New Publications
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NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW1 for January has been sent us by the Publishers, Leonard Scott & Co., 79 Fulton street. It is a number of average merit, and contains, as usual, a great variety of interesting reading. The writer of the leading article on “Prospects of the Indian Empire” goes over nearly the same ground and comes to the same conclusions as do most of the more sagacious organs of public opinion in Great Britain, in regard to this difficult question. It is by British capital, he says, applied by British enterprise to native labor that India’s revenues are to be augmented and her resources developed, and it is by British troops that the authority of the Supreme power can alone be securely upheld. British legislators are to frame a code of laws which shall give equal protection to the rights of every creed. The rebellion is regarded as being not against England merely, but against civilization, and it is to be dealt with accordingly. “Millman’s History of Latin Christianity” is the title of the following article. It is able and elaborate, as it may well be, more than three years having elapsed since the publication of the work under review. We pass over the two succeeding papers, respectively entitled “Scottish University Reform,” and the “Addington and Pitt Administrations,” to a highly eulogistic critique on a new work which has attracted a large share of attention across the water—“Tom Brown’s Schooldays.” This book furnishes a complete and graphic picture of the great public schools of England. This is followed by a review of “Abbe Le Dieu’s Memoirs of Bossuet.” A singular fortune, that which befell this book—encouraging, besides, to authors who are waiters upon fortune and aspirants to posthumous fame. The writer in his life time could not find a purchaser, although his manuscript was abundantly praised, and now at length, after the lapse of a century and a half, it has found a publisher. For twenty years the private secretary of Bossuet, the confidant of his thoughts and labors, he, above all other men, was competent for the task, and according to the testimony of the reviewer the book is rich in interesting material. “The Hawkers’ Literature of France”—or in other words French popular literature ordinarily distributed by colporteurs, is the subject of the next article. The number concludes with a review of Lord Overstone’s “Tracts on the Metallic Currency.”
THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW for January, same publisher, is a very good number. It opens with an able and exhaustive paper on a subject that has, of late, attracted the careful consideration of the English press—viz: “The Difficulties of Railroad Engineering.” In the following article, “The Historic Peerage” of England is treated of. Then comes a genial and appreciative paper on “Tobias Smollett.” The author of “Peregrine Pickle” receives ample justice at the hands of his commentator. But the best criticism on Fielding’s great contemporary is, after all, contained in Thackeray’s admirable lectures. It takes genius to fully recognize and understand genius. Thousands to whom England’s immortal Humorists had been as a sealed book have made their acquaintance under the cheerful guidance of the author of the “Newcomes,” with an ever increasing delight. An article on “Wiltshire” and another on “Church Extension” follow. An article on “Woolwich Arsenal” comes after and one on “Our Indian Empire” concludes the number. The most noticeable article is, perhaps, that on “The Sense of Pain in Man and Animals.” From the opening we quote a paragraph or two on what we may term
THE BENEFICIENCE OF PAIN.
Sir Humphry Davy when a boy, with the defiant constancy of youth which had as yet suffered nothing, held the opinion that pain was no evil. He was refuted by a crab who bit his toe when he was bathing, and made him roar load enough to be heard half a mile off. If he had maintained instead, that pain was a good, his doctrine would have been unimpeachable. Unless the whole constitution of the world were altered our very existence depends upon our sensibility to suffering. An anecdote, which is quoted by Dr. Carpenter in his 'Principles of Human Physiology,' from the 'Journal of a Naturalist,' shows the fatal effects of a temporary suspension of this law of nature. A drover went to sleep on a winter's evening upon the platform of a lime-kiln, with one leg resting upon the stones which had been piled up to burn through the night. That which was gentle warmth when he lay down became a consuming fire before he rose up. His foot was burnt off above the ancle, and when, roused in the morning by a man who superintended the lime-kiln, he put his stump, unconscious of his misfortune, to the ground, the extremity crumbled into fragments. Whether he had been lulled into torpor by the carbonic acid driven off from the limestone, or whatever else may have been the cause of his insensibility, he felt no pain, and through his very exemption from this lot of humanity expired a fortnight afterwards in Bristol hospital. Without the warning voice of pain, life would be a series of similar disasters. The crab, to the lasting detriment of chemistry, might have eaten off the future Sir Humphry's foot while he was swimming with out his entertaining the slightest suspicion of the ravages which were going on. Had he survived the injuries from the crab, he would yet have been cut off in the morning of his famous career, if, when experimenting upon the gases, the terrible oppression at his chest had not warned him to cease inhaling the carburetted hydrogen, nor, after a long struggle for life, would he have recovered to say to his alarmed assistant, 'I do not think I shall die.' Without physical pain, infancy would be maimed, or perish, before experience could inform it of its dangers. Lord Kaimes advised parents to cut the fingers of their children 'cunningly' with a knife, that the little innocents might associate suffering with the glittering blade before they could do themselves a worse injury; but if no smart accompanied the wound, they would cut up their own fingers with the same glee that they cut a stick, and burn them in the candle with the same delight that they burn a piece of paper in the fire. Without pain, we could not proportion our actions to the strength of our frame, or our exertions to its powers of endurance. In the impetuosity of youth we should strike blows that would crush our hands, and break our arms; we should take leaps that would dislocate our limbs; and no longer taught by fatigue that the muscles needed repose, we should continue our sports and our walking tours till we had worn out the living tissue with the same unconsciousness that we now wear out our coats and our shoes. The very nutriment which is the support of life would frequently prove our death. Mirabeau said of a man who was as idle as he was corpulent, that his only use was to show how far the skin would stretch without bursting. Without pain, this limit would be constantly exceeded, and epicures, experiencing no uneasy sensations, would continue their festivities until they met with the fate of the frog in the fable, who was ambitious of emulating the size of the ox. Sir Charles Bell mentions the case of a patient who had lost the sense of heat in his right hand, and who, unconscious that the cover of a pan which had fallen into the fire was burning hot, took it out and deliberately returned it to its proper place to the destruction of the skin of the palm and fingers. This of itself would be an accident of incessant occurrence if the monitor were wanting which makes us drop such materials more hastily than we pick them up. Pain is the grand preserver of existence, the sleepless sentinel that watches over our safety, and makes us both start away from the injury that is present, and guard against it carefully in the time to come.
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY,2 for March, has been received. Its contents are varied and entertaining. Perhaps the feature of the present number is the continuation of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” This series of papers is kept up with admirable spirit. They overflow with wit, wisdom and geniality. The paper on “Aaron Burr” is a rather severe critique on Parton’s life of that unscrupulous egotist and callous debauchee. The writer, in his comments, is not less severe than just. “Saints and their Bodies” is the title of an article in relation to the alleged falling-off in health and vitality of American men and women. The author concedes that the allegation is well-founded and makes an earnest plea for more physical exercise among the great body of our merchants and professional men. This matter is beginning to excite attention throughout the country, and is being discussed seriously in our daily newspapers and in all our serials. And it is well that it is so. Surely no matter can touch us more nearly—none deserves more careful consideration and in none would a reform be more beneficial. When one looks at the hosts of our “city young men” who are prematurely faded by contact with day-book and ledger or etiolated by dissipation, one feels a startling sense of the necessity of a return to “first principles,” or at least some approach to it, in our way of life. Undoubtedly, as things stand at present, we are losing ground daily in this matter of physical health, and it is perhaps the only attribute of power in which the American People are losing ground. To us, then, it has a stupendous importance. There are several other meritorious articles which we lack space to notice in detail. The poetry in the present number is much above the ordinary level. The weakest point about the new monthly is in the department of tales. “The Diamond Lens,” which was the most readable that has yet appeared in that line, has given rise to what Sir Lucius O’Trigger would denominate “A very pretty quarrel as it stands,” and sundry rather ugly charges of plagiarism have been laid at the author’s door.