Wisdom and Goodness. Dr. Tullock is au courant in the latest theological speculations, both in England and Germany, and while he adheres, for the most part, to the orthodox standards of philosophy, yet manifests an intelligent appreciation of the merits of other schools. His argument must interest all those who are susceptible of an interest in such inquiries.

A FAIRY BOOK.-Any parent or instructor of youth, who knows how the young mind craves imaginative food, in the shape of nursery and legendary lore, will be glad to get the Child's Own Book of Fairy Tales -a judicious collection of some of the best things to be found in the Arabian Nights, and the ancient Mr. Newbury's publications. We know of one venerable gentleman, at least, whose various experiences in the way of editing daily newspapers and monthly magazines, and sometimes both together, have not so tasked his brain as the demands of a certain small circle, who look to him for the latest reports from the realm of giant and fairy. He is glad to avail himself of any assistance from foreign sources, and he doubts not that others, in like circumstances, will be equally glad. A portable volume, with Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Cinderella, and Blue Beard, and Hop o' my Thumb, and some two dozen more choice extracts from the store-houses of juvenile fiction, nicely packed between its two covers, must prove to them a most acceptable resource. It will be, also, as lasting as it is acceptable, for this species of literature is of the perennial kind. never wears out. Like the greater fictions which have made the names of Homer and Shakespeare so enduring, they defy the ravages of time. They float down the current of the ages, like lilies which are freshened by the flow of the tide. They are always in bloom; and, as long as children shall be born (and we opine that no premature frost of Shakerism, or sudden fire of Millerism will cut the period short), always will be. Empires may decay, and stars withdraw from the sky, but, until this great globe itself dissolves, the Bean Stalk of Jack will flourish, and Tom Thumb rise heroic over destiny.

It

THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE.-Mr. WM. GILES DIX has written a most enthusiastic protest against the part which England and

France are playing, so much to their serious cost, in the Eastern affairs. He regards the Eastern Question as, at bottom, a question between Christianity and Mohammedanism; and he is shocked that the leading Christian Nations of Europe should lend their aid to the great archenemy of Christ, just at a time when his empire is staggering to its fall. For Russia he does not cherish any particular sympathy, but in the existing quarrel he thinks her quite in the right; and he expresses a fervent hope that she may succeed in the fearful trial of strength waged around Sebastopol, unless England and France change their policy. If Mr. Dix were personally one of the parties engaged, he could not write with more warmth than he does of the merits of the dispute. Nor can it be denied that there is much truth in what he says, although it appears to us be overestimates the bearing of the quarrel on the destinies of the world. In one place he represents this war as the greatest event which has occurred since the fall of the Roman Empire, in which opinion few students of history will concur. Russia is bound to possess Constantinople, he predicts, and the possession of it will render her, in the course of time, a commercial and consequently a less despotic power. In opposing her spread in that direction, England and France are really opposing her civilization. Despotism can only exist as a kind of close corporation, and, by opening itself to the moral and social influences of the world, it really liberalizes itself, and becomes constitutional and free. This point is stated with much force by Mr. Dix, whose whole argument, indeed, deserves attentive consideration. He has fallen, however, into one great heresy, as it seems to us, which is in the sentiment that the political tendency of this age is toward consolidated empire-and which leads him into an unfriendly attitude towards the republican efforts of Poland, Hungary, and Italy. The tendency and hope of this age is in the liberation and freedom of the nationalities, without which there can be no genuine consolidation, only despotism. Indeed, all consolidation is despotism; and federation alone, between mutually independent states, as in this country, furnishes the key to vigorous and stable national existence.

ENGLAND. The press in England continues to be more rich in promises than in performance. Perhaps the most important book upon our table is Sir DAVID BREWSTER'S new Life of Sir Isaac Newton. The small volume published by Sir David, then plain Dr., Brewster, in the "Family Library" some twenty years ago, has grown, up into two stately, octavos. Sir David has had access to valuable MS. collections, from which he has drawn new materials for his work. The whole Flamsteed corre-. spondence has thus come into his hands. Sir David Brewster is an enthusiast in his task. Not satisfied with placing Newton, the philosopher, at the head of the "benefactors and ornaments of their species," he claims for Newton, the man, a character "exhibiting all the symmetry of which an imperfect nature is susceptible." His book is so truly a panegyric, that, before finishing the first volume, the reader begins to sympathize with the Athenian who voted Aristides into banishment because he was weary of hearing him called the "Just." If this were the only consequence of Sir David's partisanship it might be easily forgiven. But his love for Newton, or rather for Sir David Brewster's hero, has led him into strange injustice to the contemporaries of Sir Isaac. It surely should have sufficed Sir David to immolate Archimedes and Anaxagoras, Kepler and Copernicus on the shrine of Newton's intellectual glory. Is it not going too far to offer up the good name of so mild, and generous, and honorable a man as Leibnitz to the idol, which Sir David's hands have reared, of Newton's spiritual perfections? According to Sir David's own showing, the discovery of the Differential Calculus was made independently on Newton by Leibnitz. Leibnitz asked of Newton, in the most candid manner, what progress he had made in his alleged analytical discoveries. Newton wrote, in October, 1676, a reply not very courteous in style, and rendered nearly worthless to Leibnitz by the fact that the meaning of the most important passage it contained was purposely veiled from him by an enigmatical arrangement of the words! This churlish reply Newton kept nearly six months before he sent it. Leibnitz instantly acknowledged the receipt by a letter, in which he frankly

stated, in plain language, his own most important discovery. No respectable man, not a biographer, could have failed to see and to lament in this matter, the moral inferiority of the great Englishman to his German contemporary. Throughout his account of the unfortunate quarrel which, followed the publication of Leibnitz's method, (a quarrel of Sir Isaac's own seeking, since Leibnitz was really bound, in courtesy, to say nothing of alleged discoveries which Newton had himself refused to make public), Sir David Brewster preserves the tone of a passionate partisan. He roars like a lion when he finds Newton thinking that he has been charged with plagiarism, but quite "like a sucking dove" when Newton's friends, coarsely and plainly, bring the same charge against Leibnitz. His awkward and irate advocacy will do no more, we fear, to damage Newton's reputation in this affair, than Newton himself ever did.

The unfortunate Flamsteed fares still worse at Sir David's hands. He is charged with downright lying, and is dismissed with an antithetical kick, as "a divine without charity, and an astronomer without principles." His correspondence is called "revolting," on p. 242 of vol. ii., although on p. 162 of the same volume, Sir David asserts that Flamsteed "bore his misfortunes with Christian resignation, and never failed to exhibit in his conduct, and to express in his writings, the humblest submission to the Divine will!" The truth would seem to be, that Flamsteed was really wronged in regard to his "Observations;" that Sir Isaac was at least privy to the wrong, and that when Flamsteed applied for redress to the government, Sir Isaac made no effort to help him, great as were his personal obligations to Flamsteed for scientific assistance. Flamsteed did some wrong things and said some unwise ones, but Sir David should have remembered the allowance to be made for a "great man" (his own words), "feeble from his infancy, afflicted with the stone," and confessedly treated with great unkindness and want of consideration. The Scotch knight, however, sharply slaps, with one hand, Flamsteed's "gross iniquities," while with the other he mildly pats Sir Isaac's "little imperfections." Sir David, indeed,

goes nearly as far in his partisanship as the lady who maintained that John Wilkes squinted "no more than a gentleman and a man of honor ought to squint." He impliedly charges a respectable foreign savant with falsehood for saying that Sir Isaac gave him bad wine at dinner!

This tendency is the most serious drawback upon the value of Sir David's biography. His historical sketches of the sciences, illustrated by the glorious intellect of Newton, are admirable. In treating his own department of Optics, Sir David has shown especial judgment and ability. And he is so honest, with all his partiality, that he gives us, in his own text, the means of correcting his judgments. Thus, he makes it plain that Sir Isaac was of a somewhat testy and suspicious temper, a man in short, as John Locke says, "nice to deal with, and a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where there was no ground."

In discussing Sir Isaac's theology, Sir David avoids conclusions, though he intimates pretty plainly that Newton was a simple humanitarian. Newton's own papers, indeed, leave no room for doubt on the subject. The second volume of the work is illustrated with a photographic engraving of Roubiliac's spirited statue of Sir Isaac. It is an exquisite specimen of this new and beautiful art, which is surely destined to work wonders in the æsthetic cultivation of mankind.

-Commentaries upon the Productive Forces of Russia, can hardly fail to command attention at this juncture of affairs, when they come to us from a Privy Councillor and member of the Council of the Russian Empire. M. L. DE TEGOBORSKI is already known in America, from this very work, published in French nearly three years since, and briefly noticed in our pages at the time. He is a diligent and accomplished statistician, and, as a high official in the Russian treasury, enjoyed excellent opportunities for familiarizing himself, as far as such a thing was possible, with the resources of the Empire. His "Commentaries" are quoted all over Europe as an authority, and are now first translated into English. The first volume lies before us, the second is to appear shortly. M. de Tegoborski gives an interesting picture of the resources of Russia. For instance, he states that the extent of cultivated land in European Russia, is to that of France as 15 to 4,

and to that of Austria as 9 to 2. It is thrice as large as the area of Prussia. The Russian forests cover an area nearly four times as large as France. In the proportion of productive to unproductive soil, however, Russia is greatly behind the rest of the Continent. He estimates the population of Russia at 62,000,000, but admits that, in density of population, Russia is very far in the rear of Europe. This is a serious drawback not only in the development of Russian resources, but on the administration of finance and of the military power of the empire. "Its inconveniences," says M. Tegoborski, "are felt in every branch of the public service." The want of large towns is another source of weakness. In France, we find one town to 10 2-3 square miles in Russia, one to 130 1-2 square miles! Moreover, "in the Russian towns, we seldom see the animation of industry and commerce." There is a great scarcity of artificers in Russia. The proportion of skilled workmen in Prussia, is more than quadruple that of Russia. And M. Tegoborski confesses the almost entire absence, in Russia, of that municipal spirit which makes the strength of the Teutonic nations. The Russians tend to association and subordination rather than to individuality and enterprise. The immense proportion which the raw products of Russia bear to her manufactures, is established by M. Tegoborski; and it is easy to infer, from this fact, the extent of the distress which must have been already inflicted upon the empire by the destruction of the export trade. Scarcity of capital and the high rate of interest, the want of water-power and the expense of steam machinery, in a country ill-provided with coal, and where iron is excessively dear, the difficulties of communication, and the low standard of burgher education, are enumerated by M. Tegoborski as causes which may serve to account for the comparative failure of Russia to develop her manufacturing industry under a system of protection amounting almost to prohibition. The exceeding poverty of the masses of the population is apparent, not only from the condition of the town revenues, but from the small relative consumption in Russia of many articles which may be called the popular luxuries of modern civilized life.

On the whole, M. Tegoborski, patriotic

as he is, makes out a rather unfavorable case for the capacity of Russia to maintain such a struggle as that in which she is now engaged. The importance to the allied powers of their operations in the Black Sea, is fully attested by his statements. He lays immense stress on the value of the Black Sea ports, and declares that the prosperity of the richest provinces of Southern and Central Russia, whatever may be their internal welfare, "must always depend, in a great measure, on the activity of the Black Sea commerce." In 1843, Odessa and Taganrog exported more than 60 per cent. of the cereals alone, sent from Russia. The influence of serfage on the prosperity of Russia, M. de Tegoborski distinctly declares to be disastrous. "Slave labor," he justly says, "is always less productive than free labor; that is, not always as regards the interest of the proprietor, but as regards the total amount of value created by the employment of labor." The number of serfs in Russia he estimates at about 46 per cent. of the male population.

We shall return to M. Tegoborski's work on the appearance of the second volume.

-A bibliographical work of more than bibliographical interest, has been published by Dr. COTTON, Archdeacon of Cashel. It is entitled Rhemes and Doway, and is an attempt to show what has been done by Roman Catholics for the diffusion of the Bible in English. As the author observes, "there is a general want of information on this subject among all classes." "Learned men" talk loosely of "the Douay Bible," "the Rhemes Testament," as if they believed there was but one English text of the Catholic Scriptures, and one body of Notes upon them. So far is this from being true, that Dr. Cotton enumerates no less than ten editions published "by authority," many of them repeatedly multiplied, which differ from each other materially, and some of which, e. g., Challoner's, of 1750, which was reprinted at Dublin, in 1820, without note or comment, do not vary from the common English version more than that varies from other Protestant translations. In addition to these, he describes seven translations, made by individuals, according to their own notions. Upon one of these translations, in particular, that of Bishop Kenrick, of Philadelphia, Dr. Cotton bestows high and merited commendation. The currency which these independent

versions have obtained among the clergy, has not been very encouraging, and Dr. Cotton quotes Cardinal Wiseman to show that the highest dignitaries of Rome "do not encourage their people to read the Scriptures, and do not spread them to the utmost." The fate of the labors of the learned and liberal Dr. Geddes, the most earnest of Catholic translators, among whose papers, after his death, not a line relating to his biblical studies could be found by his executor the accomplished Butler, is a further illustration of clerical hostility to all projects for increasing the popular knowledge of the Scriptures. Rome, indeed, boasts of her Vulgate translation, but it is the Vulgate of the dead, and not of the living. On the other hand, it is fair to say that men like Dr. Kenrick strenuously advocate the publication of "the whole New Testament in a more popular form for the general edification of the faithful." And Dr. Cotton gives some facts, which we fancy will be new to most of our readers, in respect to Catholic "Bible Societies." A society of Catholics at Paris published several editions of the New Testament for popular distribution, at the beginning of the last century, nearly a hundred years before the establishment of Bible societies in England and America. A society at Ratisbon, in Germany, instituted in 1805, contemporaneously with the "British and Foreign Bible Society," had distributed, before 1818, sixty thousand German Testaments, without note or comment. The Catholic Bible Societies of Russia preceded the Protestant efforts in that direction, which were inaugurated under the protection of the "illuminated" Emperor Alexander. The faithful labors of Von Ess, who, by his individual exertions, and in the face of Papal opposition, distributed, in four years, 390,000 copies of his own translation (and a very good one it is), among the Germans, are well known. And under the auspices of the Catholic aristocracy of England, a Catholic Bible Society was formed at London, in 1813 (five years before our American Bible Society began its career), which distributed three large editions of the Rhemish Testament, edited by the Vicar Apostolic of London.

-Mr. STIRLING, the author of the "Annals of the Artists of Spain," has given us a most complete and interesting account

of Velazquez and his Works. This is founded upon his sketch of that painter in his previous and excellent book, but it is really a new and independent treatise. In his preface, he treats Mr. Blanc's Histoire des Peintres de toutes les Ecoles with great severity, and we are gratified to find our general impressions of that. publication confirmed by Mr. Stirling's specific investigations. Mr. Stirling fails in his descriptions, but he is a man of sound sense, of healthy sentiment, and of unwearied diligence, and he has made an excellent biography of a painter who was himself. more distinguished for sound sense, healthy sentiment, and unwearied diligence, than for the higher qualities of the imagination.

Another English contribution to the literature of art is Mr. STANLEY's Synopsis of Dutch and Flemish Painters. It is by. no means a brilliant book, but it might have been made an useful one by a better index, and an arrangement approaching the philosophical. It is, in fact, a carelessly written compilation by a gentleman who has edited his facts, as Carlyle once said of somebody, just as a cartman edits a load of bricks, "by dumping them down."

FRANCE.-M. DE LAMARTINE'S Histoire de Russie is not M. de Lamartine's Histoire de Russie, but a rifacciamento of M. Schnitzler's works on Russia. We are aware that M. de Lamartine bas, for some time past, been engaged in bookmaking, and we would not willingly be hypercritical in noticing works which a man of genius is compelled, by the pressure of necessity, to produce. But the extent to which M. de Lamartine, without a word of acknowledgment, has made use of M. Schnitzler's labors, is really unjustifiable. The Histoire de Russie is divided into ten books and an epilogue; the books being again divided into numbered paragraphs, stanzas we might call them. It is really a sort of chronicle in poetical prose. The web of the work comes from the loom of Schnitzler, and is well known as the "Histoire de l'Empire Russe." M. de Lamartine has covered it with embroideries of his own. Each Russian reign becomes for him the theme of a "Meditation poétique." The vile favorites of the murderess of Peter III., from the savage Orloff to the contemptible Zouboff, pass from his magic pencil invested with a pensive beauty, a regiment of "Raphaels," dimly discerned

by the light of their diamonds, through a haze of soft perfumes. From Schnitzler's Secret History of the Court and Cabinet,” M. de Lamartine takes, bodily, his account of the last days of Alexander I., forming a large proportion of book IX. He condescends occasionally to use quotation marks, but he gives no reference to his authorities,

The book thus nimbly constructed, is, of course, a readable one, for the subject is interesting, and Lamartine has a flowing style. The "Epilogue," a series of reflections on the causes and consequences of the present war, is a striking, and, on the whole, we think, a sound and sensible paper. We have never believed that Lamartine failed, in political life, from the Utopianism of his views. So far as his views of public affairs transpired, they seem to us to have been generally statesmanlike and correct. Vanity, forever falsifying his vision where he himself is called upon to act, made him impotent in public life as it has constantly made him absurd in private. In his account of the sixth coalition against Napoleon (vol. ii., p. 260), occurs a passage which paints the man. He is speaking of Moreau, who came back from exile to join the armies allied against France, and conceived the plan of the campaign which overthrew the emperor. This conduct, he says, is "a new proof that emigration perverts the views as well as the hearts of the greatest men, and that one can only preserve patriotic morality upon the soil of one's native land." Lamartine, we need hardly say, alone among the republican leaders, has remained in France since the triumph of Napoleon III.!

His notion of the effects of emigration would hardly be accepted, we fancy, by the authors of L'Almanach de l'Exil pour 1855, "conçu et rédigé dans l'esprit et la pratique de liberté," and published at London and Jersey. F. Pyat, L. Blane, V. Hugo and his two sons, the Russian Herzen, the Italian Piancini, the German Ruge, and the Hungarian Teleki, all contribute to this cosmopolite work, which is of moderate size. But, like Hermia, though it be but little it is fierce," and breathes wrath in every word. We confess a dislike to the mad mouthing of mighty phrases, and we allude to this little book only because it contains a paper on Shakespeare, from the pen of F. Victor Hugo,