rznionrcALs.*

THE two oldest of the greater reviews, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly, are rather of average than extraordinary merit. The papers are mostly well we enough chosen- in point of subject, and executed with a fair degree of literary ability, but are not likely to influence public opinion.. There is no article in either periodi- cal that is ahead of the times as regards- topic, or possesses any very striking originality of view,, or any remarkable felicity or power of execution. The paper.. with most. of what the placards call. "novelty" is an article in the Quarterly entitled. "The Triton. and the Minnows " ; being a description of the gigantio steam-vessel now building at Blackwell and- intended for the * The Edinburgh Review, No. CCX. Published by Longman and Co.. The Quarterly Review, No. CXCV1. Published by Murray. The Law -Magazine and. Law Review; or Quarterly Animal of jurisprudence for May 1856. Published by Butterworth. B1 's Edinburgh Magazine. No. CCCCLX.XXVII. Published by Black- wood and Sons.

Fraser's Magazine. No, CCCXVII. Published' by Parker and Son.

The Dublin University Magazine. No. CCLXXX1. Published hyliodges and Co. The Journal of FsycfwlaØcal. Medicine and Mental Pathology. No. 11. Pub- lished by Churchill. The Satan,* Review. May 1856. Published by Ward and Co. Australian trade. It is very " graphic " the external AA' of the ship, so far as it has taken shape, is placed before41 reader's eye ; the leading facts impressive of its magnitude are clearly presented ; when words might fail the aid of woode-ctits is milled in ; the statistics are given tellingly. For example; she "is destined to carry 800 first-class, 2000 second-class, and 1200 third-class passengers, independently of the ship's complement." These passengers will, contrary to the usual method, be placed midships ; and we read something like a guarantee against sea- sickness. Her paddle-wheels "are considerably larger than the i

ccus at Astley's," but she has screws in addition to paddles ; and her total power is that of 3000 horses. "She is the eighth of a mile (680 feet) in length ; from side to side of her hull she mea- sures 83 feet--the width of Pall Mall ; but across the paddle- boxes her breadth is 114' feet—that is, she could just steam up Portland Place scraping with her paddle-boxes the houses on either side." And so it goes on, with striking illustrations, and much vivacity ; but the whole bears the air of a man speaking from a brief or composing a prospectus. The political partisan peeps out at the close, in an attack upon the Admiralty adminis- tration of Sir James Graham and the failure in the Baltic ; very right, but in the wrong place.

The Quarterly also contains the article which touches most di- rectly upon passing events—" The Peace and its Effects on the Condition of Turkey." There is a spice of party politics at start- ing ; but it is upon the whole sound; though not very new. The writer admits that the peace does obtain something, though not so much as another year of war would have given us ; but he seems to feel that we could not have gone on by ourselves. In common with many others, he doubts as to whether the Hatti- scheriff may not do the Turks more harm than the Christians good, supposing an attempt be made to carry it out fully. "The child is father of the man," and both periodicals exhibit some of their old characteristics. The style in the Quarterly is close, solid, and with an air of good workmanship pervading the whole number, however particular papers may differ from one another in other respects. The Edinburgh has rarely the same compactness in the putting together of its papers, or so much terseness of style ; it has more animation probably, though of a rhetorical kind, with something of the swagger of the old Edin- burgh Reviewer, and touches of the ex-cathedra manner. Each review has a notice of Montalembert's England, exhibiting these respective manners. The object of the Quarterly is to attack the public career. and character of the Frenchman. This it does by a minute exhibition of facts, in which the glaring tergiver- sation and Romanist superstition of Montalembert are adduced to show that any opinion of his either on. politics or religion is a. matter of small moment. The object of the Edinburgh is broader ; it is to prove, by reference to "'French Judgments on England- Montalembert and Remusat," with some aid from the French and. Russian cravings for peace and the British wish to go on, the superiority of constitutional government, as well as to let down easily the mismanagement of the war. It contains some facts in reference to the divided command in the Crimea—curious if true; and a good explanation of the causes that induced so cordial a reception of the Emperor in this country last year.

Both periodicals have papers on Ruskin, which further exhibit their respective modes of workmanship ; in purpose they are both at one. Poor Mr. Ruskin is mauled in every way—principles, taste, style, good feeling, and good manners.

Two more papers in the Edusburgh exhaust the articles on con- temporary topics of whatever kind. There is an historical sketch of Papal usurpations, in the form of a notice on "The Austrian Concordat" ; rather heavy, from the past occupying so much space, and the absence of living characters in connexion with in- stant events: An apology for the modern Greeks, and aspirations for their future, in which the hopes are scarcely supported by the facts. No enemy has drawn a more unfavourable picture than this- " The population of the kingdom of Greece does not augment ; the culti- vation of the soil is strangely and wilfully neglected ; and instead of those habits of industry which ought to flourish among a free peasantry, the ten- dency to atrocious agrarian outrages, called by the Greeks brigandage,' has lamentably increased, and prevails to an extent which is deeply dis- graceful to the Government and to the community. The excesses commit- ted within the last few months by these bands of robbers, murderers, and extortioners, are so abominable, that all personal security is at an end in many districts, and nothing but the presence of a certain number of foreign troops appears to save the kingdom from the horrors of social dissolution. . . . . Such is the terror inspired by these banditti, that in some villages the peasantry have refused to BOW corn for sale, and are falling into com- plete despair."

Each review has four literary papers. In this branch the palm. must for two instances be assigned to the Quarterly. The sketch of Southey, induced by the late publication of his Letters, is not quite so favourable as former notices,, but is more lifelike : the weaknesses are plaeedin brighter light. ".Lewis on Early Roman

History" is a fair, painstaking, and sensible paper; doing full

justice In Sir George, and supplying his logical shortcomings. "The Haldanes," one of those biographical essays for which the Quarterly has long been famous, gives the beading events in the lives of two representative men, who• some fifty years ago began in Scotland a work of the kind that John Wesley had accom- plished in England nearly half a century before.

Two old friends appear with a new name, if not a new face. "The Law Magazine" and "the Law Review" have become the Quarterly Journal of Jurisprudence. The papers in this first IMIllber are numerous and various, but the great majority bear upon strictly professional matters, and those whose subjects are mere general are treated in a technical way. We seem to miss the broader handling of the old precursors with the biographies of great lawyers, sometimes grave, sometimes with a lighter manner,but mostly rendering the practitioner subordinate to the man. A main feature in the review of Mrs. Fitzherbert's Memoirs is the forfeiture of the crown by George the Fourth by his mar-. riage with a Roman Catholic ; and the Duke of Wellington is praised. for opposing the opening of the parcel at Couttes' lest there be positive proof of the matter. The "Constitutional His- tory of Jersey," from Mr. Le Quesne's volume and other sources, ex- hibits some curious points connected with the laws and legal practice Of the island; but the plan is too desultory. A want of purpose and completeness is traceable in the "History of Jurisprudence," being a review of Puffendorf and Leibnitz : their writings, how- ever, are well noticed. The "Four Heirs to Sovereignty" in France is the neatest paper in respect of structure. It presents an account of the state flummery offered up on the birth of each of the three preceding heirs, and the certainty with which a future was predicted for the baby in its cradle especially for the King of Rome and the present Count de Chamiord. The author's view of the infant Napoleon's prospects is rather hopeful than confi- dent. He has a little flattery for the Emperor's speech for its rebuke of flatterers and his conception of the situation. " Life- Peerages " is an exhausted subject, unless sonic new plan or some fresh arguments were brought forward.

An article on "Fish-ponds and Fishing-boats," in Blackwood, professes to supply an important desideratum in ichthyology. According to this piscatorial authority, "the so-called natural history of the herring, as given in books, is the baseless fabric of a vision." Like a host of other popular errors, it has been copied by one writer after another without the slightest attempt to as- Certain the truth. Instead of coming from the Hyperborean seas in immense shoals every summer, as our naturalists have always taught, it is now affirmed that "the herring is a native fish, born and bred along our shores, which it never leaves for any length of either time or space." The paper is evidently by a practical hand, who has studied the subject in the right way, on board a fishing-boat. "Letters from the Banks of the Irrawaddy" give a lively sketch of a visit paid to the capital of the Burman empire, last summer. If the architectural wonders of that newly-con- quered region are equal to what the writer describes, they offer a wide field of investigation for scientific travellers. Some of the ruined buildings are spoken of as " sublime " ; and the style of ornamentation, consisting of pilasters, "with regular capital and base mouldings of very strongly Roman character," will furnish an admirable argument for those theorists who contend that the Burmese are lineal descendants of the lost legions of Crassus. "The Scot Abroad" follows up the subject opened in last number with notices of soldiers of fortune from North Britain who have played a distinguished part in Russia and other parts of the Con- tinent. The commencement of a new story, entitled "The Meta- morphoses," will, no doubt, be the most popular thing in the number; and next to it, probably, the pleasant discursive essay on "The Art of Travel," from the welcome pen of Tlepolemus.

Pleasant as it may be for a man of letters to find himself the subject of universal criticism, we question if Mr. Croker will feel much gratification in the result of his recent literary enterprise. Few men connected with the periodical press have incurred a larger amount of personal ill-will than he has done during the last half-century, by the mode in which he applied the lash ; and now that he has laid himself open by his peculiar dealing with Montalembert's work on England, the lash is applied to himself unsparingly. From a recent correspondence in the Times, re- garding the way in which that work had been rendered into English, the public, inferred that a certain "H. B." was the translator : but whoever has to answer for that part of the .business, the writer of an article in Fraser, on M. Mon- talembert and John Wilson Croker," scouts the notion that any person is responsible for the wholesale garbling and suppression of which he complains, save Mr. Croker. The general scope and tendency of the alterations, he contends, was to exclude from the translation certain statements which did not square with Mr. Croker's Tory predilections. The extent to which he exercised his power of excision appears to have been much greater than most people were led to believe, even from Mr. Hayward's state- ment of the case in the Times. Numerous instances of unlicensed freedom are given, but the heaviest inculpation of the transla- tor's good faith is contained in the following passage- " He has wholly suppressed, and stifled in the most faithless fashion, a whole chapter in this work, consisting of no less than twelve pages of French. That chapter, O'Connell and the House of Lords,' is the tenth in the French edition ; and in order to cover this deceit and fraud, the translator places the letter X in his version over the eleventh chapter of M. de Montabmbert : The Public Schools and the Universities.' Had any young and unknown author been guilty of an artifice of this kind, at once so dishonest and disingenuous, how spitefully and acridly would John Wil- son Croker have scourged him in the Quarterly! This chapter is one of the most interesting and able in the book."

The third volume of the " (Euvres de Napoleon II!" has furnished the h.roundivork of a very ingenious paper in the Dublin Uniceratty Mafazine on the character and recent history of the French Emperor. Though the subject is rather hacknied, the writer contrives to eve it novelty by quoting from speeches made by Louis Napoleon before the coup d'etat, certain passages which indicate the course he intended to pursue. In the speech at the Hotel de Ville on the 10th of December 1849, for example, when he was looked upon as a mere stopgap to the revolution, the following remark, though ridiculed at the time, might have led his enemies to suspect that he would become a much more formidable antagonist than they were disposed to consider him.

" Ce qui donne une force irresistible 'name an mortel le plus humble, c'est d'avoir devant lui un grand but it atteindre, et derriere une grande cause a defendre."

In 1849 such a sentiment as that from the lips of the hero of Boulogne and Strasbourg only provoked laughter : how different it appears in 1856, as we look back to it through the events of the last six years !

An article "On Moral and Criminal Epidemics," in the Journal of Psychological Medicine contains some valuable information on a topic which has recently excited a good deal of attention. Among other causes to which the spread of moral contagion is attributed, the writer makes the following remarks on the un- certainty of science, as a fruitful source of evil-

" The public press teems with illustrations of this position perpetually ; we have scientific evidence for the defence and scientific evidence for the prose- cution, almost as formally as we have counsel. The Staffordshire papers announce that Mr. Palmer's defence is to be purely scientific. On one of the most important points now before the public—the detection of a subtile and powerful poison—the most eminent men are at variance. That they should differ among themselves in the details of a science not yet perfected, is quite natural ; but that these things should be allowed to go forth to the world, so that men may screen their enormous vices under the wing of science, is a phenomenon so monstrous as to be scarcely credible. . . . . If there be three men who are capable of conducting an impartial chemical investiga- tion, how much more weight and conviction would their unbiased analysis carry to midsoftli m7 disputed casesofgisoning, tlaareiainedgzepnpdefeeilIeanosysI'moIpessionaieilence

"The life of a literary veteran who died in harness," would be an appropriate title for the principal article in the Eclectic _Re- view. John Kitto, the subject of- the biography, was one of the ablest self-taught men of the present century ; indeed, taking into account all the difficulties he had to struggle against, we question if there be any instance on record of so remarkable a progress as that which he made from first to last. "Totally deaf from his thirteenth year, he became an inmate of a workhouse when fourteen, a parish apprentice at seventeen, and nearly died of misery, solitude of heart, and unrequited toil under the ty- ranny of a base master; and yet, despite his small sehooling, and almost utter friendliness, he contrived closely to study many of the best books," and ultimately to achieve an honourable position as a man of letters. With all his book learning, however, he was unfortunately ignorant of the laws of health. Ile appears not to have been aware of the important physiological fact that "it is unnatural to live as the cherubs on the tombs are represented— like winged heads moved only in thought and feeling." He neglected due exercise in the open air ; worked with little inter- ruption from four in the mornmg till nine at night, and died of over-work of brain, in his fiftieth year.