REVIEW OF THE MONTH.

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With all these abatements, and they are abundantly grave, it may be questioned if any modern has produced a work at once so profound and so popular, so extensive and yet so well sustained, so charming in its episodes, and so commanding in the interest of its leading narrations. And when it is remembered that it connects Ancient History with Modern, and takes us back to the cradle of our existing civilisation, no national history can equal its importance. The sequel to Polybius, Josephus, and Tacitus, it is the proper introduction to De Thou and Sismondi, to Robertson and Hume; and the man who, from its eminence, makes a good map of the horizon will have landmarks wherever he goes. J. H.

REVIEW OF THE MONTH.

THE most conspicuous light remaining in the literature of our Northern capital has disappeared. The "Isle of Palms" and the "City of the Plague" will take a permanent place in English poetry; but much of Professor Wilson's fame was of that kind which passes away with the coeval generation. With exuberant spirits and extraordinary physical powers, in his twofold calling as lecturer on Moral Philosophy and as the "Christopher North" of "Blackwood's Magazine," he led a sort of extempore existence, pouring forth in floods of dazzling diction the literary criticism and political sagacity, the satire and the tenderness, the fun and the philosophy, of which there were few larger holders and not one more generous prodigal; and he was repaid on the instant with the plaudits of an enthusiastic class-room or the suffused eyes and resounding laughter of ten thousand readers. The terror of pedants and a grim

foe to free-traders, the "Noctes" were a sort of Sherwood Forest, in which he patrolled, ready to do battle with all presumptuous intruders; and many a literary upstart, and eke many a Whig lawyer, had long reason to remember the weight of his quarter-staff. But such was his sympathy with everything human, and so unmistakeable was the kindheartedness which mingled with his wildest mischief, that betwixt himself and many of his victims there subsisted to the last unbroken good humour; nor were the instances few where his ardent temperament led him to admire and to praise far beyond the merits of his author or the verdict of a less generous public. In the hey-day of " Maga," the first of the month was a sort of illumination in which the firmament of "Auld Reekie " blazed with rockets and Roman candles, and its streets were all flashing with crackers and squibs; and though much of the point is now lost amidst forgotten personalities, these early volumes will always be a rare repository of wit, and fancy, and rich poetic criticism, and a prized memorial of the wealthiest and most genial of our modern rhapsodists. Mr. Wilson was born at Paisley May 19, 1785, and died at Edinburgh April 3, 1854. He succeeded Dr. Thomas Brown in the chair of Moral Philosophy, in 1820.

The same month has deprived the University of Edinburgh of its oldest Professor, and mineralogical science of its oldest surviving patriarch. Mr. Jameson was an enthusiastic disciple of Werner, and was one of the last to surrender the geological theories of his admired and eloquent master. He occupied the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh for fifty years; and in its Museum, and in the Philosophical Journal which he edited, as well as in his separate treatises, he has left memorials of a mind, which in the field of Natural History was almost encyclopedic, and which had the merit of being pre-eminently orderly and systematic.

PROFESSOR JAMESON.-MR. NEWPORT.

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Mr. George Newport died at London on the 6th of April. By profession a surgeon, he eventually devoted himself almost entirely to researches in the physiology and structure of animals, more especially insects. A paper on the nervous system of the Privet Hawk-Moth (Sphinx Ligustri), published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, at once placed his name alongside of Lyonet, whose dissections of the Cossus ligniperda laid the foundation of all that has since been accomplished in insect anatomy. Mr. Newport was latterly engaged in a series of physiological investigations, which his death leaves incomplete. With a view to some experiments, he had been collecting live frogs in marshy ground, and contracted a fever,-the fatal termination of which has added his name to the long list of the "martyrs of science."

The last number of the "Edinburgh Review" contains a valuable paper on the "Consumption of Food in the United Kingdom." It strikingly exhibits the rising standard of comfort in the community as indicated in the average supply of food to each person. Thus, each inhabitant of the island consumed of the following articles at the periods named :—

In other words, Free-trade has

"Added nearly a third to our Bread,

Nearly doubled our Sugar,

Added a third to our Coffee,

And nearly doubled our Tea."

It is also a remarkable fact, not noticed in the Review, that although a hundred millions worth of gold has been

added to the market of the world within the last five years, there is no depreciation in the value of that metal: proving that the increase of commodities must have kept pace with the increase of the currency :-in other words, that a hundred millions of pounds' worth of comforts must have been added to the world's store within these years.

We must confess that we are not entirely superior to the common distaste at printed sermons. Yet who can help reading the discourses of Taylor and Barrow, Horsley and Chalmers? Occasionally, too, volumes come forth which conquer our prejudice; and of late we have met with some which even in print are so interesting that we envy the original hearers. Of these, the most life-like and speaking is Mr. Jay's "Female Characters of Scripture." Mr. Bradley has added to his series "The Trials, Duties, and Encouragements of the Christian Life,"—as lucid, as exhaustive, as evangelical in sentiment, and as charming in style, as any that went before. Mr. Bruce has produced a "Biography of Samson," in which the giant is depicted with the mystic touches and the shadowy grandeur of Rembrandt; and if there be any fault at all, it is the fault of a hero's biographer,—excess of affection. Of Dr. Gordon's lofty intellect we have the worthy memorial in "Christ as made known to the Ancient Church: an Exposition of the Revelation of Divine Grace, as unfolded in the Old Testament Scriptures." And though nothing can reproduce the flash of an eagle's eye or the voice of a son of thunder, a work so judicious as this, so fraught with maturest wisdom, and so superior to all freaks of fancy, will be welcome to those who love the Bible already, and who wish to love it more.