Italian born subject returning from a visit to his parents passed incautiously into the Austrian dominions. He met with all the vexatious stoppages that the wise laws of that empire permitted. And when his innocence of any improper motive in his journey was fully established, the ascertained fact that he came from Birmingham, the guilty town where Kossuth had been wildly welcomed, obtained him a fortnight's imprisonment in a place that nearly deprived him of his eye-sight. This shews indeed the will to quench our light, but have all the combined despots of the earth the power to do it? Let them try to quench the sun! Let them try to put out the light of heaven! Let them try to thrust the whole free atmosphere into their dungeons! When they have accomplished this, they may hope to extirpate from the earth "LIBERTY AND ANGLO-SAXONDOM." There are inflammable

materials enough in their own dominions, and if they strike a spark among them by abrasing with their polished steel the flinty rocks of Albion, then-Woe to them that sit in the high places of the earth, for the day of their rule is ended.

Reviews.

THE DYNAMICAL THEORY OF THE FORMATIOM OF
THE EARTH. By ARCHIBALD TUCKER RITCHIE,
Longman and Co.

London;

WE well remember once listening to a disquisition on the wisdom and goodness of God, as displayed in the works of creation, in which the speaker, with a seriousness and solemnity provocative to our risible faculties, cited it as a remarkable exhibition of wisdom, that God, before he created anything else, should call light into existence, "that he might see what he was going to do!"

Mr. Ritchie is evidently of a very different opinion to the speaker in question; for he considers that for long, indefinite, geological periods, the orbs of space had purused their mystic dance, and that our own earth, a non-rotating sphere, had pursued its annual course around an unillumined sun, while all the various strata that form its crust were deposited from the menstruum of the primitive ocean, before one single ray of light had beamed the universe.

upon

This is, in our estimation, the one great defect of a couple of large volumes, almost full of solid learning, earnest argument, scientific truth, and religious feeling, not wholly unaccompanied

with literary beauty. Starting on the great foundation, in which we perfectly agree with him, that Scripture must be true, Mr. Ritchle ably illustrates its truth by geological, chemical, and mathematical science. But, finding a few facts which will not bend to his theory, instead of waiting with patience for such farther elucidations as the onward progress of science may afford, he attemps to bend those facts in a way in which they will not bend, and breaks them; or rather breaks his own argument in the attempt. Alas! that a man of such knowledge, such acuteness, and such power as his volumes display, should have attempted to contend that light has not existed in any portion of the material universe for six thousand years, when there are now shining on our earth rays from the distant nebulæ, which could not have passed through the intervening space between their orbs and ours in thirty thousand years!

This error, however, unless we greatly misread the records of the universe, is not necessary to the perfection of our author's dynamical theory. Existing, as the Parsonstown Telescope has demonstrated on the outer sphere of the universe, light might not have reached our system at the time when the command was issued, "Let there be light." And as there must have been a first moment when it dawned upon the earth, it is quite conceivable, in the absence of contrary evidence, that that first moment was between five and six thousand years ago. That there is an absence of contrary evidence, Mr. Ritchie has gone far towards proving, although he has certainly not cleared all the stones out of the way, and made it perfectly smooth to travel on. His work is a contribution of such importance to theological science, that he richly deserves for his labours the thanks of the whole religious community. The number of scientific facts he has brought out in corroboration of the details in the first chapter of Genesis, is remarkable; and his thorough acquaintance at once with geology, mineralogy, chemistry, and physiology, render him a very proper person to have taken such a work in hand. This, indeed, causes us more deeply to regret the few important errors into which he has fallen; since, but for these, we are convinced that his work, which is far too little known, must already have exercised an important influence on the opinions of mankind. We can promise to every genuine lover of truth and knowledge a rich treat in the perusal of these volumes, notwithstanding the defects to which we have alluded; and strongly recommend them to the attention of our readers.

PLEASURES, OBJECTS, AND ADVANTAGES OF LITERATURE. By the REV. ROBERT WILLMOTT. London: Bosworth.

AMONG the thousands of volumes that issue monthly from the dusk of the printing-office, few, comparatively, are there which will bear a second perusal, or upon the brevity of which the reader will waste a sigh. The book now before us will, however, rank among those exceptions. Elegant and polished, antithetical and eppigramatic in its style, it yet contains sober truth and thoughtful instruction; in it the potion of knowledge is well disguised under the sweat meat of a fascinating diction. Well is the gay robe flung over the stern and weather-beaten seer; it is "the oration of a philosopher in the language of a bard!" As completely is the attention of the reader embound by the art-burnished reasoning, as though were cast around him the gaudier scarfs of fiction of the best of fiction, where the tissue is not rotten. No cockney is he that reviews the broad fields—he is acquainted with the fertility of every diverse shadow of soil, and scans over the clods with a master's hand. He prates not of the harmony of the harpsichord, of its various stops and pedals, without showing us in the meantime that his fingers are no strangers to the scale. As he tells of those who have, as it were, hurled their music against the walls of the world, music of his own trembles within our ears. When he describes the consolations of poetry, which ❝arches over the world as a rainbow, which fancy sets in the clouds of life," and which "drinks fragrance from all its many-coloured joys and sorrows," and "restores the hues which it gathers with milder beauty;" so that "the barrenest way-side of want and mourning looks green and cheerful under its brooding line of shadow," -we cannot but feel that no small portion of the muselight exists within the mind of our instructor, as he tells us, that "the giant of clouds," despondency in the human breast, falls ever before the sling of the harper, and "that not only may the sling which works his downfal be wielded by Spencer and Milton, but that he is often vanquished by a stone taken from the village brook, and by a ruddy youth from the sheepfold."

How strongly we feel of what power the missel of his glorious language would be found in the same warfare! While listening to his precepts for those who wish to clamber up the swaying ladder of criticism, or examining the garments which he recommends, and the training which he prescribes, to those who meditate a journey through the thick green forests of song, we, sighing,

desire to yield ourselves to the guidance of such a worthy pioneer, and even wish to stroll into the deep forests, solely for the sake of the company of so experienced a ranger! With the love of nature and nature's harmonies, that was so folded round the hearts of Shelley, of Coleridge, and of Thompson, and the affection for humanity that so cast its glory-ray round the actions and thoughts of Lamb, he adds the simplicity, also, of the prose of the latter, and his pithy and telling manner. Every sentence is a hero in his armament he has pressed in no cowards in order to swell its bulk, or extend the line of its frontage, but each one steps in the place of the other to fight his share as well. The chapters, like battalions, march steadily on, shining in their armour of golden thought, till they halt and raise their arms in triumph to the clang of victory-pealings, or lie down calmly to rest while the softer strains of love and home flutter above them-all is capable of affording instruction and amusement-all is worthy of study! Were it not for the sisterhood of modesty with greatness, the admirer of the pen-wielders would, ere this, have been more admired than most, and would now, as he pictures Milton, be “walking up and down in his singing robes, and with the laurels round his head."

WOMAN, AND HER DUTIES. By GEORGIANA BENNET. London: Longman, Brown, and Co.

THE author of this little treatise, after taking a short but truthful retrospective view of the moral, social, and intellectual position of WOMAN through the ages of the world which have risen and rolled away, and shewn the status which she at present occupies in society, proceeds to demonstrate that as "Woman must act a principal part in carrying out the plans that will effect such a change" as is necessary to "promote the moral and social elevation of the people," attention cannot be too immediately and forcibly directed to the consideration of her "capabilities and powers, and the duties of her lot;" so that her influence upon the rising generation may be a beneficial one.

In these days of Bloomerism, women-lecturers on woman's right, together with whole avalanches of works and pamphlets on this subject, we expect to find the question well handled: and we must say we have not yet seen it more philosophically and lucidly discussed, or treated in a manner more deserving to be endorsed with a public's verdict of approval than in the work now before us.

We would heartily recommend our readers to possess themselves of it-nay more to cut the leaves, and read it; for there is much to be found therein which should become as familiar as "household words" in every family.

But before we lay down our pen, we would say a few words with their permission to our fair readers.

In our midst we daily hear a great many complaints and outcries about-man's injustice in aggrandizing to himself--sneers at "the self-constituted lords of creation." Now it occurs to us that great "injustice" is done to the men of England of to-day. One might imagine that woman's material servitude to man as an orthodox institution had not ceased to exist in this country. We will not ask you to compare the situation, "moral, social, and intellectual" of English women of the nineteenth century, with that of those in the past history of the world-it is just possible you may call that a myth-nor will we desire you to look at the condition of the poor squaw, whom the savage disposes of at will, or the wretched Kaffir woman,- -nor point out to you the work-bent women in Austrian fields, nor yet call your attention to the more romantic, though not less degraded state of the languishers in the Turk's slave-filled seraglio,-no-but we will demand of you that you look around on the most civilized nations of the world, and you shall find that nowhere is woman's right to stand side-by-side with man acknowledged as in our own dear fatherland.*

Daughters of England let us urge on you to be content,-to seek to decorate, cheer, and elevate the sphere in which you move, strive to impart the unpurchaseable grace of life. As mothers, be the nurses of manly sentiment-heroic enterprize,such a matron-band will prove the best defence the nation can possess.

CHINOLOGY. NOT BY EDEN WARWICK.

IT has been by a contemporary proved satisfactorily (at least to those readers who are capable of following him through the mazes of his imagination and the mire of his unsupported assertion) that

*We would just recommend to discontented Englishwomen a perusal of Mr. Michelet's valuable tract on "the brutalizing influence of despotism in Russia,”—and we think after reading of the treatment to which women are there subjected, they will lay it down ashamed of their complainings,—if not, God help them.