cave, "talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, and so on, till they were all out of sight, and that they all walked infallibly straight, without making one false step, though all were alike blind." With these must I class those assertors of the development hypothesis who can see in the upward progress of being only the operations of an incomprehending and incomprehensible law, through which, in the course of unreckoned ages, the lower tribes and families have risen into the higher, and inferior into superior natures, and in virtue of which, in short, the animal creation has grown, in at least its nobler specimens, altogether unwittingly, without thought or care on its own part, and without intelligence on the part of the operating law, from irrational to rational, and risen in the scale from the mere promptings of instinct to the highest exercise of reason, from apes and baboons to Bacons and Newtons. The blind lead the blind;-the unseeing law operates on the unperceiving creatures; and they go, not together into the ditch, but direct onwards, straight as an arrow, and higher and higher at every step.

“Another class look with profound melancholy on that great city of the dead,— the burial place of all that ever lived in the past,-which occupies with its everextending pavements of gravestones, and its ever-lengthening streets of tombs and sepulchres, every region opened up by the geologist. They see the onward procession of being as if but tipped with life, and nought but inanimate carcasses all behind, dead individuals, dead specics, dead genera, dead creations,-a universe of death; and ask whether the same annihilation which overtook in turn all the past, shall not onr day overtake our own race also, and a time come when men and their works shall have no existence save as stone-pervaded fossils locked up iu thə rock forever? Nowhere do we find the doubts and fears of this class more admirably portrayed than in the works of perhaps the most thoughtful and suggestive of living poets :

I care for nothing; all shall go :
Thou makest thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath :
I know no more.' And he,-shall he,
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
And built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,

And love creation's final law,

Though Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With ravine shrieked against his creed,-

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,-
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?
No more!-a monster, then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tore each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
O, life, as futile then as frail,-

O for the voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer or redress :
Behind the veil, behind the veil !"

The sagacity of the poet here,—that strange sagacity which seems so nearly akin to the prophetic spirit,-suggests in this noble passage the true reading of the enigma. The appearance of man upon the scene of being constitutes a new era in creation; the operations of a new instinct come into play,-that instinct which anticipates a life after the grave, and reposes in implicit faith upon a God alike just and good, who is the pledged "rewarder of all who diligently seek Him." And in looking along the long line of being,—ever rising in the scale from higher to yet higher manifestations. or abroad on the lower animals, whom instinct never deceives, can we hold that man, immeasurably higher in his place and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspirations, than all that ever went before him, should be, notwithstanding, the one grand error in creation, -the one painful worker, in the midst of present trouble, for a state into which he is never to enter, the befooled expectant of a happy future, which he is never to see? Assuredly no. He who keeps faith with all ́his humbler creatures,-who gives to even the bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare,—will to a certainty not break faith with man,—with man, alike the deputed lord of the present creation, and the chosen heir of all the future. We have been looking abroad on the old geologic burying-grounds, and deciphering the strange inscriptions on their tombs; but there are other buryinggrounds, and other tombs,--solitary church-yards among the hills, where the dust of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the ashes of the wise and good; nor are there awanting, on even the monuments of the perished races, frequent hieroglyphics, and symbols of high meaning, which darkly intimate to us, that while their burial yards contain but the debris of the past, we are to regard the others as charged with the sown seed of the future."

In conclusion, it should be stated that the value of the explanatory portions of the present work is much increased by the addition of numerous, well-executed engravings. Most of these, however, greet us with a strangely familiar aspect. The greater number appeared originally in a little elementary work in French by Beudant, and in the "Cours de Paléontologie," of Alcide d'Orbigny; but they have done duty since the epoch of their first appearance, in several English and German works; amongst others, oddly enough-when considered in connexion with the present book-in that work of very

opposite tendencies, the "Lehrbuch" of Carl Vegt. We must except however, the illustrations of the last two lectures-" The Fossil Floras of Scotland"—which appear to be original. These lectures : in a scientific point of view the most important in the volume, scarcely belong to the general plan of the work, and hence we have not alluded to them in our review. We trust, however, to give some extracts from them in a future number of the Journal.

E. J C.

The Canada Educational Directory and Calendar, for 1857-8; containing an account of the Schools, Colleges, and Universities; the Professions; Scientific and Literary Institutions; Decisions of the Courts on School Questions, &c., &c. Edited by Thomas Hodgins, B.A. Toronto: Maclear & Co., 1857.

It is no discreditable or unsatisfactory evidence of the rapid progress which Canada is making in the all-important step of providing for the intellectual growth of the province, that such a work as this can be issued with a reasonable prospect of its success as a trading speculation. The number of those interested in educational questions must be considerable, before such could be the case, and to all such the "Canada Educational Directory" can be confidently recommended. The courses of study and requirements for the various examinations in Schools and Colleges, for Masterships in Common and Grammar Schools, for Degrees in Universities, admission as Students or Barristers-at-Law, Surveyors, &c., are here set forth in an exceedingly convenient and accessible forin. Lists are also given of the Office-Bearers, Professors, Teachers, Graduates, &c., with a brief, and on the whole impartial notice of the various constitutious of the very diverse educational institutions of the province. Here and there remarks occur reminding us of the conflicting opinions. which prevent a perfect union among all the sincere promoters of a liberal education throughout the province; and one or two notes and comments scarcely correspond with the character of the work; but the editor deserves credit for the general aim at impartiality apparent throughout. In some cases information has been withheld, and in the whole compilation considerable labour must have been incurred to secure the accuracy in minute details, without which the object aimed at in its publication would be defeated.

In addition to the varied contents, thus summarily noticed, there is also a useful department, embracing the principal Scientific and Literary Associations of the province, which already begin to assume a very creditable aspect. Unpretending as this work is, it will be valuable to the historian of Cauada, hereafter, when the harvest of this good seed-time is beginning to be reaped. We wish the work all success, and hope to see it established as a regular annual publication, improving yearly with the progress it records.

D. W.

Indigenous Races of the Earth; or new chapters of Ethnological Inquiry; including Monographs on special departments of Philology, Iconography, Cranioscopy, Paleontology, Pathology, Archæology, Comparative Geography, and Natural History: contributed by Alfred Maury, Bibliothécaire de l'Institut de France, &c. &c., Francis Pulszky, of Lubocz and Cselfalva, Fellow of the Hungarian Academy, &c. &c., and J. Aitkin Meigs, M. D., Projessor of the Institutes of Medicine in the Philadelphia College of Medicine, &c. &c.,; presenting fresh investigations, documents, and materials. By J. C. Nott, M.D., and Geo. R. Gliddon, authors of "Types of Mankind." Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.,

1857.

very

Such is the title, in a greatly condensed form, of the new work by the authors of the " Types of Mankind;" wherein they have carried out still further even, than in their former joint production, the cooperative system, applied of old so effectively in a different branch of English literature; when Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger, conjointly produced works which defy the modern critic to apportion to each the product of his gifted pen. No such homogenous character, however, marks the modern literary edifice. Each independent labourer carves his own masonry, inscribes it with his mark, and places it, finished, at the disposal of the master-builder, to be harmonised as chance or fortune shall direct, with the stones that are ready to be built with it into the superstructure. The coherence in fact, is little more than such as pertains to the various independent articles which go to make up a cyclopædia, where absolute concurrence in opinions, or even in statement of facts, is not indispensable; while the whole makes

a bulky quarto volume, which, as it has just come to hand as these sheets are passing through the press, we can only notice very cursorily. And glancing first at that which comes last in the order of arrangement, the special chapters devoted to the controversial theme of "the Monogenists and Polygenists," or in simple words: the unity, or the diversity of the human race, as the descendants of one, or of several pairs; we cannot but regret the form in which it is here put forth, as calculated only to excite unnecessary prejudices against the whole inquiry. Notwithstanding the vehemence of its offensive and defensive warfare against all who venture to maintain their literal interpretation, in simple faith, of the words of their Eng lish Bible, that God hath made of one blood all nation of men :" the author himself confesses that whilst according to his present opinions, "the reasonings in favour of the diversity view preponderate greatly over those against it, he does not, nevertheless, hold the latter to be, as yet, absolutely proven." Such being the uncertainty even in the mind of the boldest and most aggressive champion in the cause of a diversity of origin for the human race, we feel assured that the great majority of Ethnologists must deplore with us, the premature dragging into the arena of theological controversy of a science which is still in its mere infancy; has its data to accumulate, its first principles to determine, and even a commonly recognized nomenclature and termonology to agree upon; and is therefore totally unprepared to buckle on the armour fitted for offensive warfare. What faith can the simple learner be expected to repose, for example, in arguments based on Egyptian chronology, when no two of its authorities can be got to agree on its dates. Within a brief interval of five years, the era of Menes alone shifted back and forward over a range of variations differing by upwards of two thousand two hundred years. Since then it has shown no greater tendency towards a stable equilibrium. Bunsen, indeed, it would seem, from private information of his most recent views just received, (p. 587,) makes of Menes' Egyptian reign (B.C. 3623,) quite a modern era, and starting with the origin of mankind 20,000 years before Christ (1) he gives us an Arian migration circa B.C. 11,000; an Egyptian Republic, B.C. 10,000; a Theban Hierarchy B.C. 7,231; and an elective monarch extending from the precise date, B.C. 5,413 to the very year in which Menes-the first of us moderns-united Egypt under his single sceptre, exactly 5480 years ago! In some such comprehensive ante-historic eras, Mr. Gliddon fully "Egypt," he remarks in summing up an ideal

concurs.

VOL. II.-0.