me in my own house, when I caal'd vurst." | his pulling them out to read to the most inNor is Parson Adams, though a better man, congruous audience, his resolving never to a more desirable inmate of a lady's drawing- be without his sermon on Vanity in his pockroom. It is scarcely to be wondered at that et, and his offer of his MS. volume in pledge he can get no nearer access to the great for an unpaid score. Printing sermons is lady than Mrs. Slipslop, her waiting-maid, indeed a time-honoured joke. In one of who is herself a curate's daughter. He fits Smollet's prefaces - after the model with much better the kitchen, where he so often which Walter Scott has made us familiarrefreshes himself with Sir Thomas's ale af- the Reverend Mr. Jonathan Dustwich, who ter his four services. Scholarship and crit- is coming up to town with a sermon to print, icism are good things, but a woman must be hears in reply from his publisher, You excused from caring for them when they can need not take the trouble to bring up your only be heard through the fumes of endless sermons on my account, nobody reads serpipes of tobacco. It may be that the novel-mons but Methodists and Dissenters "; goist's old plan of leading the hero through a series of adventures confines him to such company as at least is introduced at the alehouse, for certainly the historical parson seems most at home there. "The parson," says one man, "took me for a Presbyterian because I would not drink with him." And how Adams's salary of 231. a year could supply him in beer alone is a problem nowhere explained. ing on further to explain that he himself was a stranger to that sort of reading, and that the man whose judgment he depended on in such matters had gone abroad as carpenter in a man-of-war. This change, then, has come over the novel. The parson of old, to be worth drawing at all, must be either a disgrace to his cloth or an oddity—either disreputable or a pedant, or an amiable eccentric and The novelist and essayist of that day butt, or simply conventional of the whitealike amused themselves with the rustic haired type, a piece of furniture uttering fondness for sermons. It was the fashion- platitudes which the reader never dreams able world, then as now, that took the sa- of reading, but who must be there for the tirical view. Sir Roger, when he restricted credit of the hero or heroine. Any way he his pastor to a choice from a library of could only be subordinate. That he should standard divines of his own selection, no take the lead and represent light and progdoubt pleased himself at the expense of his ress, that he should be well-mannered, handparish. Parson Adams has a faith in his some, and interesting, is an idea of another own sermons which implies, however, ad-century which deserves further consideramiring parishioners; the joke is relished of tion. Miss Yonge, who now (we believe, for the first time,) places her name on the title-page, gives us her authorities and points out her deviations from literal history in her preface. We think the book deserves to be well read, and that it will be much enjoyed. Spectator. THE CAGED LION. By Charlotte M. Yonge, | tive land, in spite of the gains of his captivity, author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." (Macmil-require to be fully brought out, as well as the lan and Co.) - There are very few women (or passages of his after life and disastrous death. men) of our day so well read in medieval history as Miss Yonge. From childhood the study seems to have been her passion, and in her "Cameos" she displays a familiarity with character and scenery which is rare and remarkable. In historical fiction she is also often successful; and if ever she fails, it is through the want of power to place her readers at her own point of view. Some of the characters and scenes in the Caged Lion will command sympathy, and they are clearly and graphically put. Thus, our MR. ROBERT BROWN, commander of the first Henry V. is sure to inspire the interest he de- Vancouver Exploring Expedition, in a paper serves. We are not so sure about the Lion him- "On the Coal-fields of the North Pacific Coast," self, James I. of Scotland. Yet we suppose, it concludes that though there are abundant supis merely that he is overshadowed by his Eng-plies of tertiary coal on the North Pacific, the lish friend and guardian King Henry. Less is only beds fitted for steaming purposes are those known about James than could be wished. The of the British possessions. It is to be hoped that history of his early life and training at Windsor, these will lead to the prosperity of British Colhis genius, his beautiful poem of the "King's umbia. Quhair," and his strong attachment to his na From The Spectator. Transactions. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly THE new volume of Mr. Emerson's es-erson's rationale of this horror and agony study to decline."" And now for Mr. Emsays opens with one exceedingly characteristic of that subtle and acute interpreter of nature, whose principal fault it is that he makes it a sort of religion (perhaps for want of what others think religion) to force a symbolic meaning in natural facts even where he has not been able truly to discover one. Thus he gives us here a rationale of shyness which strikes us in the highest degree questionable. It follows a very graphic and humorous account of a humourist he once knew, who might, in most of his characteristics at least, stand for Nathaniel friend." 66 66 He interprets it as the effort of nature to of observation,- of this lust of privacy. keep genius itself, to keep it unalloyed by the common-places of a tyrannical world. Each must stand on his glass tripod," he says, "if he would keep up his electricity." he cries again, with just a touch of affectation, Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee," "there is no coöperation ... we sit and muse and are serene and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction." 66 Hawthorne,-who "declared that he could ed two utterly different things when he Now, surely Mr. Emerson has confoundnot get enough alone to write a letter to a describes the symptoms and when he gives He left the city," proceeds Mr. Emerson. "He hid himself in pastures: finely is shyness—which he does not interhis interpretation. What he describes so The solitary river was not solitary enough; the sun and moon put him out. When he pret. What he interprets is the capillary bought a house the first thing he did was to repulsion, so to speak, of genius for all plant trees. He could not enough conceal menacing and alloying substances, which he himself. Set a hedge here; set oaks there; in genius to possess its own soul apart, and hardly describes. That there is this instinct trees behind trees; above all, set evergreens, for they will keep a secret all the year round. resist as an injury the attempts of society The most agreeable compliment you could to break it into the yoke of ordinary conBut in the pay him was to imply that you had not obventionalism, is absolutely true. served him in a house or a street where you of men who were most remarkable instances it has been true never in their lives had met him. Whilst he suffered at being troubled with shyness. Goethe, for inseen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable stance, was the least shy of mankind. Yet number of places where he was not." We he was always jealously guarding himself may safely assert, by the way, that that last from the alien influences, the intellectual consolation was a consolation suggested by and striving to restore his true self in soliaggressiveness, of his ablest companions, the humourist (Mr. Emerson, or his friend?) to the consciousness of the shy tude or such society as was perfectly plastic man, and no natural alleviation of the to his influence. It was the same with Wordsworth, with Shelley, with plenty of agonies of shyness. He would have given his soul," proceeds Mr. Emerson, "for the They men of genius who were not poets. ring of Gyges. His dismay at his visibility felt that they had a deposit to guard had blunted his fears of mortality. Do which too much contact with the common air would oxidize, would rust, and turn into you think,' he said, 'I am in such great terror of being shot, I who am only wait- something far less bright and valuable. But ing to shuffle off my corporeal jacket, to slip all this jealousy of alien influences is not away into the back stars and put diameters shyness, and has hardly any true connection of the solar system and sidereal orbits be- with that horror of mere observation which tween me and all souls, then to wear out often affects the least remarkable intellects. ages in solitude, and forget memory itself, quite as powerfully as the most remarkable, if it be possible?' He had a remorse run--which often attacks the minds which ning to despair of his social gaucheries, and would be simply improved by even rough walked miles and miles to get the twitch-friction with the world, as much as the ings out of his face, the starts and shrugs minds which would lose all the delicate out of his arms and shoulders. He ad- essence of their charm in so rough a promired in Newton not so much his theory of cess. Of course, genius may have both both the instinctive dread the moon as his letter to Collins, in which these qualities; he forbade him to insert his name with the of alien influence which belongs to all sensolution of the problem in the Philosophical sitive genius, and the instinctive dread of mere eyes, the hiding instinct, which is the essence of shyness. Hawthorne had both. feelings; Cowper had both; and when they Society and Solitude. Twelve chapters by Ralph Waldo Emerson. London: Sampson Low. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 741 of any such high intensity of the feelings as Mr. Emerson describes. Their own genius is too strong for it. They identify themselves so closely both with the observing power as well as with the nature observed, that the resulting feeling is hardly so much that of increased sensitiveness to observation, as of increased power of observation. It almost takes a person who is denied the resource of any such faculty as this, to be, in the most painful sense of the word, "shy." You must be far more conscious of yourself than of the power to observe yourself,—in fact, perceptiveness must be utterly secondary to sensitiveness, in other words, genius must be quite secondary to the discomforts of feeling,—in order to give that word its fullest meaning. exist together, it is no doubt impossible accurately to discriminate them. But the two are essentially distinct, and the interpretation which Mr. Emerson has given of the one does not in the least apply to the other. The desire to flee away to "the back stars," and there barricade yourself in with worlds against the myriad eyes of the universe, is not in any sense, we imagine, due to the rebellion of genius against conventional influences, though that of course must increase it, but is attributable to that morbid self-consciousness of deficiencies which anything like the appearance of observation from without stimulates into intense activity. Shyness comes of mirrors, -moral or physical. Mr. Emerson's friend who felt remorse for his gaucheries and walked miles to get the twitchings out of Mr. Emerson having missed, as we behis arms, was the victim of both moral and lieve, the essence of the malady, has, of physical looking-glasses. There are many course, missed the essence of the remedy men and women who are always weighing for shyness, and only suggests that true themselves and finding themselves wanting; society, the society in which you can feel and these, if any eyes at all are upon them, your inner nature to some extent kindled cannot refrain from weighing themselves into vividness, is the proper balance for again with a special view to the imaginary the natural love of solitude proper to all criticisms of the owner of this particular true genius. But it is not the men of eye; and so their mind is thrown into tu-genius — who have plenty of resource in multuous vibrations fatal to their peace. themselves who most need a remedy for Now, it is obvious that this sort of tempera- this terrible malady. It is those who have ment, though it may in some sense be a no such genius, who are afflicted with the sensitive one, is not in the least necessarily connected with peculiar power of any kind, and may be common-place in the last degree. To interpret it as the anxiety of nature to protect her individual creations, is like saying that the effeminacy which makes some women scream at a spider is a special provision for their protection against that most inoffensive of insects. Indeed, the fact is, that though there are exceptional cases like Hawthorne's and Cowper's, shyness frequently exists in the highest intensity in those natures when there is the least of individual life to preserve. The mere presence of real creative power tends, so far as it goes, to diminish the intensity of passive self-consciousness, to betray into self-forgetfulness, to blind to that purely imaginary gaze from which the mind shrinks. It is only in those whose minds rarely bubble up into full energy of their own, that this desire to find a secure hiding-place assumes the strongest forms. It is true that men of genius are very often indeed, especially in our modern days, men of a double nature. One side of Goethe's mind, the hard side, was almost always watching the soft, impressionable side; and the same is true of Thackeray, and George Eliot, and Miss Brontë, and a host of modern artists. Still, none of these are capable consciousness of having all the eyes of their ly if it be something which diverts the at- their powers, their amiable weaknesses, and tention elsewhere. An enigma will always you may slip about as unobserved as if you be scanned till it is guessed; and obviously were in "the back stars" with diameters silent, thinking people are always an enigma of solar systems between you and all other to the world at large. The true privacy is souls. There are no persons so truly rea certain superficial atinosphere of social served as those who seem to live in an atfeeling, a power of effervescing slightly in mosphere of genial superficial raillery. This all sorts of society, and showing that the is the silk cocoon in which the chrysalis of effervescence is due to a certain adequate, many a shy mind is so deeply enveloped as but not necessarily at all profound, appre- to be quite beyond mortal sight. And no ciation of that society. And no power is veil is easier to draw, unless, indeed, the more easily acquired. A shy person with powers of insight and of will are more than the least bonhomie (and most persons, how-ordinarily slight. It is pleasant and easy ever peculiar, have some) can acquire a to know something characteristic of every habit in no time,- a habit, of course, pure- one. It is not difficult, especially if you ly selfish in its motive, but full of relief in realize that the immediate result is not to its results, of noting, and discussing with expose but to conceal you, to use this animation, the personal interests of his knowledge with that ready banter and easy friends and acquaintances, so that he is soon criticism in return. We recommend this as much unobserved as Æneas in the mist specific to all shy readers. They will find which his mother cast about him when he it far more useful than the rather transcenentered Carthage. This is the true "ring dental recipes of Mr. Emerson,—which, of Gyges." Attack others with a gentle, too, are not in the main adapted for the superficial raillery, show that you have malady of ordinary mortals. noted their traits of character, their wishes, THE ANTIQUITY OF PAPER IN ENGLAND.I stan; and in the part of which I have just rehave made a little discovery, which will be con-ceived the proof I find " Papirus, paper." The sidered curious in the history of paper. I be- word paper does not occur in Dr. Bosworth's, lieve that the first traces of the use of paper in or any other, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; but we Western Europe are found towards the end of have here evidence that it was in use in our lanthe twelfth century, and we have no reason to guage at a very early period, and there cannot suppose that it was in use in England until the be a doubt that we derive it from the Anglothirteenth, or even the beginning of the four- Saxons, and have not taken it from the French teenth. It is understood to have been brought of the Middle Ages. But this fact leads us to westward from Italy, where it was in use earlier; another, namely, that our Anglo-Saxon foreand I believe that our word paper,· -a corrup-fathers, to have the word in an Anglo-Saxon tion, of course, of papyrus, - is considered to form in their own language, must have been have been borrowed, with the article itself, from pretty well acquainted with paper itself, and, the French. I saw years ago in Paris, I be- no doubt, they found the Roman paper in use in lieve they belonged to the royal collection (it the island when they came. It is a fact, indeed was in the time of Louis Philippe), - a few of which opens to us several others, equally new, the earliest documents on paper known belong- in the social history of our Anglo-Saxon foreing to Western Europe in the period since the fathers. I need hardly add, that paper probaRomans, which interested me much. They con- bly never went entirely out of use in Western sisted of receipts, or rather bonds, for money Europe after the Roman times, and a little reborrowed from the Jews in the time of our Coeur- search might still throw some curious light upon de-Lion, given by chiefs who were starting for its history during the earlier Middle Ages. It his Crusade; and, if I remember well, the paper certainly was not supposed before that it might resembled much that of the fifteenth and six- be in use among the Anglo Saxons. teenth centuries, except that it was of a rather Athenæum. coarser texture. It would seem as if, in the West, its use at this early period was known among the Jews. Now, I am just passing through the press an edition of a Glossary of Latin and English or, as we are accustomed to call it, Anglo-Saxon - Words, of, I think, not later than the middle of the tenth century. We may safely look upon it as the English of the days of Athel THOMAS WRIGHT. M. LENORMAND has shown from a study of the sculptures that in Egypt, during the time of the Shepherd-Kings, three distinct species of gazelle were domesticated. From The Saturday Review. violence against the heads of his colleagues. It is MATHEMATICIANS, living and dead, have of late had rather a bad time of it in France. The case of Auguste Comte is somewhat M. Leverrier has been dismissed from the harder. Like the kings of Ancient Egypt directorship of the Observatory in Paris. he has been subjected to posthumous judgThe sanity of the late Auguste Comte has ment. A French Court has been called on been in question before a French tribunal. to determine whether the High Priest of M. Michel Chasles has appeared again, and Humanity was in the days of his religious for the last time it may be hoped, in the exaltation and official pontificate neither character of the most egregious dupe in con- more nor less than a lunatic. The wounded temporary history. Against M. Leverrier feelings of Mr. Richard Congreve, Professor no more serious charge seems to have been Beesly, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, at this made than that he was of an incurably quar- suggestion and inquiry, form a subject too relsome temper. His colleagues and assist- painful for contemplation. We hasten to ants could not get on with him. Kant, in a drop a veil over the agonizing picture. celebrated passage, compares the spectacle Archbishop Manning reading Father Graof the starry heavens at midnight, as a try's proof that Pope Honorius was a heretic, source of reverence and awe, with the deep or a faithful Mormon emigrant newly come inner consciousness of the moral law. Pas- from Wales listening to the demonstration cal, in a sentence equally well-known, ex- of the Messrs. Smith junior, sons of Joe the presses the terror with which the thought prophet, that Brigham Young is a deceiver, and the sight of the infinite spaces oppressed may faintly image the grief and desolation him. M. Leverrier, officially surveying the of the Comtist Church. One of the most skies as a sort of celestial inspector-general, afflicting circumstances in the whole busiappears to have kept his mind free from ness is the fact that a woman should have so these elevating and subduing influences. far forgotten her function in the Religion He had to report upon the movements and of Humanity as to ask for a judgment of inperturbations of the stellar bodies, and sanity against its founder. Madame Comte seemed to regard himself only as a kind of was her illustrious husband's accuser. astronomical French detective. The influ-true that she had no very distinct place, and ences which penetrated Kant and Pascal left indeed no place at all, in his system. He him unaffected. A poet more frequently never showed any disposition to worship quoted than read has remarked that an un- her. The private religious observances devout astronomer is mad. There is no which he practised were in honour of the reason to suppose that M. Leverrier is an departed spirit of Madame Clotilde de Vaux. undevout astronomer. On the contrary, That lady was elevated to the rank, during ⚫ the second and third of the three adjectives her life and after her death, of Comte's guarin the celebrated epitaph which described dian angel; and Madame Comte had no its subject as bland, passionate, and deeply title or obligation to assume the office. religious may, for aught we know, strictly Whether, like Donna Inez in Don Juan, she apply to him. The capacity of turning from called some druggists and physicians," we celestial contemplations to human wrang- do not know, but she certainly “tried to lings and strife is, however, remarkable. prove her loving lord was mad." It was The calm order and the regular movement the judgment of the Court rather than hers, of the heavenly bodies might be expected to which, as he had some lucid intermissions, shed something of their own repose into the next decided he was only bad." In other minds of those who habitually survey them. respects, however, M. Comte, rather than The music of the spheres does not appear, his wife, seems to have acted the part of like the harp of David or the lyre of Timo- Inez. It was he who kept a journal where theus, to cast the evil spirit out of those who her faults were noted," and confided secrets listen to it. One would have thought that to "certain trunks of books and letters." a certain stillness of temper and largeness M. Comte appears also to have vilified his of intelligence would have been derived from wife in his will -a course of conduct to intercourse with the stars. It seems that a which, if she had been not his wife but his man may dwell all his life amid the sublimest daughter, an episcopal parallel might be stellar scenery and be as little impressed by cited. Against Madame Comte's character it as the Alpine peasant by the grandeur of there is by universal confession_no_wellhis mountains, or the American backwoods- grounded imputation whatsoever. man by the religion of the groves. M. himself in his better days admitted as much. Leverrier returned from knocking his sub- The Court granted her such redress as was lime head against the stars, to knock it with in its power, and confided to her keeping 66 66 Comte |