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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Orit 3 e » are not the legislators , but the . judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Eevieto .
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Thkbk are retrospective periods in Literature : periods when the baffled thinkers losing confidence in tlie Present , and seeing the Future loom but dimly through the mist , turn back with lingering glances to the Past to read some comfort tibere—to read there the lessons of wisdom which time has proved to be wise—to , learn there the secrets of success which time has pro red to be success . That we are entering on such & period many indications seem to show . Among them , and the only one to be touched on at this moment , is the simultaneous movement of four publishers towards our
English Classics . Pabkeb has commenced an Annotated Edition , of the English Poets , edited by Robest Beul , as we noted last week . Nicole has reached the fifth volume of his Library Edition of the British Poets , edited by George GrreuxAN . Bomf has commenced with Gibbon and Addison his edition of The British Classics . And now Mukbat comes forth with the first volume of his series—Murray ' s British Classics . All these works demand extensive sale not to be ruinous speculations : the first three are unusually cheap , the last is more elegant and more expensive .
GrorJ > SMrrH ' s works in four volumes , edited anew b y Pbteb Cunktikgham , at seven shillings and sixpence a volume , will certainly tempt the purse of many who can , and of some who cannot , afford the luxury . It is really a very elegant edition , fit for a drawing-room table , and for the best shelves of a library . This is good policy on Mcbray ' s part . If books are not to be cheap let them be luxurious ; there are abundant booklovers who regard paper , type , and general appearance , more than they do cost . And seven shillings and sixpence-is a moderate price for such luxuries in England .
Looking closer into this edition of Goudsmith ( the first volume of which only has appeared , containing the Poems , Dramas , and the " Vicar of Wakefield" ) , we shall find abundant material for comment vhen the work is complete . Our readers may be told , however , that this edition is not a mere re-issue , but lias been very carefully edited by Pbteb Cunningham . It contains more pieces than any former edition , and is the first in which the works appear exactly as GtOLBsmith left them , after his numerous corrections . We were surprised to learn , from the preface , how inaccurate the previous editions are , and how much Gojldsmith stood in need of an editor . Of all this we shall speak at length hereafter . To-day we only notice the retrospective tendency— ' Nostra dabunt alios hodie convivia ludos =
Conditor Ili&dos cantabitur , atone Maroiua Altisoni dubiam facientia carmina palmanithe tendency is wholesome if kept within due bounds , and no Englishman will remain indifferent to the great names of his Literature .
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We regard the British and Foreign Medical Review as quite a model of wtat reviews should be now-a-days . It addresses , of course , a special clas 3 ; but the way it is edited might teach something to all the other reviews . In the last number Dr . Axison gives an excellent paper on the Exciting Causes of Epidemics , in which he argues for the contagiousness of Cholera , and for the district liability ( so to speak ) of infection . It is worth consulting even by non-medical readers . The following criticism oa a source of statistical fallacy will be read with interest : — '' Dr . Southwood Smith observe . * , in the course of discussions on the effects of air vitiated by decomposing animal or vegetable matter , that the districts of a town which are undrained will very generally be found much more liable to disease , and particularl y to epidemic diseases , than those which are drained ; from which he infers , that it is by the diffusion thjough the atmosphere of putrescent matters , which good draining would carry off , that these diseases are produced * or that the poison exciting them acquires what has been called an epidemic influence ; and when this statement is taken along with the somewhat hasty assertions , to be found in several scientific works of late years , m to the intimate relation , if not identity of the process of decomposition of an organised lody after death , with the changes effected in a living body by the action of malaria or contagion—it is not surprising tha . t it Bhould be regarded as an exposition of ascertained truths , very different from what nave really been made out . " We have no doubt that the observation itself will be found very generally correct ; but in regard to the inference , we must observe , Jirst , that the condition of the inhabitants of the ufldrained parts of a town differs from that ef tlie inhabitants of other pans , in many other circumstances besides the degree of vitiation of the air which they breathe : and , secondly , 1 u ! . ^ latl 011 of tho nir which they breathe depends on manj other causes , besides those winch draining can remove ; it depends on the construction of the houses , and of the streets , courts , or a leys which they inhabit , often such as to make ventilation impossible ; it depends especially on the degree of crowding of their rooms , and very often likewise on tliair own habits : they are very generally the poorest of the artisans , many are . indeed , destitute ; they are ill fed , ill clothed , ill lodged , almost always crowded together , and carel less as to the use both of pure air and pure water , often inadequately protected from cold . often exposed to fatigue , often addicted to intemperance . It is . a fact statistically proved and more general than any other tbat has been ascertained in regard to the health of diff "f . P ^™ of the human race , that among those who are most in want of the comforts 01 me , there 1 is the greatest amount of sickness and mortality . In order to ascertain , - therefore , by the method of induction , that tho unhealthy condition of any poor district of a * ' ° \ V mt th , prevalence of any epidemic disease there , is owing to defect of drainage , Ke must havo the subject subdivided , and statistical evidence adduced on ita subdivisions excluding other pecuharitifes of two condition of tlie people Lhere , and fixing attention on ( lie results of the deficiency of draining only , which , so far 48 we know , has not yet been ilonc in this country . J There is also an interesting paper on the Physiological Discoveries of Claude Bernard , and one all readers Bhould consult , on the Rise , Progress , and Present Condition of Animal Electricity , in which the history of marvellous discoveries is lucidly and popularly given . Among the " original communications "
there » a continuation of Dr . WWms ' s striking paper on the Blood : the purport may be gathered from this extract : " In these papers the general proposition has been more than < mCe cMi < Mm » fW « , «»»^» that ia the zoological series the > £ fc of the living orgaiujm » ££ BiSS-r ^ SZ **>**** , chemical and vital com ™ sition i ( proportion as theWr ^ KJK S&tfaSSSiS and that , correspondency with the fluids , the fixed solids display a consfcin ? W ^~^* tendency to simplification . To reverse the proposition , the free fluid * and the fSS ^ S constituting the mass of the body acquire , in a corresponding ratio as the aminalchaJns ! tracked upwards , a greater and greater complexity of composition . " As respects the fluids , this principle has been substantiated by reference to demonstra . tive facts . This law of progressive complexity on its application to tl > e floating and ^ ed solids remains to be unfolded . The standard of this fluid is raised by an increase in the proportion of albumen , and by the suyeraddition , at a certain limit in the scale of fibrinethe standard of solids is raised by th « production of new organised constituents within the elementary cells . The relation between the fluids and solids o £ the living organism is much more intimate , however , and recondite , than that which is implied in this general statement . The blood-proper is the highest form under which the nutrimental fluid occurs in the animal kingdom , but it is not perfect in its composition at its first appearance in the series it is comparatively simple in its first-born condition : it gradually increases in complexity by a successive increase in the number of its ingredients . The chylaaueous fluid in the annelids , its superior limit , exhibits a composition much more complex than tbat which it possessed in the lower radiated animal . In the lowest animal its albumen is least in amount , its floating corpuscles present tie lowest features of organisation . It may be affirmed as an absolute principle in the chemistry of living beings , that what is not , or never has been present in the fluids , never can constitute an integral ingredient of the solids . " If fibrine forms no part of the fluids of an animal , it cannot exist as a constituent of the solids ; it is an absolute organic law that the proximate principle can only be productd in the fluids ; it is used by the solids only as a building material . Fibrine , properly so called , cannot bo manufactured de novo out of the elements of albumen by the elementary cells of the fixed solids ; these latter cells are capable of no farther effort than that o £ modifying a principle already prepared , into a newer and higher organic compound . Neither ' albumennor fibrine exists as such in the interior of any sedentary cells ; such situations are occupied onl y by a principle developed from fibrine or albumen . Below the limit in the zoological scale at which fibrine disappears from the fluids , albumen rapidly falls in relative amountabove this limit both these principles increase in a similar ratio—^ that is * that animal fluidwhich contains the largest proportion , of albumen contains also the largest amount of fibrine and conversely , until the latter ceases altogether . A very small proportion of albumen suffices-for the production of the simplest order of floating cells ; the presence of fibrine is required for the evolution-of the highest . . . . "It will be now shown , for the first time in physiology , that the same gradation from simple to complex , from a lower to a higher standard of organisation ; is traceable in tile elementary cells of the fixed , as in those of the floating solids . As tie floating solids of the chylaqueous fluid are to the fixed structures of the animals in which tin * fluid only exists , so are the corpuscles of the true blood to the sedentary solids of those animals in which true blood only exists . Disregarding the floating cells , this new-and important physiological law may be thus enounced : —The chylaqueous fluid produces sitnpler solids than : those developed from blood-pro jer : consequently , the solid structures or organs of those animals in which the chylaqueous fluid constitutes the exclusive medium of nutrition , are more simple than the solids of those animals in which true blood exclusively "exists . " - We omit all mention of professional subjects of interest contained in this review . ,
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A new quarterly—The Ethnological Journal—has been started by Mr . Ltjkj : Bubkb , who announces the discovery of a new inductive science---Mythonomy—which , is to throw great and unexpected light upon all lihe old mythologies and legends . The principal portion of this number is devoted to the first four chapters of the new treatise . ' We must leave it to persons versed in this subject to pronounce an opinion on this new science ; for ourselves we cannot find firm footing amid these speculations . '
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AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND . A Month in England * By Henry T . Tucker man . Price 10 * , Bentley " A Month in England , " by an American . What are the expectations such a title raises in our minds ? What do we too often meet with in an English tour in America ? A defiant planting of the national biahtter in the first pages—a perpetual measuring of swords from , the first ; tb -ih $ ; Iftsft ^—a narrow disposition to compare ( and to condemn ) everything by the standard of the national taste—a tendency , even in usually candid minds , to walk by the light of the preconceived notions , of the very strong prejudices , acquired from the
pertvsal of equally unphilosophical predecessors—in a word , a disposition to consider England and America as rivals , rather than as the children of one parent , cemented by all ties of blood , alliance , and identity of interests . Even authors of greater ability , and of more enlightened views , are so far tinctured with this feeling of the national rivalry , that" we rarely open an English work on America , or an American work on England , without finding that a comparison , however fair and just , of our respective institutions , and an inquiry , however friendly its spirit , into the causes of our national differences , occupy the most important portion of the work . In whatever spirit it is regarded , the most interesting point of view to either party of the other—is the political one .
Such being the ease , it is novel and pleasant to open an American visit to England , in which we discover the artist , the poet , the antiquarian , the man of letters—everything more than the politician . To all who reverence old books and old stories—to all who love to dream and wander in the pantto all who are sensible to the magic of association , this little book will be very interesting and suggestive . At exery tarn we come upon some memory which makes cold walls and bare landscapes instinct with life ; and it is not a mere guide-book of names , dates , birth-places , and tomb-stones—erudite , correct , and cold—but the genuine outpouring of a mind deeply imbued with historic and literary associations , and the worship of the great names which form his—no less than our—intellectual ancestry . dreamland it contains
It must not be supposed that the book is all ; yery acute and graphic remarks upon things present , as well as things past . The chapter on " Lions" is very amusing ; and tho satire on that peculiarly English mania very just , and it must be acknowledged , singuhuly goodhumoured , whence reflect that Mr . Tuckerrnan ' s vmt to London occ urred , unfortunately for him , at the period when " Uncle loraism had rea died its most alarming freight , and the most sympathetic abolitionists had be ^ un to echo Mrs . Keeley ' a aspiration , " that poor Uncle Tom was gone whero the good niggers go . '' We are much tempted to quote ; but are checked by the difficulties of selection and curtailment . From the chapter on f ' Art" and on English
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January 21 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER . 65
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 21, 1854, page 65, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2022/page/17/
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