and Denmark-the first Roman Catholic periodical published in Scandinavia. They pretend to make many converts, and report that the king is favourably disposed to ward them. In Sweden, new acts of persecution are expected, as the government applied to the Catholic priest of Stockholm for ascertaining the names of the persons who had gone over to Romanism, and of those parents who sent their children to the Roman school. In Russia, the new emperor has recalled some of the most oppressive acts of the late government, and inspired his Roman Catholic subjects with the hope that they will have, under his reign, a better time than under that of his father. Preliminary measures have been taken for concluding a Concordat with the pope, and an ambassador sent to Rome for that purpose. In Turkey, the Roman Church endeavours, with the aid of France and Austria, to profit from the new firman, which grants to the Christian equal rights with the Mohammedan; and works for her extension with greater confidence than ever before. ORIENTAL CHURCHES. The American missionaries in The Kingdom of Greece, report that the prospects of distributing the Bible were never better than at present. Five, at least, of the archbishops and bishops of the Greek Church are favourable to the circulation of the Bible among their people; and the government are quite ready to have the Testament introduced and taught in all their schools. Dr. King, of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, has a class of eight theological students, devoted, pious young men, four of whom are anxious to spend their vacation as colporteurs, travelling in Macedonia, Thessaly, and Albania, to sell and distribute the Bible. He has already distributed on an average three or four thousand a year, for a period of twenty-five years, making between seventyfive and one hundred thousand copies that have thus gone forth through all the land. In Turkey, where now all the restrictions of the laws against Christianity have been abolished by the imperial firman of February, a bright future would soon dawn for the Greek Church, if only it could be aroused from the deep lethargy in which it has fallen for centuries; for the Turks are a decaying and desponding race, and their power is rapidly breaking to pieces. The members of the Greek Church, in the European part of the empire, outnumber them already in the ratio two to one; they form a large majority of the whole population, and would, therefore, not find it difficult, under the present circumstances, to get a prevailing influence in the management of public affairs. Unfortunately for the Christian interests, a large number of the Greek clergy are utterly corrupt, and greatly dissatisfied with the reforms of the sultan, as they may lose by them all occasions of extorting money from their congregations. The Greek Pitzipios of Skio is about to found a society for effecting a union of the Roman and Greek Churches. Its centre will be at Rome, and auxiliary societies will be established at Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Bucharest, and other places. The pope is very favourable to the enterprise, and Pitzipios will seek, by a journey through Europe, to enlist in his favour also the influence of other Catholic governments. Of the Roman efforts among the Armenians, nothing has been lately heard, except that an editor advocating the union of the two churches has been thrown into prison by order of the Armenian patriarch. NOTE. It is due to the accomplished scholar who has preceded me in the Editorship of the Quarterly to say that, although my tenure of the office dates from election, yet the credit for this excellent number is entirely due to him. The same is true, also, in regard to the procurement of the contributed articles which will appear in the ensuing October number. D. D. WHEDON. THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1856. ART. I.-BLAKEY'S HISTORY OF LOGIC. Historical Sketch of Logic, from the earliest Times to the present Day. By ROBERT BLAKEY, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Queen's College, Belfast; Author of "The History of the Philosophy of the Mind," &c., &c. London: H. Bailliere. Edinburgh: James Nichol. Glasgow: Griffin & Co. Belfast: W. M'Combe. MDCCCLI. 1 vol. 8vo. IT has seldom been our fortune to read any book on a grave and important subject with more amusement and less satisfaction than we have experienced in the perusal of this goodly and elegantly printed volume. We looked for information and instruction; we have found only ignorance, pretension, and the most ludicrous blundering. Mr. Blakey has no distinct conception of the nature and range of the subject he has attempted to discuss; he has neither fixed principles nor landmarks to guide him through the wilderness into which he has plunged; his mental capacity is very limited, and his learning, even with respect to the miscellaneous topics he has jumbled confusedly together, is common-place, loose, inaccurate, and inadequate. His reasoning is as slovenly and miserable as his erudition; his philosophy rarely rises above the slippery level of ridiculous verbiage; and his grammar is singularly lame and mutilated. He misspells the names of the authors whose works fall under his consideration, and he quotes Latin and other languages without any regard to cases or other grammatical inflections. The qualifications thus exemplified are not exactly those which are calculated to render a man competent to delineate the arduous history of the fortunes of logical research. Mr. Blakey accordingly offers many provocations to laughter, but no rewards to study; nor could anything else be expected of one who, professing to be a logician, still regards with admiration the bald and barren common-places of Watts. If FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.—32 he has had any readers so unfortunate as to be beguiled into the credulity of believing that any available knowledge had been derived by them from this book, he may have attained the object which he contemplated in its composition; but we can only appease a strong sentiment of indignation by smiling at the pitiable spectacle thus afforded of the blind leading the blind, till they both fall together into the ditch. Where he begged or borrowed the long list of writers on logic, and divers other subjects, which he appends as the envoi to his book, we do not know; (perhaps he got it from Mr. De Morgan, for it is certainly not extracted from his own text;) but we do know that, if he had read and understood a single author in his extended catalogue, always excepting Watts, Hedge, et id genus omne, he certainly would have exhibited greater familiarity with the subject whose history he professes to write than is discoverable in this volume. Mr. Blakey is professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen's College, Belfast; but if his present work may be taken as a sample of his teaching, it is very curious logic and very shadowy metaphysics which are taught there. He informs us, indeed, that in the three Queen's Colleges, of Cork, Galway, and Belfast, "the logic class is only now about to open. There is no prescribed mode of teaching the science, and it is quite open to the several logical professors to adopt any system of tuition, in accordance with their own individual judg ment."* An alarming latitude is here announced, and it appears still more alarming when illustrated by the present performance. Under any circumstances, such license would be dangerous and illogical. It is a strange idea to dream of teaching the uniform operations of human thought in the process of reasoning, in such manner as may accord with the judgment of an individual. It is only comparable to the absurdity of lecturing on astronomy by guess. If such aimless intellectual vagabondage had been always allowed, and Mr. Blakey's career had been prepared by a similar and equally incompetent instructor in logic in all the colleges and academies of Ireland, we could readily understand the origination of that distortion of thought and that squinting mode of reasoning which are so frequently displayed in Hibernian argumentation, and which, like the double refraction in Iceland spar, assume such brilliant forms and crystalline splendor in the perfection of Irish bulls. Mr. Blakey has written other books, not luminous, but voluminous, on the history of morals, and of the philosophy of mind. Into some of these it has been our misfortune occasionally to look, but we never discovered anything there sufficiently striking, original, or * Hist. Sketch of Logic, chap, xvi, p. 447. profound to attract us to their steady perusal, or to detain us long from the company of authors from whom either instruction or a more acceptable gratification was to be gained. The Historical Sketch of Logic, from the earliest Times to the present Day, offered temptations in its title sufficient to induce oblivion of the warnings which our previous acquaintance with the writer had whispered in our ear. We were in hopes of meeting with something, at any rate, more satisfactory than the meagre and inaccurate outline of Whateley. With the prospect of discovering some information or some novelty, or at least of refreshing and purifying our recollections of the details of an important topic, we plunged incontinently into the volume, lured on the more unwittingly by the luxury of such type, until we found ourselves in the midst of the Slough of Despond, beslimed, wearied, and blinded by that copious and oozy effusion of intellectual mud, which Mr. Blakey mistakes for logic or metaphysics, and which may be a hybrid species of the latter, but which exhibits neither affinity with nor resemblance to the former. How we got out of this quagmire, or lived to return thanks for our deliverance, are questions which can only be solved by being promptly attributed to a special miracle. Our gratitude, however, shall be shown, not by the suspension of votive tablets, but by giving a late caution to others not to trust themselves to the deceptive security of the yielding swamp, and the bewildering mazes of the tangled thicket. All the lights and coruscations which flit around are only wandering fires-marsh-lights inviting to destruction. There is nothing firm and solid for the foot of the wayfarer in its ample limits, but a few tussocks of grass here and there, which have been pillaged from neighbouring fields, and have taken root, lamentably out of place in this treacherous abyss of ignorance and delusion. This is a harsh criticism with which to commence our notice of this seemly volume, whose internal weakness is charitably strengthened by the substantial thickness and solidity of its antique binding, though, like its contents, not composed of any permanent fabric, but only of flimsy muslin worked up à l'antique. Harsh, however, as the criticism is, it will be amply sustained before we lay down our pen. We have, indeed, a design, if our space permits, of exhibiting, at the end of the essay, a bill of particulars, arranged under appropriate heads, like those lists of heretical opinions submitted to the councils of the Middle Ages for condemnation. Then each of our readers may readily judge for himself of the justice of our severity, and the moderation which we have displayed. A history of Logic in the English language was a great desideratum. The want, if adequately supplied, would have met with grat itude, and been entitled to liberal commendation. The scholars of the English tongue-to use an expressive and serviceable archaism, which has gone out of vogue with the crowded mediæval universities which gave it currency-the scholars of the English tongue have been shamefully negligent of logical pursuits during three centuries, and this negligence has been productive of proportionate ignorance in regard to all matters connected with its history and details. It might be difficult at this time, by any sudden or single effort, to revive an interest in these long-forgotten studies; but all persons, even those accustomed to speak, think, and look upon Logic as an antiquated vagary, and as the idle trifling of benighted ages, would have read with interest a creditable account of its origin, fortunes, fluctuations, and fate. But this work appeared just in time and form to damp any such interest, and to chill any future expectation of this kind. While the patient and sedate labours of many learned and profound philosophers were beginning to produce their effect even in England; while Sir Wm. Hamilton and John Stuart Mill, with their disciples, were recalling attention to the long unjustly slighted study of Logic, and giving a new impetus to its career, Mr. Blakey comes forward with his threadbare balderdash, and palms off the crude notions and superficial conclusions which were current in the school of Reid and Dugald Stewart, and which might be pardonably entertained there, as something calculated to satisfy the philosophical appetences of the middle of the nineteenth century, and as a competent canon of criticism to be employed in the exposition of the history of Logic. The task undertaken by Mr. Blakey would have been productive of a most acceptable treatise, if it had been decently performed. Executed as it has been, it sinks into a nuisance. "There is not," says he, "so far as I know, any work of this kind in the English language."* Heaven forbid that there should be a second of the same sort discoverable in any language. But, even in the sense in which this declaration is made by its author, it is perfectly true; and just for this reason, his book will be sold, and may be read, to the confusion, dismay, and disappointment of all persons at all acquainted with the subject, and to the hopeless bewilderment of all others. But Mr. Blakey is not content with informing us that the want of any history of logic in the English language had emboldened him to trust to the public ignorance or the public anxiety, for the favourable reception of his commodity; he proceeds with the further assurance that he has not been able to derive much benefit or assistance from the "two or three treatises of a foreign origin, possessing an • Hist. Sketch of Logic, Preface, p. vii. |