, and it would be easy to show that others of his reasonings in this essay bearing upon astronomical subjects are unsound and without value; but we have surely already said enough to prove our thesis, that the omission of the essay and its appended note from his next edition would be a

notable increase of the value of the work. We hope that in the other pair of volumes, promised as the completion of the series, he will be somewhat more tender of his fellows' reputation and of his own.

2.1. Women's Suffrage; the Reform against Nature. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869. 2. The Subjection of Women. By JOHN STUART MILL. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.

ENGLISH style is distinguished by the atmosphere of homely splendor, of familiar pomp, of surcharged association, in which its words move. The sentences unroll themselves deliberately, seeming to listen to their own progress, now packing volumes of meaning into a simple word, now yielding to passing suggestions and incorporating into their mass epithets and clauses which writers of other nations would neglect as collateral and exuberant fancies. The secret of this peculiarly Engglish richness of movement has been kept by Dr. Bushnell, perhaps, more steadily than by any other of our contemporary writers. Mr. Mill's sentences, clean, weighted, and going straight to their mark, would, if translated literally, sound as natural and forcible to French, German, or Italian ears as they do to ours. But Dr. Bushnell's, in any tongue but our own, would have an outlandish air. To take an example at random: "Where we touch the limits of reason, they [women] touch the limits of excess; where we are impetuous in a cause, they are uncontrollable in it. We know how, as men, to be moderated in part, by self-moderation, even as ships by their helms in all great storms at sea; for the other part we had women kept in moderation by their element, even as ships in harbor lie swinging by their anchors; but now we get even less of help from these than they do from us." The reef on which the old English style often split came from an excess of this self-listening, and the result was affectation, or, to use the vulgar term, mouthing. And Dr. Bushnell with his rich fancy has not steered clear of the reef. A clerical training always tends to make a diffuse writer, and we think that" Women's Suffrage" would have been a more solid book if its author's remarkable powers of expression had been a little balanced by some cultivation of a correlative power of repression. As it is, he is redundant and careless, not to say often vulgar; as in such phrases as, "the Duchess of Devonshire was a high-life conventional kind of woman."