THE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE SUBJECT. 395 the victorious student hastened to London, and on his fiftyfirst birthday, May 8, 1788, the three concluding volumes were published. Such were the origin and progress of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire :" on the whole, the most masterly performance of the Historic Muse of England. On its mighty canvass are projected the colossal figures of Constantine, Justinian, Belisarius, Mahomet, Charlemagne, Attila, Saladin, Zingis Khan, and Gregory the Great; and, as its vast panorama revolves, we contemplate the establishment of Christianity, the pillage of Rome, the invasions of the Goths and the Huns, the foundation of the French monarchy, the rise of the Papacy, the progress of the Byzantine Empire, the origin of Mahometanism, the victories of the Saracens, the Crusades, and last of all, the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; the whole forming "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind," and possessing an importance quite peculiar as the historic isthmus along which the world that once was found its way into the world that now is, and which again in its turn may be passing away. The general execution of the work is worthy of its grandeur. Where individual portraits are required, they are sketched with firmness and precision; the several groups are arranged with consummate skill; and the impression of general magnificence is not impaired, but enhanced by the elaboration of accurate details. And although its veracity has often been assailed, and the writer has been accused of quoting authorities which he never consulted, we believe that the critics best qualified to judge are the most impressed with the historian's research and industry. His faults were neither incompetence nor idleness. The fatal one was 66 an evil heart of unbelief," excluding from the scene that pervasive and all-controlling Power which imparts to events their deep significance, and which gives. to the devout student of human history his strongest consolation. To say nothing of the unfairness and transparent animus of those passages which touch on Christianity, the tone of the book is entirely destroyed by its author's levity. Not only do the innuendoes and irony of the freethinker suggest doubts as to the veracity of the witnessbearer, but they are sadly inconsistent with his own standard of historic dignity. Nor can a heartless book be entirely popular. Irreligion is inhumane; and, with affections constitutionally languid, Gibbon had not the benevolence which is inspired by the Gospel. Without being a misanthrope, he is an evident egotist, and so faintly is he concerned for the welfare of his species, that he can get no hold on the reader's sympathy. Whilst admiring the glowing tints of the picture, the student complains of the coldness of the gallery, and is reminded by incipient rigours not to protract his stay in such a comfortless clime. Nor can any language sufficiently reprobate those passages which make it so needful that Gibbon should be decently edited. Their appearance in the original work amply accounts for the writer's hatred of Christianity. But if the purity of the Gospel was sufficient to awaken the rancour of a spirit so impure, happily modern society has no toleration for rancour thus aroused. Able men, like Byron and Gibbon, who thirst for posthumous fame, would do well to remember that of all paths to oblivion a book's surest road is its own immorality. The wine may be good, but no one will drink it if a musk-rat has made free with the bottle. And although Christianity can very well afford to preserve the two famous chapters as the sword of a vanquished Goliath, the sanatory commissioners must remove the offensive materials which an unscrupulous enemy has collected in order to taint our moral atmosphere. REVIEW OF THE MONTH. 397 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. 399 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 |