10 MAY 1873, Page 23

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Dublin Review. April. (Burns and Oates.)—This (somewhat belated) number of the Dublin is one of the very best we have soon for many quarters back. The political article, indeed, appears somewhat embarrassed in tone, and though written with great humour and literary power, it seems to us obvious that the writer has kept silence, -yea oven from good words" of coudemnation of the Irish Episcopacy which were on the very tip of his tongue. Deference to ecclesiastical authority certainly has its literary inconveniences. Still for the means of under- standing thoroughly that blind and unintelligible folly of the Irish Episcopate which caused the late Ministerial crisis, our readers cannot do better than refer to the paper in question. Then there is a philo- sophical article of great power awl brilliance ou the relation of Aristotle to modern philosophy, in which it is a pleasure to see that the writer, who is at least as remarkable for literary as for philosophical talents, does justice to one great, half-recognised philosopher of the day,—the Rev. James Martineau. It would be impossible in any space at our disposal to expound even one of the questions taken up in this pro- found article, but it is truly encouraging to see the most orthodox of Catholic Reviews recognising the depth and philosophical insight of a groat Unitarian thinker. Mr. Froude's " Ireland " is reviewed with great ability, and there is a very caustic,—too caustic,—but very clever criticism on Mr. Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma." What we miss is one of tha purely literary papers of which the Dublin has lately had several written both with much spirit and great literary insight.