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has been maximized by Virgil: "Possunt, quia posse CREDUNTUR." As to the third point, or the testimony of the party magnetized, the allegation of it is a begging of the question; the sentiments or declarations which are inspired by an illusion can be, of course, no more reliable than the illusion which is their basis. The inevitable subjectivity and unreality of those explanations of the somnambulists themselves, both artificial and spontaneous, is well evinced by the contagiousness of the phenomena at special epochs, and their conformity to the condition of the age and of the individual. Thus the ecstatics of antiquity were endowed mainly with the powers of prophecy, to suit the curiosity of those ages about future events. The ascetically religious preoccupations of the middle ages gave the somnambulists the form of demoniacs; in our own day, the American "mediums" are the reporters of departed spirits, whose revelations are as puerile as the conversations of the community.

6. The final article of the programme is not a question, but a condition, a requisition as to the manner in which the subject should be treated. I briefly indicated at the outset the general manner of the author, much less conformable, I think, to method than to the spirit of the Academy; and hence, perhaps, in large part, his coronation. I close with a transcription of the author's summary conclusion:

"Man is never wholly either healthy or sick, either wise or insane, either awake or asleep. He carries sickness in health, and health in the midst of sickness; reason still persists in the delirium of the maniac, and folly is commingled with the meditations of the sage. Never have the organs of the senses, all together, or even each of them in particular, that supreme or main degree of agility and of lucidity which would be properly called wakefulness; never are they buried in that profound torpor which would be absolute sleep. The waking and the healthy states of the body and of the mind are, as it were, an ideal type which is never realized in life. We designate by the words malady, madness, sleep, the states which diverge widely from the ordinary conditions of life and from the regular course of nature, uncertain by what names to call the states of our body and soul, which vary slightly, or but transiently, from an unsettled and relative main. At every instant, and on all sides, we quit this salutary temperament which constitutes the free possession of one's self and of his organs. Nothing is more difficult than to limit and define, perhaps because there are no limits in the continuous order of nature. Liberty, reason, are the attributes of man; but where do they commence, where do they terminate? The child who does not yet enjoy them, the idiot who will do so never, the madman who has lost thein irrecoverably, the sleeper in whom they rest for a time, are they not buman? Sensibility, activity, intelligence, range over the infinite degrees of a vast scale: by turns crude, obscure, confused or noble, clear or subtle, they descend or ascend with different ages, with varying conditions and circumstances.

"A firm and directive will can alone maintain all the powers of our soul in the high position assigned by nature to man. Man is culpable when he abdicates it voluntarily. But this moderating power is wrested from him periodically by sleeps, and sometimes violently by the derangement of his organs. Sleep, somnambulism, ecstasy, pass the intellect through all its conditions and degrees; they crush its energy, blunt its senses, obscure its thoughts, or they give it an abnormal ardour, exquisiteness, exaltation. Sometimes the sleeper is like the animal that vegetates, immovable in his place and almost insensible; sometimes he perceives confusedly interior or exterior pain. Anon the dreamer has but the absurd or imbecile visions of the madman; anon his thoughts are clear and consequent, as when awake. In fine, the ecstatic somnambulist, in his extravagant delirium, is sometimes rapt away from the reality: but sometimes his intelligence is lucid and almost rational. At the same time, however closely

the human intellect may descend, in profound sleep and idiotism, to the unintelligent and senseless animals, it remains always unalterable, with all its powers; for it is not in the power of matter to extinguish in our souls completely the torch of reason, though it were to burn there without light and without heat. But, on the other hand, however high the excited organs may seem to carry it, they have still less the power of giving it new faculties."

"A Theory of Natural History, General and Special, by ISIDORE GEOFFROY DE ST. HILAIRE, Professor in the Museum of Natural History of this city," is a work that merits the attention of your scientific readers. With all the positive and precise doctrines of the merely practical treatises, it mixes an unusual quantity of philosophical discussion, which supplies a sort of leaven to make more digestible those technicalities. The first volume of the work, which has alone appeared as yet, might indeed pass for being a treatise of logic. It discusses all the methods affected specially to all the sciences, from the syllogism of Aristotle to the social methods of M. Comte. The author is not equally at home in all those branches; he shares the general defects in their definition and classification. Yet his views are, if but mainly from the comprehensiveness of the survey, much more sound, upon the whole, than is habitual to French savans. It may, moreover, be admitted, in apology for the deficiencies, that the discussion of the other methods was intended only as subsidiary to the enforcement of that applied by him to the department of Natural History.

How he has treated this his specialité, it would be rash, no doubt, in me to judge. M. Isidore is the son and pupil of the illustrious St. Hilaire who is the founder, at least in France, of the progressive school of physiology; and he assumes to be his heir in science as well as in succession. I may, however, venture on a single observation as to a point wherein his competency should be certainly the least contestable. His father, Geoffroy, was, it is known, the rival of Cuvier; they were antagonists in both the method and the theory of natural history. The latter was empirical, or what is vulgarly called inductive; he kept to "facts," and was the oracle of the past. St. Hilaire was deductive, analytic, a man of theory, the organ of the future, and therefore persecuted by the present. A pious purpose of the son is to vindicate the father's system; but to this end he wisely seeks to reconcile the rival theories. The most decisive means to this, however, though well known to him, he overlooks. In a previous portion of the volume, he had shown that the two methods known scholastically as synthesis and analysis, so far from being antagonistic, as is commonly supposed, are quite concordant with and complementary of each other. But these procedures were respectively the philosophical characteristics of the hostile schools of Cuvier and of St. Hilaire the former synthetized the past, the latter analyzed the future, or unexplored, of the same department of nature. Their scientific coöperation would then be demonstrated by their methods. But our author, with this means of demonstration before his eyes, adduces nothing for the fusion except feeble generalities: a proof presumptive that his conception of the methods mentioned is not still complete, nor perhaps even that of the theory of his father. What would confirm this alternative is, that in labouring to jus

tify his father's celebrated "Theory of Analogues," he fails distressingly to show its scientific character. He need, however, but define it an application to anatomy of the method of analogy, that is, induction of relations. And hence, no doubt, the title adopted quaintly by the great discoverer, with his habitually profound, but tortuous or unsystematical sagacity. Despite these blemishes upon the frontispiece of the great project of the son, I commend the body of his structure, and its various contents, to your men of science.

Not to forget a much more numerous and worthy portion of your readers, I must announce to them a new volume, of which the title runs as follows:Missions de Chine. Mémoire sur l'étât actuel de la Mission du Kiang-Nan. Par le R. P. BROUILLON de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris: 1855.

The most generally interesting portion of the volume, and which occupies about one-half of its five hundred pages, is found in the Letters, which were written on the spot, from time to time, throughout the progress of the revolution which they describe. There is, besides, an introduction that treats the subject systematically. The account of Father Brouillon seems, however, worthy of his name. Take, for example, the following resumé of the disquisition :-" The Chinese insurrection is a product of the country; all sorts of sufferings and of resentments have been preparing it; the secret societies of Asia have fomented it, and those of Europe are not without hand in its existence. A thousand passions, a thousand interests, urge onward the movement. The discontented and the oppressed invoke it more or less loudly; the people wish it with its advantages, but without its disasters; foreigners await it; some of them second it, the devil would direct it, but God conducts it." And of course into the net of the Jesuits! It is probably this destination, depending mainly on his faith, but in patent conflict with the facts which are presented in his Letters, that produces this flat jumble in the explanation of the father. Indeed, he owns expressly that the tendency of the Chinese prophet is rather to follow Mohammed than Christ; but he no less expects that God will bring the issue to his own account, which is to say, to that of Catholicity. Accordingly, the father and his brethren have their net spread in the shape of a mission at Nankin. The Catholics have in the city of Nankin and its province over seventy-two thousand neophytes and catechumens. With this nucleus they would not dread the competition of their Protestant rivals, if "only the French government would give them something of the support which the official agents of America and England give their missionaries." You may think the foreigners alluded to, in the passage cited, mean the Protestants. But no; the queer allusion is to Garibaldi and his Italian radicals. The Jesuit naturally sees the red hand of those mortal enemies of the Pope emerging in the remote regions and domestic broils of the Celestial Empire.

0.

ART. VIII.-SHORT REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS.

It is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.-MILTON.

(1.) "Roemer's Polyglot Readers, English, French, and German," (NewYork: D. Appleton & Co., 1855; 3 vols. 12mo.,) contain copious reading lessons in the three languages named, and are designed at once to facilitate the process of acquiring them and to make that acquisition solid. The method recommended by the author is that of double translation, in which the learner first turns the foreign language into the vernacular, and then retranslates it after some time has elapsed. Professor Roemer has prefixed to one of the volumes an essay on "The Study of Languages," which, bating its undue length, is every way admirable. The books furnish excellent means of using the most excellent method of studying French and German, and we cordially commend them to all teachers and students of these languages. They are especially adapted for self-instruction.

(2.) "Letters to the People on Health and Happiness, by CATHARINE E. BEECHER." (New-York: Harper & Brothers; 18mo., pp. 223.) There is no earthly subject on which the American people more need "line upon line and precept upon precept" than upon the laws of health. As Miss Beecher remarks in the first letter of the admirable series which make up this volume, our people are pursuing a course, in their own habits and practices, which is destroying health and happiness to an extent that is perfectly appalling." Nor is it less true that "the majority of parents in this nation are systematically educating the rising generation to be feeble, deformed, sickly, and miserable; as much so as if it were their express aim to commit so monstrous a folly." The existence of the evil is plain and undeniable; to remedy it is not so easy. If this little volume could only be read by every parent in the land, the chances of the next generation would be greatly improved. It treats, first, of the human organs; secondly, of the laws of health; thirdly, of abuses of the organs; fourthly, of the evils resulting from such abuses; and fifthly, of the remedies for these evils. All these heads are treated with discrimination, and yet with great force and clearness. We recommend the volume without qualification.

(3.) We have received a copy of Dr. Armitage's "Funeral Sermon on the Death of the Rev. S. H. CONE, D. D.,” which has been printed at the request of the bereaved Church. It gives a brief but clear sketch of Dr. Cone's life, and bears ample testimony to the many noble qualities that adorned the character of that eminent servant of God.

(4.) "Learning to Talk; or, Entertaining and Instructive Lessons in the Use of Language, by JACOB ABBOTT." (New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1855.) This admirable little book contains a series of pictures intended for very young children, with descriptions accompanying them. Its greatest advantage will be found to lie in the power of observation which the continued use of the book cannot fail to give a child.

(5.) ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS have published a new edition of "The Acts and Monuments of the Church, containing the History and Sufferings of the Martyrs, by JOHN FOXE." (New-York, 1855; royal 8vo., pp. 1082.) No book in the English language has done more to keep alive the memory, and to maintain the principles of the Reformation, than "Foxe's Book of Martyrs." It should be a household book in every Protestant family; and the Messrs. Carter have contributed their share to make it such by the opportune issue of this new and improved edition. While it omits a number of unimportant documents and narrations that encumbered former editions, it gives, in an appendix, accounts of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, of the Spanish Armada, of the Gunpowder Plot, and of the Irish rebellion of 1745, all written by authors contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the events. The entire work has passed under the careful editorial supervision of the Rey. M. Hobart Seymour, whose "Evenings with the Romanists," and other works, have made him so popular with the Protestant public of England and America.

(6.) “Mexico and her Religion, by R. A. WILSON." (New-York: Harper & Brothers; 12mo., pp. 406.) A little more system would have added greatly to the value of this book. It contains a graphic narration of the author's travels in Mexico, a large amount of historical information, and much critical detail; but they are all thrown together without art or skill. In spite of these defects, the book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Mexico. The author is shrewd and clear-headed, and, while he sees well, knows how to describe what he sees in vigorous language.

(7.) "Scenes in the Practice of a New-York Surgeon, by E. H. DIXON, M. D." (New-York: Dewitt & Davenport, 1855; 12mo., pp. 407.) This volume is made up of extracts from the "Scalpel,”—a journal designed, we believe, to convey medical knowledge to the people in a popular and attractive form. It contains many striking narratives, and gives at the same time a good deal of information.

(8.) ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS have published a new edition (the fourth) of " The Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral, by JAMES M'COSH, LL. D." (New-York, 1855; 8vo., pp. 547.) This work has been so often and so fully discussed in our pages that it is only necessary for FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.—10

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