7 AUGUST 1830, Page 17

THE REVIEWER'S TABLE.

No. X. Part II,

1. Constable's Miscellany, Vol. LVII, Bourri en ne's Memoirs of Napoleon.

2. Speech on Trial by Jury, at Malta. By Sir John Stoddart.

S. Divines of the Church of England. Vol. II. and III.

4. Experimental Inquiry into the Spleen. By William Dobson.

5. Pinnock's Catechism on the Geo- graphy of the British Empire.

6. Classical Library, No. VIII. Virgil. 7. Northern Tourist ; or Stranger's . Guide to the North and North-west of Ireland. By P. D. Hardy.

8. Official Calendar, for 1830. By John Burke, author of the "Peerage," &c.

9. Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, 10. Jacotot's Method of Universal In- struction. By B. Cornelius.

11. Cuvier's Animal Kingdom •' with Ad. ditions by E. Griffiths, &c. Part XXV. Rept' lia.

12. Poems by Charles Crocker.

13. Errors regarding Religion. By James Douglas, Esq. 14. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopmdia, No. IX. Outlines of History.

15. The Moral of Intellect. 16. The Cabinet Album.

17. Adventures of Ariston. By an Eton Boy.

18. Sketches of the Irish Peasantry. 19. Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Vol. VI. Insect Transformations,

1. Tuts is an abridged translation of DE BounniErnvE. The abridgment is faithfully made, but the style is full of Gallieisms, and some of the readings are inaccurate. BONAPARTE designates a Syrian, who had attempted his assassination, as undrole,—which . Dr. MEMUS translates " it fellow.; " knave or varlet is nearer the meaning. The air of .,1400k is mentioned as " the air Marlborough ; " a title by which very few of its admirers will re- cognize it. In one instance we have the obsolete form of expres- sion, " this it behoves to prevent," instead of " this must be pre- vented." These are trifles in a description of literary labour which, we have heard, is paid in London at the rate of sixteen shillings a sheet ; but Dr. MEMUS provokes notice by his allusions to former studies and researches, which have peculiarly fitted him for his task. . The volume is ornamented with a vignette view of Leoben, —for no purpose, that we can perceive, but to show that the translator has been in Carinthia, and that he can sketch. Ten . thousand subjects might have been found more appropriate to the translation.

2. A speech on the opening of a commission in the island of- Malta, eighteen months ago, can have very little interest for the people of England. We notice it merely for the purpose -to stating what kind of trial by jury has been introduced. In the first place, the principle of unanimity has been given up ; secondly, the sacred number twelve is given up—a Maltese jury consists of the mystical number seven ; thirdly, all juries in the island are half Maltese, half strangers, the foreman being the one or the other as chance shall decide; fourthly, the said fore- man is of a different class of jurors from the rest, and one of his functions, where the jury deliberate, is to instruct them in their duty ; fifthly, there is no grand jury ; lastly, Maltese juries are not entitled to say of any criminal, that he is guilty, or not guilty, bet merely that the facts of the indictment are proved, or not proved. Wo be to the printers, when jury trial is extended to their delin- • quencies ! The speech is a combination of mock learning and • real twaddle, quite worthy of the ex-editor of the New Times. We have an account of the manner in which the Judex Quwstionis, in the time of the Roman Republic, decided in trials before the Przetor ;* and the jurors are afterwards gravely told, that they are not to decide on questions of law before or after the trial ! Good jury law was hardly to be expected from one who had neverprac- tised in a court where juries are known, but there is a boldness of assertion in the following remark, that requires notice : "When we are satisfied that an action has been done, and done knowingly and • wilfully, there still remain two other and very different ques- • tions,--namely, what crime does this action constitute ; and what punishment is allotted to that crime ? These are questions of law; and a man of ordinary education cannot be expected to answer them." How then comes it that men of ordinary educa- tion do answer them at every criminal trial that takes place in England? The general return guilty does not mean that the • party committed a particular act,—which Sir Jon' STODDA.RT tells the Maltese is all they have to determine ; but that the act so -committed is misdemeanour, larceny, felony. It is of the crime, . not of the act, that the jury find a prisonergui/ty : guilty of an act is nonsense, philologically as well as legally.

3. These two volumes complete the works of SHERLOCK. We cannot help repeating the objection to the. Summaries, which we made on the appearance of the first volume. The second vo- lume contains twenty-six sermons, which occupy 343 pages, and twenty-six summaries of these sermons, which occupy 151 pages ! Thus, it appears, if the work go on to one hundred volumes, (and it can hardly stop short of that number), while SHERLOCK claims • a couple of volumes, some three-and-thirty, or thereabout, will be devoted to the synoptical exercises of that eminent divine of the Church of England, the Rev. J. S. HUGHES!

4. Mr. DoesoN killed several dogs at various intervals after feeding ; and he found, that the more nearly coincident the period was with that of perfect digestion, the larger was the spleen, and the more blood it contained. Four hours after a full meal, the spleen was large and firm, and the veins gorged with dark-coloured blood ; five hours after, it was very large and turgid, and the quantity of blood still greater ; twelve hours after, the spleen was small and flabby, • and contained almost no blood. The spleen of a doe- was removed, and it was suffered to feed heartily : it exhibited' symptoms of great uneasiriess soon after, and in a month it died, apparently of plethora. A similar experiment was resorted to on another dog, which was fed very sparingly and at short intervals : it showed no symptoms of suffering. The abdomen of a dog that had fasted for ten hours was laid open, while ten ounces of -blood was injected into the jugular vein : the spleen was observed to increase in size as the injection proceeded. Five hours after feed- ing, a quantity of blood was taken from the jugular vein of a dog, and the spleen was observed to diminish as -the blood flowed. From these experiments, coupled with the well-known fact of the non-elasticity of the arterial and the very slight elasticity of the • venous coats, Mr. DoesoN draws the conclusion, that the use of . the spleen is to serve as a reservoir, in which the blood formed after each meal is laid up until it be required to supply the waste consequent on circulation. The paper is extremely curious.

5. This is a useful and handsomely printed volume, illustrated by numerous cuts, and by five very neat maps, and the same • number of vignettes. The compiler is not always correct. The favourite strawberry of the Scotch is not the Chile; and honey is a very poor business affair there, although great attention is paid , to its production. The first and perhaps the best English prac- tical treatise on bees was by a Scotch weaver, whose experiments, strange as it may seem, were made in a garret in Glasgow.

6. This volume contains the Eclogues of Archdeacon WRANG■ HAM, the Georgics of Mr. SOTHEBY, and the two first books of the Eneid from DRYDEN. The Archdeacon's lines are smooth, and Mr. SOTHEBY rhymes very pleasantly also ; but neither of them is over careful of the author's meaning.

" Parcius ista viris tamen objicienda memento"— is not fairly rendered by

" These taunts on men be cautious how you throw."

In the first Georgic, Mr. SOTHEBY has the following passage, from which we defy the (printer's) Devil to pick out any meaning at all:- " Some medicate the beans, with previous toil Steep them in nitre, and dark lees of oil, But false their .swell, and oft the chosen seed, Seethed in slow fires, that maturate the breed."

The original lines are- " Semina vidi equidem multos medicare serentes, Et nitra prius, et nigra perfundere amurca ; Grandior ut fetus siliquis fallacibus esset

Et quamvis exiguo properata maderet."

And the meaning, which Dr. JOHN HUNTER gave five- and-twenty years ago, is—that they night soften easily in the boiling ! Of DRYDEN'S part we need- say nothing ; the dedication accompanies it. The book is embellished with a fine head of VIRGIL, and, like all the rest, is very handsomely got up.

7. This is a good book. It will be found amusing to those whom business precludes from witnessing the wonders it describes, and useful to the happy minority who are not so precluded. The first journey is from Dublin to Belfast ; there are three pleasure tours from that city to Donaghadee, Cohn Glen, and Shane's Castle ; and a fourth, of course, to the celebrated Giant's Causeway. From thence the traveller coasts along to Derry ; from Derry he pro- ceeds to Sligo; and ends with an animated description of the beauties of Lough Erne, Lough Derg, and Enniskillen. The Tourist contains ten plates, an engraved plan of Belfast, and a map.

8. This is a well-arranged and exceedingly useful book. Hardly a day passes in which reference to some one or other of its pages is not necessary.

9. This number contains a useful essay on the rate of Human Mortality and Life Interests. There are a number of other valua - ble papers ; among which we must not omit the continuation of Mr. WILSON'S treatise on Domestic Animals, and one on the Indi- genous Trees of North Britain, by Mr. W. MACGILLI FRAY.

10. The 'first notice of the JACOTOT system of Education that appeared in England, was given, about twelve months ago, in the SPECTATOR. (Page 522.) A more detailed account was afterwards published in -Messrs. TREUTTEL and WriaTz's valuable periodical, the Foreign Quarterly Review. Mr. Cox- NELMS, who is master of a school at Epsom, conducted on the plan of PESTALOZZI, visited Louvain and the great JACOTOT himself, in January last, with the laudable wish to examine at the fountain-head a system in which his profession so much interested him. He has given, in a letter to a friend, an amus- ing account of the inventor, and an outline of the invention. Five specimens of composition in French, Latin, and Greek, are subjoined, which Were written in Mr. CORNELIUS'S presence. The Greek was written by a boy 13-& years old, after three months' study ;—in which time, we well recollect, we had got to about the middle of Ttnrrco. The Greek of JACOTOT'S bey is not very good; still, between writing off-hand Greek of any kind, and the repe- tition of one half of the rudiments of its grammar, there is a dif- ference.

11. This number of Mr. GRIFFITHS'S valuable edition of Curler contains the orders Chelonia and Sauna, with an interesting ap- pendix to each, and seventeen plates. The number is got up with the same care as its predecessors have been.

12. CHARLES CHOKER is a worthy son of Crispin Crispianus, of a bold and gentle race. He lives in Little London,* but his works deserve to be known in Great London. He has written some very smooth and ingenious rhymes ; and, what is much rarer in one who ambitiously aims at the benefiting of mankind from head to heel, he has written a good, sound preface to them, which proves, that though he is a poet, he is a prudent, sensible man. " have no idea," says CHARLES "of becoming an author by profes- sion. The occupation by which I have hitherto procured subsist- ence for my family, is, in my opinion, not less honourable (consi- dering my situation in life) and far more likely to be attended with success.' He has, however, no objection to converting the fruits of his musings into " uppers " and " unders ;" and, as worthy Mrs. Dodd says, "what for no ? " There are hundreds whom we could name, that contrive to procure no despicable subsistence by vamping up materials that are no more to be compared to the sterling stuff of honest CHARLES, than roan is to spamsh.

• Chicbester.

13. Mr. DOUGLAS is a gentleman whose literary talents and zeal for religion we are very much disposed to respect ; but if he.had directed his attention to the good and useful parts of men's faith, instead of a laborious exposition of the bad parts, his book would have been pleasanter, and perhaps equally profitable to his readers. 14 for instance, instead of studying Popery in the pages of MIDDLETON, he had taken the pains to note its influence on the people who profess its doctrines—to observe how much zeal, how much devotion, how much singleheartedness, how much honesty, brotherly kindness, charity, a Roman Catholic community some- times exhibits ; had he marked these things, and then turned to the picture which a Protestant community sometimes exhibits— what lukewarinness, what carelessness, what selfishness, love of lucre, hardheartedness, sordidness—had he compared the inhabi- tants of a Catholic town with the Episcopalians of the metropolis of England, or even with the Presbyterians of the capital of Scot- land—he would perhaps have been led to the conclusion, either that the forms or religion were less influential than speculatists imagined, or that there was more in the Catholic system, with all its errors, than was dreamed of in his narrow philosophy. We have not space to dispute with Mr. DOUGLAS; nor do we think it very necessary to dispute with one who seriously sits down in the year 1830, to prove that the religion of four fifths of Christendom —the religion for ten or twelve centuries of all Christendom—is a gross counterfeit—whose absurdity is impossible to be concealed — a compound of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Polytheism—a putrefying and noisome carcase—a collection of unregenerate men, the doers of every evil world—that the "fire which will burn for ever is heaped up, the breath of the Lord has but to kindle it, and the modern Babylon shall become like the ancient, a desolation, a hissing, and an astonishment for ever." It is quite characteris- tic, while thus quietly and comfortably dropping the Catholics into hell, to find Mr. DOUGLAS indulging in a furious tirade against the persecuting spirit of Romanism.

14. The object of this volume, says its author, is to give a com- prehensive epitome of the history of the world. A comprehen- sive epitome of such a history, in 440 small pages, is no easy task. The distribution of the contents seems rather arbitrarily made. Greece, whose literature and politics have exercised so extended an influence over the civilized world, occupies 33 pages ; the Bar- barians, as they are called—that is, the Goths, Lombards, Bur- gundians, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, to whom, next to the Greeks, the institutions of the moderns owe most of their peculiarities— are discussed in 15 pages ; Rome has 88 pages ; and modern Eu- rope, since the accession of CHARLES the Fifth, has 104 pages assigned it. If we contemplate history in any other light than as a mere collection of facts—in which case the clearest and best form of history is the tabular—it appears to us, that the interest which attaches to the past must be in the ratio of the effects which it has produced on the present. The true way to give to each of the nations of antiquity its proper place in a modern collection; would be to trace the forms of existing societies to their sources, and thus to discover how many of the changes in aneient society had been real, how many had been only formal. As matter of mere curiosity, it may be of some value to know whether Cmsar conquered Pompey or Pompey CEesar—the adorning of the tale is interested in such sort of knowledge ; but the moral is to be pointed by a careful investigation of the consequences of the strug- gle. If the battle of Pharsaly left the condition of Rome where it found it, however proper an account of it may be in a history of Rome, its description deserves no place in a history of the world, which is not a collection of the histories of each nation considered in reference to itself, but of all nations considered in reference to all. On the whole, not altdgether undervaluing this little volume, we cannot look on it as possessing more interest than a chronolo- gical table ; and as a table would have enabled the author to include many more particulars than he has done, we think that, as a work of reference, it would have been more useful than an epitome.

15. The doggerel verses dignified by the title of " a comic poem," are merely the thread upon which the writer has strung a number of bad puns, only fit for the poet's corner of a Sunday paper for Cockneys. It is a poor imitation of H oon's quaint conceits. The cuts of ROBERT CRUICKSHANK are not unworthy of the low humour of MT. MONCRIEFF: ROBERT is to GEORGE CRUICK- SHA_NK as YATES is to MATHEWS.

16. A very tasteful and amusing selection of prose and poetry; the former principally tales, with some clever articles from the pe- riodicals. Now that there is so great a variety of relics to be cleaned from the wide field of modern literature, we think a selec- tion of this kind might consist of contemporary writings only, without prejudice to its interest,—for moderns look and read bet- ter in their own company._ It is a nice book, well got up and suitable for a lady's library. We confess that in reading it we were introduced to several new acquaintances, whom we were pleased to encounter, and few old faces but who could bear a se- cond perusal.

• 17. The youthful compiler of Ariston has shown a laudable at- tention to classical .history. We commend him for his industry ; but advise him, until he have some more shining or useful proof of it to exhibit, to refrain from Writing for the press. Extreme youth may shelter him from the critics, but that which saves him from critics will save him from readers also. It is not our attacks which genius, young or old, has to dread, but our silence. The author of Ariston is a clever boy, and we hope will prove a clever man—he promises well. Our best counsel to him is to go on storing his mind with ideas, and to eschew all purpose of publish- ing for the next four or five years. He may depend on it he will thus study to more purpose than if he were to produce a volume a month until he came of age. 18. These are pleasant sketches, something in Mrs. limes style, but with a higher object than mere amusement. The agri- cultural lessons, generally, as well as the lessons of sobriety and diligence which they inculcate, are excellent. We wish the writer had held off tithes—it is too ticklish a question to be set- tled in a tale.

19. This little volume is equally curious, but not so interesting as some of its predecessors. Unless we can, directly or indi- rectly, bring the world of nature in contact with our own pleasures or commodities, it is in vain that its singularities are subjected to our notice. The author says, if lions underwent the same changes as insects, they would be objects of universal attention. We dare say they would, and that grub lions would be very sedulously sought out and destroyed; and why? Because winged lions would be a very troublesome sort of insects to have hovering fit the neighbourhood of Christian dwellings. The same principle that would lead us to attend to flying lions, makes us curious about bees and silk-worms. Locusts, too, and mosquitoes, are, no doubt, inviting objects where they abound. In short, the book is a good book, and the wood cuts are admirable ; but it is un pets de trop. We would almost as soon be exposed to a bed full of fleas, as read a volume about them ; it sets our flesh a-creeping most uncomfortably.