On this page

• Departments (1)
  • 
• Text (4)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Xmtamn.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    The function of the Quarterly Reviews has long ceased to be a reviewing function . Instead of pronouncing verdicts on new books , a Review -rarely devotes its space to a new work , and when it does so , makes the work the excuse for an essay . The change has been gradual , and has mainly grown up from a feeling that the weekly and monthly organs of criticism anticipate and take from the hands of a Quarterly its ancient office . But there are certain things which the Quarterly can , and its smaller rivals cannot do : its greater space , and more deliberate publication , enables it to perform many offices in Literature , among which must be reckoned that of retrospective

    reviewing . From time to time it is well that the great names of literature should be reconsidered in an essay ; and a Review is the only medium for such retrospective studies . No one would read a pamphlet published about Dbtden , but hundreds will be glad to read such an essay as that which opens the new Edinburgh ; no one would buy a volume of criticism on CowrER , but even the busiest may spare half an hour to read the delightful paper on CowrER in the National Review . It would be well if editors contrived in each number to give at least one such retrospective article ; the space so filled would be better filled than with so many pages of mere political speculation and declamation .

    The Edinburgh is decidedly more agreeable this quarter than usual . Besides the article on Drydes , there is a pleasant paper on Villemain ' s " Recollections of History and Literature ; " an interesting paper on the deaf and dumb—" The Land of Silence ; " no lack of political matter , which we pass over ; and a paper of the highest importance just now on " Modern Fortification , " which is treated in a style so masterly and so popular , that the intensest civilian will be able to understand it . This is the great art of review-writing : to get a subject of interest , and to know how to interest readers in it who would be repelled by technical language ! This art the -writer of " Modern Fortification" possesses . Nothing can be clearer than his exposition . He records how and why the Russians failed before Silistria , and the Allies before Sebastopol ; and how the Allies smashed Bomarsund : —

    Oa comparing the siege with that of Silistria , we find the results so widely different as to shake our faith entirely in a science which could produce effects so strangely opposite . In the oue instance , we find a miserable earthwork , which , with all its material and the ground it stood upon , could not have cost 1000 / ., resisting for thirtytwo days an annv ten times more numerous than its garrison , and from before which they were ultimately beaten off with great slaughter . In the other ease , a great fortress , which could not liave cost less than 200 , 000 / ., falls ingloriously before a body of men only half as numerous as its garrison , in about the same number of hours ! and this , not because there was anything new or unexpected in the mode of carrying on these sieges—for everything happened as it had always happened before—but simply because the art was at a dead lock , and no one knew what was right and what was wrong . If auy service was prepared for these results , it ought to have been our own , for they know well that the Castle of Uurgos , which was a mere earth-work like the Arab Tabia , with a garrison of only 2000 men . defeated as fine an English army as ever took the field ; while the regular fortifications of Ciudad Rodrigo , of Badajoz , and San Sebastian fell inevitably before the attack of the same men .

    The result of all this experience on our engineers has been , that after the siege of Silistria was raised , ami Bomarsund had fallen , they came to Parliament for increased estimates to erect masonry towers it fa Bomnrsund along our coasts , choosing especially places where the water was deepest close in shore , and where they were most completely commanded from the high lands behind ; and , as is usually the case , the House of Commons passed these estimates without asking a single question . Ho shows how the Itussians availed themselves at Sebastopol of the lessons loarnt to thoir cost at Silistria . The whole paper should be carefully studied by military and civil readers .

    Stdnbt Smith is the favourite topic with reviewers just now , and we expected from the Edinburgh a brilliant article , rich with new matter . It turns out to bo an article of no peculiar value , and of only average ability , bringing nothing new as its contribution , and inferior in treatment to the very lively and able article in the British Quarterly , which is written with unusual vivacity and discrimination . Another paper in this Rovicw also deserves warm commendation ; it is on the works ot Dr . Thomas Young — an elaborate , yet popular exposition of his discoveries and achievementsthe sort of paper wo look for in a Review , because unattainable elsewhere . Otherwise , the number irf heavy with politics and polemics . " Russian Aggression and British Statesmanship" in vigorous and useful as an historical survey .

    Heavy also is the now Review , The National ; with one exception , the articles belong to the respectable , but not inviting class ; tlmt exception is an agreeable study of Cowr-Rit , written with vivacity and out of love of the subject . It is happily said that—If all other information as to Cowpor hnd perished save what his poems contain , tho attention of tho critic * would be diverted from the . special examination ol their interior characteristics to a conjectural dictation on the personal fortunes ol tliu auth or . The Uormuiis would have much to my . It would be debated m lubingon who were the three haras , why * ' The Sofa" was written , why John Oilpin was not ailedWilliam . Hallo would show with groat clearness that thvro vrus no reason * % h © should bo called William ; tliut it appoaml by th « IiiIIh of mortality that s « Ve » al other persono lorn about the same period hud also been called John ; and tlio

    ablest of all the professors -would finish the subject with , a monograph , showing' that there was a special fitness in the name John , and that any one "with tfae aesthetic sense who ( like the professor ) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal of the poem , would be certain that any other name would be quite " paralogistic , and in every manner impossible and inappropriate . " It would take a German to write upon the hares . " The editor of this Review made as fortunate a selection when he chose the " Cowper " as he was unfortunate when he chose the paper on " The Planets . " In the present state of the discussion , a Review which occupies twenty pages with rambling remarks on a topic so abundantly written about , and in these remarks presents no new facts , no new arguments , nor even a new mode of considering the subject , commits a serious mistake . The

    article is written by an able man ; but it is the article of an able man writing about and about a subject . The review of " Ewald ' s Life of Christ " is useful as a good account of the book , but in itself is a second-rate article , although by a writer admirable when in his happiest moods . " Goethe and Werther " is a somewhat meagre account of the recently-published correspondence between Goethe and Kestneb . " The Novels and Poems of Kingsley " are discussed by an admirer ; and this concludes the list of the articles we have read . What may be the merits of the " Administrative Problem , " " Romanism , Protestantism , and Anglicanism , " and "International Duties , " we cannot say .

    The London Quarterly has a very attractive programme . It opens with a sketch of the " Influence of the Reformation upon English Literature , " which carries us agreeably over the successive epochs of taste ; it is succeeded by an essay on " Robert Newton , " specially addressed to the sect to which the Review appeals . " Animal Organisation is a rambling paper not distinguished by first-hand knowledge ; the " Science and Poetry of Art " is an interesting sesthetical essay ; and the " Chemical Researches in Common Life " will be read for its curious facts and illustrations .

    The Journal of Psychological Medicine contains a good criticism on Mr . Swan-, in a paper on the " Brain in Relation to Mind ; " a paper of harrowing interest , entitled " Autobiography of the Insane , " in which are given some extracts from a work describing the sensations which preceded an attack of insanity , and the experience of an insane man in an asylum . Metaphysicians will be interested with the article the " Psychology of Berkeley ; " but the most important article in the number is the " Case of Buranelli , " by Dr . Forbes Wihslow , which must remain as evidence of our Medical Jurisprudence . We cannot here enter upon so complicated a

    case ; we notice it for the sake of noticing the appalling ignorance which medical men in our country may publicly display without loss of caste . Nor is the word " appalling" a word let drop at random ; it expresses no more than our meaning ; for surely ignorance becomes appalling when the lives of our fellow-creatures depend on it ? We select , therefore , Dr . A . J . Sutherland as an example . He is one of the physicians whose opinion was demanded on the important question of whether the murderer Buranelli was or was not insane . His opinion carried ; i life with it . That lie gave it conscientiously , we do not for an instant doubt . That he gave it with appalling that

    ignorance we will now proceed to show . Let the reader understand we have ourselves no opinion on the question of Bubanelli ' s insanity ; he may have been insane , he may have been sane ; our indignation is not with Dr . Sutherland ' s verdict , but with the culpable ignorance of Physiology upon which he bases his verdict . On being interrogated , he declared it to be his opinion that Buraxelli was labouring under an Elusion produced by hypochondriasis , but not under a delusion produced by insanity . He was then asked , " Where is the seat of hypochondriasis ? " and he gives a sufficiently va ^ ue answer— " In the nervous system . " This not being precise enough for ° the questioner , he is asked , " Is it not in the mind ? " And now listen to his answer : " It is seated generally in the stomach ; it is the effect of the nerves

    of the stomach conveying false notices generally through the system to the brain : ' In the first place hypochondriasi 3 , a mental condition r is said to be " seated" in the stomach ; a proposition which Akistotle might have received , with favour , and Galen with a smile , but which every physiologist of the last two centuries would condemn as "ignorance too gross for refutation , too obvious for detection . ' In the ° second place , if , allowing every latitude to the language of a man whoso conceptions are so vaguo , we follow his explanation , we learn that hypochondriasis is the effect of the gastric nerves conveying false notices . Now the nervos convey nothing but stimulus , as a telegraph wire conveys sensation

    the olectric current ; that stimulus may be strong or weak , the producod may bo agreeable or disagreeable ; but to suppose that a " message" is conveyed from the stomach along the telegraph wires of the brain , and that under certain conditions this message will be false , to suppose this was left to Dr . A . J . Sutherland , who is ignorant enough of physiology to be the dupe of gross metaphors I Wo speak metaphorically of the stomaon conveying notices to the brain , but Dr . Suthkjw-and has ro ;\ 18 ° V ™ h * I phor , and argues that these notices may in somo cases bo ' iulso , « nu w « they are false , hypochondriasis is the effect of tho falsehood ; beeauiro the brain deceived by the notices thus falsely conveyed , labour * under an illusion respecting things with which neither tho stomach nor its ' notices Una anything to do ! This is the fin * time we ever hoard the name of Dr . A ^ J . SornB * i . Am > . If ever it should appear again in a trial for nwnitgr , we may know what to expect .

    Untitled Article

    jxjL y 14 K 1 B 55 . ] THE JL > E APIR . 675

    Xmtamn.

    Xmtamn .

    Untitled Article

    rviHes are not the legislators , but the jua . . ; cs and police of literature . They do not malt e 1 aws—the j interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Review .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 14, 1855, page 675, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2099/page/15/