is illustrated by one hundred and ten engravings of unusual merit and delicacy of execution, two-thirds of the whole number being original. Upon the whole, the work is perhaps better adapted for teacher than for the ordinary student, and a grave defect is the absence of any glossary. The index, also, might with advantage have been made somewhat fuller. In spite of these drawbacks, however, the work is one which must prove of the greatest value alike to the teacher and the learner of Comparative Anatomy.

"HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES."

"I made up my mind to thole, a pithy old Scottish word signifying to bear with patience.'" The inscription might be taken as the motto of Scotland; and the biography of the Brothers Chambers is emblematic of the history of the Scottish nation. Their lives are a record of early struggles and hardships encountered with the utmost fortitude and self-denial, and, on the part of William at least, with the utmost cheerfulness. The cheerfulness is the more remarkable because the father of the two lads, though never opulent, had, during their child hood, been in comparatively comfortable circumstances, and the privations which they had to endure in youth were unfamiliar as well as severe. William Chambers, after weary service as an errand boy at a bookseller's, set up a book-stall with a little stock in trade furnished to him by a lucky accident; then acquired the means of printing and publishing on the humblest possible scale, and thus opened for himself the road to immense success. One of the pleasantest passages in the book is that which describes his first start as a printer, with his old ricketty press, and his thirty pounds of worn brevier type.

'My progress in compositorship was at first slow. I had to feel my way. A defective adjustment of the lines to a uniform degree of tightness was my greatest trouble, but this was got over. The art of working my press had next to be acquired, and in this there was no difficulty. After an interval of fifty years, I recollect the delight I experienced in working off my first impression, the pleasure of seeing hundreds of thousands of sheets pouring from machines in which I claim an interest being nothing to it. I think there was a degree of

infatuation in my attachment to that jingling, creaking, wheezing little press. Placed at the only window in my apartment, within a few feet of my bed, I could see its outlines in the silvery moonlight when I awoke, and there in the glowing dawn did its figure assume distinct proportions. When daylight came fully in, it was impossible to resist the desire to rise and have an hour or two of exercise at the little machine."

On the tide of the cheap literature movement of 1832, the two brothers, as proprietors of Chambers' Journal, floated into golden fortune and high renown; and they continued to combine the calling of the writer with that of the printer and publisher, as when the old press was worked by William in "The Walk."

William Chambers being the biographer, it was perhaps unavoidable that we should have more of his early history than of Robert's; but we should have liked to have a little more of Robert's, if it were only that Robert being the more sensitive, and in that sense at least, the finer nature of the two, the endurance of early difficulties and hardships is more interesting in his case. Evidently his fortitude was taxed to the utmost.

"When the family quitted Edinburgh Robert accompanied them, but shortly afterward, with a con. siderable strain on finances, he was associated with me in my West Port lodgings; there, from the un. congenial habits with which he was brought in con. tact, he felt considerably out of place. I was for. tunately absent during the greater part of the day in my accustomed duties; but he, after school hours, had to rely on such refuge as could be found at the unattractive fireside of our landlady, who, though dis. posed to be kind in her way, was so chilled by habits of penury as to give little consideration for the feelings of the poor scholar. He spoke to me of his sufferings and the efforts he made to assuage them. The want of warmth was his principal discomfort. Sometimes benumbed with cold, he was glad to adjourn to that ever hospitable retreat, the old Tolbooth, where, like myself, he was received as a welcome visitor by the West Enders; and it is not unworthy of being mentioned, that the oddities of character among those unfortunate, though on the whole joyous, pris. oners, and their professional associates, not forgetting Durie, formed a fund of recollection on which we afterwards drew for literary purposes. That strange old prison with its homely arrangements was therefore, to him as to me, identified with early associa tions,-a thing the remembrance of which became to both a subject of life-long amusement. There was also some exhilaration for him in occasionally attending the nightly book-auctions, where, favoured with light and warmth, seated in a by-corner he

could study his lessons, as well as derive a degree of entertainment from the scene which was presented. A further source of evening recreation, but not until past nine o'clock, and then only for an hour, was found in those meetings with the brothers King and myself for mutual scientific instruction. Viewed apart from these solacements, his life was dreary in the exHalf-starved, unsympathized with, and looking for no comfort at home, he probably would have lost heart but for the daily exercises at school, where he stood as rival and class-fellow of Mackay's best pupils.

treme.

He describes himself as unable to afford candle or fire of his own, and "sitting beside his landlady's fire, if fire it could be called, which was only a little heap of embers, reading Horace and conning his dictionary by a light which required him to hold the books almost close to the grate.

It is not wonderful that, his prospect darkening more than ever through the misfortunes of his father, and kinsmen being unkind, the iron should have entered into his sensitive soul, and that he should have experienced a state of feeling quite unnatural in youth-"a stern and burning defiance of a social world in which we were humbly and coldly treated by former friends, differing only in external respects from ourselves. " It is pleasant, after reading such passages, to see the fountain of benevolence flowing freely again in after life. "Mankind, in ignorance of the sweet drop of benevolence which they all, more or less, carry in their hearts, ready to bathe and overflow it in good time, have been too much in the habit of returning mistrust for mistrust, and doubt ing every one else because each of themselves was doubted. Hence a world of heart-burnings, grudgings, jealousies, mischief, &c., till some, even of the kindest people, were ashamed to seem kind, or to have a better opinion of things than their neighbours. Think what a fine thing it is to help to break up this general ice betwixt men's hearts, and you will no longer have any doubt of the propriety of the steps I have taken."

The book teems with vivid pictures of some of the most curious nooks and crannies of old Scottish life, in which every Scotchman will delight.

Perhaps, if Robert Chambers had been the writer, we should have had rather less of the gospel of worldly success, the precepts of which are reiterated in their pages with a somewhat ludicrous solemnity and earnestness. We begin almost to long for a biography, if it were possible, of some one who did not rise in life, but, ignobly content with the humble state to which he was called, found happiness in duty and affection.

THOUGHTS ON LIFE SCIENCE. By Edward Thring, M.A., (Benjamin Place), Head Master of Uppingham School. Second Edition. Enlarged and Revised. London and New York: Macmillan.

It is easy to understand the measure of popularity which this work has attained. To the anti-scientific party it must be very pleasant reading. Mr. Thring pitches into science and intellect manibus pedibusque, to use the expressive Latin phrase, and his fists and feet are pretty strong. He also pinches pretty hard in the way of sarcasm and innuendo, and when he has caught Materialistic Philosophy in a particularly tender part he dances off, as it were, and looks into her face with a pleasant grin to see how she likes it. We have no doubt that, to borrow Mr. Thring's words, this is "a time of discovery, change and delusion "-that the chimeras bred by the advance of science bear their full proportion to the advance of science itself. We have as little doubt of the fact that Physical Science, having achieved marvels in her own domain, and being naturally intoxicated by her success, is now stretching out her sceptre over a domain which, in the present state of our knowledge at all events, is not hers, and doing some very unscientific things in her impatience to make herself universal。 By the confession of her highest professors she is unable to give any account of the origin or nature of animal life, and this being the case, she is not yet in a position to be throwing out slapdash theories about the origin and nature of moral and spiritual life. To point this out is to do good service to the cause of truth generally and to science herself, provided it be calmly and fairly done; but Mr. Thring, though often forcible, is seldom calm, and we think he is not always fair. He seems really to hate intellect, and there is hardly any mode of argument too invidious for him to employ for the discomfiture of those whom he assumes to be its worshippers. This is the style in which he proves what, perhaps, he might have assumed without proof-that power and intellect are subordinate to morality :-"No one can doubt that man comprises in himself different and sometimes conflicting faculties. Power and the powerinstruments evidently put in a claim. Intellect is the great power-instrument, bodily strength and bodily skill the next. Let the case be put in this form: A ploughboy is employed to plough a field, a mechanical bodily work; but he feels within himself a great thirst for knowledge, aad he indulges it by studying science instead of ploughing, only ploughing just enough to escape detection. As the intellect is greater and better than bodily skill and the body, he cultivates the greater and better at the expense of the less and worse, and becomes at last, by constantly subtracting time from the common work he is set to do, a great man; and he dies and leaves behind

him an admirable work on the action of water, or whatever other point may be the knowledge-fetich of his day. Now it is clear that the love of knowledge is a higher thing than skill in ploughing, and a great geologist a higher kind of worker than a ploughman; the conclusion from these facts is that a ploughboy is right in stealing time from his employer, time which he has been paid for; is right in acting a lie day by day; is right in making this lie the centre-pivot of his life and his greatness; is right in having left out of his life problem all thought of truth in daily work, of honour between man and man, of the supreme Power which prescribes to all men their proper place. That is, if power and intellect are true ends. But power is not an end to strive for, nor the power-instrument the ruling excellence of man." Against what man or men of straw is this directed? Does Mr. Thring fancy that Laplace or Goethe or Darwin, or any one else whom he chooses to take as a representative of intellect and an idol of the intellectworshippers, ever imagined, or that any of their respective admirers ever imagined, that intellectual power was an object in itself independently of the purposes for which it was exercised. There are worshippers, of the Ritualistic Oratory of Canon Liddon as well as of the reasonings of Newton; but in neither case does the most fatuous of them consciously exclude from view the tendency of his idol's intellectual efforts to attain or propagate truth. The sneer at admirable works on the action of water is of a piece with a good many other passages in the work as-"A David at his father's sheepfold, or an Amos, a poor herdsman in his master's fields, gave us undying words of prayer and praise which we still use, and lived high and holy and pure lives; whilst the intellectual philosopher who did not belong to this class, the great Dr. This or Professor That of his day, the leader of the literary world, was chasing the slave girls, and offering a bull in sacrifice to Eros or Phoebus Apollo for a successful amour or a successful problem. So distinct was the empire of intellect from truth." We wonder whether Mr. Thring would undertake to prove what he here clearly insinuates, that there is traceable in ancient history a connection between high intellect and low morality. Physical science had not in those days reared her detested head; but were the philosophers, the historians, the orators, the poets of Greece and Rome, so far as we know, below the general moral level or above it? Few are so ignorant of literary history as not to be able easily to answer this question.

To Intellect Mr. Thring triumphantly opposes Reason, and of reason he thinks every man is endowed by the Creator with enough to guide him to all necessary truth; of which we can only say that it is a very comfortable faith.

66

Mr. Thring is the author of a work-a very good work by the way, and one which we wish he would revise and enlarge-on grammar; and he seems to us to be biased by the influence of his own pursuits in assigning to the study of language the place which it occupies in his philosophy as the first and most important part of science. "Science," he says, "starts with words and their value; for the value of words is the most important, as it is the first question that comes before science; for till this is secure, nothing else is secure." "Words," he reasons in a previous passage, are as it were a pipe. Through that pipe, everything distinctive of man, all thought, all knowledge, passes. It is absolutely necessary therefore to arrive at some conclusion about words before any other thing is passed in review: for the simple reason that all other things must pass through words before they reach us. This is decisive." Is it not as decisive in favour of commencing science with the study of the eye, the indispensable organ of observation, as of commencing with the study of language, which no doubt is the indispensable organ of communication? Have the great scientific discoverers spent much time in the preliminary study of language; if they have not, may we not say, in answer to the question whether it is possible to be successful in science without that preliminary study, by saying solvitur ambulando? Mr. Thring is very eloquent on the mysterious agency of sound in conveying thought. "What is it that thus defies our search? Is it living? Is it dead? If it is living, how comes it that the words themselves perish in a moment, and are never anything but feelingless common air? If dead, how comes it that they burn with thought, touch hearts, teach, rule, pass on from life to life, always in communion with life, and sometimes, once spoken, never again drop out of heart-sovereignty. Reason tells us that words are more than mere air. Science tells us that scientifically they are nothing but mere air." Then follow some strong deductions in an anti-materialistic sense. But Mr. Thring forgets that whatever mystery attaches to sound as the vehicle of the aspirations of a saint, attaches to it equally as the vehicle of the sensations of a jackass.

The existence of a God and the fundamental doctrines of natural religion, are assumed from the outset, and Mr. Thring adds little in the way of intellectual confirmation, though once or twice, as in his remarks on Beauty, he is on a track which, if he could pursue it philosophically, or if he dislikes that term, methodically, might lead to valuable results. His argument on Miracles seems to resolve itself into an argumentum ad verecundiam addressed to human ignorance; but to prove that it would be impudence on our part, as beings of limited intelligence,

to deny the possibility of miracles, is not to prove that there is sufficient evidence of their having been performed. The difficulties found by criticism, or the "rebel-intellect," as Mr. Thring calls it, in Scripture, are disposed of by the dogmatic assertion that the Scriptures are a test of feeling designed to prove whether man loves rightly or not. The author of Ecce Homo gets his ears soundly boxed for carving a Christ out of Scripture; and it is certain that his work, being without any critical basis, cannot have much permanent value; but we do not see that his presumption in forming his own idea of Christ is much greater than that of Mr. Thring in laying it down that the Scriptures were written for, and are to be judged with reference to, an object not stated in the Scriptures themselves.

Mr. Thring's antipathy to Science and Philosophy will probably be reciprocated by its objects, and he will not be pressed to assume the objectionable title of a man of science or of a philosopher. But, as we said in commencing, he has a good deal of force, and his work is not without real value as a protest of the spiritual element against being hastily ignored or crushed out of existence by an encroaching physicism. He is sometimes particularly happy in terse sentences and apothegms:-" Perhaps the age of scientific research, no less than the age of maritime research we look back on, has its El Dorados and Fountains of Youth, and Prester Johns, as well as its America; its gigantic delusions as well as its gigantic achievements." "Custom requires undisturbed possession to establish itself: whereas all the customs of all the world are beginning to be thrown together, and nothing will remain which has not real strength." "As well hunt a rabbit in a wood with a stick as try to kill a lie in an unwilling mind by force of words. "The subtlest form of a lie, truth out of proportion, is a special pitfall of able men." "The jewel of gold in the swine's snout only makes a more conspicuous hog.". "As soon as power talks nonsense, it means to eat its victim." Mr. Thring had not the "American case" in his mind when he wrote that last sentence, but he could not have described it more happily.

THE PILGRIM AND THE SHRINE; or passages from the life and correspondence of Herbert Ainslie. B. A., late a student of the Church of England. London: Chapman & Hall; New York: Putnam & Sons.

Mr. Herbert Ainslie, a student of the Church of England, and destined for the ministry, is disturbed in his mind by the theological difficulties of the day; and having a bigoted, evangelical father, who

man.

would be horrified at his opinions, and who insists on his taking holy orders, he goes forth physically and theologically into the wilderness, and, after trying the West Indies, becomes a gold-digger in California, and afterwards a settler in Australia. He meets with plenty of adventures, and has hair-breadth escapes from perils of the sea, disease, Indians and robbers. All the time he is ruminating and descanting on the difficulties of Christianity and the great problem of existence, the incidents with which he meets and the characters with whom he comes into contact, forming a series of pegs on which the theological and metaphysical dissertations are hung. After being long unsuccessful in his search both for gold and truth, he at last finds both where they are always found in novels, and we are landed in womanworship, as the satisfactory substitute for all religion, and the complete solution of all the problems of the universe. But Miss Mary Travers is hardly a woIn the honeymoon, at least, she is really a goddess. Of course she is unutterably beautiful. She unites something far above the highest feminine graces and tenderness, with something far above the highest male intellect and strength of character. She is a great statesman, a great philosopher, and a great artist. All the great poems in the world might have been written on her and she might have written all the great poems. She is Viola, Miranda, Beatrice and Cordelia all in one. She is the original of all the Madonnas. She is an exception to all limitations, is in perfect focus at all distances, and from all points of view looks her best. Epithets cannot describe her; she is the quality itself; not beautiful, but Beauty, not religious, but Religion. When you are fresh from her presence your manner is so bewitching that the rudest people offer you something to drink at their expense. Besides all this, she is an heiress. Now Betsey Jones, though above the average of her sex in good looks and in other respects, is only beautiful, not Beauty; she is not always in perfect focus; great poems could not have been written upon her, nor could she have written a great poem; it would be gross flattery to call her the original of a single Madonna, or to identify her with any one of the female characters in Shakespeare. Nor has she a great fortune to make matrimony a garden of Eden. Union with her, therefore, though it may make you happy, cannot solve for you all the problems of the Universe, supply your need of a religion, or give you "an impetus from the Divine sufficient to influence and direct your whole life." Jones, her husband, though good-looking, sensible and well-informed, could never have sat for a St. Michael trampling on the devil, and is as little capable of standing in place of God to his wife as she is of discharging the same function