without it. It forms the voluminous and truthful | the President to the consequences of his own acts. record of the results of the great idea of our time, The historians, philosophers, and politicians of and furnishes a sublime and enduring response to Paris stand aloof with closed lips from the prosthe question, "What did the Great Exhibition ac- perous assassin, and await in silence until the game complish?" While it is a lasting monument to the is played out before they utter their verdict. The honour of those who competed successfully for men of mightiest intellect are exiled from their prizes open to the competition of all the world, homes, and in foreign lands expect the dénouement it is at the same time a cyclopædia of most valuable of the tragedy so bloodily begun. Meanwhileinformation upon all matters connected with every the whole world looking on-Mr. E. M. Warmconceivable department of industry and skill. The ington rushes into the vacuum, and addressing reports of the several juries for the most part em- "the eight millions of electors," assures them in body the past and current history of the several the character of a French subject, simulated for the branches of manufacture of which they treat, and occasion, "that the coup d'état was not an act of all are the composition of men practically ac- tyranny, but a precious favour which we owe to quainted with the subject. We must point espe- the merciful protection of the Almighty." By cial attention to "The Supplementary Report on way of establishing this very clever position, he Design" by Mr. Redgrave. This of itself is a reviews just so much of the past doings of Legiwork of the first importance, and evidently the timacy, of Orleanism, and of the Republic, as suits production of a man not only well versed in the his purpose; and then, with an ingenuity peculiar true principles of art, but also extensively familiar to himself, finds that Bonapartism is the sovereign with the mechanical processes in which art and remedy for all the evils they produced and fosmanufacture are blended together. The volume is tered. It is a remedy certainly in one sense-it beautifully printed, and adorned with some striking knocks the patient on the head, and puts an end to coloured illustrations. his disorders and his life together. The reasoning by which the author arrives at his conclusions is of that class which would prove anything; and is perhaps borrowed from the columns of the enslaved and venal newspaper-press of Paris. This book was evidently written to curry favour with the unprincipled tyrant who, aided by the accident of It is disgusting to see an Englishman, not wanting a name, has usurped the sovereignty of France. in talent, descending so low as to hold a candle

The Poetry of Childhood. A Poem. By GOODWIN

BARMBY. London: W. Tweedie, 337, Strand. 1852.

GOODWIN BARMBY has written a goodly number of
charming little pieces, all with a cast of originality
about them, and all with a decided tendency to
Boothe, to exalt, or to purify the mind. The pro-
duction before us is a poem of considerable length,
containing, as those who are acquainted with this
author's writings would expect, many fine and
beautiful thoughts, but wanting the simplicity and
unity of his minor pieces. The following address
to woman is worthy of the author :-

To thee, O woman! high the task consigned,
Daughter of God and mother of mankind!
By thy Cain's exile and thy Abel's death,
Unto a life of promise rear thy Seth:
By Eli's sons, who from their father fell,
Devote to God thy heart's own Samuel:
Grow in his growth and gladden in his grace,
And look on high for an immortal race!

to such a devil.

The History of the Painters of All Nations. By M. CHARLES BLANC. Translated by PETER BERLYS. With their Portraits, Illustrations of their most celebrated Works, &c. Edited by M. DIGBY WYATT. London: John Cassell, Ludgate-hill, 1852. THE first thing that strikes us upon opening the first number of this new work, is the extraordinary and somewhat puzzling appearance of the illus trations. The art of wood-engraving here stands The versification, however, is not so good through-forth in bold and to a great degree successful out, and is occasionally disfigured by the sacrifice of sense to alliteration, as in the following couplet :

Even childhood's tales are clouded o'er at times, And tiny tolls blend bells with cheering chimes— which we want penetration to comprehend. A little careful revision and re-writing, with the deletion of such passages as the above, might perhaps obtain for this poem the permanency which the bulk of it deserves. If we had not thought it worth such revision, we should have made no allusion to these defects.

Qu'est-ce que le Bonapartisme? Le Salut de la France. Par M. EDWARD M. WARMINGTON. Paris Le doyen, Palais-Royal. 1852.

WHAT no Frenchman of any note could be found base enough to do an Englishman has here attempted. Every man of principle who could wield a pen to any purpose in France abandons

rivalry with the arts of engraving in line or in mezzotint, on copper or steel-gaining in inten sity of effect what it loses in delicacy of expression. The picture of Saint Diego D'Alcala is a perfect marvel of art: the drawing is as broad and bold, and the handling as carelessly playful, as a pen-andink sketch by Mortimer; while the lighter parts are relieved by a depth of shadow which the woodblock only can produce. The Young Mendicant is, if possible, still finer, leaving nothing more to be desired in the rendering of this picture into black and white. Even the portrait of Murillo has justice done to it in wood. The pictures in which female and infantine forms are the subjects are less successful, not from any want of skill in the draughtsmen, but from the nature of the material with which they work. The life of Murillo, which is completed in this first part, is a well-writter and satisfactory biography, and affords a useful lesson to the aspirants for artistic fame.

The Illustrated Exhibitor and Magazine of Art. | education are glad to get into business houses in Vol. I. London: John Cassell, La Belle Sauvage- order to learn the routine of management. We Yard, Ludgate-hill. 1852. could point to a house in the city where the profits are thousands annually, and where the whole sum paid out in wages is twenty-four shillings a-week for a single quill-driver; the managing-clerk works for nothing, and has done so for years; the second clerk, who will shortly succeed him, does the same; and three unsalaried young gentlemen from the country do the out-of-door business. Nothing that the poor clerks can say or do will put an end to this system, since it is too much to expect that employers will forego the natural advantages of their position. The profession of clerk and bookkeeper, like many others, is overcrowded; and the best remedy for the grievances of its ill-paid members, is to abandon their calling in favour of some mechanical pursuit, which, if it be less genteel, may be more remunerative. The remedy is a hard one, and will be tardy in its operation; but we see no other.

THE literature of this beautiful volume embraces nearly every variety of subject: painting, sculpture, topography, biography, with inventions and discoveries in art and manufactures, natural history, and papers on science, &c., &c. The contents, in fact, are as various as those of a magazine, though, in the choice of subjects, usefulness seems to have been mainly kept in view. The papers, which are well written, have the merit of brevity, always a recommendation in repertories of this kind. But the extraordinary attraction of this volume lies in its illustrations, which are abundant in quantity and all of a high order of merit. Many of them are not to be surpassed in beauty and finish. The Cathedral of Evreux, in page 73, an elaborate mass of architectural ornament, may rank with the best line engravings of the annuals, and there are scores of others equally fine. The cuts illustrating the paper on the fir-tree, in page 276, et seq., appear to us the perfection of wood-engraving. Altogether, this volume is a unique specimen of what can be accomplished by enterprise, urged on by the general approbation. The work is so low in price that nothing but the sale of a vast impression prevents it from being to the publisher ruinously cheap.

Traveller's Library. Part XXVI. Electricity and
the Electric Telegraph. To which is added, The
Chemistry of the Stars. By Dr. GEORGE WILSON.
London: Longman and Co. 1852.
THE first of these interesting papers contains a neat
and compact history of electricity from the first
vague perception of its existence by the Greeks,
who evoked its agency by the friction of amber,
down to the completion of the grandest of its tri-
umphs, in the electric telegraph of our day. The
construction and the working of that marvellous
machine which annihilates time and space, are ex-
plained in a pleasing and intelligible manner, and
its applicability to still further purposes of utility
is pointed out. The essay on the Chemistry of
the Stars is a somewhat poetical flight into the far
regions of space; and being written with a great
deal of learning, a great deal of imagination, and
not a little humour, it forms a most novel and
agreeable introduction to the marvels and mysteries
which astronomy seeks in vain to grasp.

The Social Position and Claims of Bookkeepers and
Clerks Considered. By J. S. HARRISON. London:
Hamilton and Adams. Birmingham: Hudson
and Son. 1852.

MR. HARRISON seems profoundly impressed with
the misfortunes of the clerks and bookkeepers, and
he makes a solemn appeal to employers on their
behalf, conjuring them, from considerations of
religion, to do justice by their servants. We very
much fear that he will gain nothing by his motion.
There are thousands of clerks in London who get
nothing and demand nothing for their services,
and there are hundreds of principals who rarely
employ any others. Young men of property and

Traveller's Library, Part XXV. Lord Bacon. By THOMAS MACAULAY. London: Longman and Co. 1852.

THIS is a reprint of a very accomplished specimen of combined criticism and biography with which the reading public are already familiar. The character of Bacon, lauded to the skies by Mr. Montagu, is here rather roughly handled by Mr. Macaulay, who seems to have been urged to a Severer judgment through the undue praise of the other. A great deal might be said in palliation of much that was undoubtedly bad in the conduct of Bacon, which here is not said, probably for the best of all reasons, namely, that no good end would be answered by it.

The Autobiography of William Jerdan; with his
Literary, Political and Social Reminiscences and
Correspondence during the last Fifty Years. Vol. II.
London: Hall, Virtue and Co., Paternoster-row.

1852.

THE second volume of Mr. Jerdan's Reminiscences opens with a chapter on the literary profession, in which, and in subsequent parts of the book, he vindicates the views he entertains upon that subject, and to which some rather violent objections were taken by not a few members of the profession in their criticisms on his first volume. He compares the fate of literary men with that of men in business-observing with respect to the latter:

There is a bond of union nearly throughout all the rest of the stirring multitude, in active intercourse, to help each other in cases of need; but where is the help for the stricken deer who only belongs to the communion of letters? Bare is his position, weak and ineffectual his efforts, Saint Sebastian of his days, stript and bound, for every assistance a miracle, restoration a phantom; he is the cruel hand to shoot an arrow into him, to complete his martyrdom. And this is no picture of the fancy; it is the sad reality of the great majority of literary life. It is not the fate of genius, of flightiness, of thoughtlessness, of exmost useful and laborious authors of the age, who lived travagance. poor and died in debt, though they never committed a folly

I could, and will hereafter, name some of the

or an excess in their lives!"

And he does name them; and a sad summary they

a play; and looking for surprises and dénouements, as if the game of life were a comedy or a farce. Over his passions he had no control.... At the wildest times of

our differences he would east himself down upon his knees, clasp his hands, gnash his teeth and imprecate curses on my head for five minutes together, till some one humanely lifted him up and led him away to privacy. . . . In my case his disorder became a complete monomania. He thought of nothing, he talked of nothing, he wrote of pression; he worried ministers with them, he distressed friends, he bored the town, he disturbed the office, and he ruined the paper. . . . His ignorance of matters familiar nishing, and could hardly be believed possible to exist in even to uneducated persons and children was utterly astounion with such faculties as he was in reality blessed with. It was a psychological enigma. On one occasion, I seriously offered to resign to him the exposition of the Sun politics, if he could at the moment and without reference to a book on geography, repeat the names of the capitals of the principal nations in Europe. He could no more have done this than he could have flown to them, and he did not accept the challenge.

But we must turn from this sorrowful subject and glance at the more agreeable contents of the book, which are rich and varied to an extent only to be guessed at by those who have read the pre-nothing, he dreamed of nothing, but my villany and op. ceding volume. The most prominent literary topic is the rise and gradual progress of the Literary Gazette, of which Mr. Jerdan became head and chief at the expiration of his "broiling in the Sun." Eschewing politics and polemics, in accordance with the advice of his friend Mr. Canning, he made it the vehicle of literature and art. By the exercise of unparalleled industry and a liberal discrimination, he raised gradually but stedfastly its character and circulation until it became, what it long continued to be, the repertory and the oracle of a large class of readers imbued with literary tastes, and of the youthful and poetry-loving class more especially. As a specimen of his arduous labours in the cause of the journal, the author

recites

The result of this outrageous but ridiculous quarrel was, in the end, most disastrous to the interests of Mr. Jerdan, who was badgered at length into selling his share in the paper for a trifling sum, and to receiving £800 as payment in full for arrears of salary amounting to nearly £2,000.

Our space will not allow us to follow the writer's personal history through the details of this most amusing volume. We must pass his intimacy with George Canning, an intimacy equally honourable to both parties-his long and brother-like connexion with Sir Francis Freeling, the high-minded son of the Redcliffe-street pieman-his cosy and comfortable hob-a-nobbing with that most remarkable of remarkable men, the late John Trotter, Esq., and his fellowship with that prince of tragedians, John Kemble, and a whole catalogue of other matters eqnally interesting. How Mr. Jerdan was caught with his head in Lady Melbourne's lap we must leave the reader to find out as well as what it was that John Kemble preferred to the society of a literary coterie, and how he managed to enjoy the object of his preference. These and other "nuggets" of gold the reader must dig out for himself, since we have not space to do it for him. With one or two mots, taken at random, we must close our brief notice.

On the return of Parry's arctic expedition, I had the privilege of boarding the ships as they came up the river -collected all the intelligence I could, and on the Saturday (by tremendous labour extending over sixty hours without sleep) I presented the public with a good account of the voyage about which "all the world" was so interested. The sale of the Gazette was lifted above five hundred by that effort, which, please to observe, in those piping times of shilling sheets, was equal to about a thousand pounds a-year, besides the upward hoist and improved expectancies. There are some interesting revelations respecting the various contributors to the Gazette, and many of the most capital squibs and pieces of humour are reproduced, meeting us again like "old friends with new faces," to be welcomed with a hearty laugh by many an old acquaintance. One of the best of these is the sketch of Orator Hunt in the madhouse. The history of the author and of the work with which he was so long identified is brought down to the latter part of the year 1818. Perhaps the next most interesting, certainly the most amusing, subject, is the author's account of his quarrels with Taylor of The Sun. This whim sical, bombastic, irritable and tormenting genius was the author of "Monsieur Tonson," and other clever oddities of the sort; but he appears to have A Highland Donald was tried for a capital offence, and been such a self-willed and hare-brained imp as to had a rather narrow escape; but the jury found him “not have been utterly uncontrollable, even by the sug-guilty." Whereupon the judge, in discharging, thought gestions of self-interest. He is thus described by

Mr. Jerdan :—

His features were of a form which resembled an animated death's-head, covered with thin muscles and skin; his body rather tapered from the haunch to the shoulder, in the sugar-loaf fashion; and below his limbs were muscular and well-built, as his casings in knee-breeches and silk stockings was properly calculated to display. This embodiment, his frequent associate, the humorous George Colman, described in his own laughable manner by nicknaming Taylor "Merry Death," and declaring that Taylor's body would do for any legs, and his legs for any body.

It is difficult to pourtray the mental structure contained in this casket, for it was a congeries of contradictions. which I can only account for by re-stating that Mr. Taylor was a being of the artificial stage, not of the actual living world. He was acute, yet trifling; experienced, yet foolish; knowing, in one sense, yet absurdly plotting as in

fit to admonish him. "Prisoner! before you leave the bar, let me give you a piece of advice. You have got of this time, but if ever you come before me again, I'll be caution (surety) you'll be hanged!" "Thank yon, my lord," answered Donald," thank you for your good advice; and as I'm no ungratefu', I beg to gi'e your lords ip a piece of advice in return. Never be caution for onybody; for the cautioner has often to pay the penalty?

Soon after Canning's statue was put up in Palace Yard, in all its verdant freshness, the carbonate of copper not yet blackened by the smoke of London, Justice Gazelee was walking away from Westminster Hall with Curwood, when the judge, looking at the statue (the size of which is heroic if not colossal) said, "I don't think that is very like Canning; he was not so large a man." No, my lord," said Curwood; nor so green."

We must add the following anecdote of Turner, which is characteristic.

brought in contact with the blood in the lungs, ignorance-all these, and many more, form the and, in purifying the blood, removes the cause of lighter topics of the book, and they are treated disease. The idea is sufficiently ingenious, and with a light hand. The practical portion of the for aught we know to the contrary, may be just. subject has been studied in all its parts; and Mr. Johnson details a curious series of experiments nothing properly connected with the iron road, which sufficiently show that the effect of cold from the electric telegraph down to the form of a water is what he states it to be upon respiration sleeper," has been passed without full and and pulsation. But it remains to be shown upon adequate notice. Every railway work of importwhat grounds any violent and sudden disturbance ance in the kingdom is described and illustrated; of the relation usually subsisting between these and altogether the volume comprises as complete two functions must necessarily have a curative a history of the great fact of the century as we tendency. could hope to meet with in such a compass. The book is well got up, and the engravings are of a high class.

The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. By WILLIAM
HAZLITT. Second Edition, revised by his Son.
Vol. IV. London: Office of the Illustrated Lon-
don Library. 1852.

Canadian Crusoes. A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains.
By CATHARINE PARR TRAIL. London: Hail,
Virtue and Co. 1852.

Tuis fourth and concluding volume of the life of Napoleon carries down his history from the cam-THIS is an extremely pleasing and not very im paign of 1814 to his death at St. Helena in 1821. Hazlitt's version of the battle of Waterloo is not been to inculcate the virtues of energy and selfprobable fiction. The object of the writer has particularly complimentary to the Duke of Wel- reliance under circumstances of difficulty and lington, whose reputation he considered, or affected to consider, as "the most shallow and worthless;"danger. The Crusoes of this little romance are but it is a glorious and animated picture of a great forest, where, by dint of industry and ingenuity, three children who lose their way in a Canadian conflict, and does full justice to the valour and endurance of the British troops. The chapters on they contrive to support themselves for a period of the residence at St. Helena present the author's three years. During this long time they undergo hero and idol in a light which it is impressive and a variety of vicissitudes, and prosecute adventures of different kinds, the relation of which affords the profitable to contemplate. Supplementary chapters are added containing the history of Napoleon's authoress an opportunity of describing the incidents of a life in the back-woods, with which experience family; and a copy of his will is given in the has made her familiar. Catherine, the heroine, appendix. is stolen and carried off by an Indian, and is rescued by the self-devotion of an Indian girl, Our Iron Roads: their History, Construction, and whom her brother had saved from perishing. The Social Influences. By FREDERICK S. WILLIAMS. scenes in the Indian camp and settlement are very With numerous Illustrations. London: Ingram, different from the delineations of the American Cooke and Co., 227, Strand. 1852. AMONG all the books of the season we have not At the close of the wanderers' adventures an old novelists, and are probably nearer to the truth. met with one calculated to be more generally acceptable than this work of Mr. Williams's. It the means of restoring them to their parents, from trapper stumbles upon them in his route, and is is a history of the rise and progress of railways whom they have been all the while separated but and the railway system, from the first prophetic by a few miles. The story is made the vehicle of foreshadowings of the despised and unfortunate Thomas Gray down to the final and triumphant kind-the phenomena of the uncultured forest, a good deal of instruction besides that of a moral fulfilment of his prophecies, and to that perfection its botanical treasures and its living occupants, of speed and convenience which he never dreamed of, which we witness at the present day. The

furnishing the text. The book is exceedingly well calculated for children, to whom its interesting illustrations will render it an acceptable present. contents, its handsome appearance and beautiful

A

Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian North.

From the German of Madame IDA PFEIFFER London: Ingram, Cooke and Co., 227, Strand. 1852.

author of this work has evidently laboured con amore, and has passed over no single branch of his subject that could render it either amusing, interesting, or useful. The result is a volume which will be read with equal pleasure and profit by the general reader and the practical man. It embraces the whole process of railway-construction from the first projection of the line to its final opening for traffic, and describes the whole details connected THE public ought to be very much obliged to with the work in a most lively and agreeable Madame Pfeiffer for working so hard and reporting manner. Some of these details are very graphi- so faithfully to provide for their amusement, cally given, and enriched with many humorous especially since her report on the state of things and laughable incidents: the mania of 1845-the in Iceland is not of a nature calculated to tempt struggle for Acts of Parliament--the rushing and many tourists to explore that island on their own racing to deposit plans-the squabbling and ma-account. Hospitality is as cold there, it appears, noeuvring to effect surveys-the villanous venality as the climate; the generality of the people are of landowners-the opposition of purse-proud indescribably filthy in their habits, and repulsive