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of non-interference she had given the King." In Mrs. Green's collection are no letters of Henrietta Maria of the date of 1654. Other papers of importance calendered in this volume are the Mission of Ascham to Madrid, and his murder, and Middleton's expedition to Scotland.

"Willelmi Malmesburiensis Monachi de Gestis Pontificum Anglicorum Libri quinque," which has just been edited for the Master of the Rolls by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, of the Department of MSS. in the British Museum, is one of the most careful pieces of editing with which we have met for a long time, and a most interesting book it is. What, too, is of the greatest value is the fact, discovered by Mr. Hamilton, that the MS. from which this edition has been taken, and which is now in the library of Magdalen College, Oxford, is actually the autograph of William of Malmesbury himself. William of Malmesbury was born about A.D. 1095, entered the Convent of Malmesbury as a novice when a boy, in due time became monk, and ultimately præcentor and librarian, declining, however, when offered, the rank of abbot in favour of a friend who set more store by this dignity than he did. We congratulate the Lord Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury in having been able to secure the services of an editor so thoroughly competent for this work as Mr. Hamilton has proved himself to be.

"Alfred the Great," by Thomas Hughes, M.P. We confess to serious doubts whether this new publication of Mr. Hughes' will serve any good purpose, beyond showing us, as all readers of "Tom Brown's School Days" knew long ago, the kindly, manly spirit of the writer, and also, we must add, his eccentricities. History it can scarcely be called, for it adds nothing to what we knew before. Moreover, it is crammed with an over-abundant supply of sentiment, which neither the subject nor Mr. Hughes' readers want in the slightest degree. We regret this the more as coming from a man like Mr. Hughes, who has been so long associated with the so-called "working" classes, and who has shown himself on all occasions their warmest, though not always their most judicious, advocate. With the utmost respect for King Alfred, we do not believe, as Mr. Hughes appears to believe, that because that great King always carried the Psalms of David in his pocket, this habit ensured him the victory over the Danes at Ashdown; anyhow, if he still carried this sacred volume close to his person, this does not seem to have availed him much in averting his subsequent defeat, his expulsion from the throne, his hiding among the marshes, and the pillage of his country and people by the conquerors. Nor are we inclined to think that all the virtues of the period were on the side of the long-suffering Christians, and all the vices on that of the Pagan Danes, when we remember that the story of those days has been handed down to us wholly by the hands of ecclesiastical writers. Mr. Hughes thinks, we suspect alone, that the Danish invasion was a good, in so far that it "awoke a natural life;" much on the same principle, we suppose, with the ancient proverb that "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." Yet calmer students will, we imagine, fail to see much good in the wasting of whole districts, the depopu lation of towns and villages, the destruction of agriculture, and the ruin for years of all hope of improvement in the land at large. Mr. Hughes also has notions about "special" judgments we must venture to call peculiar even in him, and assuredly not likely to be accepted by the managers of the "Sunday Library for Household Reading," for which much of his book was originally composed.

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Admitting his learning and his research, we do not, generally, care much for Mr. E. A. Freeman's writings-his pen is generally so steeped in acids, and his belief manifest that no one can know any thing of English history but himself. We gladly hail, therefore, two books of his which have recently appeared-one, "English History for Children" and the other a "History of the Cathedral Church of Wells." Both are simply admirable. In the first instance, future children ought to be grateful for so genial and so able an instructor, who tells them the oft-told tales of our early history, but tells them, too, with such unaffected simplicity as well as power. In the second we find an admirable embodiment of long and continuous reading brought to the elucidation of the history of one of the noblest of our English churches. Mr. Freeman is an advanced Church Reformer, and we cordially agree with him in many of his suggestions. We quite accept his view that the cathedral is the mother church of the diocese, and wish with him for services in the nave as well as in the choir.

First part of the "Royal Commentaries of the Yncas," by Clements R. Markham, and "The Fifth Letter of Hernan Cortes to the Emperor Charles V., by Don Pascual de Gayangos," are two very interesting documents, which it is as well to class together. In the first, Mr. Markham gives us a translation of the original work of the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega, a work of the highest importance for the study of the history of Peru, being, as he knew he was, the son of one of the first conquerors and a near relation of the original rulers of that country, his father having married the niece of the great Ynca Huayna Ceapac. There can be little doubt that his narrative is a truthful one, and that he has succeeded in defending the Yncas against Mr. Prescott and Mr. Helps, who maintained that they practised human sacrifices. In the second, Don Pascual de Gayangos gives an excellent translation of the letter in which Cortes gives his account of his famous journey from Mexico to Honduras, in quest of his rebellious captain, Christobal de Olid. This letter was discovered by Robertson, the historian, in the Imperial Library at Vienna.

Societies for the publication of old documents have their value, and the Chetham Society has ere now published some valuable and interesting works, but we cannot see why they should have issued their present volume-"Tracts written in the Controversy respecting the legitimacy of Amicia, daughter of Hugh Cyvelisk, Earl of Chester, A.D. 1673-1679," by Sir Peter Leyester, Bart., and Sir Thomas Mainwaring, Bart. Such documents can hardly, we think, be of interest to even a Cheshire antiquary; by any other readers they are simply unreadable. Of a different class, and unreadable, because simply worthless, is Mr. Saxe Bannister's "Some Revelations in Irish History, or Old Elements of Creed and Class Conciliation in Ireland," a work which shows that much writing is not enough to make a style worthy of perusal, and, that having accomplished some thirty books before 1844, is no proof whatever of the author's ability to write a better one in 1870. The best part of Mr. Bannister's new production is the portion that does not relate to Ireland.

We cordially agree with Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, in a work he has just published and misnamed, "Annals of Oxford" that "it is no such difficult matter to write history in the absence of facts," if this compilation of trash and affected fine writing can be deemed by any one to be even history travestied. What can have possessed Mr. Jeaffreson, once we believe a sub-editor of the " Athenæum," and the author of one or two respectable and amusing books, to string together two volumes which have not one

new fact in them-though many facts are wholly mis-stated, a rechauffée badly enough made up from Wood's Fasti, Aubrey, Terræ filius, the "Oxford Sausage," Amhurst, "Evelyn's Diary," and other authors, good and bad indifferently, we cannot imagine. Such a production hardly deserves to be called a "Book about Oxford"—" Annals of Oxford," we are happy to say, it is not could hardly be imagined to be by the most ignorant penny-a-liner. We do not think that in our reading we have ever met with such a gross instance of mere book-making, unrelieved by any grace of style or any other excellence on the part of the individual book-maker. Mr. Ward Beecher has somewhere said, speaking of the tendency in America to create new and unnecessary sects, that it is hardly fair to paint a wart upon a man's nose and to call the picture a new man," but this is what Mr. Jeaffreson has done, or tried to do. He collects all sorts of stories gleaned from the above-mentioned and other sources, puts them together higgledy piggledy with scarcely any connexion but some exuberant rubbish of his own-and then calls his performance "Annals of Oxford," and describes a book so composed as a cup" in which are mixed "old story and new thought." What "new thought" there may be in it, we shall be surprised if any readers can detect. They will however find the English-written language, as perverted by Mr. Jeaffreson, contains many excellent words not in usual use, alas! as "row" and "shindy," "cash" for "money," "pins" for "legs," and many other like amenities.

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II. BIOGRAPHY.

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Few men in their day exercised, in Scotland especially, and to some degree in England too, so considerable a power over the students of metaphysical philosophy, as did the late Sir. W. Hamilton, for many years Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. We are glad, therefore, to find in Mr. Veitch's memoir of him a fair account of his life and labours. Educated in early life at Balliol College, Oxford, from which he obtained a first class in classics in 1810, Sir William proceeded at once to the great business of his life, the dealing with many of the highest problems of intellectual philosophy. His especial object was to break down the despotism of class-schools in science and literature; he was, in fact, as has been well said of him, an intellectual Luther, lifting up his voice against the absolute dicta of the leading teachers of his time, and, in the first instance, especially, against the cant of the professors of medicine, to which he was himself at first attached. By nature a man of the most modest character, and singularly averse to courting effects of any kind, it may be truly said that the writing of such a life as his could hardly have been committed to a later period of time, but needed all the care and judgment of a friend and contemporary. We think, therefore, all will rejoice at the issue of the present volume, interesting as it is in all its details, and a real service to literature.

Perhaps a more simple nature could scarcely be found than that of Hamilton. Men wondered who knew him not well, that there was no show about the man; and when the fame of his achievements came, not from his countrymen and townsmen, but from far distant lands, that he was still the same unmoved gentle being, scarcely remarkable for aught but the large number of personal friends, many of them twenty years younger than himself, who attached themselves to him when those years made all the difference between the sage and the youth; and who forgot his age, while feeling his superiority. His view of the human mind was clearly this, that in the work of the human intellect there is

nothing common or unclean-hence, his prodigious reading through the ponderous tomes of the fathers, schoolmen, civilians and canonists, early physicians and naturalists, not forgetting even the Monkish chroniclers, in the belief that he might thus discern the more clearly what the human intellect had really achieved, and thereby be the better prepared for his examination of its nature and capacity.

With this extraordinary labour his education and professional projects were singularly in harmony; for, during the course of his life, he may be said to have belonged-so far as study could give him this position-to each of the three learned professions, Medicine, Law, and Divinity. Medicine he took up first, and this, too, not theoretically, but with a view to practice. From this he turned to Law, and joined the bar, with an equal determination to surmount, by means of his powerful intellect, the subtlest intricacies of this most difficult of professions for an honest man. The third, however, was probably the choice of his heart. No man loved more thoroughly intellectual polemics; hence, no man could be better fitted to appreciate the great masters in that art, Luther and Calvin. Indeed so highly was he thought of abroad for his knowledge of this branch of literature, that the Dutch bestowed on him a title which reads curiously as one given to a layman- viz., that of Doctor in Divinity in the University of Leyden. But he had another quality of mind which served him greatly in his researches, and this was, the fixed unalterable determination that nothing was to be taken for granted, nothing to be believed or disbelieved, except on trial. Perhaps his chief difficulty was, when he began to methodize his knowledge on any great subject—for, owing to his wonderful power of memory, such crowds of facts were apt to crush in upon one another, that he could not always find the right place for each. Still, in such cases, this very power did him good service, so that, when the matter in hand was in any sense of a limited kind, he was provided with every element necessary to create or to adorn it. We will select one specimen of his conscientious mode of conducting inquiries, viz., the methods whereby he investigated the claims of phrenology and mesmerism to be considered sciences. The physiological and anatomical studies on which he determined to rest his conclusions were continued for many years subsequently to 1826 and "extended to points which Sir William had not originally intended to embrace, such as the weight and various relative proportions of the brain of men and animals under varying circumstances." "It was certain discoveries," he tells us, "which I made in regard to the laws of development and the functions of this organ (the cerebellum), and the desire of establishing these by an induction from as many of the species as possible of the animal kingdom, that led me into a more extensive inquiry than has hitherto been instituted by any professional physiologist. My tables extend to above 1000 brains of about 50 species of animals accurately weighed by a delicate balance." Professor Veitch adds that "he conducted his numerous experiments with his own hand-sawing open skulls, dissecting and testing the weight of brain." "So tolerant," adds his friend Mr. George Moir, "was Sir William of all opinions, that I may say phrenology was the only doctrine he could not tolerate. He had studied it with care, and mastered very completely the anatomy of the brain. The result was that he had come to look on phrenology as a mischievous humbug." Those who wish to see the results of his inquiries on this subject will find them in Dr. Monro's "Anatomy of the Brain," 1831, in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal," 1850, and in the Medical Times," 1845.

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[309 It was in just the same spirit that he dealt with mesmerism. 'Before," he said, "you set aside the science of the mesmerist, you ought to read the evidence in its favour given by all the greatest medical authorities in Germany;" indeed, as another of his friends has recorded, "Sir William had no doubt of the power of mesmerism on nervous temperaments to produce sleep and other cognate phenomena; but he utterly disbelieved clairvoyance—and, when Mr. Colquhoun used to bring forward instances to that effect, he would remind him of the story of the bank note for 1000l. which had been lying sealed up for years to be delivered to any clairvoyant—who, without opening the envelope, should read its

contents."

Among Sir W. Hamilton's intimate friends were several who have, in many walks of science or literature, made names for themselves, which will be remembered for a period scarcely less than his own. Among these we may notice those of George Brodie, John Riddell, Dr. Thomas McCrie, Dr. John Brown, Jamieson, Thomas Thomson, James Semple, and John Colquhoun-not forgetting three others who have left their mark on the world's history-James Ferrier, William Spalding, and Thomas De Quincy.

Sir William Hamilton was struck down by paralysis in 1844, and though his powerful intellect ultimately recovered itself, those about him recognized a sad and painful change in his aspect and his ways, Then it was, that he felt the full value he had in the possession of so large a circle of friends, who cheered him by their reminiscences of the old topics they had so often discussed together. Then, more than ever, it was, that he found the true value of that untiring amanuensis, his wife, of whom Mr. Veitch gives us the following graceful description. He is alluding to what was one of the great fears of Sir William's friends that, with his almost uncontrolled love of accumulating materials on almost every literary subject, he would never bring himself to be what his position, as a Professor, most of all, required from him, a good or methodical teacher. Their fears, too, had been greatly increased by his suggestion that the lectures should themselves be postponed for one session, in order that he might the better be able to perfect them for the next. Professor Veitch adds, "This course of five lectures was composed during the currency of the session of five months. He gave three lectures a week, and each lecture was, as a rule, written on the night preceding delivery. The lecture hour was one o'clock in the afternoon, and the lecturer seldom went to bed before five or six in the morning. He was generally

aroused between ten and eleven, and then hurried off to the College, portfolio under arm, at a swinging pace. Frequently, notwithstanding the late hour of going to bed, he had to be up before nine o'clock, to attend the Teind Court. All through the session, Lady Hamilton sat up with her husband, each night until near the grey dawn of the winter morning. Sir William wrote the pages of the lectures upon rough sheets, and his wife, sitting in an adjoining room, copied them as he got them ready. On some occasions, the subjects of the lecture would prove less easily managed than on others, and then Sir William would be found writing as late as nine o'clock of a morning, while his faithful but wearied amanuensis had fallen asleep on a sofa. Sometimes the finishing touch to the lecture was left to be given just before the class-hour."

It is very interesting to hear that when attacked by the paralytic seizure he sent for Dr. Maclagan and calmly discussed with him the question how far impaired articulation was capable of cure, thus recalling his own early medical researches. "The difficulty of articulation," says Dr. Maclagan," of which he

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