cursive as Thackeray's; but nobody ever thinks of skipping over Thackeray's discursions and dissertations, as they do Mr. Trollope's. As Lamb said of Heywood, the dramatist, that he was a sort of prose Shakespeare, it may be said of Mr. Trollope that he is a dull Thackeray. When he has a story to tell, he can tell it well enough, but the misfortune now is that often he has no story to tell. He is Canning's knifegrinder come back again, transformed by education and habit into a writer of serials for English periodicals. What he knows most about is the life of English provincial towns, and the people he is most at home among are the clergy and their families. How many times we have met the characters who figure in his last novel-The Vicar of Bullhampton (Harper & Brothers)—it would be difficult to say, but we seem to have known them ever since we have known Mr. Trollope as a novelist. It ought to cost him no trouble to write, for he always writes in the same fashion, and about the same things. It cannot be said of his plots that one is better or worse than another, for his novels are without plots. There are incidents in them, and a languid movement, like that of water in a windless day, but nothing more. "The Vicar of Bullhampton" may be summed up, by saying that a young lady is loved by two gentlemen, A. and B. She does not love A., but does love B., and becomes engaged to him. The engagement ceasing (no matter how, or why), she is engaged to A., and is on the point of being married to him, when she changes her mind and marries B. This is about all there is of it. Other incidents occur in the family of a dowr old miller (there is even a murder, and a trial of the murderers), but these are hardly of sufficient importance to be mentioned, and they have nothing whatever to do with the stirring and eventful love-story we have dwelt upon at such length. To be sure, they are in it, but they might just as well have been in an earlier novel of Mr. Trollope's, or in the one-or rather two, for that, we believe, is the number

-he is now writing. Was there ever a more industrious author than Mr. Trollope, and did ever author, industrious or otherwise, have more patient readers than he? There will be an end to their patience some day, probably; but, till that day comes, there will be no end to his novels, and, perhaps, not then. Fearful thought!

We cannot all be men of science, but most of us can know something about science, if we choose, by reading the popular hand-books of which it is the specialty. This could not have been said with truth fifty years ago, for, though there were scientific hand-books then, which were as popular, perhaps, as ours, they were often erroneous and generally worthless. Much that was sheer ignorance, or mere conjecture, has since become positive knowledge. There was a time when this knowledge would have been shut up in a dead language, or, enfranchised into the vernacular speech, would yet have remained the exclusive property of scholars; but that time is past, and it is now among the most valued intellectual possessions of mankind. The French (as we may have observed before) have done much towards encouraging the spirit which has led to this happy result, and no recent writer among them, more than M. Louis Figuier, who, if not a man of science himself (though he may be), is certainly in communication with men of science, and an able exponent of their views. He has published several volumes devoted to special branches of scientific knowledge, but none that has interested more than his "L'Homme Primitif," of which Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. have published an English translation-Primitive Man. Nothing appeals so strongly to the imagination, in the shape of remote humanity, as his subject, which is no less than the history of man before History existed-the history of Pre-Historic Man, as made and left by himself-deposited here in drift-beds, there in bone-caves and shellheaps; now in the Stone Age, now in the Bronze Age, and, last of all, in the

Age of Iron-more beneficent than the Golden Age of the poets. It is M. Figuier's object to present an outline, not so much of what is conjectured, as what is known, of man in these distant periods of his progress towards civilization -"an outline sufficient to afford a reasonable working acquaintance with the facts and arguments of the science to such as cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a starting-ground for those who will follow it up in the more minute researches of Nilsson, Keller, Lastet, Christy, Lubbock, Mortillet, Desor, Troyon, Gastaldi, and others." He has been successful in this, if we may judge by the impression he has left upon our minds; and a portion of his success is owing to his illustrations, which contribute largely to the scientific interest and value of his work. We refer more particularly to the implements and weapons of the Pre-Historic Man-flint-hatchets, knives, arrow-heads, &c.; the full-page drawings strike us as being altogether too ideal as regards the forms and faces of the primitive races they depict. However this may be, they are excellent as art-work, and they add to the pleasure we feel in making the acquaintance of our very remote ancestors.

Not the least of the results which the annexation of distant territories is likely to bring upon us, will be the multitude of books that will spring up about them like mushrooms. We shall know all we want to concerning these national incumbrances-with the exception of the debts we have assumed, of which it is just as well that we should be ignorant awhile, if we are to enjoy our whistles--and we shall know more than we want to concerning their tribes and peoples, who are to share the suffrage with us. We already object to the emigration hither of the Chinese, the latest ripple of whose first wave is now somewhere in the neighborhood of New England's great Blarney-Stone, Plymouth Rock, but our objection comes too late. John is making our shoes, and it will not be long before he is making our coats, and hats, and watch

es.

course

ren.

John is to take the bread from our mouths, as the Protectionists would have us believe; shall we allow him to take the ballots from our hands, as Patrick has done? But if we are troubled about John, who possesses, we must allow, some claims, of a primitive sort, to be considered a civilized being, ought we not to be troubled about Nuklukahyet tyone, Sakhniti, Red Leggings, and Anvik Stareek? They are Indians, of followers, perhaps, of Red Cloud, or Red Dog, or whoever it was that told us how displeased he was with his White Father, and how fat he had grown with the lies of his white brethNot exactly; they are Alaskanslate subjects of His High Mightiness, the Emperor of all the Russias, now, or soon to be, the equals of Their Higher Mightinesses, the People of the United States. We must know all about them, and their country. Of course; and the means are within our power, in the shape of a large octavo entitled Alaska and its Resources, by Mr. William H. Dall, Director of the Scientific Corps of the late Western Union Telegraphing Company. It is as much a work as any of the plays of Ben Jonson (the reader will recall old Ben's complacent epigram on this point); indeed, it is altogether too much of a work to be enjoyable to the critical mind, already jaded with the Pre-Historic Man and Mr. Trollope (neither light subjects for contemplation); with the dazzling brilliancy of Mr. Reade and the infinite sweetness of George Sand, to say nothing of the oppressive heat of the summer days. the long cold nights of winter," as Macaulay sings, it might be play to read Mr. Dall's volume, but now it is really work merely to skim over it, which we confess is all we have done. To parody the bon mot of Choate on the Chief Justice-we see that it is bulky in size, and we know that it is crammed with facts-facts in regard to the travels of the writer, and facts in regard to the geography, history, inhabitants, and resources, as well as the population, fur-trade, meteorology, latitude and longitude, vocabularies, and natural history of Alaska, besides a

"In

bibliography of works relating to it, of which there are upwards of one hundred and fifty, in English, French, German, and Russian. We are absolutely bewildered by their number. We hope Mr. Dall's readers will fare better; for he has much to tell them about Alaska that is worth knowing. His volume is illustrated, not very elegantly, with designs from his own drawings, and contains a good Map, and an Index.

To be gentle towards his fellows, and tender towards the brute creation, is the duty as it should be the pleasure of man; but as it is not his highest pleasure, so it is not his most imperative duty, -not the one duty, that is, to which all others must yield. Our first duty is to ourselves. It seems selfish to say so, but it is the law of nature, the law by which all animated beings are governed, and which can never be practically set aside by any system of ethics. We have the greatest respect for the sentiment of Humanity, but for its sentimentality we have none whatever. "You cruel man!" said a young lady to a butcher, "you are not going to kill that innocent little lamb?" "Bless you, marm, you wouldn't eat it alive, would you?" Miss was sentimental, but she was fond of lamb,-when green peas were in season. So probably was Leigh Hunt, -most charming of writers, and most humane of men; but in this matter he was something of a sentimentalist. As regards angling, for instance, he not only failed to sympathise with it as a sport, but he inveighed against it as a piece of wanton cruelty. Harold Skimpole would have done the same, and would have eaten his trout with an increased appetite, consequent upon the utterance of a noble sentiment. Dr. Johnson sneered at anglers, as every body knows, but it was not, we think, so much on account of his tenderness of heart, as because he was too near-sighted to make an angler. Byron was not a follower of the craft, though we remember to have read a remark of his in regard to Wordsworth, to the effect that he was not a poet, because he was not a fisherman. Coleridge was both, we are told,

as was also Gay, whom all his friends, even the cynical Swift, loved for his tenderness of heart. If names were of weight, the lovers of angling might justify themselves and their art by the authority and practice of the greatest; but happily neither stand in need of justification with men of sense. As regards the supposed cruelty of angling, the point on which the sentimentalists harp most, let us hear what a philosopher says: "The hook is usually fixed in the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there are no nerves; and a proof that the sufferings of a hooked fish cannot be great is found in the circumstance, that though a trout has been hooked and played with for some minutes, he will often, after his escape with the artificial fly in his mouth, take the natural fly, and feed as if nothing had happened; having apparently learnt only from the experiment, that the artificial fly is not proper food. And I have caught pikes with four or five hooks in their mouths, and tackle which they had broken off only a few minutes before; and the hooks seemed to have no other effect than that of serving as a sauce piquante, urging them to seize another morsel of the same kind." This is the testimony of Sir Humphry Davy in his Salmonia, of which Messrs. Roberts Brothers have lately issued a new edition. It is a book which we always read with pleasure, and never more than now when the recreation it celebrates is at its best. We will not say that it is as delightful reading as "The Compleat Angler," for no lover of honest old Izaak would admit that, but with that exception, it is the most enjoyable work on angling in the language. As a piece of writing it is better than Walton's immortal gossip, but it lacks a certain charm which Walton possessed above all the writers of his time, and which is best described by the word naturalness. He is simple and joyous as a child, if we can imagine a child with his knowledge and love of natural objects,—and as much at home among them as the dew that lingered in the fields he crossed, the wind that charm him with a sense of its freshness, or the

creeps in. One new classical professor is added at Manchester, but he is called "Professor of Comparative Grammar;" one proof in many that classical learning is silently losing its literary and authoritative character, and taking its place in the system of sciences, as a branch of general philology. In short, the movement of the times is scientific. In another respect, the Manchester University is interesting; as not identified with the Church of England, like Oxford or Cambridge, but affording equal privileges to all religious creeds.

Richard Cobden's speeches have been collected in two handsome volumes, by John Bright and Prof. Harold Rogers (London, Macmillan & Co.). Their literary merit is as speeches only; they contain no finished passages for elegant prose extracts, but are printed much as they were spoken, hitting the point before the speaker every time in direct and often homely words. Many of them, on India, Parliamentary Reform, the Russian War, and other subjects of no special interest in this country, are chiefly valuable to students of history, or of Cobden himself. But the first volume is filled with those splendid attacks on protective legislation, and on the traditional errors of British finance, which may be said to have once revolutionized public opinion in England, but which have not yet done all their work. No better tract for popular distribution in this country could be found by the friends of free trade and equal taxation than could be made up out of these speeches. The noble words in which Cobden persistently defied the prejudices of his nation, declared that the patriotism of the American people during the late war was one of the most sublime spectacles in the history of the world," and predicted the preservation of union, will also be found preserved here, and will make Cobden's memory dear to many generations on this continent.

There are few subjects so much discussed, which seem to be so superficially studied, as the principles of copyright. The law of copyright is in utter confusion, in the United States as well

as in European nations: and in many practical questions concerning it, the opinion of the ablest jurist is little more than a guess as to the probable inclination of a particular court. Copyright agreements and interests, too, are treated in practice with a looseness which would not be tolerated in connection with any other property. The question of international copyright attracts much attention in Europe of late. The experiment of the laws protecting foreign authors and translations from them in England is regarded as a success. But a strong and growing party in all Western Europe advocates the gradual abolition of copyright, or at least important limitations of it. Mr. John Camden Hotten, the well known bookseller, has made a special study of this subject, and is about to publish a volume on "Literary Copyright, considered in its relations to authors and to the public." We do not know what his conclusions are; but a candid and intelligent inquiry into the principles on which copyright is founded, such as Mr. Hotten ought to write, will be an important contribution to the progress of the controversy.

A formidable enterprise, under the title, "Haydn's Universal Index of Biography, from the Creation to the Present Time" (London, E. Moxon & Co.), although it has nothing to do with Haydn, who died long ago, affords a valuable skeleton of a biographical dictionary, more complete in its list of names than any other in existence. It has common note of all British work in displaying wonderful ignorance of men and things in America; but, apart from this, contains some hint of what every illustrious man, and nearly every eminent man, in known history, will be remembered for; with thousands of contemporary names which ought to be, and will be, forgotten. An American edition ought to be edited by some one who could put the additions necessary for this country in half the space saved, by abandoning the aim, so common with compilers of such books, of miti gating the pangs which obscurity gives to so many nobodies.