carnivora. Lions, indeed, are getting scarce; as Ellwood, James Naylor, Andrew Marvell, John Roberts, Samuel Hopkins, Richard Baxter, William Leggett, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers and Robert Dinsmore, as his subjects, and finds in each those traits which he most loves and honors. but the various species of leopard and tigercat, known to the colonists under the general name of tigers, and of hyænas (called wolves), is still very great. The beneficent purpose these animals fulfil in the great scheme of nature, has been so admirably pointed out in the "Bridgewater Treatise" of the late Dean Buckland, that although our limits forbid our transcribing it, we cannot help begging the reader to turn to it. It is, indeed, trite and superfluous to say that this intimate relation between every department of nature may be traced by the attentive observer upon every spot on the earth's surface, but in South Africa it possesses an additional interest from the consideration that while on the one hand (if the surmises of recent geologists as to the antiquity of the present state of the South African continent be correct), there is no region we can point to where those relations AS THEY NOW EXIST, have been longer in force; there is on the other none where the retreat of animal life before the almost imperceptible encroachments of civilized man has been and is progressing in a more marked or obvious manner. From the N. Y. Evening Post. JOHN G. WHITTIER'S PROSE WORKS. WE have received from Ticknor & Fields, the Boston publishers, a new and beautiful edition of the prose writings of one of New England's most loved and honored poets John Greenleaf Whittier. To the majority of those who now are readers of Whittier, this collection will be a new book. The first half of the first volume contains his "Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal," which was published in 1836, a full generation since. Of the many attempts that have been made to reproduce the daily life of New Englanders during the earlier history of the country, we know of none more successful or that more simply and beautifully tells its own story. The latter portion of the first volume has several" Old Portraits and Modern Sketches," first published in 1850, the most of them we believe written originally for the National Era, of which Mr. Whittier was for many years the corresponding editor. The titles of these sketches indicate the bent of the author's mind, and his personal predilections. Always an ardent lover of freedom and humanity, his heroes are those who have displayed rare moral courage in their service. Thus he selects John Bunyan, ThomSee Sir R. Murchison's remarks on the South African Continent. He is especially zealous in developing the noble qualities of the Quakers during the trying periods of their persecutions in Old and New England, and occasionally even the mildness peculiar to his sect is lost in a holy wrath at its persecutors. As thus, when speaking of the English Quakers of Thomas Ellwood's time: THE ENGLISH QUAKERS. "Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the present generation, now quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to recognise your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at the cost of home, fortune and life. English liberty owes more to your unyielding firmness than to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby." witness the following from his fine sketch He is just, however, to the Puritans, as of ANDREW MARVELL. "It has been the fashion of a class of shallow church and state defenders, to ridicule the great men of the commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-poem of Harrington, and the admircient answer to this accusation. To none has it able discourses of Algernon Sydney, are a suffiless application than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warm-hearted man, an elegant scholar, a finished gentleman, at home, and the life of every circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II., amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana,' and Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation. His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark, Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptiousness, PosT spoke out strongly in condemnation of scarcely gave token of the steady purpose and the mob. William Leggett was not then an firm will of the inflexible statesman; these, add- abolitionist; he had known nothing of the proed to the prestige of his genius, and the respect scribed class, save through the cruel misreprewhich a lofty, self sacrificing patriotism extorts sentations of their enemies; but, true to his deeven from those who would fain corrupt and mocratic faith, he maintained the right to disbribe it, gave him a ready passport to the fash-cuss the question of slavery. The infection of ionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled in that society and escaped its contamination, and who, "Amidst the wavering days of sin, Kept himself icy chaste and pure.'" The broad and tolerant philosophy of the author is seen in his review of the life-work of Samuel Hopkins, of whom he well says: SAMUEL HOPKINS. In cowardly fear, which at that time sealed the lips of multitudes who deplored the excesses of the mob and sympathized with its victims, never reached him. Boldly, indignantly, he demanded that the mob should be put down at once by the civil authorities. He declared the abolitionists, even if guilty of all that had been charged immunities of American citizens. upon them fully entitled to the privileges and He sternly reprimanded the board of Aldermen of the city "We honor him, not as the founder of a for rejecting with contempt the memorial of the new sect, but as the friend of mankind the abolitionists to that body, explanatory of their generous defender of the poor and oppressed. principles, and the measures by which they had Great as unquestionably were his powers of sought to disseminate them. Referring to the argument, his learning, and skill in the use of determination, expressed by the memorialists weapons of theologic warfare, these by no means in the rejected document, not to recant or reconstitute the highest title to respect and rev- linquish any principle which they had adopted, erence. As the product of an honest and ear- but to live and die by their faith, he said: nest mind, his doctrinal dissertations have at this, however mistaken, however mad we may least the merit of sincerity. They were put consider their opinions in relation to the blacks, forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; what honest, independent mind can blame them? and the success which they met with, while it Where is the man so poor of soul, so whitecalled into exercise his profoundest gratitude, livered, so base, that he would do less in relaonly served to deepen the humility and self- tion to any important doctrine in which he reliabasement of their author. As the utterance giously believed?" Where is the man who of what a good man believed and felt, as a part would have his tenets drubbed into him by the of the history of a life remarkable for its conse-clubs of ruffians, or hold his conscience at the cration to apprehended duty, these writings dictation of a mob?" cannot be without interest even to those who dissent from their arguments and deny their assumptions; but in the time now, we trust, near at hand, when distracted and divided Christendom shall unite in a new evangelical union, in which orthodoxy in life and practice shall be estimated above orthodoxy in theory, he will be honored as a good man, rather than as a successful creed-maker; as a friend of the oppressed and a fearless rebuker of popular sin, rather than as the champion of a protracted sectarian war. Even now his writings, so popular in their day, are little known. The time may come when no pilgrim of sectarianism shall visit his grave. But his memory shall live in the hearts of the good and generous; the emancipated slave shall kneel over his ashes, and bless God for the gift to humanity of a life so devoted to his welfare." The second volume contains: " Utopian Schemes and Political Theories; 99 66 Peculiar Institutions of Massachusetts; "Thomas Carlyle on the Slave Question; laud under James II.; sions; 99.66 "" 66 39 66 39 99 66 99 66 Eng "The two ProcesEvangeline; ""A Chapter of His""Fame and Glory; tory; Fanaticism;" "The Border War of 1708;" The Ipswich Fright;' Lord Ashley and the Thieves;"" Mirth and Medicine;"" Pope Night; "The Better Land;" "The Poetry of the North; "The Boy Captives; The Black Men in the Revolution and War of 1812; Singletary;" "Charms and Fairy Faith; My Summer with Dr. Magicians and Witch Folk;' "The Among the subjects of Mr. Whittier's Agency of Evil;""The Little Iron Solbiographical efforts there was none who had dier;""The City of a Day;' "Patucket more of his own spirit than William Leg- Falls;" Hamlet among the Graves; gett, whose boldness in the advocacy of anti-"Yankee Gypsies; 79.66 The World's End; slavery principles over thirty years ago, while " Swedenborg; "First Day in Lowell; editor of the EVENING POST, will be vivid-" Taking Comfort;" "The Beautiful;" ly remembered by all whose anti-slavery" The Lighting up; ""The Scottish Reformconvictions have not had too recent an ers; " and "The Training." origin. It is still worth while to extract something from Mr. Whittier's tribute to Mr. Leggett's heroic conduct. He says: 66 The present edition is embellished with a fine steel engraving of the author, who, we trust, has many years of active life yet before him. No. 1174. Fourth Series, No. 35. 1 December, 1866. LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. The Complete work 50 66 80 66 220 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. NEWS OF THE WEEK. From the Spectator, Nov. 3. VENETIA has voted herself Italian by 641,758 to 69, which, considering that Venice was Italian by the will of Heaven, whether she voted it or no, is highly satisfactory. It is not often that a fact is recognized to be a fact by 9,999 out of every 10,000 men. The vote has no other importance, but this little story told by the Times' correspondent has. A poor Venetian cobbler, unable to buy a flag, pasted three pieces of paper over his door, red, white, and green, with this inscription on the white, "Dear Italy, I would, but I cannot, do more for thee." Imagine a sentiment of that kind not only felt, but expressed, by an English cobbler. He would be killed before night with the brutal jocularity of a class who in Italy appreciate the sentiment as keenly as if they could read and write. With what a scorn an English rough or gent" must read the statement that in the wild burst of enthusiasm which followed the evacuation of Venice," no one in the crowd attempted to push," or wore a false nose, or howled insults by way of gentle bandinage. What effeminate men, who can only die for their country! MR. BRIGHT's great speech in Dublin on Tuesday was delivered, it is said, under a good deal of difficulty, from both huskiness of voice and general indisposition. Nevertheless it was a very fine one. We will only note two of the finest touches in the speech. In reference to the statement of a Dublin man that the people of Ireland are rather in the country than of it, and are looking more to America than England, Mr. Bright said, "I do not know how we can wonder at that statement. You will remember that the ancient Hebrew, in his captiv ity, had his windows open towards Jerusalem when he prayed. You know that the follower of Mohammed when he prays turns his face towards Mecca; and the Irish peasant, when he asks for food, and freedom, and blessing, follows with his eye the setting sun." Still finer perhaps was his comparison of the grand passage in Dante about the bubbles which agitated the surface of the Stygian lake, and which were nothing but the breath of countless sighs from the multitude that dwe't beneath, to the agitated surface of Irish society, troubled by the sighs groans of an unhappy peasantry. There was a grave humour as well as pathos in parts of the speech. Formally, it was an attempt to answer the question proposed by the Parliament of Kilkenny some five hundred years ago. "How comes it that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?". a difficult question, to which Mr. Bright of course gave but a partial and imperfect answer. and THE Princess Dagmar of Denmark professed the Greek faith on the 24th of October, and on the 26th of October was betrothed to Alexan LORD GEORGE MANNERS has made an important speech. Speaking on Wednesday to the Farmer's Club at Newmarket, Lord George tempt the labourers to stay, and he thought the suggested that it was becoming necessary to best way to do it would be to promise them a share in all the profit of the farm above 10 per yield of a farmer's capital is barely 8 per cent., cent. on the capital invested. As the average that promise will not add much to wages, not half so much as a 10 per cent. reduction in rentais would. Lord George is, however, the first that the labourer must in one way or another of his class to see what we believe to be a truth, it for himself, which will probably be the first share in the farm, either by cultivating bits of attempt, or by becoming himself the farmer, as he is at Assington. There the labourers hold direct of the landlord, Mr. Gurdon, farm very well, pay a good rent, and are about twice as well off as if they took wages. THE Emperor of the French has ordered a Commission to report on the reorganization of the French Army. The Commission includes six Ministers, the Marshals of France, and several Generals, of whom Fleury and Trochu are the best known. The reason assigned is the "grave events which have just been accomplished in Germany," and the object, to "place the Army in a situation to assure the defence of the territory and the maintenance of French political influence." As it is evident that Napoleon contemplates an increase to his force, as such increase must in some way or other widen the area of conscription, and as the peasantry will not like that, the inference is irresistible that Napoleon intends war. Able sovereigns do not run the risk of quarrelling with their subjects, except for defined and visible ends. will be one in Spain, and that it will involve WE fear that the next revolution in Europe the overthrow of the dynasty. French journals look confidently to a decree revindicating issued, will convulse society. The programme all unsold Church property, a decree which, if cludes, it is said, a permanent dictatorship, the of Father Claret, the real ruler of Spain, inabrogation of the Cortes, and an increase of the army, he probably dreaming that he may be destined to restore the Pope. It is believed that Marshal Narvaez is not thorough-going enough for the confessor, and that M. de Vilupointed Vizier. ma, an Ultramontane diplomatist, will be ap Two more volumes of Mr. Froude's copious history invite the study of the learned, and the enlightened curiosity of that large class of readers to whom the annals of their own country, presented under new aspects and enriched with fresh materials, are ever an object of lively interest. In former numbers of this Journal we followed Mr. Froude through the eight preceding volumes of his work; and while we endeavoured to do justice to his remarkable merits, we did not shrink from the unwelcome task of pointing out, in the interests of truth, some of his faults as an historian. It was mainly, however, in his treatment of the reign of Henry VIII., and his paradoxical conception of the character of that monarch, that we found ourselves at issue with him. When his judgment ceased to be perverted by the idolatrous worship of that equivocal hero of his own creation, his views became more consistent with the received opinions of history; and if he was less original, he approached more nearly, as we venture to think, to the higher aim of historical research severe and simple truth. The peculiar merit of Mr. Froude's work is its wealth of unpublished manuscripts; and the reign of Elizabeth is remarkably illustrated by the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors, and other agents of the Court of Spain, which have been preserved in the Archives at Simancas. The extraordinary interest of such illustrations is apparent in every page of these volumes: they give novelty to the narrative, and variety to the well-known incidents of the time; and they bring in aid of historical evidence, the contemporary opinions of society upon current events. The discovery of such treasures is apt to seduce the historian into an undue estimate of their historical value, and to lead him to prefer their version of facts to more common-place conclusions founded upon published documents. The reader, perhaps, is also prepared to receive too readily, as decisive, the testimony of witnesses so original and unexpected. But we must be on our guard against these natural prepossessions. The authority of * Edin. Rev., July, 1858; and January 1864. manuscripts is not to be accepted as superior to that of printed documents: they may be more interesting, by reason of their novelty, but they are not more trustworthy; ful, as they have not been exposed to the and they need a scrutiny even more care critcism of other writers. It may be safely affirmed that recent researches into the unpublished state papers of different countries have generally served to confirm rather than to disturb our previous convictions as to the events and characters of history. They have made most valuable additions to our stock of knowledge: they have filled up its broad outlines with an infinite variety of pictuthey have multiplied proofs in corroboration resque details and suggestive illustrations: of facts and traditions already received; but they have rarely overthrown the evidence presented by printed records, accessible to all the world. Mr. Rawdon Brown, in the preface to his interesting Calendar of Venetian State papers,' thus aptly estimates the value of such documents: 6 'Nor must we expect that the revelations of unpublished, MSS. will make black and white change places in our estimate of character and suddenly alter the notions we have formed of the great actors in the drama of history. With respect to characters, as well as facts, it is rather by minute and repeated touches that the force and colour of truth are to be restored, than by substituting a new picture for an old one.'* Regarded in this point of view, the Simancas papers are singularly interesting.. Philip II. of Spain, as consort of the late Queen Mary, was closely connected with England and with Elizabeth; and as the most zealous Catholic prince in Europe, he was deeply concerned in a country which had again renounced the ancient faith, and was still agitated by the religious and political discords of the Reformation. His ambassadors watched narrowly the stirring events of the time; and their opportunities of observation were peculiarly favourable. As representing a sovereign allied by marriage to the Queen, they were admitted to confidential intercourse with the court, and conversed freely with Elizabeth and her councillors; as ministers of a Catholic prince, they were the friends and advisers of Mary Queen of Scots, of the Catholic peers, and of the leaders of that restless and disaffected party who were ever plotting to overthrow their Protestant Queen and restore Rawdon Brown's Pref. to Calendar of Venetian State Papers, p. xciv. |