sides, the substance of all Comte's theory is contained in what he calls his three fundamental laws, and these once mastered, any body tolerably informed of the intellectual history of his race can supply the needful proofs and illustrations. One special disadvantage, however, the compend labors under is that of excessive dryness. The original is quite destitute of any of those charms of style, which relieve the dull discussions of science, and in the condensed state it has become literally, to use a homely phrase, "as dry as a basket of chips."

Miss Martineau, in her preface, explains her motive in giving this version of Comte, as follows:

"Seldom as Comte's name is mentioned in England, there is no doubt in the minds of students of his great work that most of all of those who have added substantially to our knowledge for many years past are fully acquainted with it, and are under obligations to it, which they would have thankfully acknowledged, but for the fear of offending the prejudices of the society in which they live. Whichever way we look over the whole field of science, we see the truths aud ideas presented by Comte cropping out from the surface, and tacitly recognized as the foundation of all that is systematic in our knowledge. This being the case, it may appear to be a needless labor to render into our own tongue what is clearly existing in so many of the minds which are guiding and forming popular views. But it was not without reason that I undertook so serious a labor, while so much work was waiting to be done which might seem to be more urgent.

"One reason, though not the chief, was that it seems to me unfair, through fear or indolence, to use the benefits conferred on us by M. Comte without acknowledgment. His fame is no doubt safe. Such a work as this is sure of receiving due honor, sooner cr later. Before the end of the century, society at large will have become aware that this work is one of the chief honors of the century, and that its author's name will rank with those of the worthies who have illustrated former ages: but it does not seem to me right to assist in delaying the recognition till the author of so noble a service is beyond the reach of our gratitude and honor; and that it is demoralizing to ourselves to accept and use such a boon as he has given us in a silence which is in fact ingratitude. His honors we cannot share: they are his own and incommunicable. His trials we may share, and, by sharing, lighten; and he has the strongest claim upon us for sympathy and fellowship in any popular disrepute which in this case, as in all cases of signal social service, attends upon a first movement."

It is a curious piece of literary history, which she mentions, that after she had undertaken the work, her purpose was mentioned to a Mr. Lombe, an Englishman residing at Florence, who had conceived the same project. But as soon as he heard that, she was engaged in it, he sent her a check for £500, to assist in its publication. He afterwards made an offer of a further advance, to assist in the pro

mulgation of its principles, but died before any plan on the subject could be matured.

Comte's three fundamental laws to which we have referred are these: FIRST, that human knowledge is limited strictly to the phenomena of the universe, of which we can learn only their laws, or their relations of co-cxistence or sequence, and not their causes. The entire duty of Philosophy, then, is to inquire what exists or how it exists, according altogether the question why it exists or by whom it was established. SECOND, that human intelligence, in the acquisition of this knowledge passes through three stages of development; first, a theological or fictitious stage, second, a metaphysical or critical stage, third, a positive or scientific stage. In other words, it is the nature of the mind; in its progress, to employ three methods of philosophizing, or of accounting for what it sees and hears, the character of which is essentially different or radically opposed-the theological, the metaphysical and the positive. THIRD. The science, or the generalizations of our knowledge, follow each other in a regular series, from the most simple and general to the most complex and special, beginning with the Mathematics as the foundation, and passing through Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, to Sociology, which is the summit of all the sciences. (We should add that since the "Positive Philosophy," Comte has constructed in "Positive Politics," in which he adds "Morals and Religion" to his scientific hierancy.)

As we propose to make the theory of Comte the subject of an elaborate consideration in the body of the magazine, we will not remark upon its obvious merits and extraordinary defects in this place. We have no doubt that his three laws are scientific truths, confining science to the mere study of the phenomenal world, and yet so far are they from exhausting the intelligence, that they seem to us not to have reached the threshold of genuine knowledge. They are, consequentlythough not without a certain importance, as we shall hercafter show-superficial to the last degree, when presented as the sum of philosophy.

ENGLISH. A large and handsome volume is Norway and its Glaciers, by Mr. Forbes, the Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. It describes a tour which he made in 1851 in Norway, one of the most picturesque countries of the world, and subsequently extended to the High Alps of Dauphiné, Berne and Savoy. It is finely

illustrated throughout, though its literature is scientific rather than popular. The important phenomena, the glaciers, which were the chief objects of the traveller's search, were never before more profoundly investigated or more beautifully described.

-Mr. BARTLETT, known by his famous Views of Switzerland, the Danube, the United States, &c., generally poetic rather than accurate treatments of their subjects, has issued an illustrated volume, that possesses more interest for Americans than Englishmen. It is called The Pilgrim Fathers, or the Founders of New England in the Reign of James the First. He has gathered together all the most remarkable memorials of these renowned men, private narratives as well as rare pictures; and has thus presented a complete account of their doings, their departure out of England, their voyage to Holland, their brief residence in the quaint old Dutch cities, their perilous ocean passage, and of their final settlement in the New World. The etchings and plates which accompany the volume, give curious copies of many things relating to them, from the ships they sailed in to the chairs they sat upon, the dishes and kettles they used, and the very cradles that rocked their babies. It is a volume, of course, that will be speedily republished in this country.

-THE author of the suppressed memoirs of the first wife of Milton, of Mrs. Moore, and of Madame Palissy, and other bygone dames, has just put forth a new work of the same character, called Cherry and Violet. It relates to the time of the great plague in London, and is written in the style, and printed in the type, of that period. The narrative is artless and verisimilar; and the incidents, especially those which relate to domestic life, full of pathos and beauty; while the writer wisely avoids any attempts to describe the terrible desolations of the pestilence, already handled in a manner so masterly by Defoc, as to render rivalry a mere presumption.

-A Peep at the Pixies, is a pleasing and successful attempt by Mrs. BRAY to revive the legends of certain western localitics of England, and make them instructive to children. Her little book is well illustrated by Browne.

-A movement has been for some time silently in progress in the Church of England, which, we are told, is likely to produce a greater sensation than the celebrated Oxford schism, which resulted in what is termed Puseyism. It takes a different direction from that, however, and indicates

a tendency not to higher views of church prerogative and discipline, but to more latitudinarian doctrines. The leader of it is the Rev. Professor Denison Maurice, who has been recently dismissed from his place in King's College, London, on account of the imputed heterodoxy of his opinions touching the nature and extent of future punishment. A series of Theological Essays" by him, going over the whole ground of theological controversy, are just out, and will be speedily reissued in this city by Redfield. His previous works leaves us in no doubt as to his rare and large abilities, as well as to his sincere and deep piety; and we may expect in his volume, a profound discussion of the points to which it relates. We hope that the correspondent of the Christian Intelligencer, who objected to an allusion to Professor Maurice, last month, will read these essays, when they appear, that he may have a better understanding of the subject than he appears to have at present.

FRENCH.-"The Abbe Cochet, Inspector of Historical Monuments of the Seine-Inférieure," says the London Athenæum, "so well known for his researches in France among the cemeteries of the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian period, announces for publication a work in octavo, under the title of "La Normandie Souterraine" in which he proposes to give the result of his experience in that department of archæology. It is a somewhat singular fact that France, so much alive to the importance of classical antiquities, remained so long dead to those which are peculiarly her own-namely, the remains of the Frank period. For some time her savans were disinclined to believe that the weapons and personal ornaments found in the Frank graves of Envermeu and Londinières were of the period to which they are now ascribed; but they are at length sensible of their value, the hint having doubtless been conveyed to them by the researches of our English antiquaries in Anglo-Saxon burial-grounds. The Abbe proposes to divide his work into three parts: the first to sepulchres in general, the second to the Roman and Gallo-Roman cemeteries in Normandy, and the third to the Frank and Carlovingian cemeteries of Londinières, Parfondeval, and Envermeu. The volume is to be published by subscription, and will appear during the present winter.

A question of considerable literary interest has been just decided in France, after many months' litigation. Messrs. Didot, the eminent Paris publishers, com

menced some time ago the publication of a "New Universal Biography," to be brought down to the present time, and to be made more complete and exact than any previous one. For the first volumes of the work, they made no scruple in borrowing a number of biographies from the famous "Biographie Universelle," of the Messrs. Michaud, such articles having, they thought, become public property, owing to the length of time which had elapsed since the death of their authors. Messrs. Michaud objected both to the title of the new Biography, which they said was a plagiarism of theirs, and to the taking of the articles from it, which they said were still their property, as, though the authors were dead, they formed part of a collective work which they had revised and paid for. The question as to the title was at once decided against Messrs. Michaud, the courts holding that they could not monopolize the words, " Universal Biography;" but that respecting the proprietorship of the articles, drew forth contradictory decisions,-one, to the effect that they were right, the other, that they were wrong. A third court has settled the matter by laying down, that the right of possession of articles by deceased authors ceases after the number of years from their death fixed by law, though forming part of a work in which copyright still remains.

-M. EDGAR QUINET has given to the public the fruits of his exile in the publication at Brussels of a dramatic poem, whose hero is Spartacus and whose title is Les Esclaves. It represents the famous gladiator and rebel, as history shows us he really was, a man of large genius, and of ideas expanded under the hard lessons of bondage and degradation, till he was able to comprehend the liberation of all bondmen, and the existence of society without chains or Scourges. The interest of the piece turns also on the conflict which really rendered the efforts of the heroic leader nugatory after all his triumphs, the resistance of his followers to the discipline he sought to enforce, and the purposes to which he desired to form them. The catastrophe consists in his fall, amid the maledictions of the creatures who could not understand him; while his daughter is tortured by them for having allowed a captured Roman, whom she loves, to escape; and the play concludes with the entrance of the Roman general Crassus upon the scene, and the nailing of the still warm body of Spartacus to a crucifix.

-M. VIOLLET LE DUC, is publishing in numbers a Dictionnaire Raisonné of

French architecture from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. The engravings are all from the designs of the author. The work will be in two volumes of 500 pages each, costing about $12. No man is more competent to such an undertaking than M. Viollet le Duc.

-M. DE BARANTE has completed his history of the Convention, by the publication of the sixth and last volume. It is a careful and valuable work. Its author, who is a constitutional monarchist, is far from sharing the admiration with which revolutionary writers treat the leading actors of that vast and bloody drama, mingling horror for their sanguinary acts with exultation at their noble phrases. The character of Robespierre is here exhibited in the most odious light; all generous' aspirations are denied him; all humane impulses are represented as strangers to his bosom; no good end sheds its light over the dark and sanguinary path of his policy; no large idea penetrated the gloom of his narrow and relentless mind: he was great only in hatred; he was enthusiastic only in cruelty; he labored for nothing but the extermination of his enemies; and all were his enemies who were superior to himself; if he was dexterous in conducting the furious elements of the revolution, envy alone gave him skill; if he was ever eloquent, it was the rage of envy, alone, which warmed him out of the monotonous coldness of his ordinary life. Two things were intolerable to him, a rival, and contradiction. Such is the picture of the redoubtable revolutionist, as drawn by M. De Barante; it is very different from that by Lamartine in the Girondins, and we think not so just. The truth does not lie in an extreme view even of such a man as Robespierre; and they who utterly condemn him, are, as well as those who make him an angel, led astray only by the force of circumstances. The present history of the Convention should, however, be consulted by all who would thoroughly understand the most remarkable and deeply interesting portion of all human experience, the French Revolution.

-M. GUSTAVE PLANCHE is the author of a vigorous and severe essay in the Revue des Deux Mondes, on the dramatic pieces which the last year has added to Frenchliterature. It condemns at the outset the entire drama of France since the Restoration, as having ridiculously failed to keep the pompous promise with which the new school began its career, to furnish a dramatist who should not merely rival Calderon and Lope de Vega, Schiller and Goethe, but should even transcend Shak

speare, as much as Napoleon was superior to Charlemagne. All this wealth of boasting has resulted in nothing but the miserable poverty which puts the costumer and machinist above human nature. It has produced tragedies in which the faith of history has been rigorously observed, but the truth of the heart and soul entirely forgotten. It has produced comedies-and Messrs. PONSARD and AUGIER'S Honneur et Argent and Philiberte, brought out last year, are examples,-which have exhibited talent, and enjoyed success, but have not contained one real personage nor a single spark of genuine life. Madame GEORGE SAND'S last comedy, Le Pressori, is an ingenious assemblage of true details and good sentiments, but there is no action and no object in it; and it might as well have been extended to two acts, or reduced to one. The thousand other pieces of the year M. PLANCHE deems unworthy of notice. Finally, he considers the method by which dramatic writing may regain its lost worth and excellence. Tragedy cannot be written any longer by pretentious ignoramuses, but must be based on thorough study and thoughtful digestion of history and philosophy; nor should it confine itself to Greek antiquity. The Bible is rich in tragic subjects, and ancient Italy can as well serve for the renewal of the tragic drama, as ancient Greece. As for comedy, while France abounds in that of manners and that of fantasy, it no longer has the comedy of character; and to this the authors of the day are recommended to turn their attention. In justice to M. Planche, we ought to add, that Molière's School of Women, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, form his standard of dramatic excellence.

-If there are any admirers of Russia, who desire to find their affection for that country expressed in a high key, we commend them M. ZANDO's Russie en 1850, which has recently been translated from German into French by the author himself. Here they will learn that Russia is not only perfect in every moral and intellectual respect, but enjoys the most delicious climate in the world. M. Zando ought at once to get an ukase from the Czar, changing his name into the more ancient and well-known one of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto.

-M. TEGOBORSKI, the eminent Russian economist and statistician, has published the third volume of his Etudes sur les forces productives de la Russie. It is a work which every publicist should possess, though it cannot be relied on as revealing the whole truth with regard to its subject. M. Tegoborski is too ardent a Russian,

and too faithful to his official obligations (he is a Councillor of State), to give publicity to any truths which might be apparent to one of equal knowledge, whose judgment was not influenced by any patriotic illusions.

-M. VIOLLET LE DUC has just published a romance, written thirty-five years ago, entitled Histoire de six mois de la vie d'un jeune homme en 1797. (History of Six Months in the Life of a Young Man of 1797.) We have not seen it, only a limited edition having been published, and not a copy having as yet made its way to Ameriça. But we find it warmly recommended by no less a critic than M. SaintMarc Girardin, who praises it as a faithful picture of the manners and ideas of the remarkable epoch in which the scene is laid.

-M. SAINT-REUE TAILLANDIER has collected, in two volumes, the essays on German politics and literature, which, since the end of the last German revolution, he has published from time to time in the Revue des Deux Mondes. It is a book which may be read with instruction, though it is impossible always to agree with the writer in his criticisms or his hopes. The latter are directed to the restoration, in Germany, of what the author calls spiritualism, by which he seems to mean, that vague philosophy about which Cousin makes so much ado-a kind of dilettante and transcendental apotheosis of the soul, without any definite religion, or any precise view of the nature of man or his relations with God. M. Taillandier is apparently neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither orthodox nor heterodox; but a sort of tertium quid superior to both; above all, superior to the German Hegelians and Rationalists in general. He is, however, well worth reading, particularly by those who are, unfortunately, unable to study the German literature for themselves. Some of his descriptions of noted personages are true and striking, among the rest, that of Goethe.

-A new edition of the Euvres Completes, of MATIIURIN REGNIER, has appeared at Paris, accompanied by explanatory notes. He was a satiric poet of the time of Henri IV., and his art and cloquence are fresh to this day. The volume opens with an interesting history of Satire in France, from the pen of M. Viollet-leDuc.

-An association has been formed at Paris to publish the voluminous posthumous works of Arago, the astronomer. Among them is a Treatise of Popular Astronomy, on which the highest value

will be set by all who know the admirable power which Arago brought into the popular explanation of scientific subjects. There is also a large work, entitled Notices of the Most Famous Discoverers, and an account of Arago's own youth, with all sorts of piquant anecdotes and revelations. His memoirs and reports to the Academy, most of which have never been published, will also be given in full.

-Memoirs, autobiographies, and personal revelations, are now in fashion at Paris. VILLEMAIN, the accomplished and manly Academician, is about to publish his, a book, we may be sure, that will make its mark, both in respect to the classic vigor and perfection of its style, and the elevation of its ideas and tone. The Duke of Pasquier also announces his Memoires, in three volumes. He was Grand Chancellor of France under Louis Philippe; and, among other attractions in his bill of fare, promises a complete list of the secret agents employed by the government of that virtuous monarch.

-We hear from Paris that the translation into French of Dante's Divina Commedia, on which LAMENAIS has for some time been engaged, is advancing with all the rapidity possible, in the rather uncertain health of the illustrious translator.

GERMAN. A book quite unique in its freshness and beauty is Das Thierleben der Alpenwelt (Animal Life in the Alps), by FRIEDRICH VON TSCHUDI. It reminds us of some of Henry Thoreau's sketches of New England, though the Yankee naturalist and poet is inferior to the Switzer in breadth of culture as he is in glow of feeling and beauty of style. Of all the books we have looked into in the discharge of our duty in the preparation of these Notes of Foreign Literature, this is the one which, above all others, we have read with enthusiasm. It is a poem, a romance, a scientific treatise all in one, full of the healthy air and exciting grandeur of the Alps, but withal as genial as the sunshine, and as lovely and refreshing as the summer flowers of Swiss valleys. After an introductory account of the mountain regions of Switzerland, and of their vegetation, we are led through the entire circle of their animal inhabitants, including the trout of the brooks as well as the eagles on the cliffs, and the chamois and goats, and the inaccessible heights, concluding with the dogs of St. Bernard. We quote a passage from the introductory chapter:-

"The Alps are the pride of the Switzer, who has made his home at their feet. Their neighborhood exercises an indescribable, far-reaching influence on

his whole existence. Partially at least, they form the conditions of his natural and intellectual, his social and political life. He loves them almost as if by instinct; the secret roots of his affections cling to them, and when he leaves them he longs to be back with his beloved hills. His love for them is perhaps greater than his knowledge of their nature. Even now when search is made for the slope in which the locomotive can easiest wind its way over the saddle of the Central Alps, and the galvanic stream be led along the wires-even at this day, after the weariless ardor of our many great naturalists have led thousands of explorating parties to the shining peaks of their highest ranges, a deep mystery rests upon them. Their wonderful structure, the stratification of their rocks, the formation of their icy diadems, the part they play in varying the course of nature, their relation to living organisms, their earliest and latest history-all form a riddle which has hardly begun to be solved. There are mighty mountain masses which have never yet been trodden by a human foot, and nameless horns rise in the air that never echoed to the sound of a human voice, or to any sound but the rushing flight of the royal eagle. There are icy seas stretching their motionless waves for miles, that no wanderer has seen and no observer has ever studied the animal and vegetable life of their stony island. There is niany a valley reposing in the torn and jagged arms of the high Alps that scarce a hunter's foot has visited and that is less known than the shores of the remotest countries, or the banks of the Nile or the Mississippi. And besides this, the regions under our very feet and eyes, the familiar world of the Alps with its superficial and subterranean mineralogical relations, its iceformations, processes of vegetation, meteorologic laws, climatic changes and gradations, the series of development of its living creatures and their varying relations to the series below them, their differences according to difference in mountain position and peculiar Alpine form, all these are yet far from being well understood; we are only at the doors of knowledge, and there are few who seriously knock and desire admission. *****

"This mountain world is so extraordinarily varied, its phenomena so remarkable and peculiar, that every excursion into it has its profit and reward. From its woody base, and from the genial hills with which it first rises from the valley, to the icy crown of its summits, it nourishes according to fixed laws and climato conditions, a changing and infinite wealth of life. Hero in the ascent of a few miles we often find a gradation of animal phenomena which in the low country we should either not find at all, or only in distances of hundreds of miles. A few hours' travel takes us from the last chestnut grove, where the Italian scorpion climbs along the wall, to the pigmy vegetable and animal forms of the polar regions. The great variety of the mountain localities, their central position between Northern and Southern Europe, their multiform climatic and meteorologic relations, condition and favor this magnificent richness of organic phenomena, extending as it does, vit credible economy and pertinacity into domains shut up in ice, which we usually suppose devoid of all life, and sink in the desolation of death. What a range of animal individualities is that which includes the mighty eagle floating in the morning clouds and watching his prey in some far-off valley, and the glacier flea that lives in the minutest crevices of the ice-which extends from the fleet and watchful chamois to the microscopic animalculæ of the iced snow! Let us then attempt to comprehend this stupendous world of mountains in the outlines of their animal life, and in the connection of all their phenomena. Though we make but a slight