express his surprise at such an error. But one thing is clear, the words of Harriet Martineau on page vii. imply nothing of the kind. I have quoted them accurately, and the reader will judge of that point for himself; that is, he will come to the only conclusion possible upon the subject.

But, on the spur of the moment, when I came to these notes, I asked two persons, quite off hand, the question, "Which should you call the last year of the eighteenth century?" One of them said, 1799; the other said 1800. But when I asked the friend who said 1799, what was the first year of the present half-century, I got for an answer 1851.

MECHANISM IN THOUGHT AND MORALS. AN ADDRESS, WITH NOTES AND AFTER-THOUGHTS. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

On page 119 of this very pleasant and thoughtful little book, I find the following:-"True faith and true philosophy ought to be one; and these disputes—à double verité-these statements, true according to philosophy, and false according to faith, condemned by the last Council of Lateran, ought not to find a place in the records of an age like our own."

Very good, Dr. Holmes. But on page 99 of the same brochure, I read this :-" It is one thing to prove a proposition like the doctrine of necessity in terms, and another thing to accept it as an article of faith. There are cases in which I would oppose to the credo quia impossibile a paradox as bold and as serviceable-nego quia probatum est."

If any one has a right to contradict Dr. Holmes it is himself; and he certainly does it in these contrasted paragraphs.

THE SAME BOOK (passim).

AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. BY JOHN STUART MILL.

CONSUELO. ELLE ET LUI. LUCREZIA FLORIANI, &c., &c., PAR GEORGE SAND.

In Dr. Holmes's pamphlet, there are many anecdotes, not all of them new to students, about the automatic, and often automatically absurd action of the brain in our waking hours. In the course of Mr. Mill's book above referred to, reference is made to the number of ideas which the brain can find room for at once, and Sir William Hamilton's odd limit of six is mentioned (of course with the disapprobation you might expect from Mr. Mill). While I was performing a manual operation that required some little attention, the thought was passing through my mind that George Sand was a great deal too self-conscious and reflective: (she would be the last to deny it-see "Lucrezia Floriani.") This shaped itself in my mind in the following form:-I saw the lady, as Margaret Fuller saw her for the

first time, in her violet dress, her figure "framed" by the door-jambs, and I said to her angrily-sharpening a razor all the time-(for that was the mechanical operation), "Pardon, madame, mais vous êtes trop réfléchisseuse." Now, there is no such word as "réfléchisseuse," though perhaps there might be; and I instantly became aware that I had made a new word on the pattern of blanchisseuse, and that I must correct myself. And how did I do it? Why, I went up to George Sand, as before, and said, "Pardon, madame, mais vous êtes trop blanchisseuse." Then suddenly becoming conscious of the whole absurdity, treating the image of the lady as if she were no older than when she said "C'est vous to Margaret Fuller, and then addressing the eidolon in violet with, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you are too much of a washerwoman," and flattering myself that that was the necessary correction of my former French,-becoming conscious of all this, I laughed aloud. A friendly voice from another room said, "What's up this time?" and it was only in trying to explain the whole of what was "up," that I at all recognised the long processes of sense and nonsense, the latter with a mechanical method in it, that my brain had been through in an immensely small fraction of a second of time. In that space I had, before my queer double blunder, had present to my thought large masses of George Sand's writings, and Margaret Fuller's account of the interview in question. I was, moreover, paying minute attention to the mechanical operation that was occupying me, and had then, as always at such times, fully before me an occasion on which I nearly cut my right thumb in two with a razor. Yet this multitudinous brain-action all in a flash of time is not a whit more wonderful than a thousand of the commonest things of the kind, which, as Dr. Beattie said, about an orator making a speech, would, if they were not so familiar, seem more wonderful than that a man should without injury dance blindfold on ten thousand red-hot ploughshares.-"We are fearfully and wonderfully made,"-as the man, quoting Scripture, said to his friend as they were looking at the skeleton of a donkey.

SOME NEWSPAPERS.

I see additional announcements of the intention of drapers to close their shops at eight o'clock. Who will not rejoice? But I have not observed that any one has noticed that the streets will now be partially dark at an earlier hour than hitherto. Already I find a considerable difference in certain quarters, where a rather rough population is not far off. Indeed, too many of the lads and lasses who are now released at an earlier hour are quite unfit for their freedom. They are not likely to pick pockets, but they do actually rough-and-tumble it about the streets in a very noisy way, and play rude pranks with women and girl passengers. Personally I can stand almost any amount of fun in the streets, and I am tolerant of much

that the ordinary citizen wants put down as "public nuisances"; but the moment people pass from free enjoyment, with toleration of other people's enjoyment, to active interference with other people's freedom of action, that moment I become, to speak melo-dramatically, "their-ah, deadly enemy-ah." Besides, unless the police look sharp, robberies will increase under cover of the increasing darkness of the thoroughfares after eight o'clock.

THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, OCTOBER, 1872.

In his interesting article in the last number of the Contemporary Review, Dr. Carpenter quotes Burns as saying that man is the God of the dog. Well, it is so obvious a mot that Macaulay's school-boy might have said it, or put it into a school-theme. But may I add that somebody said this before Burns? Look here :-" Atheism destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising human nature; for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he⚫ will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of God, or melior natura'; which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain." This passage is from Bacon's essay "Of Atheism."

SOME NEWSPAPERS.

I observe that electors of Tiverton, Preston, and others, are very much astonished to find that, in spite of the Ballot Act, means are found of pretty accurately "fixing" a man with his vote, and even that canvassing continues! It does not take much to astonish some people. There is now a demand that the Legislature should for the protection of the "working-man" (principally) make canvassing a crime. I beg leave to suggest in addition that in the next session of Parliament it should be made a crime

1. To hold public meetings at which persons should openly declare their preference of particular candidates, whether by show of hands or otherwise. Nay,

2. To express at any time or in any way any preference for any candidate, actual or possible, or to announce himself as of any political denomination whatever.

As there are so many ways in which a man may express his political preferences, the law must be very stringent and very minute in its provisions-very. And even then it might fail to protect the poor "working-man." Freemasons find means to communicate in secret ; and I fancy I could in sixty minutes invent and dictate to a shorthand amanuensis sixty different ways of driving a coach-and-six through any ballot-law whatever. Could not a great deal be done by simple winking? Women have been active in these matters, but there is a large field still open in that direction. Apropos de bottes and of Mr. Fox at Westminster, if a beautiful woman were to give that

Tiverton butcher a kiss with political intent, how should the law deal with her?

A CRITICAL JOURNAL.

In a certain literary journal I find a country newspaper ridiculed for writing bombast or bathos about a certain romance of real life; and the following quotation from the country paper's article is produced in proof:-"One morning he found his morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent; she seemed to have been weeping. Alas! no longer a morning-star, but a troublous skyey portent, announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, 'They were to meet no more.' Thick curtains of night rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable crash of doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered universe was he falling, falling, towards the abyss."

* *

Now, it is very likely that the country newspaper writer wrote bathos, but a London editor ought to be equal to the discovery, or the feat of recollecting, that these sentences are by Mr. Carlyle, and taken from "Sartor Resartus."

SOME NEWSPAPERS.

A letter in the Maidstone Gazette makes, among other criticisms, the following upon a recent article in this periodical :

:

"Mr. Holbeach, with reference to 'Prehistoric Times' and the 'Origin of Civilization,' remarks that 'one is somewhat startled to find how little emotion he (Sir J. Lubbock) displays in going over his long story of misery and degradation.' Now was it honest of Mr. Holbeach thus utterly to ignore Sir John's explanation of his reticence on this point in the preface to his 'Origin of Civilization,' pp. 5, 6 From the very nature of the subjects dealt with in the present volume' (writes Sir John Lubbock) 'I shall have to record many actions and ideas very abhorrent to us; so many, in fact, that if I pass them without comment or condemnation, it is because I am reluctant to fatigue the reader by a wearisome iteration of disapproval. Were I to express my sentiments in some cases, my silence in others might be held to imply indifference, if not approval."

*

To imitate my model I will say, was it honest of" this correspondent "utterly to ignore" that Mr. Holbeach in the very same paragraph wrote thus:- "The way in which Sir John Lubbock abstains from passing moral judgments is admirable, and his reasons are well assigned?" One to Mr. Holbeach! Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Nobody was ever more weary of a sermon than thoughtful persons in general must be of the commonplaces which form the staple of the current discussions about sermons. Yet I see the controversy, such as it is, is as lively as ever; and at a Church Congress a layman

has been saying over again, though in smart language, the sort of thing we are nearly all sick of by this time. There was, however, this touch of piquancy in the case here, that the layman spoke in the presence of a multitude of clergymen.

It is observable that we do not hear anything like the same quantity of complaint about sermons in the Nonconforming communities. Of course there are dull pulpits there as elsewhere; but the people settle such matters among themselves. If the minister cannot "draw" the "cause" droops, and another man is found. If the minister, though destitute of the preaching faculty, have high spiritual gifts, it is to be hoped he finds his sphere somewhere out of the pulpit. But pulpit inefficiency, in the usual sense, is not so common among Dissenting communities for obvious reasons. It is strong, distinct, and positive personal choice which ordinarily determines a man to aim at the pulpit among Nonconformists. There are mistakes here as elsewhere, but the aspirant has usually some knack of "expounding," and some natural taste for public speaking. And then, his "gifts" are gradually tested. He delivers addresses at Sunday schools. He says a few words at prayer-meetings. He is sent out to "supply" at humble chapels. He, in fact, undergoes a prolonged course of scrutinising and testing before he is definitively sent forth; and the chances are strongly against any man's getting as far as an ordination or recognition" service who is not likely to be able to attract and keep a fair congregation.

There are, indeed, certain pretty fixed conditions of adaptation between preacher and hearer which do not so regularly exist in the Church of England. The congregations and the preachers know each other, and the former take a keen, expectant interest in the sermon especially. In the Church of England the congregations as a rule are much more miscellaneous; the relation between people and preacher has an air of officialism about it which does not exist among Nonconformists, and the preacher is not by any means so often a man who finds himself in the pulpit because preaching is his natural vocation. Whatever is not in plain accord with the spontaneity of religious emotion is chilling. The undercurrent of hypothesis in a dissenting people is something like this: "This preacher is our own choice, and we have chosen him because we find him apt to teach. Before we agreed to receive him for our pastor we satisfied ourselves that the Divine Spirit was upon him. Souls have been converted under his preaching, and when we put him in that pulpit, it was as if God himself put him there."

This is not the place for any expression of opinions upon points of ecclesiastical order, and I express none. But Churchmen may depend upon it that Nonconformists in general regard the sort of criticisms they hear from Church laymen upon Church pastors as little better than profane :-" The preacher is either God's divinely commissioned