extended nations of the western world. Long may he rejoice in his labors, and thus receive the twofold reward he so richly merits -a pecuniary compensation and the honor of producing a work which can introduce the two nations to the literary treasures of the German and English tongue.

LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

An Appeal to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by Rev. J. L. Merrick, twelve years in the service of the Board. Springfield. 1847. 8vo. pp. 126.

An Appeal to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from the unjust and oppressive measures of the Secretary and Prudential Committee, by Rev. J. D. Baxter, D. D. New Haven. 1848. 8vo. pp. 40. An Oration delivered before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge, August 24th, 1848, by Horace Bushnell. Cambridge. 1848. 8vo. pp. 40. The Least of Two Evils, a Sermon Preached on July 9th, 1848, by John Weiss, Minister of the First Congregational Church in New Bedford. New Bedford. 1848. 12mo. pp. 12.

Communication to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences relative to a late Report on the subject of Ventilation and Chimney-Tops, by Frederick Emerson. Boston. 1848. Svo. pp. 12.

Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. Book the First. London. Vol. I. 12mo. pp. VIII. and 228.

The Conquerers of the New World and their Bondmen, being a Narrative of the Principal Events which led to Negro Slavery in the West Indies and America. Volume the First, [by the author of the preceding work.] London. 1848. Vol. I. 12mo. pp. x11. and 264. [These are two delightful and instructive works.]

Poems by Dora Greenwell. London. 1848. 1 vol. 16mo. pp. vI. and 192. Madonna Pia, and other Poems, by James Gregor Grant. London. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. XII. and 320, and XIV. and 360. [These two volumes, printed with all the beauty of the English press, are dedicated to Mr. Wordsworth, by an author who seems to be a young man, and an earnest admirer of that poet. The volumes contain a few pieces of considerable merit.]

The System of Nature, or Laws of the Moral and Physical World, by Baron d' Holbach. 2 volumes in one. Boston. 1848. 8vo. pp. x. and 368.

The Son of the Wilderness, a Dramatic Poem, in five acts, by Frederick Halm, [Baron Münch-Bellinghausen,] translated from the German by Charles Edward Austin. New York. 1848. 12mo. pp. VII. and 166.

Verses of a Life Time, by Caroline Gilman, &c., &c. Boston and Cambridge. vol. 12mo. pp. VIII. and 264.

A Discourse delivered before the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati. Sunday, Oct. 8th, 1848, by James H. Perkins. Cincinnati. 1848. pp. 16. The Mysteries of Russia, by Frederick Lacroix, translated from the French, Boston. 1848. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 212.

An Universal History in a Series of Letters, being a complete and impar tial narrative of the most remarkable Events of all nations, from the earliest period to the present time, forming a complete History of the World, by G. C. Hebbe, LL. D. Vol. I. Ancient History. New York. 1848. Vol. I. pp. VIII. and 562.

8vo.

Orators of the American Revolution, by E. L. Magoon. 2d Edition. New York. 1848. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. xvI. and 456.

Ancient Sea Margins, as Memorials of Changes in the relative Level of Sea and Land, by Robert Chambers, Esq., F. R. S. E. Edinburgh and London. 1848. 8vo. pp. VI. and 338.

MASSACHUSETTS QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NO. VII.-JUNE, 1849.

ART. I.-1. The Zoöist for 1848. London.

2. Journal du Magnetisme: Quatrième Année. Paris. 1848.

3. Blätter aus Prevorst. Stuttgart. 1833-39.

It is by no means the purpose of this article to enter into an extensive and penetrating criticism of the details of Mesmerism. Its object is not nearly so difficult of execution. It simply proposes to consider how far the phenomena of zoömagnetism do really deserve the serious investigation of inductive science; to convey to such readers as may not yet have attended to the subject, even as a literary appearance, some vivid conceptions concerning the sorts of things asserted by mesmeric authors; to pronounce a short, certainly not an uncharitable, and if possible a just, scientific judgment regarding the general character of the statements of the science; and to bring the universally accredited fact of the mere mesmeric sleep or trance into harmony with the system of Nature, so far as that system seems to be understood.

It is well known to the students of modern British literature that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the "inspired charity-boy" of Charles Lamb, a poet of deep-going insight and most musical expression in youth, a well read and original metaphysician in manhood, an agonizing divine in old age, and altogether one of the most lustrous of modern spirits, bestowed a great deal of study on the subject now approached. It is duly recorded in a note to Southey's Life of Wesley, that, after having considered the question in all the aspects in which it had then been presented, and that during the course of nine years, he could not conscientiously decide either for or against the claims

of Mesmerism. It is worthy of notice, however that the word Mesmerism stood in the vocabulary of that time as the sign of nothing more nor less than the apparent transference of one species of sensibility to the organ of another on one hand, and the faculty of farseeing on the other; an equivalent which is far from sufficient for the symbol at this time of day. Furthermore, Coleridge did undeniably study the evidence in favor of such Mesmerism from an unwarrantable point of view. For example, he examined the testimony for the so-called fact of farseeing in inseparable connection with the theory usually advanced in explanation of it; being of the prejudged opinion that "nothing less than such an hypothesis would be adequate to the satisfactory explanation of the facts." This was to investigate the grounds on which an asserted thing was made to rest, but it was to investigate them with an intellect predisposed against the only conceivable idea of the possible fact, and that was to investigate them with an intellect predisposed against the very possibility of the asserted fact itself. Yet the evidences of Mesmerism were able to bear the scrutiny of this searching and not uncolored eye: They were "too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvability on the supposition of imposture or coincidence; too fugacious and unfixable to support any theory that supposes the always potential and, under certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally actual existence of a corresponding faculty (of farseeing, inseeing, foreseeing, &c.,) in the human soul." The parenthesis in the last sentence is our own.

Every body must be aware, of course, that the inquiries of so hungering and thirsting a student as Coleridge always was could not consist in attendance upon ever so large a number of stray lectures or séances, or the perusal of the half-literary pamphlets and paragraphs that constitute the staple of mesmeric literature in Great Britain and America, or a professional glance through the notorious misreport of the French academicians. "Nine years," says he, "has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it historically; have collected a mass of documents in French, German, and Italian, and from the Latinists of the sixteenth century; have never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses (as Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity); and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's work had left me, without having advanced an inch backward or forward." Thus and after