תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

Has the memory of Nelson been duly honoured?

Was Henry VIII. superior as a monarch to Charles V.?

Was Luther essential to the Reformation?

Had Charles V. or Luther the greater share in producing the political results of the Reformation [the sixteenth century]?

Was Charles V. the greatest sovereign of his age?

Has the invasion of Europe by the Turks been advantageous to the Continent ?

Is the character and life of Clive as well given by Lord Macaulay as by James Mill?

Was Sir Thomas More legally condemned?

Has Carbonarism justified its friends or its enemies?

Did the Medici family do more good than ill to the European nations?

Was the French siege of Rome (1849) justifiable?

Did Bonaparte procure the death of Pichegru?

Has O'Connell been properly appreciated as a politician?

Has the history of the Revolution influenced Napoleon III. for good or evil?

Was the 18th Fructeder, 4th Sept., 1797, or the 2nd Dec., 1852, the better conducted Coup d'etat?

Was Marius superior or inferior to Sulla?

Are Thomas McCrie's biographies as trustworthy in their inferences as in their statements?

Was the Insurrection in Canada (1838) justifiable in itself or justifiably repressed?

Were the Civil Wars in France advantageous in their results?

Did Leo X. merit the admiration of his own times and the wonder of posterity?

Was Napoleon's Mexican scheme as foolish as it has been vain ?

Was the Emperor Theodosius superior to Constantine the Great? Was Swedenborg an impostor, a deceiver, or himself deceived?

Has the eighteenth century a just claim to human admiration and interest ?

Did the sixteenth or the eigh teenth century proclaim the more powerfully the right of truth to govern the world?

Did science or civilization make the greater advancement in the eighteenth century?

Did Erasmus or Reuchlin do the greater service to the Reformation? Has monasticism conduced to Christian life?

Was Butler a better bishop than Warburton ?

Was the career of Pelissier (Duc de Malakoff) [upright, honourable, or] commendable?

Have the clergy been the opponents of science?

Have the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of man been verified by modern discoveries?

Was Guizot right in interdicting Michelet's lectures on history?

Is there a true distinction between history sacred and profane ? *

Has the English nation been guilty of selfish injustice to Ireland?

Did Richelieu or Muzarin do the greater amount of good to France?

Were the wars of the Fronde beneficial to France?

Has the reign of Charles V. been fruitful in good?

Did the domination of the Arabs in Spain produce more good than evil?

Was Palmerston as a premier superior to Peel?

Was the career of Cavour praiseworthy?

Was Alexander the Great worthy of the power he gained?

* See Vol. XXVI,

Literary Notes.

LITERARY ACTIVITY OF THE YEAR 1867.-During the past year there have appeared 4,144 new books and new editions, which may be thus classified :-Religious books and pamphlets, 849; minor works of fiction and children's books, 535; novels, 410; annuals and serials (volumes only), 257; travels, topography, 212; English philology and education, 210; European and classical theology and translations, 196; historical and biographical, 193; politics and questions of the day, 113; poetry and the drama, 150; science, natural history, &c., 133; medical and surgical, 121; law, 101; trade and commerce, 63; agriculture, horticulture, &c., 62; illustrated works (Christmas books), 62; art, architecture, &c., 53; naval, military, and engineering, 42; miscellaneous, not classified, 352: total, 4,144. Last year the total was 4,204.

"The History and Antiquities of Lancashire" are receiving great attention from its literati. The reprint of "Roby's Traditions of Lancashire" has been followed by the "History of the Forest of Rossendale," by Thomas Newbie Gray, an original work, &c. "The History of Lancashire," by Thomas Baines, is promised at an early date. In addition to these, "Baines' Lancashire," an old and authoritative work, is passing through the press under the editorship of John Harland; and we are informed that new editions of " Whittaker's History of Whalley" and Gregson's "Fragments" are contemplated under the editorship of John Harland and Canon Raines.

James Hannay, author of "Satire

and Satirists," is engaged on a volume on "The Literature of Satire," of which a sketch has been furnished to the readers of Temple Bar, which is now under his editorship.

A new philological journal-the successor to The Philological Museum and The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology - has been projected, under favourable auspices, at Cambridge.

V. A. Huber (born 1800), author of a work on "English Universities," which was translated by F. W. Newman, is engaged on a work on "Cooperation and Social Science."

"The Literary Remains" of the late Rev. John Mitford are being asked about for publication.

The London Student, a university magazine, is projected.

"A Selection from the miscellaneous and unedited poems of the late Rev. John Keble," and as a companion volume a Memoir by Sir J. T. Coleridge, are to be issued by Messrs. Parker shortly.

The Savage Club papers are henceforth to be issued as an annual, the profits of which are to form a literary charitable fund for unfortunate brethren, without parading their names and calling public attention to their distresses. This is kindly Savagery. God-speed.

Our interesting contemporary, Notes and Queries, has commenced its fourth series with the presentits eighteenth-year.

"The Dialogues of Plato," translated by the Rev. B. Jowett, Regius professor of Greek, with Introductions, Analyses, and Notes, in three vols. 8vo., are in the Clarendon press.

A new edition of Chaucer's entire works, under the supervision of John Earle, A.M., and others, is in prepa

ration.

"The Minor Works of Wycliff" are in the press.

E. M. Cope is preparing a revised edition of the Greek text of Aristotle's "Rhetoric."

An Homeric Society has been suggested for the investigation of all questions regarding "blind Maimonides," his writings, and such collateral matters as might arise.

M. Athanase Cocquerel, author of "The Preacher's Counsellor," died 10th January. [See British Controversialist, October, 1867, p. 301.]

Ex-president Filmore is preparing "Personal and Political Recollections of his Administration."

John Timbs, author of 120 vols., is engaged on "Collections and Recollections of his Literary Life," containing details of authors, publishers, books, &c.

Herr Strodtmann has issued the first volume of a work on "The Life and Works of Heine."

A critical and chronological edition of Schiller's works, under the editorship of Karl Gödeke, has been begun; and first draughts of five projected tragedies have just been added to the materials of such a work.

The German Shakspere Society is issuing a revised edition of Schlegel and Tieck's Translation. When will our Shaksperians unite as a body to give us a complete and thorough historical, critical, bibliographical, explanatory, and glossarial text of England's pride? - which might

become the trade edition.

It is known that Mr. Theodore Martin is preparing a translation of Goethe's "Faust," part II., in continuation of his version of part I.

A Bibliotheca Canadensis-a list

of the writers of books, pamphlets, and papers relating to and connected with Canada-has been published by H. J. Morgan, of Ottawa.

Rénan's "St. Paul" has been put in the printer's hands.

Dr. Stratmann, of Krefeld, has made a good addition to English lexicography in his "Dictionary of the Old English Language, 13th to 15th Centuries."

A collection of the ancient and modern historians of Armenia is in course of publication at Paris, by order of the Viceroy of Egypt.

Dr. J. H. Stirling, author of the "Secret of Hegel," is about to republish "Essays on Jerrold, Tennyson, Macaulay," &c., contributed to Meliora, Leigh Hunt's London Journal, &c. Professor J. C. Shairp, author of "Kilmahoe," will reprint his papers on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keble for the North British Review; and S. S. Laurie, author of "The Philosophy of Ethics," has in the press Notes, expository and critical, on certain British theories of morals-all as witnesses in behalf of their fitness for the chair of Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh.

A "Standard" four-volumed edition of Tennyson's "Poems," carefully revised, with additions, is promised. When will he issue a 'people's" edition?

[ocr errors]

A series of "Essays on Modern Religious Thought" has been commenced.

Kinglake's "History of the Invasion of the Crimea," vols. iii. and iv., are in the press.

The public libraries of Europe contain 20,000,000 books. A selection from the ten published Lectures and Sermons of Theodore Parker, including a series of sketches of "Great Americans," in preparation.

Epoch Men.

THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE.-EXPERIMENTAL

SCIENCE.

"No one Englishman of the seventeenth century-after Lord Bacon— raised to himself so high a reputation in Experimental Philosophy as Robert Boyle; the most faithful, the most patient, the most successful disciple who carried forward the Experimental Philosophy of Bacon."-HALLAM.

PHILOSOPHY signifies an affectionate desire for Wisdom. Wisdom implies a twofold knowledge,-knowledge of that which thinks, and that which is thought of. The proper co-ordination, reconciliation, and progressive development of each of these forms of knowledge, either as a unity, or in parallel consentaneousness, is the great aim of genuine culture. Science presents to our view not only the sensible phenomena of Nature in Static immobility, but also an infinitely varied series of actions, interchanges, and resiliences in Dynamic manifestations as forces. But that which reasons out the truth from phenomena to force, and reduces the entire conception of creation to that of a Cosmos in which law is the guarantee of regularity, permanence and order, is Mind. Science transcends sense, and not only systematizes, but interprets experience by the supremacy which mind claims and aims at exercising over all phenomenal being.

Physical Science is not a mere record of observations; it consists of acts marshalled in categories arranged for experimental investigation, subjected to the grasp and operation of the speculative faculty, and brought by scrutiny of reason, added to the educated perceptions of the senses, to show their relationships, consecutions, and antagonisms-in other words, science consists both of a knowledge of facts and of the laws of their operation. Sense does not affirm law, sensation is panoramic. Science substantiates experience by grouping perceptions into conceptions, and by bringing into the vision of the mind the laws which govern the phenomena of experience. Phenomena exist to sense, they subsist to science; they are the preparatory materials which are by the intelligence of man developed into science. "Science is a growth. The future must issue from seeds sown in the past." "From the small beginnings and successive growths of knowledge, there emerges a more comprehensive and more complex science. The advance is not one simply of addition but of new development-a development rendered possible by the addition." But what addition is it that imparts fertility and developability to knowledge so 1868.

M

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

that it may become science? The generative factor is mindmind through its interpretative conceptiveness. "Science may result from experience and observation by induction; but induction is not therefore the same thing as experience and observation. Induction is experience or observation consciously looked at in a general form. This consciousness and generality are necessary parts of that knowledge which is science; for science is the result of careful observation or investigative experiment leading to the correct colligation of facts by "right conceptions supplied by the mind in order to bind the facts together." Science systematizes, harmonizes, combines, forms the facts of phenomena into new unities, but "the point of agreement (among various facts) visible to the discoverer alone, does not come even into his sight, till after the facts have been connected by thoughts of his own, and have been regarded in points of view in which he by his mental acts places them." Hence it is that we affirm that there are two distinct elements in human knowledge, which require to co-operate in harmonious activity before we can attain to true science-mind thinking and experience thought about, in other words that science results from inductive observations or experiments with an interpretative conception added to them by the observing or experimenting mind.

[ocr errors]

Science is investigated experience. Experience may be investigated by observation or by experiment; and the results of the investigations made may be criticized and verified, or disproved by induction or deduction. Observation accepts, notes, and records the facts of experience which are given either in sense or consciousness; experiment directs, definitizes, and supplements observation. "Experiment by varying the circumstances which usually accompany phenomena, endeavours to disengage the conditions which are coincident, from the conditions which are causally related." 'Experiment adds nothing to the certainty [of observation rightly made], but renders the fact precise and quantitatively appreciable. Although experiment is an instrument of immense importance, it is one which derives all its value from the mind directing it. Used at haphazard, its results are fortuitous." "Experiment is an art and demands an artist." * Experiment is in fact intelligent and intentional observation. "It is intentional observation combined with a physical mastery or manipulation of the object observed. In all cases where we are able to dispose of an object according to our pleasure, to reduce it into our power, to render it subservient to our will, to handle it, to change its place, to isolate it or combine it with other substances, to vary its concomitant circumstances, to subject it to any physical treatment which our choice may dictate, the method of scientific experiment is applicable. Scientific experiment can be employed, whenever we can bring the subject of experimentation under the cognizance of our senses, and within the grasp of our hands. According to the philosophical poet, the pheG. H. Lewes' " Aristotle," p. 50.

« הקודםהמשך »