the misanthropical vein of thought belonging to a considerable portion of the poetry of the nineteenth century, admits the splendid results to which physical science can point. "What more dazzling in speculation than the discovery of Neptune? What more stimulating to curiosity than the researches of Goethe, Cuvier, and Owen? What more enticing to the adventurer than the geological prediction of the gold-fields of Australia? In chemistry we have well-nigh realised the dream of alchemy, and pierced the mystery of transmutation." And then, after enumerating a long list of similar triumphs, he concludes: "A thousand years hereafter poets and historians may write of our great engineers and scientific discoverers as we now speak of Arthur and his paladins, Faust and the devil, Cortes and Pizarro. Why should not those who figure in the fairy tales of science obtain the renown which is rightfully theirs?" Why indeed? They will obtain it. Mr. Dallas himself admits it. There is no longer a possibility of separating art or literature from the progress of science. Mr. Dallas's attempt to reduce criticism to a science is a proof of the fact. If Pope's maxim holds true, that the proper study of mankind is man, so also are his works. It is the same in this respect with regard to man as it is with regard to the works of his Creator. The works of man tend to the advancement of civilisation-that is to say, to the amelioration of the condition of the greater number; the works of the Creator tend to provide for the wants of ALL creation. There can be no possible antithesis, then, between the works of God and those of man, save in a mental misconception of the relation which the two bear to one another.

It is possible that in the rush of the intellectual current all in one direction it fares ill with mental science-" with all the sciences that may more strictly be called human, including that of criticism"-but can that be wondered at? Mr. Dallas is very caustic upon the rage for science which induces the tailors of London, like their ideals of Laputa, to abjure tape and take altitudes and longitudes with a quadrant, and to baptise their masterpieces Eureka; but when people are engaged in bringing the New World in contact with the Old by an electric cable, can they be expected to give all the attention that is due to Mr. G. H. Lewes's History of Philosophy, in which the author insists that the chief problems of metaphysics are insoluble? Happily, Mr. Dallas's work is saved from the sad neglect with which so many bantlings of the human brain are treated. It is an attempt to bring criticism within the pale of science; it belongs, therefore, to the age we live in; it belongs to the category of things which contribute to the progress of our time, and it cannot, therefore, be passed over in silence any more than photography or the spectrum analysis.

The picture so ably sketched, however, of the various points of view from which is produced the despair of any science of human nature is certainly not encouraging. The jargon of philosophy, we are told, is the curse of criticism, systems are soon forgotten, the forms of current literature are adverse to system, the science of human nature is not itself exact, and yet all this despair, the author hopefully advances, is founded on mistake. It is the neglect of the moral sciences, he argues, which gives a hollowness to our literature; and all criticism which does not either achieve science, or definitely reach towards it, is mere mirage.

"As the apostle declared of himself, that though he could speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and had not charity, he was become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal; so we may say of the critic, that though he have all faith, so that he can remove mountains, and have not science, he is nothing. There are men like Iago, who think that they are nothing if not critical, but the critic is nothing if not scientific." To which sentiment, we, to the fullest extent, and most unreservedly, give our entire adhesion. Only to the study of the moral sciences we should add the study of all sciences-the acquirement of all knowledge. The chapter of Mr. Dallas's work on the "Corner Stone" evolves the further important principles that a science of criticism implies that there is something common to the arts-an admitted relationship of the arts and a unity of art—that the Aristotelian doctrine that Art has a common method-that of imitation-and which constituted the corner-stone of ancient criticism, is false, as is also the case with the German theory that Art has a common theme; but that Art is the manifestation of the Beautiful, of the True, and of Power, and that the unity of the arts and their common purpose lie in giving pleasure-that feeling which is beyond science, beyond knowledge, to which art reaches, and which it is difficult to express in one word. This is all clear argument: not so the following passage: "If art be the opposite of science, the end of art must be antithetical to the end of science. But the end of science is knowledge. What, then, is its antithesis-the end of art? Shall we say ignorance? We cannot say that it is ignorance, because that is a pure negation. But there is no objection to our saying-life ignorant of itself, unconscious life, pleasure." Now, pleasure is simply the enjoyment in moderation of all or any of the attributes of man. And whilst the intellectual powers are gratified as they are in art, there cannot be said to be any antithesis between art and science; but there is this advantage of art over science in giving rise to feelings of pleasure, that at the same time that it gratifies the intellect, it awakens the moral feelings and even the passions. Hence its scope is greater than science, in some respects, yet each, while seeking to ameliorate the condition of man in different ways, unite in the one purport of obtaining for him new sources of pleasure.

"If art be the minister," Mr. Dallas goes on to say, "criticism must be the science of pleasure." And this he declares to be so obvious a truth, that since, in the history of literature and art, the inference has never been drawn, a doubt may arise in some minds as to the extent to which the production of pleasure has been admitted in criticism as the first principle of art. He therefore feels himself called upon to set the authorities in array, and to show what in every school of criticism is regarded as the relation of art to pleasure. No trifling undertaking, viewed in a merely literary point of view, yet ably and efficiently done. The discussion, however, like most others, leads to a digression on Imagination, which is here held out as a special function. Not "Ideality," nor yet the active state of the intellectual faculties, but as "the hidden soul." This is the most amusing if not the most philosophical portion of the whole inquiry, and we find ourselves most unexpectedly carried into all the mysteries of mysticism, somnambulism, biology, the play of thought, and the romance of mind.

Believing that art is the opposite of science, and its field, therefore, the unknown and the unknowable, Mr. Dallas admits, at the same time, that the statement sounds too much like a paradox for ordinary use. People, he says, do not understand how a secret exists which cannot be told; yet there are current phrases which may help us to understand this paradoxical definition of art. If the object of art, he adds, were to make known, it would not be art, but science. It is to the hidden soul, the unknown part of us, that the artist appeals. This definition of art, as of the empire of the unknown, is further explained, first by reference to poetry, then to music, and next to painting and sculpture. Music especially, we are told, is the art which has more direct connexion than any other with the unknown of thought. But it might be asked, if the domain of art is the unknown, how can it ever be the subject of science? This question is answered by reference to biology, which is defined as the science of something the essence of which is unknown.

Three or four chapters devoted to the consideration of Pleasure, remind us that some derive a peculiar pleasure from criticism, especially when harshly dealt. It lowers the author to the level of the mediocrity of the would-be critical reader. Mr. Dallas himself points out that pleasure is sometimes, in a moral sense, odious. The great point, however, is the divergence of the teachings of Sir William Hamilton as the representative of European opinion upon the question, and those of Mill, which are a mere reassertion of Hume's philosophy. The reader will find the whole question fairly discussed and afterwards expounded under the heads of Mixed Pleasure, Pure Pleasure, and Hidden Pleasure. Sir William Hamilton's theory of pleasure, founded on the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, so severely impugned by Mill and his followers, but adopted by Mr. Dallas, is that it is "a reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion of a power of whose energy we are conscious: pain a reflex of the overstrained or repressed exertion of such a power." Such a definition, like that of Kant, emanates, as we have before explained, spontaneously, from the theory of the constitution of man considered in relation to external objects.

To the psychological branch of the argument belongs also the inquiry into the ethics of art, and the temper in which the consideration of the delicate subject of the moral bearings of art is discussed is worthy of all praise. The "world of fiction," as it is termed, finds here an able defender, one who justly remarks that when art is accused of mendacity, it is by prosers and by persons unendowed with the gift of imagination -deprived, in fact, of an additional sense. The discussion upon the movement and opinions of our own times-the ethical current-as Mr. Dallas calls it, is also especially replete with interesting matter, with varied information, and with subject for thought. It constitutes a long but worthy conclusion to a work which places its author high in the ranks of the thinking men of the day, and which must be in the hands of all who would pretend to be on a level with the opinions, the intellectual movement, and the progress in literature and art, in their own times.

THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY AFTER THE WAR.

DURING the four years that the war between the Northern and Southern States of America lasted, the Shenandoah Valley was the constant scene of cavalry raids, predatory incursions, and sanguinary battles; in consequence of which it suffered more than any other section of the country, as it was laid waste alike by friend and by foe; by the one to prevent their enemies deriving sustenance from its luxuriant crops while in their occupation, by the other to supply themselves with whatever they could take possession of as likely to prove useful to them; the bridges being destroyed by those in retreat to check pursuit; the snake fences and pinewoods burnt up by those in advance to afford fuel for their camp-fires; the dwelling-houses and barns demolished in retaliation for sympathy shown or information afforded by the inhabitants to the Confederates, with whose sentiments nearly all were imbued.

Since the names of the different places, towns, and villages have been made so familiar to all of us, it may not prove uninteresting to give an account of a tour made through the Shenandoah Valley in the month of April of last year, just twelve months after the conclusion of hostilities between the conqueror and the conquered; with some description of the traces still left of its various occupations, the devastation caused to its highly cultivated fields and numerous previously thriving homesteads, and the present poverty of its inhabitants.

I start from Baltimore, after having visited a "monster bazaar" that was being held in that city in aid of the many Southerners left destitute by the war; those proclivities which had been repressed and kept under by force, so long as they were likely to prove dangerous, now finding vent in a form more suitable to the sex of the "fair" yet "Yankeedetestating" Baltimoreans, who are celebrated alike for their beauty and their antipathy to the North. In company with a friend, I take tickets by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway to Harper's Ferry, and enter the "cars," that peculiar American institution so unsuited to the ideas of comfort and exclusiveness of any European nation. The "cars," as they are invariably styled, consist of a series of long boxes, supported at each end by two pairs of wheels, and provided with a double row of uncomfortable seats, that allow just sufficient room for two persons to sit tightly packed; and leave a passage through the centre which serves to connect the doors at either end, and affords a promenade for the conductor, fidgety passengers, and numerous small boys who are constantly passing through, slamming the doors behind them. These boys throw periodicals, illustrated papers, and cheap pirated novels on each one's lap as they pass, and return after a while to collect, or, should you have got interested in their contents, to receive the value of them. Interspersed with these are apples, cakes, pies, drops, and candies of all flavours, for which there seemed to be a large demand. In the middle stands a large iron stove, the heat of which greatly adds to the already close and stuffy feeling engendered by the crowded state of the car, and which appears to be much appreciated, for it is generally the centre of a select party of expectorating tobacco-chewers, who succeed in making its neighbourhood anything but pleasant to those unused to this very general but disgusting

habit. As it is seldom a window is ever opened to admit fresh air, the only thing to prevent one's getting almost suffocated is the draught through, from the constantly opening and nerve-shaking doors.

We pass through some fine hilly scenery in the neighbourhood of the Patapsco River, and stop at several thriving villages, usually situated on the bank of some stream, the water of which supplies the motive power to a large manufacturing or flour mill, which, in conjunction with the owner's name, gives it its title, such as "Ellicott's Mills," or 66 Hood's

Mills."

At length we arrive at a river about a quarter of a mile in breadth, the bridge over which had been burnt down during the war, and not yet rebuilt. Our mode of crossing this is very ingenious, and surprised me more than any other "Yankee invention" I had yet seen; for instead of -as would have been done in England-having to turn out of the train, be ferried across, and get into another on the opposite side; after a short pause the cars begin to move on again, and we find ourselves transferred bodily, engine and all, to a large square steam-boat, provided on each side with lines of rails, on which, divided into two portions, the cars remain till we are across and anchored fast on the other side, when off we steam on to terra firma once more.

Just beyond this was Frederick, near to which we had pointed out to us the scene of the first encounter between General Lee's army and that of General M'Clellan, when the former, in the autumn of 1862, determined to carry the war into the enemy's territory, and strike a blow at Baltimore, or even at Washington, as he expected on entering Maryland that his army would be largely increased by recruits, who were represented to him as ready to take up arms against the Federal government. General M'Clellan, however, having got together a large force, proceeded to the relief of Harper's Ferry, which was closely pressed by "Stonewall" Jackson, to whose support General Lee had to fall back. As he slowly retreated with his main body, the cavalry, who were left to protect his rear, came into collision with the Federal advance-guard on the banks of the Monocacy, which was here crossed by a bridge, on the opposite side of which a small body of Confederate cavalry were drawn up, who, as soon as the enemy appeared advancing towards it, charged across, dispersed the leading regiment, captured its colonel and also a piece of artillery, and then retired, setting fire to the bridge, thus effectually checking their further advance. The buttresses of this bridge are still standing, and one of our fellow-travellers, who had been an eye-witness of the encounter, described to us the movements, pointing out the hill, along the road at the base of which the Federals were carelessly advancing when so suddenly attacked. We soon afterwards reach Point of Rocks, as it is appropriately named, from a sharp ridge of hills running down to the edge of the Potomac, through which the river has evidently worn its way, and on whose sloping sides the town is built, one house above another. The extremity of this had been cut away, and just sufficient room left between it and the river for the "track" to curve sharply round.

The line now skirts the banks of the Potomac for about twelve miles, running alongside of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; the scenery is most picturesque, some of the views being only equalled by the best portions of our Devonshire rivers, but on a larger scale. In the fore