to a most curious work. Saul' is in three parts, each of five acts, and altogether about ten thousand lines long. What much adds to the startling effect of this poem is the manifest fact that the writer is some person who has received little or no education, in the ordinary sense of the term. Not only does he make ridiculous mistakes in the commonest Latin quotations-for example, he has 'from DE PROFUNDUS' twice over-but he is apparently ignorant of English grammar, and even of spelling. There are two things, however, which he proves that he knows, namely, the Bible and human nature; and a poet cannot be said to be really uneducated who knows these well. Shakspeare he also knows far better than most men know him; for he has discerned and adopted his method as no other dramatist has done. He takes not virtue and morality, and their opposites generally, as other dramatists do, but these under the single aspect of their dependence upon spiritual influences, of whatever kind: the direct influence of the divine Spirit, and the influence of good spirits, and of the principalities and powers of darkness, and even the mysterious influences of music, the weather, etc., upon the moral state of the soul. Like most of Shakspeare's plays, this drama has the appearance of being strangely chaotic. There are hundreds of passages for the existence of which we cannot account, until the moral clue is found, and it would never be found by a careless and unreflecting reader; for the work is exceedingly artistic, and there are few things in recent poetry so praiseworthy as the quiet and unobtrusive way in which the theme is treated. In a work written upon this noble symbolic method, one is never sure of exactly stating the author's meaning-indeed, as we have said of Shakspeare, the meaning is too full to be stated more briefly than by the whole poem; but we are sure that we are not far from the writer's intention when we say that in Saul he represents a man who is eminently the creature of spiritual influences; who is of the happiest sensitive and perceptive constitution, but lacks the one thing needful, the principle of faith, which would have given the will to submit himself to the good influence and resist the bad. Faith wanting, all his works fell short,' is the only explicit statement in the whole poem of this idea; but the whole poem indirectly implies it. This view of Saul's character, which is amply justified by Scripture history, is carried out and illustrated with an elaborate subtlety of which it is impossible for us to give our readers an adequate idea The evil spirit of the king is brought personally, under the name of Malzah, upon the stage; and we are made to understand Saul's nature, and the nature of all who are the more or less passive slaves of natural and spiritual influences ab extra, by the exaggeration of this character in the spirit himself, who is depicted with an imaginative veracity, which we do not exaggerate in saying has not been equaled in our language by any but the creator of Caliban and Ariel. Malzah is decidedly well-disposed,' like many another evil spirit, human or otherwise; he knows his faults; is almost changed, for the moment, into a good spirit by artistic influences, especially music; he has attained to be a deep philosopher through the habitual observation of himself; and does not at all like the evil work of destroying the soul of Saul-a work which he undertook voluntarily, and to which he returns as the fit takes him. The following passages will carry out what we have said, and will illustrate the oddity, subtlety, and originality of this writer's language. Malzah tries to exonerate himself, in soliloquy, from the guilt of destroying Saul: 6 "I've had no part in this. I'm sorry too (Like thee, king,) that I ever came to thee. Zounds! Why, I ought to have strong penance set me, Or else be branded with some sign of shame For having volunteered for his undoing, There's no essential honor nor good i'th' world, But a pure selfishness is all in all Nay, I could curse my demonhood, and wish X. THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, July, 1858.-1. Hugh Miller: 2. Thiers's History of the Consulate and the Empire: 3. The Progress and Spirit of Physical Science: 4. Canning's Literary Remains: 5. The Health of the Army: 6. The Celts and the Germans: 7. Posthumous Memoirs and Songs of Béranger: 8. Chronicles of the Teutonic Knights: 9. Froude's King Henry VIII: 10. The Hindú Drama: 11. Earl Grey on Parliamentary Government. FROM the splendid article on The Progress and Spirit of Physical Scienco we extract a passage on a point where physics and metaphysics come in curious contact. In the doctrine of definite proportions, the science of chemistry seems to establish the principle of molecular action, demonstrate the old atomic theory, and land in rather homœopathic results: "If seeking to devote in a few words the most striking characteristic of modern science as directed to matter, we should come at once to the principle of molecular action, in its present application to physical research. Through this doctrine has been made man's deepest inroad into the secrets of the natural world. No single principle is so variously applicable to every branch of knowledge; none has done so much to promote discovery, or to authenticate and give the form and force of law to the results obtained. And yet it may be said to have had a lawless origin, and to have been long a play of human phantasy under the garb of science. We cannot here travel back to those early speculations on atoms which entered so largely into the staple of the ancient philosophy; and which the poetry of Lucretius has better consecrated to later times than the most subtle prose of the Greek philosophers. In every intermediate age, even the darkest, the atomic doctrine, in one form or other, has kept a certain hold on the minds of learned or speculative men; a natural effect of the facility with which it lends itself to any hypothesis, however crude, regarding matter and material phenomena. It was reserved for our own time to render it at once the subject and instrument of legitimate science, the foundation of laws next to mathematical in scope and exactness, and the most powerful of all aids to ulterior research. "This great achievement, for such it is, we owe mainly to Chemistry; and to John Dalton, the Quaker chemist, more appropriately than to any one besides. Close approaches had been made before to the doctrine of definite proportions, as represented by the molecules of matter in their combinations. Such anticipations are recorded in the case of every great discovery. But Dalton (speedily seconded indeed by other great chemists) first gave clear declaration to the principle; and illustrated its applications, mighty in their universality, with a simple sagacity belonging to the genius and habits of the man. The simplicity of his early experiments is, indeed, characteristic also of the manner in which many of the highest truths in science have been reached. Facts the most familiar to common observation, and thence disregarded by common intellects, have furnished better materials and suggestions for discovery than the most recondite theories. "It has been justly said by Sir J. Herschel, that number, weight, and measure are the foundations of all exact science. The atomic doctrine has acquired from chemistry these conditions, which give it substance and certainty as a physical truth. When analysis and synthesis, carefully applied to compound bodies, disclosed a constant and definite proportion of the combining elements, and an equivalent or multiple ratio of parts in every chemical change, the requirements of number and weight and measure were all met by the discovery. Numbers became needful to express the proportion of the combining molecules; and in every case, even of the most complex chemical compounds, they have been found to fulfill this object so exactly, that combination, yet unknown, may be predicted with assurance as the results of future research. The absolute weight of these elementary molecules is unresolved, and will probably ever remain so; but their relative weight is known to us through the proportions in which they severally combine; and this method is checked and counter-checked through such vast variety of compounds, that every chance of error is done away. Measure, the third condition proposed, is expressed chiefly in the combining volumes of gases -invariable always, whether under the simplest proportions shown by analysis, or the multiple measures of other chemical compounds. "Here then we have a great law, or group of laws, thoroughly attested; of high generality; and proving, because based upon, that atomic or molecular constitution of matter which alone could afford such results. Whatever name we give to them, these atomic parts exist in all bodies, and determine by their own nature or arrangement the properties and functions of each. That they are minute beyond all human measure is proved, not only by the chemical relations just denoted, but also by those relations to heat, light, electricity, and mechanical force which experiment has demonstrated to us. "No hindrance to belief need exist on this score. When, even in organic or compound material structure, the microscope tells us, by computation, that two cubic feet of the Tripoli slate of Billin contain one hundred and forty billions of fossil infusoria; that there are some millions of distinct fibers in the crystalline lens of the cod-fish, and that a single fungus (Bovista Giganteum) is composed of cellules far exceeding this number-we infer in reason, though not by comprehension, what the elementary molecules must be, so organised into living forms. Looking to simple inorganic matter, or what we suppose such, we have before us a recent memoir of Faraday's on the 'Optical Phenomena of thin Gold Films and Gold Fluids,' where in one experiment a ruby tint, equal to that of a red rose, was given to a fluid by a quantity of gold not exceeding 000 part of its weight. We quote another instance from this paper, as well expounding the spirit which prompts and guides these bold incursions into the atomic world. In seeking to procure the thinnest film of gold, retaining continuity, for the purpose of noting its effects on light passing through it, he obtained by a chemical action on gold-leaf, films not exceeding 8500000 of an inch in thickness. The number of vibrations in an inch of the red ray being thirty-seven thousand six hundred and forty, it follows that each such film cannot occupy more than a hundredth part of the vibration of light-a deduction derived in such way from the premises as to compel belief, hard though it be for the imagination to follow it. But if in these and other cases the imagination fails, yet reason accepts this next to infinite divisibility of matter, and the conception of polarities and mutual relations of atoms so constituted, as the sole method of expounding the phenomena ever present around us." Pp. 95-97. ART. XII.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE. Ir is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.-MILTON. I.-Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature. (1.) "Sermons, by the REV. JOHN CAIRD, M. A., Minister of the Park Church, Glasgow; Author of Religion in Common Life.' A Sermon Preached before the Queen." (12mo., pp. 398.) New-York: Robert Carter & Brothers. It is a pleasing incident which rendered Mr. Caird a noticeable man, and, in a good degree, made a volume of sermons from his hand an acceptable present to the public. Queen Victoria was one of his audience once, and was so impressed with the excellence of his sermon as to wish its publication for a broader circulation. Our republican principles do not forbid our sympathizing with the interest excited by this royal notice, and experi encing a pleasure at the liberality, the desire for the people's moral good, and we would trust, the piety expressed in this simple matter. Moreover, we approve the royal judgment, and think, as her majesty evidently thought, that Mr. Caird's sermons are good enough for a queen. Mr. Caird's sermons are evangelical in spirit and eloquent in style. They do not abound in strong graphic imagery. They are little doctrinal. There is no terseness or sententious depth; but there is a brilliancy, perhaps sometimes an ambitiousness of language, a glow of feeling, and a transparency of style, which render them attractive to the reader. One of the most suitable specimens is his sermon on Spiritual Influence, from John iii, 7, 8, founded on the analogy between the operation of the Spirit and the blowing of the wind. He introduces the subject with a paragraph drawing the analogy between a regeneration of soul and a regeneration of body, (suggested by Nicodemus's materialistic question,) somewhat diffuse yet not a little beautiful: "Marvelous though it would be for the old man to become a little child again—for one surrounded with the cares and responsibilities of manhood, or sinking into the feebleness of age-to feel the shadow on the sun-dial of life going back, and the light of life's morning once more shining around him; yet might such a return from the maturity or decline of the infancy of man's outward life involve nothing so wonderful as the entering upon a new spiritual history—the second birth of the soul. Could we for a moment entertain the supposition that some one here who is now far advanced in life, had this day become conscious, as if by some mysterious spell passing over him, that a new freshness was beginning to be infused into the springs of his physical life, that the form and features on which Time's impress had unmistakably been set, were being molded anew into the roundness and softness of childhood, and the worn and withered man was by some strange influence transformed again into the bright and buoyant creature of days long by-gone; yet even then, I repeat, extravagant and incredible as such a conception seems, we should have before us a transformation not at all so wonderful, so momentous as that of which the text affirms the possibility. For it speaks, not for the re-construction of the outward form, but of the re-creating of the inward life; not of a mere external metamorphosis, but of an inner and vital change. And it cannot be doubted that mental and moral changes are far more momentous than physical; that a transformation of soul would revolutionise a man's being far more completely than a mere modification of bodily form and feature. The soul is the true essence of man's nature. The character, spirit, moral temper of the inner being constitutes the man, and everything else is outward and incidental. The physical form and life, amidst a thousand changes, may leave the real man unaltered, or as little changed as the inhabitant by the reconstruction of the house, or the person by the new making of the vesture that clothes it." Founded on the analogy opened in the text, the eloquent preacher proceeds to the solution of three difficulties, namely: The supernaturalness, the sovereignty, or apparent arbitrariness, and the secresy of the Spirit's influences. Under the first head he traces the progress of men's minds from the age of mythology, in which every process of nature was traced to an animating FOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-43 Deity, toward the period in which science begins to ignore Deity and recognise natural causations alone in the processes both of physical and moral nature. "Accustomed to the observation of natural causes at work around them, men cease to think of any other. The tendency becomes habitual to refer everything to the laws of nature, and to imagine that when we have specified the outward and physical causes of any phenomenon, we have completely accounted for it. The voice of God is no longer heard in the thunder when the laws of electricity begin to be known. In the darkened luminary there is no shadow of the Almighty's wing to the observer who can calmly sit down and calculate the period and duration of the solar eclipse. The region of marvels is thus driven further and further back; but the territory lost to superstition is seldom won for religion. The old gods of heathenism have long vanished from the woods, and meadows, and fountains; but it is not that the one living and true God, but only gravitation, light, heat, magnetism, may be recognised as reigning in their forsaken haunts. And we carry the same tendency into the moral world. The outward agents in moral and spiritual changes are those on which we chiefly dwell. The power of motives, the influence of education, the natural efficacy of instructions, appeals, admonitions, warnings-it is to these almost exclusively, and not to any direct operation of the Spirit of God that we are apt to trace changes of character. We may be ready, indeed, decorously to remark, that no good can be done without the blessing of God, but we seldom realize the true significance of this statement. The interposition of a Divine agent in every instance of moral improvement may not be denied or controverted, but it is too often practically ignored. A child grows up gentle, amiable, pious; and when we say that he had the benefit of a careful and religious education, we seem to ourselves to have given the whole account of the matter. A careless youth develops into a thoughtful and serious manhood, and we remark on the sobering and mellowing effect of years. An irreligious man becomes devout, and the dangerous illness, or the severe domestic affliction, or the influence of a Christian friend or minister, has made him, we perhaps observe, a wiser and a better man. Seldom does the mind naturally turn to the thought 'the finger of God is here;' to many it would seem fanatical or irrational thus to speak. The idea of a mysterious Holy Spirit coming down from the heavens, and working in the man's mind, would but too often be regarded, if not avowedly, yet in our secret judgment, as a strange mystical notion, peculiar to the domain of theology, but quite apart from our ordinary experience, having nothing in common with the plain realities of every-day life.” To all this he replies by showing that God is the life of all causations. The universe might stand like a motionless machine did not God actuate its parts and give it intelligent and regulated motion. A true science must recognize an orderly supernatural in nature. What impropriety then in recognizing the same God in regeneration. There seems a failure in this answer. It reduces regeneration to the category of ordinary natural processes. Thereby God is no more specially recognized in regeneration than in grass growing, or in natural mental education. |