5 DECEMBER 1863, Page 19

Culture and Self - Culture. By Samuel Neil (Houlston and Wright.)— We

really think we are not speaking too harshly when wo call this pamphlet a mass of rhetorical rubbish from which no human being can derive a single useful hint. Take an extract on thought. "The thin air is dispossessed of its apparent unity by chemical elimination, and the solid brilliancy of the diamond is reduced to elemental tenuousness by the skill of the thinker. Tho might of mind constructs artificial explosives destructive as the lightning's flash, and its precautionary forethought disarms the thunderbolt of its deadly energy." There are ninety pages of this sort of inflated twaddle. If this is to be the result of "culture and self-culture," ignorance is bliss indeed !