Lecture XVII

RESUME OF DOCTRINE.

Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them to the modern school that has recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character of certainty and reality that this process gives to it.

Having arrived at the limit of this course, we have a final task to perform,--it is necessary to recall its general spirit and most important results.

From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the spirit that should animate this instruction,--a spirit of free inquiry, recognizing with joy the truth wherever found, profiting by all the systems that the eighteenth century has bequeathed to our times, but confining itself to none of them.

The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance three great schools which still endure--the English and French school, whose chief is Locke, among whose most accredited representatives are Condillac, Helvetius, and Saint-Lambert; the Scotch school, with so many celebrated names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Beattie, Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart; the German school, or rather school of Kant, for, of all the philosophers beyond the Rhine, the philosopher of Koenigsberg is almost the only one who belongs to history. Kant died at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the ashes of his most illustrious disciple, Fichte, are scarcely cold. The other renowned philosophers of Germany still live, and escape our valuation.

But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools of the eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider them in their characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly represents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human knowledge to experience in general, and especially to sensible experience. The Scotch school and the German school represent a more or less developed spiritualism. Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson, Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the supremacy to sentiment.

Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the nineteenth century is placed.

We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, contains the entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a considerable part of knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that sentiment is a basis neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human science. We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan of the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith. Are we on that account the disciple of Reid and Kant? Yes, certainly, we declare our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, and we believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would touch him most. Common sense is to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the constant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; his method is true, his general principles are incontestable, but we will willingly say to this irreproachable genius,--Sapere aude. Kant is far from being as sure a guide as Reid. Both excel in analysis; but Reid stops there, and Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he shows with great skill how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its exercise, nearly all human knowledge; there is only one misfortune, which is that all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in analysis, Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His skepticism is the most learned, most moral, that ever existed; but, in fine, it is always skepticism. This is saying plainly enough that we are far from belonging to the school of the philosopher of Koenigsberg.

In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in antiquity, we side with Plato against his adversaries; among the moderns, with Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason as a power superior to sensation and sentiment, as being, par excellence, the faculty of every kind of knowledge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the beautiful, the faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot be developed without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice for the government of man without the aid of another power: that power which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those conditions, without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. It is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and sentiment: how, consequently, it is impossible for us absolutely to condemn either the philosophy of sensation, or, much more, that of sentiment.

Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is not in us the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making ourself a place apart among the historians of philosophy; no, it is philosophy itself that imposes on us our historical views. It is not our fault if God has made the human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that we are also much rejoiced that all systems are not absurd. Without giving the lie to the most certain facts signalized and established by ourself, it was indeed necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of philosophy, to recognize and respect them, and if the history of philosophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless systems, a chaos, without light, and without issue; if, on the contrary, it became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should seem, a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the most fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing of the philosophic spirit.

We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of the enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. Let us see, let us compare what we have done with what we have wished to do.

Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just towards that great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, whose best model among the moderns is the wise author of the Essay on the Human Understanding.

There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and what is false. The false is the pretension of explaining all human knowledge by the acquisitions of the senses; this pretension is the system itself; we reject it, and the system with it. The true is that sensibility, considered in its external and visible organs, and in its internal organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the indispensable condition of the development of all our faculties, not only of the faculties that evidently pertain to sensibility, but of those that seem to be most remote from it. This true side of sensualism we have everywhere recognized and elucidated in metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and theodicea.

For us, theodicea, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest on psychology, and the first principle of our psychology is that the condition of all exercise of mind and soul is an impression made on our organs, and a movement of the vital functions.

Man is not a pure spirit; he has a body which is for the spirit sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have too often said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon nature, through which the soul communicates with the universe. There is an entire part of Locke's polemic against the theories of innate ideas that is to our eyes perfectly true. We are the first to invoke experience in philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis, from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say, from the geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to certain sides of Cartesianism, and closing his eyes to all the others, forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most certain principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole series of deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It is also on account of having exchanged experience for a systematic analysis, that Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a single fact, and from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of a series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a nominalism, like that of the later scholastics. Experience does not contain all science, but it furnishes the conditions of all science. Space is nothing for us without visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time is nothing without the succession of events, cause without its effects, substance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it rules. Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary truth, if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us particular and contingent notions. In aesthetics, while severely distinguishing between the beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agreeable is the constant accompaniment of the beautiful, and that if art has for its supreme law the expression of the ideal, it must express it under an animated and living form which puts it in relation with our senses, with our imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have guarded ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are contrary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule them; we have not wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of happiness, without which life would not be supportable for a day, nor society for an hour; we have proposed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed but real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to open to it infinite prospects.

With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds. In our works--and why should we not say it?--we have often presented the thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible men that ever lived. He is among those secret and illustrious advisers with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. Locke is for us the true representative, the most original, and altogether the most temperate of the empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a rare spirit of liberty,--under the name of reflection he admits another source of knowledge than sensation; and this concession to common sense is very important. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, exclusive, entirely false system,--sensualism, to speak properly. Condillac works upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We seek in vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of human nature. One truly believes himself to be in the realm of shades, per inania regna. The Essay on the Human Understanding produces the opposite impression. Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the excesses of Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one of the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most profound connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat unsteady but always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism.

By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much greater, which it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, in order to maintain it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by Socrates, constituted by Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the moderns, men of the highest renown. It speaks to man in the name of what is noblest in man. It demands the rights of reason; it establishes in science, in art, and in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this imperfect existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute.

This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not be accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. In the eighteenth century it was especially represented in different degrees by Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his historical views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with error. There are two parts in Kant,--the analytical part, and the dialectical part, as he calls them. We admit the one and reject the other. In this whole course we have borrowed much from the Critique of Speculative Reason*, the Critique of Judgment, and the *Critique of Practical Reason. These three works are, in our eyes, admirable monuments of philosophic genius,--they are filled with treasures of observation and analysis.

With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of the true, the beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue that we directly refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most elevated part. All the systematic pretensions of sensualism are broken against the manifest reality of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably in our mind. At each instant, whether we know it or not, we bear universal and necessary judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the principle of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life without concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. These principles are absolutely true, they are true everywhere and always. Now, experience apprises us of what happens here and there, to-day or yesterday; but of what happens everywhere and always, especially of what cannot but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always limited to time and space? There are, then, in man principles superior to experience.

Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phenomena are the objects of science only so far as they reveal something superior to themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural history does not study such or such an individual, but the generic type that every individual bears in itself, that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals pass away and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty of knowing than sensation, we never know aught but what is passing in things, and that, too, we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensibility will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so different in different individuals. Each of us will have his own science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one moment produces and another destroys, false as well as true, since what is true for me is false for you, and will even be false for me in a little while. Such are science and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary, necessary and immutable principles found a science necessary and immutable as themselves,--the truth which they gave as is neither mine nor yours, neither the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth in itself.

The same spirit transferred to aesthetics has enabled us to seize the beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above different and imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an ideal beauty, one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the only model worthy of genius.

In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction between good and evil; that the idea of the good is an idea just as absolute as the idea of the beautiful and that of the true; that the good is a universal and necessary truth, marked with the particular character that it ought to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law of sensibility, reason has made us recognize the law of duty, which a free being can alone fulfil. From these ethics has sprung a generous political doctrine, giving to right a sure foundation in the respect due to the person, establishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling for institutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on the nature of things, on truth and justice.

From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives empiricism its whole force--that the conditions of science, of art, of ethics, are in experience, and often in sensible experience. But we profess at the same time this other maxim, that the foundation of science is absolute truth, that the direct foundation of art is absolute beauty, that the direct foundation of ethics and politics is the good, is duty, is right, and that what reveals to us these absolute ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is, therefore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism.

But what would be the use of having restored to reason the power of elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above experience, although experience furnishes their external conditions, if, to adopt the language of Kant, these principles have no objective value? What good could result from having determined with a precision until then unknown the respective domains of experience and reason, if, wholly superior as it is to the senses and experience, reason is captive in their inclosure, and we know nothing beyond with certainty? Thereby, then, we return by a detour to skepticism to which sensualism conducts us directly, and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of causality, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject that possesses it,--is it not saying the same thing? Kant avows that man has no right to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. This acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume; it would be of very little importance to him that the reason of man, according to Kant, might conceive, and even could not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time, space, liberty, spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing real. I see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at once so poor and so rich, so full and so void.

A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discontented with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to approach common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on sentiment. It would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that instinct, nobler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. Is it not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the good? Is it not the heart that, in all the great circumstances of life, when passion and sophism obscure to our eyes the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it shine forth with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us, animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it?

We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is called sentiment; we even believe that here will be found a more precise and more complete analysis of it than in the writings where sentiment reigns alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contemplation of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to the practice of the good; there is in us an innate love for all these things; and when great rigor is not aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the heart which discerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light and guide of our life.

To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its natural and spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a multitude of resemblances. Sentiment is intimately attached to reason; it is its sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment is reason, which communicates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason its charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the most touching proof of the existence of God that spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the consciousness of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this idea, with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, or even prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even when the reason refuses to believe in him? But look more closely, and you will see that this incredulous reason is reasoning supported by principles whose bearing is insufficient; you will see that what reveals the infinite and perfect being is precisely reason itself; and that, in turn, it is this revelation of the infinite by reason, which, passing into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration that we have mentioned. May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of sentiment! On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself. Here we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but reflects it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide ourselves, in order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the ignorant, and even to save them in the mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or refinements of an ambitious philosophy.

We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the nobility of sentiment makes the nobility of thought. Enthusiasm is the principle of great works as well as of great actions. Without the love of the beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are perhaps regular but frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not the man of taste. In order to communicate life to the canvas, to the marble, to speech, it must be born in one's self. It is the heart mingled with logic that makes true eloquence; it is the heart mingled with imagination that makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of Bossuet,--their most characteristic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry of the soul. But it is especially in ethics that sentiment shines forth. Sentiment, as we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that aids us in the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is the good! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers; it speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice of the heart is the voice of God.

We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble element of human nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart as by reason. We have a high regard for the generous writers who, in the looseness of principles and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the baseness of calculation and interest with the beauty of sentiment. We are with Hutcheson against Hobbes, with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the author of Woldemar against the ethics of egoism or those of the schools. We borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason; but reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it is contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate instrument of reason; its value is determined by that of the principles on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and especially spontaneous reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to its object, without passing through analysis, abstraction, and deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they suppose a primary operation, the pure and simple apperception of the truth. It is wrong to attribute this apperception to sentiment. Sentiment is an emotion, not a judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it does not know. It is not universal like reason; and as it still pertains on some side to organization, it even borrows from the organization something of its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and does not precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics lack firm and solid bases.

Psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an order of investigations more difficult and more elevated, which are mingled with all the others, and crown them--theodicea.

We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We might shun it, and stop in the regions--already very high--of the universal and necessary principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good, without going farther, without ascending to the principles of these principles, to the reason of reason, to the source of truth. But such a prudence is, at bottom, only a disguised skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is the last explanation of all things. Is it, then, true that God is to us an inexplicable enigma,--he without whom the most certain of all things that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge of God, it is powerless; for if it does not possess God, it possesses nothing. But we are convinced that the need of knowing has not been given us in vain, and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being bears witness to the right and power of knowing which we have. Accordingly, after having discoursed to you about the true, the beautiful, and the good, we have not feared to speak to you of God.

More than one road may lead us to God. We do not pretend to close any of them; but it was necessary for us to follow the one that was open to us, that which the nature and subject of our instruction opened to us.

Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our mind draws by way of reasoning from particular things; for particular things are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the universal and necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves; they would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity and without relation to any thing. Truth, beauty, and goodness are attributes and not entities. Now there are no attributes without a subject. And as here the question is concerning absolute truth, beauty and goodness, their substance can be nothing else than absolute being. It is thus that we arrive at God. Once more, there are many other means of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way.

For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too narrow interpretation, absolute truth is in God,--it is God himself under one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, Saint Augustine, Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in God, as in their source, the principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. It is by the participation of the divine reason that our reason possesses something absolute. Every judgment of reason envelops a necessary truth, and every necessary truth supposes necessary being.

If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, without knowing it, under the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose. It is to him that the artist, discontented with the imperfect beauties of nature and those that he creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations. It is in him that are summed up the main forms of every kind of beauty, the beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies all our faculties by his perfections, and overwhelms them with his infinitude.

God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of all other truths. All our duties are comprised in justice and charity. These two great precepts have not been made by us; they have been imposed on us; from whom, then, can they come, except from a legislator essentially just and good? Therein, in our opinion, is an invincible demonstration of the divine justice and charity:--this demonstration elucidates and sustains all others. In this immense universe, of which we catch a glimpse of a comparatively insignificant portion, every thing, in spite of more than one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general good, and this plan attests a Providence. To the physical order which one in good faith can scarcely deny, add the certainty, the evidence of the moral order that we bear in ourselves. This order supposes the harmony of virtue and goodness; it therefore requires it. Without doubt this harmony already appears in the visible world, in the natural consequences of good and bad actions, in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and contempt, especially in the troubles and joys of conscience. Although this necessary law of order is not always exactly fulfilled, it nevertheless ought to be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the intimate nature of things, their moral nature, remains violated, troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a being who takes it upon himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself, and in a manner that will be proper, the order of which he has put in us the inviolable need; and this being is again, God.

Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of aesthetics, especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence, interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably in it, always makes us the same response; it sends us back to the same explanation,--at the foundation of all, above all, God, always God.

We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. We are in fellowship with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God, and, at the same time, with the religions that cover the earth, with the Christian religion, incomparably the most perfect and the most holy. As long as philosophy has not reached natural religion,--and by this we mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that hypothetical state that is called the state of nature, but the religion which is revealed to us by the natural light accorded to all men,--it remains beneath all worship, even the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father, a witness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, guarded against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its turn to mankind; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him of God in the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the name of reason and sentiment.

Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without any hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and perfectly rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths which have not been made by us, and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended from these truths to their author, as one goes from the effect to the cause, from the sign to the thing signified, from phenomenon to being, from quality to subject. These two principles--that every effect supposes a cause, and every quality a subject--are universal and necessary principles. They have been put by us in their full light, and demonstrated in the manner in which principles undemonstrable, because they are primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these necessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral truths, which are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude in the existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it was necessary to deny either the necessity of the principle of cause and the principle of substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied them, that is to say, to renounce all notions of common sense; for these very principles and these truths, with their character of universality and necessity, compose common sense.

Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree. Whence it follows, that we have very legitimately concluded from truth in an intelligent cause and substance, from beauty in a being supremely beautiful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and charity in a legislator supremely just and supremely good.

And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodicea, after the example of many philosophers, and the most illustrious. We have not deduced the attributes of God from each other, as the different terms of an equation are converted, or as from one property of a triangle the other properties are deduced, thus ending at a God wholly abstract, good perhaps for the schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We have given to theodicea a surer foundation--psychology. Our God is doubtless also the author of the world, but he is especially the father of humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence and infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related to their immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice and charity. Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn can comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our virtues, our miseries. Made in his image, conducted to him by a ray of his own being, there is between him and us a living and sacred tie.

Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and abstraction. By preserving ourselves from the one, we have preserved ourselves from the other. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the eyes and intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary consequence, setting out from real effects and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause and a real substance, at a cause having in power all its essential effects, at a substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of those who, in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determination. I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an extravagance. No; it is not true that the diversity of determinations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys the absolute unity of a being; the infallible proof of it is that my unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and multiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from altering unity in me, multiplicity develops it and makes its productiveness appear. So the richness of the determinations and the attributes of God is exactly the sign of the plenitude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is therefore to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihilate him,--for a being without attributes exists not; and the abstraction of being, human or divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is nonentity.

Theodicea has two rocks,--one, which we have just signalized to you, is abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it is the vice of the schools and metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiment, which developing in us the loving and affectionate faculties at the expense of all the others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and makes us institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of the divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither love nor contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do not come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that are only conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither does it study God in truth of every kind, in physics, metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest him; it considers in him particularly the characters to which affection is attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but love may subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover.

We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the nature of God, by which he escapes all relation with us,--necessity, eternity, infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes which are our own attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came from him.

I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by the signs which he gives of his existence, as I am able to conceive any being only by the attributes of that being, a cause only by its effects, as I am able to conceive myself only by the exercise of my faculties. Take away my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not for myself. It is the same with God,--take away nature and the soul, and every sign of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul that he must be sought and found.

The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. Is this saying that it exhausts God? By no means. Let us always consult psychology. I know myself only by my acts; that is certain; and what is not less certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal my power and my substance; for my power, at least that of my will, can always add an act to all those which it has already produced, and it has the consciousness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing in itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be said two things in appearance contrary,--we know God only by the world, and God is essentially distinct and different from the world. The first cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its effects; it can even be conceived only by them, and it surpasses them by all of the difference between the Creator and the created, the perfect and the imperfect. The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. To the myriads of worlds that compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds. But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an indefinite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable of continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has its harmony; for a God could make only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a defective sign of the infinity of God. To say that the world is God, is to admit only the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that the world is void of God, and that God is separate from the world, is an insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not to separate. I distinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my qualities and my acts. So God is not the world, although he is in it everywhere present in spirit and in truth.

Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all systems, and contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From sentiment it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a person, and from reason a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite systems,--one of which, in order to see and feel God in the world, absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order not to confound God with the world, separates him from it and relegates him to an inaccessible solitude,--it gives to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God who is in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but without his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and unity multiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of movement, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are like nonentity, who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and man, substance eternal, and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who must by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, venerated and loved, continually studied with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored.

Let us sum up this resume. Setting out from the observation of ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we have found in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left to each of them its character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared to us the indispensable condition, but not the foundation of knowledge. Reason is the faculty itself of knowing; it has furnished us with absolute principles, and these absolute principles have conducted us to absolute truths. Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and reason, has found a place between both. Setting out from consciousness, but always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being; we have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by the road that the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather misconceived at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be admitted entire or rejected entire, which reveals to us existences as well as truths. Therefore, after having recalled all the great metaphysical, aesthetical, and moral truths, we have referred them to their principle; with the human race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains all things, because he has made all things, whom all our faculties require,--reason, the heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties.

This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our powers, is so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you examine it more closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you will find that it is related to them and differs from them, that it is none of them and embraces them all, that it expresses precisely the side of them that has made them live and sustains them in history. But that is only the scientific character of the doctrine which we present to you; it has still another character which distinguishes it and recommends it to you much more. The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to Vauvenargues the few pages that have immortalized his name, which you feel especially in Reid, sustained by an admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the midst of, and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to wit, the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, the passionate love of honesty, the ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity. Yes, we do not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views; it is the end to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is the thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak, their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and accompany you as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune shall lead you, under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes remind you of him who has been to you its very sincere but too feeble interpreter!

FOOTNOTES:

This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone survives the ruins of the German philosophy.

FRAGMENTS DE PHILOSOPHIE CARTESIENNE, p. 429: Des Rapports du Cartesienisme et du Spinozisme.

Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2.

Part 2d.

Part 3d.

On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., passim, and particularly vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.

We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even while combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, Discours d'Ouverture, vol. ii., lecture 1, and especially 2d Series, vol. iii., passim.

See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.

For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and publishing the three Critiques, joining to them a selection from the smaller productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the completion of our design; but a young and skilful professor of philosophy, a graduate of the Normal School, has been willing to supply our place, and to undertake to give to the French public a faithful and intelligent version of the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century. M. Barni has worthily commenced the useful and difficult enterprise which we have remitted to his zeal, and pursues it with courage and talent.

Part 1st, Lecture 3.

Lecture 5, Mysticism.

This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the Cartesian proof itself. See lectures 4 and 16.

M. Jacobi. See the Manual of the History of Philosophy, by Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.

On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2 and 3.

Lectures 4 and 5.

See particularly lecture 5.

We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in the first place that God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that, being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we recognize him. 'The heavens declare his glory.' and 'the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space; his intelligence in their harmonious laws; finally, that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is necessary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God, in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which nothing finite can absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation. There is something inexplicable for thought,--behold then whither thought tends; there is infinite being,--behold then the necessary principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and, further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty, mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the God concealed, 'Deus vivus et Deus absconditus.'"

APPENDIX.

Page 188: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"

It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and which have misled the best judges before us. But there have appeared in a recent and interesting publication, called Archives de l'Art francais, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, never before published, on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which compel us to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion, but contrary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the first time from the Register of Deaths of the parish church of Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre-Dame, preserved amongst the archives of the Hotel de Ville at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the Chartreux, but in the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that Lesueur died before his wife, Genevieve Gousse, since the Register of Births of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur. Now, Genevieve Gousse must have deceased almost immediately after her confinement, supposing her to have died before her husband's decease, which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If this were the case, we should have found a notice of her death in the Register of Deaths for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. Such a notice, however, which could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the Hotel de Ville, at least the author of the Nouvelles Recherches has nowhere been able to meet with it.

In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history remains untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the account of Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in manuscript, he never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with his three brothers and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow-laborers of his. It appears to be a refinement of criticism which denies the current belief of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document authenticates it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and appears to us to be highly probable.

Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It would certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which he could have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying at Paris from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to have met. After Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and more a peculiar style; and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a taste ripe for the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at the Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose that they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, and with their sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance must have resulted in esteem and love. If Poussin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would remark that neither do they mention Champagne, whose connection with Poussin is not disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de Saint-Georges' account is far from convincing; inasmuch as being intended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those biographical details in which his friendships would be mentioned. Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his counsels as to his example.

Page 190: "But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. Paul."

We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven cartoons of Raphael, which should not be looked at, still less criticised, but on bended knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the summit of his art, and in the last years of life! And these were but drawings for tapestry! These drawings alone would reward the journey to England, even were the figures from the friezes of the Parthenon not at the British Museum. One never tires of contemplating these grand performances even in the obscurity of that ill-lighted room. Nothing could be more noble, more magnificent, more imposing, more majestic. What draperies, what attitudes, what forms! Notwithstanding the absence of color, the effect is immense; the mind is struck, at once charmed and transported; but the soul, we can speak for ourselves, remains well-nigh insensible. We request any one to compare carefully the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest, representing the Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we have described of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight, transports you into the regions of the ideal; the other is less striking at first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then take in the whole: by degrees you are overcome by an ever-increasing emotion. Above all, examine in both the principal character, St. Paul. Here, you behold the fine long folds of a superb robe which at once envelops and sets off his height, whilst the figure is in shade, and the little you see of it has nothing striking. There he confronts you, inspired, terrible, majestic. Now say which side lays claim to moral effect.

Page 193: "The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many others scattered over Europe."

Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that which we regret most not having seen is Alexander and his Physician, painted for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the Postes, which passed from the Hotel Nouveau to the Place Royale in the Orleans Gallery, from thence into England, where it was bought by Lady Lucas at the great London sale in 1800. The sale catalogue, with the prices and names of the purchasers, will be found at the end of vol. i. of M. Waagen's excellent work, Oeuvres d'Art et Artistes en Angleterre, 2 vols., Berlin, 1837 and 1838.

We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to meet, in the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient peer of France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with another Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand of Lesueur cannot be mistaken. The composition of the entire piece is perfect. The drawing is exquisite. The amplitude and nobleness of the draperies recall those of Raphael. The form of Alexander fine and languid; the person of Philip the physician grave and imposing. The coloring, though not powerful, is finely blended in tone. Now, where is the true original, is it with M. Houdetot or in England? The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly came from the Orleans' gallery, which would seem most likely to have possessed the original. On the other hand, it is impossible M. Houdetot's picture is a copy. They must, therefore, both be equally the work of Lesueur, who has in this instance treated the same subject twice over, as he has likewise done the Preaching of St. Paul; of which there is another, smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at the Place Royale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.

We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found by that eminent critic in the English collections: The Queen of Sheba before Solomon, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. i., p. 245. Christ at the foot of the Cross supported by his Family, belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, "the sentiment deep and truthful," remarks M. Waagen. The Magdalen pouring the ointment on the feet of Jesus, the property of Lord Exeter, vol. ii., p. 485, "a picture full of the purest sentiment;" lastly, in the possession of M. Miles, a Death of Germanicus, "a rich and noble composition, completely in Poussin's style," remarks M. Waagen, vol. ii., p. 356. Let us add that this last work is not met with in any catalogue, ancient or modern. We ask ourselves whether this may not be a copy of the Germanicus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur.

The author of Musees d'Allemagne et du Russie (Paris, 1844) mentions at Berlin a Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening upon a landscape, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the best Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is probably a sketch, like the one we have, or one of the wanting panels; for as for the pictures themselves, there were never more than twenty-two at the Chartreux, and these are at the Louvre. Perhaps, however, it may be the picture which Lesueur made for M. Bernard de Roze, see Florent Lecomte, vol. iii., p. 98, which represented a Carthusian in a cell. At St. Petersburg, the catalogue of the Hermitage mentions seven pictures of Lesueur, one of which, The infant Moses exposed on the Nile, is admitted by the author cited to be authentic. Can this be one of two Moses which were painted by Lesueur for M. de Nouveau, as we learn from Guillet de Saint-Georges? Unless M. Viardot is deceived, and mistakes a copy for an original, we must regret that a real Lesueur should Lave been suffered to stray to St. Petersburg, with many of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p. 474), Mignards, Sebastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins.

Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we might have acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had got, by some chance, into the possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, afterwards into that of the Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, Christ with Martha and Mary, formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Will it be believed that the French Government lost the opportunity, and permitted this little chef-d'oeuvre to pass into the hands of the King of Bavaria? A good copy at Marseilles was thought, doubtless, sufficient, and the original was left to find its way to the gallery at Munich, and meet again the St. Louis on his knees at Mass, which the catalogue of that gallery attributes to Lesueur, on what ground we are not aware. In conclusion, we may mention that there is in the Museum at Brussels, a charming little Lesueur, The Saviour giving his Blessing, and in the Museums of Grenoble and Montpelier several fragments of the History of Tobias, painted for M. de Fieubet.

Page 193: "Those master-pieces of art that honor the nation depart without authorization from the national territory! There has not been found a government which has undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvases, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression."

Shall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to set on Poussin? We blush to think that in 1848 we should have permitted the noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into England. One picture escaped: it was put up to sale in Paris on the 5th of March, 1850. It was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly authentic, from the Orleans gallery, and described at length in the catalogue of Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It represented the Birth of Bacchus, and by its variety of scenes and multitude of ideas, showed it belonged to Poussin's best period. We must do Normandy, rather the city of Rouen, the justice to say, that it made an effort to acquire it, but it was unsupported by Government; and this composition, wholly French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000 francs, to a foreigner, Mr. Hope.

Miserable contrast! while five or six hundred thousand francs have been given for a Virgin by Murillo, which is now turning the heads of all who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I admire the freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color; but every other superior quality which one looks to find in such a subject is wanting, or at least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that face, which is neither noble nor great. The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of the profound mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in this vaunted Virgin which so catches the multitude? She is supported by beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming color, the effect of all which is doubtless highly pleasant.

Page 195: "We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep from England and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign collections," etc.

After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with the Seven Sacraments save from the engravings of Pesne, we made a journey to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves these famous pictures, with many others of our great countryman, now fallen into the possession of England, through our culpable indifference, and which have been brought under our notice by M Waagen.

In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we had to examine four galleries: the National Gallery, answering to our Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich College, celebrated in England, though but little known on the continent.

We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or unknown cabinets of provincial amateurs! The society, having at its head the greatest names of England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly to its appeal.

We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to the exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of Bedford, Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the Earls of Derby and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides bankers, merchants, savants, and artists. The exhibition is public, but not free, as you must pay both for admission and the printed catalogue. The money thus acquired is appropriated to defray the expenses of the exhibition; whatever remains is employed in the purchase of pictures, which are then presented to the National Gallery.

At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which well sustained the name of that master. Apollo watching the herds of Admetus*; a *Sea-port, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and Psyche and Amor, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pretended Lesueur, the Death of the Virgin, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian Bourdons, the Seven Works of Mercy, lent by the Earl of Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one morceau of his illustrious brother-in-law's.

We were more fortunate in the National Gallery.

There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as many as ten, some of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves to the recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.

1st. The Embarkation of St. Ursula, which was painted for the Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, when an English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, with other works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches high, 4 feet 11 inches wide.

2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches wide. Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the arrival of Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage.

3d. The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, going to visit Solomon, formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles in its dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing, M. Waagen declares it to be the most beautiful morceau of the kind he is acquainted with, and asserts that Lorrain has here attained perfection, vol. i., p. 211. This masterpiece was executed by Claude for his protector, the Duke de Bouillon. It is signed "Claude GE. I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Duc de Bouillon, anno 1648." Doubtless the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest brother of Turenne. This French work, destined, too, for France, she has now forever lost, as well as the famous Book of Truth, Libro di Verita, in which Claude collected the drawings of all his paintings, drawings which may be themselves regarded as finished pictures. This invaluable treasure was, like the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, for a long time in the hands of a French broker, who would willingly have relinquished it to the Government, but failing to find purchasers in Paris in the last century, ultimately sold it for a mere nothing into Holland, whence it has passed into England. The author of the Musees d'Allemagne et de Russie, mentions that in the gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, amongst a large number of Claudes, whose authenticity he appears to admit, there are four morceaux, which he does not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated chefs-d'oeuvre of that master, in Paris or London, called the Morning, the Noon, the Evening, and the Night. They are from Malmaison. Thus the sale of the gallery of an empress has in our own time enriched Russia, as, twenty-five years before, the sale of the Orleans gallery enriched England.

In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet landscapes of Lorrain, are five of Caspar's, depicting nature under an opposite aspect--rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One of the most remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter in a grotto from the violence of a storm. The figures are from the pencil of Albano, and for a length of time remained in the palace Falconieri. Two other landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two from the palace Colonna.

But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are eight paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of mention. M. Waagen has merely spoken of them in general terms, but we shall proceed to give a description in detail.

Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of Ashdod, is taken from sacred history. This is described in the printed catalogue as No. 105. The Israelites having been vanquished by the Philistines, the ark was taken by the victors and placed in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod. The idol falls before the ark, and the Philistines are smitten with the pestilence. This canvas is 4 feet 3 inches high, and 6 feet 8 inches, wide. A sketch or copy of the Plague of the Philistines is in the Museum of the Louvre, and has been engraved by Picard. Poussin was, in fact, fond of repeating a subject; there are two sets of the Seven Sacraments*, two Arcadias, two or three *Moses striking the Rock, &c. The science of painting is here employed to portray the scene in all its terrors, and display every horror of the pestilence, and it would seem that Poussin had here endeavored to contend with Michael Angelo, even at the expense of beauty. It is said the commission for this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It comes from the palace of Colonna. The subjects of the remaining seven pictures in the National Gallery are mythological, and may be nearly all referred to the early epoch of Poussin's career, when he paid tribute to the genius of the 16th century, and yielded to the influence of Marini.

No. 39. The Education of Bacchus, a subject chosen by Poussin more than once. On a small canvas 2 feet 3 inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch wide.

No. 40. Another small picture 1 foot 6 inches high, and 3 feet 4 inches broad: Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain, a touching emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To heighten this rustic scene, and impart its meaning, the painter shows us the trophies of the noble warrior hung on the trunk of a tree at a little distance. The whole composition is striking and full of animation. We believe that it has never been engraved. It forms a happy addition to the two other compositions consecrated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so admirably engraved by Baudet, Phocion carried out of the City of Athens*, and the *Tomb of Phocion.

No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin for the Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in the collection of Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch wide. In a warm landscape Bacchus is sleeping surrounded by nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs, whilst Silenus appears under an arbor attended by sylvan figures.

No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of Poussin's masterpieces. According to M. Waagen, it belonged to the Colonna collection, but the catalogue, published by authority, states that it was originally the property of the Comte de Vaudreueili, that it afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence it passed into England, and ultimately found its way into the hands of Mr. Hamlet, from whom it was purchased by Parliament, and placed in the National Gallery. It is 3 feet 8 inches high, and 4 feet 8 inches wide. Its subject is a dance of fauns and bacchantes, which is interrupted by a satyr, who attempts to take liberties with a nymph. Besides the main subject, there are numerous spirited and graceful episodes, particularly two infants endeavoring to catch in a cup the juice of a bunch of grapes supported in air, and pressed by a bacchante of slim and fine form. The composition is full of fire, energy, and spirit. There is not a single group, not a figure, which will not repay an attentive study. M. Waagen does not hesitate to pronounce it one of Poussin's finest. He admires the truth and variety of heads, the freshness of color, and the transparent tone (die Faerbung von seltenster Frische, Helle und Klarheit in allen Theilen). It has been engraved by Huart, and accurately copied by Landon, under the title of Danse de Fauns et de Bacchantes.

No. 65. Cephalus and Aurora. Aurora, captivated by the beauty of Cephalus, endeavors to separate him from his wife Procris. Being unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to Cephalus the dart which causes the death of his adored spouse. 3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 2 inches wide.

No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide, representing Phineas and his Companions changed into Stones by looking on the Gorgon. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from the sea monster, obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed, rushes in upon the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A combat ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed to stone. This composition is full of vigor, with brilliant coloring, although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware of its having been engraved.

No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 inches wide: A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Lore and Satyrs, engraved by Daulle, also in Landon's work.

Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come upon another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disciple of Mariai but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology giving way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is the account of what we came to see; we looked for much, and found more than we expected.

The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke of Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the eighteenth century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of Stafford, on the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord Francis Egerton, now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collection was engraved during the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by Ottley, under the title of the Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols. folio.

It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, on account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, and French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it from the Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret to meet at Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly belonging to France, and which have been engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. La Galerie du duc d'Orleans au Palais-Royal*, 2 volumes in folio; 2. *Recueil d'estampes d'apres les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans, 1729, 2 volumes in folio; a most valuable collection known also under the name of the Cabinet of Crozat. This admirable collection is deposited in a building worthy of it, in a veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300 paintings. The French school is here well represented. The Musical Party*, from the Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the *Galerie du Palais-Royal, three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes, described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a gentleman of Lorraine; the former, Demosthenes by the Sea-side, offers a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally young and fresh; the second, Moses at the Burning Bush, a third, No. 103, of the year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and represents the Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a Shepherd; lastly, there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a View of the Cascatelles of Tivoli.

The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades before the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the catalogue Nos. 62-69, the Seven Sacraments, and Moses striking the Rock with his Rod.

It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took possession of us whilst contemplating the Seven Sacraments. Whatever M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing theatrical about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated and enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the painter. The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and is left to be noticed less in the details than in the general composition. In fact, it is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, we do not think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and Roman school. As each Sacrament is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to enhance the effect of the whole, so the Seven Sacraments form a harmonious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same way as the twenty-two St. Brunos of Lesueur express the whole monastic life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer conception of its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much as this for the Stanze of the Vatican? Have they a common sentiment? Is the sentiment profound, and, indeed, Christian? No doubt Raphael elevates the soul, whatever is beautiful cannot fail to do that; but he touches only the surface, circum praecordia ludit; he penetrates not deep; moves not the inner fibres of our being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He snatches us from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of eternal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of the heart, magnanimity, heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he does not express; and why was this? because he did not possess it in himself, because it was not to be met with around him in the Italy of the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious, given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a glimpse of without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From this corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great figures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the Fornarina; and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid engineer who defended Florence, the melancholy author of the Last Judgment and of Lorenzo di Medici, have with such men as Perugino boldly professing atheism, at the same time that he painted, at the highest price possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and his worthy friend Aretino, atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with the same hand his infamous sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his pencil to the wildest debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved them? Such is the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught him to worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin belongs to a very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know in France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant amateurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court of Louis XIII., between 1640 and 1642, the young Conde and the voting Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Mademoiselle de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with Lesueur, with Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like the last, he is grave and masculine; he has the sentiment of the great, and strives to reach it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, if his long career is an assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, it is pre-eminently moral beauty that strikes him: and when he represents historic or Christian scenes, one feels he is there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and of Polyeuete, in his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit and grace in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his elegies and in the Declaration of Love to Psyche: but also like him, it is in the thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the moral ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of art.

It is not our intention to describe the Seven Sacraments, which has been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. We will only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacrament of the Ordination, could have employed more gravity and majesty than Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as in the other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the landscape accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter before the assembled apostles, in the distance, and above the heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the Extreme Unction is the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed around the images of death; but, unhappily, this striking composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which has little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured the whole painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of Pesne, and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the Louvre.

Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one half of Poussin's labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas with a preparation of red, which has been changed by the effect of time into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect of the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur with a white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, preserves them for a length of time in their original state. This last process Poussin appears to have adopted in the Moses striking the Rock with his Staff*, incomparably the finest of all the *Strikings of the Rock which proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the Seven Sacraments, from the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. What unity is in this vast composition, and yet what variety in the action, the pose, the features of the figures! It consists of twenty different pictures, and yet is but one; and not even one of the episodes could be taken away without considerable injury to the ensemble of the piece. At the same time, what fine coloring! The impastation is both solid and light, and the colors are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might possess greater brilliancy; but the severity of the subject agrees well with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. In the first place, every subject demands its proper color: in the second, grave subjects require a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not be exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance: for, in that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be altogether dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable, crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, likewise impairs the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. Color is to painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is equal defect whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, while one same harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious fault. Is Corneille happily inspired? His harmony, like his words, are true, beautiful, admirable in their variety. The tones differ with his different characters, but are always consistent with the conditions of harmony imposed by poesy. Is he negligent? his style then becomes rude, unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine is slightly monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre was but one tone, that of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colors and accents for every subject, naive and sublime, vividly correct yet unaffectedly simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, masculine and vigorous as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to describe Retz or Cromwell, clear as the battle trumpet when his strain is Roeroy or Conde, suggestive of the equal and varied flow of a mighty river in the majestic harmony of his Discourse on Universal History, a History which, in the grandeur and extent of its composition, in its vanquished difficulties, its depth of art, where art even ceases to appear as such, in its perfect unity, and, at the same time, almost infinite variety of tone and style, is perhaps the most finished work which has ever come from the hand of man.

To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of the seven cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas representing the triumph of Caesar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer and Holbein, French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin of particularly fine color, Satyrs finding a Nymph. The transparent and lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is a study of design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, to perfect himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian.

Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the Marquess of Westminster, in Grosvenor-street. We refer for this to what M. Waagen has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish and Dutch schools preponderate in this gallery. One sees there in all their glory the three great masters of that school, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt, accompanied by a numerous suite of inferior masters, at present much in vogue, Hobbema, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, who, to our idea, fade completely before some half-dozen by Claude of all sizes, of every variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time of the great landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1661. Of these paintings, the greatest and most important is perhaps the Sermon on the Mount. Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the gallery at Grosvenor-street. M. Waagen admires particularly Calisto changed into a Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the Constellations, and still more a Virgin with the infant Jesus surrounded by Angels. He extols in this morceau the surpassing clearness of coloring, the noble and melancholy sentiment of nature, together with a warm and powerful tone. M. Waagen places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French painter (gehoert zu dem vortrefflichsten was ich von ihm kenne). Whilst fully concurring in this judgment, we beg leave to point out in the same gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two delicious pieces from the easel, first a touching episode in Moses striking the Rock, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, heedless of herself, hastens to give her children drink, whilst their father bends in thanksgiving to God; the other, Children at play. Never did a more delightful scene come from the pencil of Albano. Two children look, laughing, at each other; another to the right holds a butterfly on his finger; a fourth endeavors to catch a butterfly which is flying from him; a fifth, stooping, takes fruit from a basket.

But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to that which forms the ornament of the college situated in the charming village of Dulwich.

Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. Noel Desenfans, to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes of Stanislas, and the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desenfans' hands all he had collected; these he made a present of to a friend of his, M. Bourgeois, a painter, who still further enriched this fine collection, and bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich College, where it now is in a very commodious and well-lighted building. It consists of nearly 350 paintings. M. Waagen, who visited it, pronounces judgment with some severity. The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is true, but in this it does not differ from numerous other catalogues. Mediocrity is frequently placed side by side with excellence, and copies given as originals; this is the case with more than one gallery. This one, however, has to us the merit of containing a considerable number of French paintings, to some of which even M. Waagen cannot refuse his admiration.

We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, two Bourguignons, three portraits by Rigaud, or after Rigaud, a Louis XIV., a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two Lebruns, the Massacre of the Innocents, and Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge, in which M. Waagen discovers happy imitations of Poussin, three or four Gaspars and seven Claude Lorrains, the beauty of most of which is a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity; together with a very fine Fete champetre by Watteau, and a View near Rome, by Joseph Vernet. Of Poussin, the catalogue points out eighteen, of which the following is a list:

No. 115. The Education of Bacchus; 142, a Landscape; 249, a Holy Family*; 253, the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham; 260, a Landscape; 269, the Destruction of Niobe; 279, *a Landscape; 291, the Adoration of the Magi; 292, a Landscape; 295, the Inspiration of the Poet*; 300, the Education of Jupiter; 305, the Triumph of David; 310, the Flight into Egypt; 315, *Renald and Armida; 316, Venus and Mercury; 325, Jupiter and Antiope; 336, the Assumption of the Virgin*; 352, *Children.

Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which he thus characterizes:

The Assumption of the Virgin, No. 336. In a landscape of powerful poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of gold: a small picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, the coloring strong and transparent (in der Farbe kraftiges und klaares Bild). Children, No. 352. Replete with loveliness and charm. The Triumph of David, No. 305. A rich picture, but theatrical.

Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea, No. 300. A charming composition, transparent tone. A Landscape, No. 260. A well-drawn landscape, breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but which has become rather blackened.

We are unable to recognize in the Triumph of David the theatrical character which shocked M. Waagen. On the contrary, we perceive a bold and almost wild expression, a great deal of passion finely subdued.

A triumph must always contain some formality; here, however, there is the least possible, and that with which we are struck is its vigor and truth to nature. The giant's head stuck on the pike has the grandest effect: and we believe that the able German critic has, in this instance, likewise yielded to the prejudices of his country, which, in its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives the theatrical in whatever is noble. We admit that at the close of the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV. and Lebrun, the noble was merged in the theatrical and academic; but under Louis XIII. and the Regency, in the time of Corneille and Poussin, the academic and theatrical style was wholly unknown. We entreat the sagacious critic not to forget this distinction between the divisions of the seventeenth century, nor to confound the master with his disciples, who, although they were still great, had slightly degenerated, and who were oppressed by the taste of the age of Louis XIV.

But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is, that he did not notice at Dulwich numerous morceaux of Poussin, which well merited his attention; amongst others, the Adoration of the Magi, far superior, for its coloring, to that in the Museum at Paris; and, above all, a picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the difficult art of conveying a philosophic idea under the living form of a myth and an allegory.

In this art, Poussin excelled: he is pre-eminently a philosophical artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the science of design. He has ever an idea which guides his hand, and which is his main object. Let us not tire to reiterate this: it is moral beauty which he everywhere seeks, both in nature and humanity. As we have stated in relation to the sacrament of Ordination, the landscapes of Poussin are almost always designed to set off and heighten human life, whilst Claude is essentially a landscape painter, with whom both history and humanity are made subservient to nature. Subjects derived from Christianity were exactly suited to Poussin, inasmuch as they afforded the sublimest types of that moral grandeur in which he delighted, although we do not see in him the exquisite piety of Lesueur and Champagne; and if Christian greatness speaks to his soul, it appears to do so with no authority beyond that of Phocion, of Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither sacred nor profane history suffices him: he invents, he imagines, he has recourse to moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he is most original, and that his imagination displays itself in its greatest freedom and elevation. Arcadia is a lesson of high philosophy under the form of an idyll. The Testament of Eudamidas portrays the sublime confidence of friendship. Time Rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy and Discord*, *the Ballet of Human Life, are celebrated models of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet at Dulwich with a work of Poussin's almost unknown, and of whose existence we had not even an idea, sparkling at the same time with the style we have been describing, and with the most eminent qualities of the chief of the French school.

This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, marked No. 295, and described in the catalogue as The Inspiration of the Poet, a delightful subject, and treated in the most delightful manner. Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground a harmonious group of three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carries to his lips the sacred cup which Apollo, the god of poesy, has presented to him. Whilst he quaffs, inspiration seizes him, his face is transfigured, and the sacred intoxication becomes apparent in the motion of his hands and his whole body. Beside Apollo, the Muse prepares to collect the songs of the poet. Above this group, a genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet, whilst other genii scatter flowers. In the background, the clearest horizon. Grace, spirit, depth--this enchanting composition unites the whole. Added to this, the color is well-grounded and of great brilliancy.

It is very singular that neither Bellori nor Felibien, who both lived on terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best historians, say not a word of this work. It is not referred to in the catalogues of Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or of Castellan; nor does M. Waagen himself, who, having been at Dulwich, must have seen it there, make the least mention of it. We are, therefore, ignorant in what year, on what occasion, and for whom this delicious little painting was executed: but the hand of Poussin is seen throughout, in the drawing, in the composition, in the expression. Nothing theatrical or vulgar: truth combined with beauty. The whole scene conveys unmixed delight, and its impression is at once serene and profound. In our idea, The Inspiration of the Poet* may be ranked as almost equal with *The Arcadia.

Notwithstanding this, The Inspiration has never been engraved, at least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of engravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those of M. de Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and lastly, the cabinet of prints in the Bibliotheque Nationale. We hope that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the idea of undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dulwich, and making known to the lovers of national art an ingenious and touching production of Poussin, strayed and lost, as it, were, in a foreign collection.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

This is the sketch which Felibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.

This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette, see the Abecedario, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p. 171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having himself engraved it, see de Piles, Abrege de la Vie des Peintres, 2d edition, p. 494, and the Peintre graveur francais, of M. Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the Seven Works of Mercy are at the Louvre.

The Libro di Verita is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire. M. Leon de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the Archives de l'Art francais, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.

The first composition of Arcadia, truly precious could it have been placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in England, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.

In the first set of the Seven Sacraments, executed for the Chevalier del Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of Rutland, and with which we are acquainted only through engravings, Christ is placed on the left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and the centre has a vacant appearance. In the second set, painted five or six years after the former for M. de Chanteloup, Christ is placed in the centre: this new disposition changes the entire effect of the piece. Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same subject a second time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the memorable answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what means he had attained to so great perfection, "I never neglected any thing," should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor, poet, or composer.

Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de Poussin, Paris, 1824), "I am working briskly at the Extreme Unction, which is indeed a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of representing the dying." He adds, with a vivacity which seems to indicate that he took a particular fancy to this painting, "I do not intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well-disposed, until I have put it in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men, women, and children, young and old, one part of whom are drowned in tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not describe it to you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it requires a gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet high; the painting will be about the size of your Manne, but of better proportion." Felibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise remarks (Entretiens, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the Extreme Unction was one of the paintings which pleased him most. We learn at length, from Poussin's letters, that he finished it and sent it into France in this same year, 1644. Fenoien informs us that in 1646 he completed the Confirmation, in 1647 the Baptism, the Penance, the Ordination and the Eucharist, and that he sent the last sacrament, that of Marriage, at the commencement of the year 1648. Bellori (le Vite de Pittori, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed description of the Extreme Unction; and, as he lived with Poussin, it seems credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had himself received from the great artist.

The drawing of the Extreme Unction is at the Louvre; the drawings of the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de la Salle, that of the seventh is the property of the well-known print seller, M. Deter.

There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the hand of Clouet, and the portrait of Fenelon by Rigaud, which may be the original or at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery at Versailles.

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This work is the Tenth of a Series commenced in 1861, and published, one volume annually since, in the same style as the "New American Cyclopaedia," and is, in fact, an addendum to that invaluable work. Each volume, however, is complete in itself, and is confined to the results of its year.

THIS VOLUME ALSO CONTAINS A COMPLETE INDEX TO ALL THE "ANNUALS" HERETOFORE PUBLISHED.

COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.

The New York World, speaking of this work, says: "The past volumes of the annual series have all been good; but that which has been recently added is excellent, in fact, it might be said to have approached perfection. No final Word is needed to express the genuine admiration which this work, in its conception, execution, and publication, deserves. No private library in the country should be without it or its predecessors."

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A TEXT-BOOK OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE, with Particular Reference to Physiology and Pathological Anatomy. By Dr. FELIX VON NIEMEYER. Translated from the eighth German edition, by special permission of the Author, by GEORGE H. HUMPHREYS, M. D., and CHARLES E. HACKLEY, M. D. 2 vols., 8vo, 1,528 pages. Cloth. Price, $9.00.

The translators are pleased to find that the medical public sustain their own opinion of the practical value of Professor Niemeyer's Text-Book, and take pleasure in presenting the present edition, which is altered to correspond with the eighth and last German edition.

The translators also take great pleasure in noticing the favorable reception of this work in England, showing the interest felt there as well as herein the ideas of the modern German School of Medicine.

VERA; OR THE ENGLISH EARL AND THE RUSSIAN PRINCESS. By the Author of "The Hotel du Petit St. Jean." 1 vol., 8vo, forming No. 25 of Library of Choice Novels. Price, 40 cents.

"Vera" has been praised by the English press in the highest terms. There is a freshness of style, of method and material, and the world of English novel-readers have found in them a new sensation. The London Saturday Review, speaking of "Vera," says that "it heartily recommends to the public a book which cannot fail to please every one who reads it."

LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. A Series of Familiar Essays on Scientific Subjects, Natural Phenomena, etc. By R. A. PROCTOR, B. A., F. R. A. S., author of "Saturn and its System," "Other Worlds than Ours," "The Sun," etc. 1 vol. Cloth. 12mo. Price, $2.00.

CONTENTS.--Strange Discoveries respecting the Aurora; The Earth's Magnetism; Our Chief Timepiece losing Time; Encke, the Astronomer; Venus on the Sun's Face; Recent Solar Researches; Government Aid to Science; American Alms for British Science; The Secret of the North Pole; Is the Gulf Stream a Myth? Floods in Switzerland; A Great Tidal Wave; Deep-Sea Dredgings; The Tunnel through Mont Cenis; Tornadoes; Vesuvius; The Earthquake in Peru; The Greatest Sea Wave ever known; The Usefulness of Earthquakes; The Forcing Power of Rain; A Shower of Snow Crystals; Long Shots; Influence of Marriage on the Death-Rate; The Topographical Survey of India; A Ship attacked by a Swordfish; The Safety-Lamp; The Dust we have to Breathe; Photographic Ghosts; The Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Styles; Betting on Horse-Races, or the State of the Odds; Squaring the Circle; A New Theory of Achilles's Shield.

HEREDITARY GENIUS; an Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. By FRANCIS GALTON, F. R. S. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.

The author of this book endeavors to show that man's natural abilities are derived from inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding the limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses, gifted with peculiar powers of reasoning, or of doing any thing else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.

APPLETONS' EUROPEAN GUIDE-BOOK, Illustrated, including England, Scotland, and Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Northern and Southern Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Russia, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; containing a Map of Europe, and Nine other Maps, with Plans of Twenty of the Principal Cities, and 120 Engravings. 1 vol., 12mo. Second Edition, brought down to May, 1871. 720 pages. Red French morocco, with a tuck. Price, $6.00.

"In the preparation of this Guide-book, the author has sought to give, within the limits of a single volume, all the information necessary to enable the tourist to find his way, without difficulty, from place to place, and to see the objects best worth seeing, throughout such parts of Europe as are generally visited by American and English travellers."--Extract from Preface.

THE ART OF BEAUTIFYING SUBURBAN HOME GROUNDS OF SMALL EXTENT, and the best Modes of Laying out, Planting, and Keeping Decorated Grounds. Illustrated by upward of Two Hundred Plates and Engravings of Plans for Residences and their Grounds, of Trees, and Shrubs, and Garden Embellishments. With Descriptions of the Beautiful and Hardy Trees and Shrubs grown in the United States. By FRANK J. SCOTT. Complete in one Elegant Quarto Volume of 618 pages. Is printed on tinted paper, bound in green morocco cloth, bevelled boards, with uncut edges, gilt top. Price, $8.00.

This elegant work is the only book published on the especial subject indicated by the title. Its aim and object are to aid persons of moderate incomes, who are not fully posted on the arts of decorative gardening, to beautify their homes, to suggest and illustrate the simple means with which beautiful home-surroundings* may be realized on *small ground, and with little cost; also to assist in giving an intelligent direction to the desires and a satisfactory result for the labors of those who are engaged in embellishing houses, as well as those whose imaginations are warm with the hopes of homes that are yet to be.

LIFE OF MAJOR JOHN ANDRE. By WINTHORP SARGENT. A new and revised edition. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portraits of the Author and Editor. Price, $2.50.

This work is an important contribution to our historical literature--"a volume," says Robert C. Winthrop, "full of attractive and valuable matter, and displaying the fruit of rich culture and rare accomplishments." The "Life of Andre" has been fortunate in receiving the commendation, at home and abroad, of careful critics and distinguished historians.

THE TWO GUARDIANS; OR HOME IN THIS WORLD. By the author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. Forming one of the volumes of the new illustrated edition of Miss Yonge's popular novels. Volumes already published: "The Heir of Redclyffe," 2 vols.; "Heartsease," 2 vols.; "Daisy Chain," 2 vols.; "Beechcroft," 1 vol.

THE RECOVERY OF JERUSALEM. An Account of the Recent Excavations and Discoveries in the Holy City. By CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E., and CAPTAIN WARREN, R. E. With an Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley. Cloth, 8vo. With fifty Illustrations. Price, $3.50.

"That this volume may bring home to the English public a more definite knowledge of what the Palestine Exploration Fund has been doing, and hopes to do, than can be gathered from partial and isolated reports, or from popular lectures, must be the desire of every one who judges the Bible to be the most precious, as it is the most profound, book in the world, and who deems nothing small or unimportant that shall tend to throw light upon its meaning, and to remove the obscurities which time and distance have caused to rest upon some of its pages."--Globe.

THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST, and its Relations to the Principles and Practice of Christianity. By WM. STROUD, M. D. With a Letter on the Subject by SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, Bart., M. D. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.

Dr. William Stroud's treatise on "The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, and its Relation to the Principles and Practice of Christianity," although now first reprinted in this country, has maintained, for the last quarter of a century, a great reputation in England. It is, in its own place, a masterpiece. "It could have been composed," says Dr. Stroud's biographer, "only by a man characterized by a combination of superior endowments. It required, on the one hand, a profound acquaintance with medical subjects and medical literature. It required, on the other, an equally profound acquaintance with the Bible, and with theology in general." The object of the treatise is to demonstrate an important physical fact connected with the death of Christ--namely, that it was caused by rupture of the heart--and to point out its relation to the principles and practice of Christianity.

WESTWARD BY RAIL: THE NEW ROUTE TO THE EAST. By W. F. RAE. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.

The author of this work, one of the editors of the London Daily News, was a stanch defender of the Union, and his work is one of the most just and appreciative books on America yet published by an Englishman.

"There is a quiet and subtle charm, as well as a deep and true romantic interest, in the story of the railway journey."--Westminster Review.

"He has given us a very pleasant and instructive book, which we heartily commend to the attention of all thoughtful and inquiring readers."--Glasgow Mail.

"He has written a most readable, interesting, and attractive account of a journey which is long enough to be worth the complete description he has given it."--Observer.

THE REVELATION OF JOHN, with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical. Designed for both Pastors and People. By Rev. HENRY COWLES, D. D. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50.

D. Appleton & Co. also publish by the same Author: "Minor Prophets." 12mo, cloth. Price, $2.00; "Ezekiel and Daniel." 12mo, cloth. $2.25; "Isaiah." With Notes, $2.25; "Jeremiah." 1 vol., 12mo. $2.00; "Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon." $2.00.

A TREATISE ON DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D., Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System, and of Clinical Medicine, in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College; Physician-in-chief to the New-York State Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, etc. With Forty-five Illustrations. 1 vol., 8vo, 750 pages. Price, $5.00.

"In the following work I have endeavored to present a 'Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System' which, without being superficial, would be concise and explicit, and which, while making no claim to being exhaustive, would nevertheless be sufficiently complete for the instruction and guidance of those who might be disposed to seek information from its pages. How far I have been successful will soon be determined by the judgment of those more competent than myself to form an unbiased opinion.

"One feature I may, however, with justice claim for this work, and that is, that it rests, to a great extent, on my own observation and experience, and is, therefore, no mere compilation. The reader will readily perceive that I have views of my own on every disease considered, and that I have not hesitated to express them."--Extract from the Preface.

Over fifty diseases of the nervous system, including insanity, are considered in this treatise.

ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE AND PROTRACTED MUSCULAR EXERCISE, with Special Reference to its Influence upon the Excretion of Nitrogen. By AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.

APPLETONS' HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN TRAVEL. Northern and Eastern Tour. New edition, revised for the Summer of 1871. Including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the British Dominion, being a Guide to Niagara, the White Mountains, the Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the Berkshire Hills, the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Lake Memphremagog, Saratoga, Newport, Cape May, the Hudson, and other Famous Localities; with full Descriptive Sketches of the Cities, Towns, Rivers, Lakes, Waterfalls, Mountains, Hunting and Fishing Grounds, Watering-places, Sea-side Resorts, and all scenes and objects of importance and interest within the district named. With Maps and various Skeleton Tours, arranged as suggestions and guides to the Traveller. One vol., 12mo. Flexible cloth. Price, $2.00.

JAMES GORDON'S WIFE. A Novel. 8vo. Paper. Price, 50 cents.

"An interesting novel, pleasantly written, refined in tone, and easy in style."--London Globe.

"This novel is conceived and executed in the purest spirit. The illustrations of society in its various phases are cleverly and spiritedly done."--London Post.

THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. By HERBERT SPENCER. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $2.50.

This work is thought by many able judges to be the most original and valuable contribution to the science of mind that has appeared in the present century. John Stuart Mill says it is "one of the finest examples we possess of the psychological method in its full power." Dr. McCosh says "his bold generalizations are always suggestive, and some may in the end be established in the profoundest laws of the knowable universe." George Ripley says "Spencer is as keen an analyst as is known in the history of Philosophy. I do not except either Aristotle or Kant, whom he greatly resembles."

NIGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. A Novel. By FLORENCE WILFORD. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 50 cents.

This is a novel of marked originality and high literary merit. The heroine is one of the loveliest and purest characters of recent fiction, and the detail of her adventures in the arduous task of overcoming her husband's prejudices and jealousies forms an exceedingly interesting plot. The book is high in tone and excellent in style.

GOOD FOR NOTHING. A Novel. By WHYTE MELVILLE. Author of "Digby Grand," "The Interpreter," etc. 1 vol., 8vo, 210 pages. Price, 60 cents.

"The interest of the reader in the story, which for the most part is laid in England, is enthralling from the beginning to the end. The moral tone is altogether unexceptionable."--The Chronicle.

A HAND-BOOK OF LAW, for Business Men; containing an Epitome of the Law of Contracts, Bills and Notes, interest, Guaranty and Suretyship, Assignments for Creditors, Agents, Factors, and Brokers, Sales, Mortgages, and Liens, Patents and Copyrights, Trade-Marks, the Good-Will of a Business, Carriers, Insurance, Shipping, Arbitrations, Statutes of Limitation, Partnership, with an Appendix, containing Forms of Instruments used in the Transaction of Business. By WILLIAM TRACY, LL. D. 1 vol., 8vo, 679 pages. Half basil, $5.50; library leather, $6.50.

This work is an epitome of those branches of law which affect the ordinary transactions of BUSINESS MEN. It is not proposed by it to make every man a lawyer, but to give a man of business a convenient and reliable book of reference, to assist him in the solution of questions relating to his rights and duties, which are constantly arising, and to guide him in conducting his negotiations.

In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE, the rules which constitute the doctrines of law which are examined, and to illustrate the same by decisions of the Courts in which they are recognized, WITH MARGINAL REFERENCES TO THE VOLUMES WHERE THE CASES MAY BE FOUND.

NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED; with Fifty-nine Illustrations. A Descriptive Text and a Map of the City. An entirely new edition, brought down to date, with new Illustrations. Price, 50 cents.

"There has never been published so beautiful a guide-book to New York as this is. A suitable letter-press accompanies the woodcuts, the whole forming a picture of New York such as no other book affords."--New York World.

THE NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In Illustration of the Manners and Morals of the Age. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.

Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and entertaining volume, has succeeded in showing that much real information concerning the morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered from the novelists of the last century. With judicial impartiality he examines and cross-examines the witnesses, laying all the evidence before the reader. Essayists as well as novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World, The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong to the testimony of Parson Adams, Trulliber, Trunnion, Squire Western, the "Fool of Quality," "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like. A chapter on dress is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise.

REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By MARK BOYD. 1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp. Price, $1.75.

Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. He has enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of many illustrious men, and he has the additional advantage of remembering a number of anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the writer acknowledges, is a perfect olla podrida. There is considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to great generals, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Clyde; some to artists and men of letters, and these include the names of Campbell, Rogers, Thackeray, and David Roberts; some to statesmen, and among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr. Boyd's father, to Lords Palmerston, Brougham, and Derby; some to discoverers, like Sir John Franklin and Sir John Ross: and others--among which may be reckoned, perhaps, the most amusing in the volume--to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners and customs now happily obsolete.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE. A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. 422 pages. Price, $2.00.

PROF. TYNDALL IS THE POET OF MODERN SCIENCE.

This is a book of genius--one of those rare productions that come but once in a generation. Prof. Tyndall is not only a bold, broad, and original thinker, but one of the most eloquent and attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range of scientific questions, giving us the latest views in the most lucid and graphic language, so that the subtlest order of invisible changes stand out with all the vividness of stereoscopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific thinker, Prof. Tyndall is also a poet, alive to all beauty, and kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonder of Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere dry inventory of prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine order of the world, and fitted to stir the highest feelings of our nature.

GABRIELLE ANDRE. An Historical Novel. By S. BARING-GOULD, author of "Myths of the Middle Ages." 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents.

Those who take an interest in comparing the effects of the present French Revolution on the Church with that of 1789 will find in this work a great deal of information illustrating the feeling in the State and Church of France at that period. The Literary Churchman says: "The book is a remarkably able one, full of vigorous and often exceedingly beautiful writing and description."

MUSINGS OVER THE CHRISTIAN YEAR AND LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE, together with a few Gleanings of Recollection, gathered by Several Friends. 1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages. Price, $2.00.

Miss Yonge has here produced a volume which will possess great interest in the eyes of Churchmen, who have for so many years enjoyed the privilege of reading the exquisite poetry of the "Christian Year" by Rev. John Keble. Miss Yonge gives her own experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years: then there are the "Recollections," by Francis M. Wilbraham: a few words of "Personal Description," by Rev. T. Simpson Evans; then follow the "Musings," one each of the poems illustrative of the "Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium."

THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. A New Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.

To be followed by HEARTSEASE.

"The first of her writings which made a sensation here was the 'Heir,' and what a sensation it was! Referring to the remains of the tear-washed covers of the copy aforesaid, we find it belonged to the 'eighth thousand.' How many thousands have been issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new, and the places of drowned, dissolved, or swept away old copies, we do not attempt to conjecture. Not individuals merely, but households--consisting in great part of tender-hearted young damsels--were plunged into mourning. With a tolerable acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to speak of real ones), from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, we have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or Redclyffe, Baronet, the most admirable one we ever met with, in story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant, ardent child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his early holiness, and overshadowed with the darkness of his hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sadness of his early death--what a caution is there! What a vision!"--Extract from a review of "The Heir of Redclyffe," and "Heartsease," in the North American Review for April.

A COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; mainly abridged from Dr. William Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," but comprising important Additions and Improvements from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst, Pape, Pott, Winer, Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes, Bush, Thomson, Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayre, and many other eminent scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various departments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the Pronunciation and Signification of Scriptural Names; the Solution of Difficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of the Old and New Testaments; the History and Description of Biblical Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals, and other things concerning which information is needed for an intelligent and thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Books of the Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and Engravings. Edited by Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNUM. Complete in one large royal octavo volume of 1,234 pages. Price, in cloth binding, $5.00; in library sheep, $6.00; in half morocco, $7.50.

LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.

"For the benefit of those who attended his Lectures on Light and Electricity at the Royal Institution. Prof. Tyndall prepared with much care a series of notes, summing up briefly and clearly the leading facts and principles of these sciences. The notes proved so serviceable to those for whom they were designed that they were widely sought by students and teachers, and Prof. Tyndall had them reprinted in two small books. Under the conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors and learners in this country, they are here combined and republished in a single volume."--Extract from Preface.

THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX. By CHARLES DARWIN, M. A. With Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $4.00.

"We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's facts, or the application of them."--Utica Herald.

"The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at first combated it, including Sir Charles Lyell, probably the most learned of living geologists."--Evening Bulletin.

ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. By ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, with Illustrations. Price, $1.75.

"Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which will clear the ideas of biologists and theologians, and which treats the most delicate questions in a manner which throws light upon most of them, and tears away the barriers of intolerance on each side."--British Medical Journal.

MARQUIS AND MERCHANT. A Novel. By MORTIMER COLLINS. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 50 cents.

"We will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr. Disraeli, but, nevertheless, the qualities which have made Mr. Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be found in no small degree in the pages of the author of 'Marquis and Merchant.'"--Times.

HEARTSEASE. A Novel. By the author of the "Heir of Redclyffe." An Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, $2.00.

This is the second of the series of Miss Yonge's novels, now being issued in a new and beautiful style with illustrations. Since this novel was first published a new generation of readers have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the delineation of character which she so beautifully portrays.

WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ, being Classified Lists of Choice Reading, with appropriate hints and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to subscribers, to libraries, and to persons intending to form collections of books. Brought down to September, 1870. By CHARLES H. MOORE, M. D. 1 vol., 12mo. Paper Covers, 50 cents. Cloth. Price, 75 cents.

The following errors in the original text have been corrected in this version:

Page 20: Mind on Man changed to Mind of Man

Page 21: Le Notre changed to Le Notre

Page 44: empirist changed to empiricist

Page 75: Fenelon; changed to Fenelon;

Page 99: metaphysicans changed to metaphysicians

Page 117: [Greek: ektasis] changed to [Greek: ekstasis]

Page 136: added missing comma after receives warmth

Page 165: resume changed to resume

Page 182: exquiste changed to exquisite

Page 184: monarh changed to monarch

Page 245: missing semi-colon added after duty and right

Page 268: destrnction changed to destruction

Page 270: depeudere changed to dependere

Page 321: missing quotation mark added after because it is just.

Page 327: inaccesible changed to inaccessible

Page 356: iufinite changed to infinite

Page 360: sinee changed to since

Page 363: extravagauce changed to extravagance

Page 366: obsconditus changed to absconditus

Page 374: Nonveau changed to Nouveau Allemange changed to Allemagne

Page 399: analysist changed to analyst