If Sorrow oft be goodness' yoke-fellow,
And fortune smile on villains; if this be-
Evil commixed with good-with goodness evil,
As chance or fate decides; amid this chaos
What boot scholastic forms and subtleties?
Who knows the least, where nothing can be known,
And owns but what he knows is wisest."

Amelius.

"Sir,

A sceptic paradox is worst of all.

He who affirms that nought can be affirmed,
Slays his own argument, which, like a babe
Birth-nipt, is dead ere it hath life."

We cannot multiply our quotations from "The Italian Wife;" "66 Babington;""Northern Lights." "Caius Marius" we have formerly noted as an excellent reproduction of a sublime moment in Roman history. The Coquet Dale Fishing Songs are also a good addition to the literature of the gentle craft.

66

As a romance, the "Eve of St. Mark" keeps its place at the libraries, and entrances many hours to many people. Though composed only, we believe, as a relief to graver toils, it has gained the suffrage of critics, and that, in these days of sensationalism, is winning much.

66

The Essay on Mundane Moral Government." 1852, is replete with a thought-lighted philosophy; while "The Political Biography of Sir Robert Peel" is a specimen of critical dealing with the life and doings of a great statesman, the ability of which cannot be denied, however different opinions may be upon its matter. Blackwood's Magazine spoke of "The Financial and Monetary History of England" as "a work of absorbing interest and uncommon research;" and we, like the writer of that notice, "have tested it minutely, and believe it strictly true, as it is unquestionably clear in its statements." It has afforded us a large amount of otherwise unattainable facts on finance, taxation, and the social condition of society. It was published in 1847, and reached a second edition in 1858. Tracts on Money," Music," the "French Alliance," and numerous other topics, have been cast upon the waves of public opinion; and contributions to quarterlies, monthlies, weeklies, and dailies, almost without number, prove the mental activity, the earnestness, and the fervour of the veteran.

66

66

The prime glory of Mr. Doubleday's literary life, however, must rest, as on an adamantine pedestal, on the discovery and method of proof employed in "The True Law of Population.' That is a great work, in its structure and its teaching, as well as in its effects. First suggested in 1837, in Blackwood, to which Mr. Doubleday was an early contributor-in a letter addressed to Lord Brougham, it excited such attention, as left the author little option but to proceed with the proof of the theory he had advanced. Four years afterwards the book was first published, and a second edition was called for in little more than a year. So much importance was attached

to Mr. Doubleday's views, that they were made the subject of a special report to the French Institute by M. Villermé, in 1844, and his opinions and facts were elaborately canvassed in all the leading reviews-that in the Westminster being by Herbert Spencer. It was also animadverted on by Archbishop Whately. The third edition contains additional matter, and reflections suggested by these notices and criticisms, and the author holds to his views as in reality as yet unimpugned. In some of the letters in "The Touchstone," indeed, he still farther fortifies his theory by fresh facts and more recent statistics. This anti-Malthusian protest is so well reasoned, so thoroughly tested by appeal to facts, so distinctly laid before the mind, and so moderately advanced, as to deserve far more than recognition among men who have the interest of their fellows truly at heart. It is certain that the population chapters of political economy will require to be reconstructed; and when this is done, the name of Mr. Doubleday will occupy its true place, as that of one of the great original minds of the age-as a man who has been able to see below the mere surface of statistics and history, and who could test facts by the sublimest power of man—a ratiocinative spirit.

These remarks we have made, that we may clear the field of thought from the misconception that this author, though, perhaps, unknown to many of our readers, is a novus homo in literature, or a novice in the exposition of political views. He holds unpopular views, and that keeps his name out of men's mouths; but his mind is as acute as Mill's, his style as clear as Cobbett's, and the illustrations employed are often as homely and as telling as any Whately ever used. The extraordinary command Mr. Doubleday possesses of the facts of all the subjects on which he discourses, makes one feel confident that in his company we are not being misled by the mere strange-thought search of an ambitious man, and that we are in the presence of a master of the special subjects of his thoughts.

"The Touchstone," we have stated, is a mine for controversialists ; it makes no matter which side they adopt. It consists of a series of letters "originally published in The Newcastle Daily Chronicle, under the signature of Britannicus," and the topics brought under notice are as follows:

1. Why is a strong government impossible?

2. The abandonment of the right of search.

3. Has not " debt" been the great cause of revolution?

4. Is aristocratic or democratic society most favourable to mental excellence ?

5. What are the causes of the great increase of crime? and is education a remedy?

6. Has the system of paper credit been beneficial to those who have adopted it?

66

Here, now, are subjects tolerably unhackneyed, and facts plentiful as blackberries to refer to on these matters. No

extracts are able to indicate the exceeding wealth of this work in historic reference, and in the highest use of reason. We have selected the following passage merely as a specimen of style and of argumentative rhetoric:

"If history is to be looked at in any case, it must be viewed as an artificial and prolonged experience. In this resides its use. Our own experience is limited to the space of our lives; and cases are constantly arising where it is found wanting. But in history we have the condensed experience of centuries; and it is hardly possible that any event should happen to which its lessons are not applicable. Thus, as a teacher, history is invaluable; but destroy that value, and it has none other to produce To read it as some do,—that is to say, as they would read a romance, for the entertainment it affords,—is pitiable and reprehensible abuse of it. Rather than do this, let us betake ourselves to the pages of Fielding, Scott, Galt, Thackeray, and Dickens. Thus we shall amuse the hour, at the same time that we have the consolation of knowing that the crimes, the vices, the abjectness, and the depravities there depicted have no existence save in the brain of the novelist, and that to his pen alone they are indebted for

"A local habitation and a name."

And thus, whilst we amuse the hour, we shall escape those depressing reflections which the veritable records of past crime and fully never fail to excite."

The letter contained in pp. 65-70, regarding Poland, is a good example of history teaching by example, and deserves thoughtful perusal just now. The biographies of Robert Burns, Wm. Cobbett, and Thomas Moore, and the inferences deduced from their lives, are also highly important in an age when self-help has become a proverb. The comparison instituted between the poetry of Burns and Moore, and the prose of Cobbett and Burns, is singularly effective; and shows a keenness of feeling, and a perception of the fitness of language to thought, which are exceedingly rare, even among the greater critics of our age.

The sermon which Mr. Doubleday preaches against "keeping up appearances," from the text of Seneca, that "many crimes are not less disgraceful to the ruler than many deaths to a doctor," in his inquiry into the causes of crime, is exceedingly pointed and plain. The whole book commends itself to us as the work of a thinking politician and moralist, who loves his country well, and truth well,— yea, who loves his country so well as to bring truths to her notice, which too many strive to hide even from their own thoughts. We do not, of course, imply an entire agreement in all the conclusions at which Mr. Doubleday has arrived; but we think that his "Touchstone" is a valuable possession, and we have placed it on our library shelves besides his other works, as a companion volume of which they need not be ashamed. We think that this collection of letters, though not rivalling those of Junius in bitterness and sarcasm, excel them in clearness of statement, in the array of facts employed, and in the usefulness of the thoughts which they bring before the reader.

The Noctes Ambrosiana. Part I. London and Edinburgh:

Blackwood and Son.

THE "Noctes Ambrosiana" are reports of evenings ideally held in Ambrose's Hotel, Picardy Street, Edinburgh,-a place which Professor Wilson, as can be stated on his own authority, never entered more than twice. The chief interlocutors are Christopher North, in character as ostensible editor of Blackwood's Magazine, in which the articles appeared, but which the professor never actually was; James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, whose portrait illustrates this issue, and which we have the authority of one who knew the bard well for saying is very like; and a fictitious personage named Timothy Tickler, modelled from Robert Sym, Esq., W.S., maternal uncle of the professor. Other characters take share in the symposia, and the dramatic power, freedom, force, copiousness, and richness of the dialogues are such as to outdo Lucian and surpass Landor. Oh that we had reports of the wit-combats of Ben Jonson and Shakspere at the " Mermaid," in the style in which these jollities of the tavern and conversational brilliancies are brought out,-in all except their fabulousness. They are a running commentary on the events, men, books, and thoughts, which make our century great for the twenty years between 1825-45, and onght to be read by all those who like to know what men did, said, or thought amid the living concerns of life which to them can only be history.

Rabelais, Montaigne, Dante, Swift, Keats, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt-but not Shakspere-mixed into one grand new unit, might have made up Christopher North. Glowing, sensuous humour, clear though diffusive thought, life-vivid imagination, strong, keen, sometimes coarse sarcasm, soft moonlightish poetry, drollery, simplicity, and wisdom, as well as genial conceit and wide literary appreciation, "mingle, mingle as they mingle may," in these strange revelries of fancy which John Wilson poured forth in the "Noctes Ambrosianæ. We shall not now enter into an elaborate notice of these, the finest and most various, the most living dialogues since those which Plato wrote,-though there is good deal of Ariosto and Quixote mixed with the Plato here. We note them now only to say that in twelve monthly shilling parts these works are to be made available to all classes, well edited by Wilson's son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, whose notes are chiefly explanatory, but whose preface will be found to contain a very thorough and able apprecia tion of the wisdom and wit of the ambrosial feast he offers the reader. We have long wished to sketch the professor as we knew him in the body and in the mind, but space will not avail us now. We shall recur soon. we hope, to the subject, in a critique of Mrs. Gordon's "Life of Professor Wilson," a work which, though able, we wish had been left in Aird's hands.

The Topic.

HAS THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT ACTED TOWARDS THE BRAZILIANS WITH PRUDENCE AND PROPRIETY?