leaves more room for the comfortable existence of the healthy survivors of its own species.

"The same police of nature which is thus beneficial to the great family of the inhabitants of the land, is established with equal advantage among the tenants of the sea. Of these, also, there is one large division that lives on vegetables, and supplies the basis of food to the other division that is carnivorous. Here, again, we see that in the absence of carnivora, the uncontrolled herbivora would multiply indefinitely, until the lack of food brought them also to the verge of starvation, and the sea would be crowded with creatures under the endurance of universal pain from hunger, while death by famine would be the termination of ill-fed and miserable lives.

"The appointment of death by the agency of carnivora, as the ordinary termination of animal existence, appears, therefore, in its main results to be a dispensation of benevolence; it deducts much from the aggregate amount of the pain of universal death. It abridges and almost annihilates throughout the brute creation the misery of disease and accidental injuries, and lingering decay; and imposes such salutary restraint upon excessive increase of numbers, that the supply of food maintains perpetually a due ratio to the demand.

“The result is, that the surface of the land and the depths of the sea are ever crowded with myriads of animated beings, the pleasures of whose life are co-extensive with its duration, and which, throughout the little day of existence that is allotted to them, fulfil with joy the functions for which they were created. Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness.”—Buckland, p. 134.

If the "enlarged view" of Dr. Buckland could discover or create two separate spheres, in one of which the herbivorous races subsisted apart by themselves, and "their carnivorous benefactors" in the other, apart in general, and only coming down to their friends in the other sphere to get a dinner among them and retire, there might be some ground for saying that the aggregate of animal enjoyment, on the eater's side at least, was much increased, and another sphere added to the stock of life. But as both races at present occupy the same sphere-as the favoured sheep, and his benefactor the wolf, both live on the same ground—and as the wolves do not eat grass, it is obvious that one wolf drives away or displaces many sheep from his neighbourhood, and that the grass which would have fed them rots on the ground. Moreover, as a general rule, the herbivo

rous animals are gregarious, and while feeding together help to fertilize the regions they frequent; but the carnivora in general are solitary, and the lair of each single despot is surrounded by the stillness of death, broken only by his own midnight roar.

The other part of the argument, that but for the carnivorous animals the others would die of famine, is very like a libel on Providence, as if God had arranged matters so ill that animals must needs increase faster than the means of their subsistence. We do not believe the fact, and when we look at the comparative size of animals, whether to the whales of the ocean, or to the elephants and giraffes of the forest, we do not find that the carnivorous races are larger or better fed than these; on the contrary, it is the common remark that those animals which suffer most from famine are the carnivorous.

In this, as in all the other questions of geology, the error arises from leaving God out of the induction. If we ascribe the increase of animals to one kind of law, and the increase of vegetables to another kind of law, and go no further, these two kinds of law may clash, or one may outrun the other; but if we ascribe both to God, the two cannot but harmonize, the one cannot but keep pace with the other. For God is wise, and wisdom prescribes that for a demand which it creates a supply in exact correspondence should also be created. He who implanted the wants and the instincts in animals, created the fruits of the carth to satisfy those wants; and if there should appear now to be a disproportion between the two, we may rest assured that such disproportion did not exist at the beginning, is not chargable upon God, nor any necessity arising out of the nature of things.

And we say the same of all plans for prevention of cruelty to animals; they do not go high enough, they do not strike deep enough to reach the root of the evil. It is not by Acts of Parliament, and fine, and imprisonment, that the evil can be reached, nor is it by considerations of equity, morality, and benevolence, that it will be remedied. It is by theology alone that it can be met and remedied-by seeing ourselves, together with the whole creation, as the offspring of one common Father, and by acknowledging the evil which exists to be not of him, but of ourselves. He, in Christianity, has provided a remedy for every evil; for the evils in ourselves, in those dependent upon us, in the whole creation: "for the earnest expectation of the creature (of the whole creation that groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now) waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." (Rom. viii. 19, 22). Just in proportion as men become Christians, the evil is reached and the remedy applied. As they become Christians, not in name only, but in deed and in truth.

As they become merciful, like our heavenly Father is merciful. Could we bring men to be Christians indeed, there would be no need for Peace Societies and Prevention of Cruelty Societies, and the thousand other superficial remedies for evils which men feel without understanding, and treat as primary when they are secondary and consequent only. And then would our minds also become disabused of that "philosophy, falsely so called," which St. Paul regards as nothing better than "profane and old wives' fables ;" and should find that true philosophy and Christianity exactly coincide; and that the Bible is not only the book of Christianity, but the book of the religion of nature-that there is no such thing as religion to be found elsewhere; that it is the record both of the history of the Church, and also of the history of the world; and that as the blessing of the world is in every sense dependent upon the advance of the Church, so her perfecting shall be the consummation of blessedness to the whole dependent creation.

ART. VI.-Beati Alberti Magni, Ratisbonensis Episcopi Ordinis Prædicatorum, Opera, &c. PETRI JAMMY, ejusdem ordinis. Lugduni. 1651. folio.

2. Naudé: Apologie pour tous les Grands Personnages faussement soupçonnees de Magie. La HAYE.

1653.

3. Bistretto della prodigiosa vita del B. Alberto Magno, descritta da RINALDO TACERA, alias RAPHAEL BADI.

4. Jacobus Echard: Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum. LUTETIE PARISIORUM, 1719-1721. folio.

5. Theophilus Raynaud: Hoplotheca contra Ictum Calumniæ. folio. (Vol. XII. of his Works). Lugduni. 1675.

IN the vicissitudes of knowledge and opinion, the struggle between the right appreciation of the past and the rational anticipations of the future; between the wide-rooted prejudices, as well as the accumulated facts, of the present, and the distraction of many objects and interests, causing the mind to limit the number of its contemplations-many important events of history have become permanently distorted, even while the truth is attainable, and to some great men of a by-gone age there is no chance of justice from posterity. The right estimate formed by a few minds is a very different thing from the public opinion of nations. The estimate of the few is but the germ of public opinion, in which, if that few can find no warmth, nor can create the requisite sympathy, it dies;

and thus it fares wherever it arises. The fame which needs to be repeatedly demonstrated has no real life in the world; and eventually ceases to find a champion. champion. Knowledge (like virtue) is, and must long continue to be, its own best (if not only) reward. It feels that a great truth once fairly launched among mankind, can never die, though it may be liable to periods of dormancy. But how launch it fairly, when the ocean refuses to take it into its breast, or even to toss it about for a sufficient time and distance to give it a chance of becoming familiar with the mutable winds? If this, then, be the most arduous trial for genius, how shall we account for the utter prostration of the highest and most extensive reputations, in cases where such reputations were incessantly laboured for, and (considering time and circumstance) amply deserved? There is, in one sense, an ingratitude in knowledge. It may be well, for the saving of time among us, that it is so; but the ingratitude is sufficiently apparent. Like the old political fable on ambition, knowledge often kicks the ladder from under her, by which she effected her ascent, and leaves its fragments to be scattered in rottenness and oblivion.

But of all those whose genius, or ability of any kind, constituted them the leaders of past generations, surely none have so much cause to complain of the neglect, nay, the contempt of posterity, as those who have been accused of having consummated their elaborate studies with the "black and devilish art of magic." Thus stands the modern theory: the present advanced state of human knowledge causes us to despise the labours of such men as Roger Bacon, Cornelius Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus, because they practised magic; and the present advanced state of human knowledge enables us to deny the possibility of any one having practised such an art.*

In the general verdict and opinion which has condemned the above individuals, there is yet a degree of injustice still more palpable than that which results from the above dilemma, between the horns of which their tortured immortalities are tossed from generation to generation. It is this: with whatever occa

* We have another reason for taking a review of the life and labours of Albertus Magnus. The biography of this distinguished man has been lately assumed to be given in the " Biographical Dictionary" of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The name of Albertus Magnus has been placed at the head of all their advertisements, and the said Dictionary has been complimented in various quarters for this especial outline of the aforesaid philosopher. After a full investigation of the biography, we pronounce it to be one of the most bald, imperfect, and one-sided biographies we ever remember to have seen. We have, therefore, availed ourselves of the opportunity of giving our readers and the public a succinct account of a very eminent, and as yet little known philosopher-little known, that is, save by name.ED.

VOL. XIII.-H

sional inconsistencies in their remarks on occult science, and their practice of astrology, and the transmutation of metals, they have all three actually declaimed against such absurd and wicked practices as those relating to the black art, and were all three devoutly religious men. But their age was one in which magic was almost universally regarded as a real art or science, however forbidden; and their arguments and declarations were not regarded. Their superior attainments in the natural sciences caused them to be accused of practising in private what they denounced in public; their chemical and mechanical experiments were exaggerated and "monstered" by the vulgar; and the gross imagination of the common mass having at length created images suited to its craving excitement, a huge brazen head—a familiar fiend, in the likeness of a black dog-—and a talking image-overpowered, in extent of popularity, all the genius and advanced knowledge of Roger Bacon, Cornelius Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus, and has successfully destroyed their good names down to the present time.

Most interesting to the philosopher, both in psychological and physical science, to the moralist and to the man of learning, are the biographies of these three traduced worthies. Their works, it is true, are rather alarming-not from the presence of any occult diabolisms, but from the simple and far more overwhelming fact of their prodigious number of volumes. One of these gentlemen has produced, single handed, upwards of twenty-one volumes in folio, very thick, and in rather small type-to say nothing of those of his works which have never been collected, or are lost. The works of their commentators, impugners, and defenders, would be enough to crush an elephant. Their biographies, however, occupy a very moderate space, and to them we would chiefly direct attention. From these may their philosophy and the influence they produced upon the age be collected, sufficiently for general purposes, without more collateral labour than an occasional reference to a few pages of their principal works.

We make choice of the biography of Albertus Magnus, partly because he is probably still less known to general readers than Roger Bacon and Cornelius Agrippa, but more on account of the greater number of definite acts of necromancy absurdly attributed to him. We shall also offer a remark as to the minor accusations, to the effect, that in several cases Albertus either did declare that he had been favoured with "a miraculous visitation" and a "special voice," or at all events had given countenance to the opinions on those matters which were promulgated concerning him. Thus, by exhibiting the "most likely” magi