sheriff's courts, or in the assemblies of the guardians of the peace, considering the means by which property and the order of society might be preserved, he lit the lamp of research during the night, and caused the events of the preceding century to unroll itself to the mind's eye in winding narrative and vigorous picture, in ingenious generalization and copious flow of words, in splendid speculations on the course of empires and the prosperity of states, and in brilliant descriptions of courts or detailed ground-plans of battles, on which he exhibits with due circumstantiality the pomp, glory, and horror of war. Europe in his pages reassumes the activity of the past, and he epitomizes the babble and Babel of rumour, correspondence, bulletins, reports, newspapers, and histories with skill, address, adroitness, and readability-though without expressing thence all its verbosity. His Life of Marlborough" added a new page to British biography; and his “Essays" in Blackwood show industry, fertility, extensive reading and research, and a marvellous fluency of expressive words for thoughts of much clearness, if not depth. He was notable as an administrator, and his professional works, though produced in early life, have stood the tests of time and law, frequent republication and practical use. The rapidity with which he wrote was immense, and the high average of literary workmanship he displayed is perhaps unparalleled by any one who has written so-to use Sheridan's phraseology-luminously and voluminously. History survives, but the historian is gone, and the biography of his being has been already written in the archives of eternity. We owe to Dr. John Anster a translation of the weird and fascinating "Faust" of Goethe, which is of rare excellence for felicity of phrase and vigour of transfusive grace. The correctness and admirable rhythm of this version attained the admiration of the strange old poet, and it retains much of its value still. Though not perhaps the most capable of giving an idea of the force and fragrancy of the original, it has the advantage of reading like an original poem, and bears no traces of the withering influences of transplantation. His "Xeniola," if it contains few pieces which rise to the first rank of poetic inspiration, gives evidence of careful culture; while his many contributions to periodical literature show that the width and range of his powers were singular even in our age of versatility. He was besides a most painstaking professor of "civil law" in Dublin University. In his life he united many dissimilarities, and so transposed them into a unity, that, like the rainbow, they gave off a radiance greater for their harmonious variety. And is not human life a rainbow, an intermixture of variety and unity? as Goethe has said, "Well paints the varying bow our life's endeavour,— "The Nestor of British Surgery," who died 5th July, was one of the favourite pupils of Abernethy, and one whose reputation as a writer on physiological subjects goes back to nearly the beginning of the century, at which time "Lawrence on Man created almost as great a sensation in scientific and theological circles as Combe's work on the "Constitution of Man," the " Vestiges of Creation," Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Rénan's "Jésus." This excitement was greatly due to the clear expository style adopted, the general readableness of the work, and the simple form in which it was cast. Its popularity very speedily extended beyond the profession, and it appeared at a time when the materialistic inductions, to which he as a surgeon confined himself, were calculated to make a strong impression upon the public mind. He has written largely on almost all professional subjects, and he did much by his translation-augmented and corrected-of Blumenbach's "Comparative Anatomy" to increase the attention given to scientific education in England. He held some of the highest offices and honours available to one of his profession; was one of the most earnest of self-culturers, and one of the hardest of workers in his profession and in general schemes of benevolence. He had only recently received the honour of baronetcy from her Majesty when he was stricken down by a paralytic seizure beyond the aid of mortal surgery. On the same day John Pitcairn Trotter, sheriff-substitute of Dumfriesshire, and a man who mingled with the sterner duties of his calling under Themis some of the lighter pleasures attainable under the favour of Minerva. He was a novelist of considerable talent, and had a genius for writing singular weird stories, for composing ballads, and for smart criticism. He lent light to Blacksoood's Magazine, and supplied several useful translations from the German to the English public. He was singularly philanthropic, and though somewhat cynical in speech on ordinary occasions, was warm-hearted in his love of all literary men, and especially those who were zealously battling against the stern opposition of poverty. He died in the full hope of another and a brighter being, in which the face of mystery creation wears would be flung aside, and his Lord should reveal Himself. Three days afterwards one of the famous men of the Scottish borders expired. He had devoted himself to the collecting of the "Traditions of the Covenanters," and had told their story so sympathetically and well that he stirred the hearts of the land of the Covenant, and the name of the Rev. Robert Simpson, of Sanquhar, had become a household word for many years among the pastoral regions of Scotland. He was a faithful and zealous minister of God, and died in the good old faith for which the Covenanters fought and suffered, and in the promotion of which he laboured and wrote, and in the firm assurance that he would receive God's "covenanted mercies." On the same day-8th July-the Countess of Blessington's niece, Miss Marguerite Power, a minor novelist of the day, who added little to our knowledge of life and its purposes, though she opened up some peeps into the practices of society, also died. We shall not affirm that her chief productions were employed as a waste-time, but they certainly never rose much higher in utility than a pass-time (or pastime); and perhaps, even as such, in certain spheres of social life it is good done to enable its monde to pass time over imaginary perplexities rather than to be engaged in producing the truth which is stranger than fiction. We therefore shall restrain our hand from throwing any stone against her reputation, and pass on. But only three days thereafter our footsteps are arrested by an opening in the necropolis, prepared for the body of Richard Huie, M.D., one of the minor bards, who sang, and sang contentedly, a simple lay to act on simple hearts, and some of whose "Sacred Lyrics" are precious as the "dew on Mount Hermon." To the French drama the unlucky 13th brought a great loss. On that day died Francis Ponsard, who had but a little while before composed a tragedy on one of the most notable individualities of history-"Galileo Galilei," a name which recalls "the tragic issue which is always going on, the conflict of new thought with old belief," and the merit of one who— "Unfurled the bannered victory of mind," the performance of which, under the influence of the clergy, was forbidden by the Government; though, duly excised, it was brought upon the stage. Ponsard was an earnest student and a great admirer of Shakspere, whom he was much laughed at for once calling "the divine Williams." From the splendid ballad of our mighty dramatist he borrowed the idea of his first victory over romanticisme-his "Lucrèce." In his " Agnes de Meranie" he delivers himself of an anti-papal bulletin; while in him the French Revolution has found one of its most skilful reproducers. In "L'Honneur et l'Argent" and "La Bourse" Ponsard endeavoured to fulfil the Shaksperian object of the drama, and to use it "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure," by lashing the vices, exposing the profligacy, and denouncing the greed of the society of the empire of the third Napoleon. He carried this further in his "Pleasure of Women," and showed how the horrors of society react on human happiness in his "Amorous Lion." Ponsard was a sterling spirit, a man of principle and worth, whom France could ill afford to lose, for he made the living lies of fashion feel how contemptible life is when it is a lie. May he have seen and found the true life, which is seen behind "That curtain of obdurate roof Which limits mortal vision, whose dim folds To the same month, though to the last day of it, belongs a note of the demise of a Transatlantic favourite of ours, Catherine M. Sedgwick, whose quiet but telling descriptions of the joys and sorrows of home life, whose homely wisdom and healthy morality, whose disregard of sensation and trust in the interests of life's realities, charmed us in those days when we had leisure and inclination to peruse works of fiction. We could scarcely think it right to close our record without a word of kindly remembrance of the graceful author of "Home," "Live and let Live," "Hope Leslie," Means and Ends," "The Linwoods," &c., with which, long ago, we used to lighten the fireside with interest, and feel our hearts stirred as our imagination followed the fortunes of her heroes and heroines, and the expression of a hope that she may have found herself going "home." On the 3rd of August the great German philologist and critic, whose name fills so much of the literary annals of classical literature-Auguste Boeckh,-forsook the study of Greek antiquity and speculations on the "cosmic system of Plato," to behold the cosmic system of God. His was a splendid conception of the duty of a classicist; it was no less than that he should revive the entire life of the olden times, its literature, religion, art, science, politics, history, commercial, and domestic life; and this he proposed should be done, not in isolated efforts, but as an organic whole, whose oneness could be felt as it has formerly been experienced. A most extensive and beneficial influence has his example had on the scholars of Germany, England, and France. His works are a mass of critical acumen and vast erudition, of subtle thought and able controversy, and are a powerful argument for that thoroughness without which scholarship is vain. His academical speeches are full of good sense and genial enthusiasm, of living thought and hearty love of knowledge. No longer shall he descant on the lunar cycles of the Greeks, but he may, in endless cycles of thought, develop his soul in the great light of eternity. Mrs. Sarah Austin was greater as an influence even than as a literary lady. The friend of Cousin and Comte, of Bentham and J. S. Mill, of Grote and Senior, of Sydney Smith and Carlyle, of Leigh Hunt and Bickersteth, she carried into all societies the heirdom of intellectuality which, as one of the Taylors of Norwich, she possessed, and as the husband of the most thorough jurisprudentist of our times it was fitting she should possess. She was a woman of almost universal accomplishments, speaking French and German with the utmost conversational fluency, and holding in her mind the finest thoughts of the greatest masters of politics, philosophy, history, and science. She could bring the varied resources of a capable mind, and the tact of a genuine feminine spirit into play in the best assemblages of thinkers-British and foreign-which ever adorned the drawing-room of a London or country residence, in which competence had to bear the burden of ill-health, and mind made up-rare fortune-for money. Like a true wife, she subordinated every personality to her husband's reputation, and devoted the years of her sorrowing widowhood to honouring his memory,. by bringing before the world the evidences he had been able to leave of a noble and fertile mind. In long ill-health she was a patient and hopeful sufferer, and she looked with an eye of desire on the spot in Weybridge churchyard which should hold her ashes in close proximity to her husband's precious dust. As the seed wraps up its best powers in the winter's cold, and lays them under cover in the mould, to give blossoms of brightness forth in after summers, so she has gone to the winter sleep of the grave in hope of a glorious rising again in eternal health of being. 66 "The science of electricity" is, in its modern form, indissolubly connected with the name of Michael Faraday, who was not only the foremost of scientific thinkers, but the most modest of men, and the most eager Christian spirit of the age. The son of a smith, himself trained to bookbinding, he was able by self-culture, industry, genius, and love of truth, to extend the horizon of men's thoughts, and to unravel in some degree the mysteries of nature-seeing always in the phenomena under his eye the presence of a divine will, and beholding in all that is observable by man the law of the Creator, by whose decree all things subsist. He had not only light of the clearest, but insight of the purest and foresight of the truest. The extreme simplicity and trustingness of his mind led him to be carefully inductive, while it made him singularly skilful in seizing upon ideas which reposed on hidden truths, and which called the proofs of these truths out of nature's recesses into the light of observation and experiment. His simplicity extended to his style, because it was the normal condition of his thinking; and his noticeable earnestness and scrupulous integrity of speech were, in our day of extreme and intense hunger after novelty of expression, almost as great a marvel as his own discoveries. Though one of the most illustrious of those who have investigated nature and made science the object of research, he has not left the God of nature unhonoured, or given to science a faith only due to revelation. Though versed in "the various forces of matter," he was equally well skilled in the forces of argument, and knew not only the practical application of the methods of investigation, but also the requisites of proof. He tested not only nature, but faith, and he found out many of the hidden truths of each. But his eye is now enriched with the special gifts of seeing which belong to those who have been admitted" within the veil,"-whose hopes have borne fruit, and whose science has become sight, and not sight only, but "the substance of things hoped for." When, in 1851, F. G. Tomlins, knowing our ardent desire to promote the culture of the masses, applied to us to aid him in the labour of preparing "Help to Self-Educators; interpreting subjects of History, Arts, Politics, and Literature," we readily agreed, because we thought it a scheme well fitted to advance the "public good;" and we had proceeded so far as to draw up a sketch and outline of an Analytic History of the Literature of England," in which the substance of the chief works of the chief 66 |