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ning, Lord Ashburton. To the same trio the authorship has been before attributed, with this difference, however, that the first place has been assigned to Lord Shelburne, Barré and Dunning being spoken of as his assistants; and Col. Barré has been named as the probable author, though his individual claims seem not to have been publicly investigated.

He at

Mr. Britton's opinion that the letters emanated from the parties above named, seems to have been formed nearly half a century ago, while collecting materials for his "Beauties of Wiltshire." that time became acquainted with the Rev. Dr. Popham, of Chilton, who, in early life, held the vicarage of Lacock for more than twenty years. During this time Dr. Popham was in the habit of visiting at Bowood, the seat of the Earl of Shelburne; where,

among other distinguished men of the day, Counsellor Dunning and Col. Barré were the most regular and constant visitors. Certain peculiarities in the daily intercourse of the Earl and his protégés excited Dr. Popham's attention, and finally his belief became confirmed that the trio were either the actual authors of the letters, or that they knew the writer. On one particular occasion, when the clergyman and the three friends were the only persons present at the dinner-table, an attack on the writings of Junius, then exciting attention, was discussed, and one of the party made the remark, "that it would be shown up and confuted by Junius in the next day's Advertiser." Instead of the confutation, however, there was a note by the printer, stating that the letter would appear in the ensuing number. "Thenceforward,” said Dr. Popham, "I was convinced that one of my three friends was Junius;" but this circumstance, in our opinion, tells rather against than for the hypothesis, though Mr. Britton seems to consider it as one of the conclusive facts in favor of his view of the case.-Westminster Review.

jected to the misfortune of receiving most of the information we possess in relation to Russia and its institutions, through channels more or less prejudiced either for or against the existing order of things.

Mr. Thompson seems to be an "honest chronicler," and to describe Russian affairs as they presented themselves to his eye, undistracted by either favor or affection.― Westminster Review.

Scholia Hellenistica in Novum Testamentum, Philone et Josepho Patribus Apostolicis aliisque Ecclesiæ antiquæ Scriptoribus necnon Libris Apocryphis maxime deprompta. Londini: Pickering.

The title of the volumes before us sufficiently explains their general object. They consist of a series of short extracts, in the original Greek, from Philo-Judæus, Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers, and writers, and from the Apocryphal books of the New occasionally from Chrysostom and other early Carpzov, Valckenaer, and other modern writers on Testament, interspersed with remarks of Grotius, Sacred Criticism. The extracts are arranged in connection with each verse of the New Testament, and are accompanied by Scripture references. Mr. Grinfield must have bestowed a vast amount of labor in

bringing together such a mass of erudition, bearing on the subject of the illustration of the New Testament; and we feel assured that his labors on so great a subject will be justly appreciated by the and we rarely meet now with such elegant Latinity Church. His work is the fruit of a ripe scholarship, as in his Preface, which it is a positive pleasure to peruse.--English Review.

Life in Russia, or the Discipline of Despotism. By Edward P. Thompson, Esq., Author of "The Notebook of a Naturalist." London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1848.

A delightful and impartial narrative of the events incident to a residence in a part of the world of which we really know next to nothing. As Mr. Thompson truly says, " In the middle of the nineteenth cenrury, there is less known of Russia than of any other country, most certainly than of any other country in Europe, and yet more is said of it, more obloquy is heaped upon it, and more unjust statements made concerning it than it deserves, with all its faults." This is clearly attributable to our ignorance of the great empire. We know that, in Russia, despotism and serfdom mutually support and sustain each other; that bribery and espionage go hand in hand; and that the two extremes of barbaric pomp and the most abject misery, co-exist among the people to a greater degree, perhaps, than is to be found in any other nation; but of the real sentiments of the Russians in reference to their condition, and indeed of the true social position of the mass of the people, we are comparatively ignorant. We are unable to realize a state of things so opposed to all we are in the habit of considering the most desirable condition for a people, forgetting that at no very remote period our own island in many respects presented an approximation to the existing state of the Russian empire. And we have been further snb

LIST OF NEW PUBLICATONS.

The Castlereagh Memoirs and Correspondence, 2
Mrs. Trollope's New Novel, the Young Countess.
vols. 8vo.
Memoirs of Chateaubriand, written by himself.
Completion of the Lives of the Queens of England.
Mr. Ross' Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark and
Sweden.

Zoological Recreations, by W. J. Broderick.
Secret History of the French Revolution of 1848; or
Memoirs of Citizen Caussidière. 2 vols. 8vo.
Travels in Sardinia, by J. W. Wane Tyndale. 3 vols.
post 8vo.

Secrets of the Confessional, by Count C. P. de Lasteyrie. 2 vols.

Clara Fane, by Louisa Stuart Costello.
Life and Remains of Theodore Hook, by Rev. R. D.
Barham. 2 vols.

Rollo and his Race, by Acton Warburton. 2 vols.
El Buscapie, the long-lost work of Cervantes, trans-
lated by Miss Ross.

Mr. Street's Poem, Frontenac.
An Essay on English Poetry, with Short Lives of the
Poets, by Thomas Campbell.

Life of the Great Lord Clive, by Rev. G. R. Gleig. Eight Years' Recollections of Bush life in Australia, by H. W. Haygarth.

The Conspiracy of the Jesuits, by the Abbate Leone.
Campaign in France in 1792, by Robert Faicie.
The Half Sisters, by Miss Jewsbury.
The Romance of the Peerage, by George Lillie Craik,
Poetry of Science, by Robert Hunt.
Sacred and Legendary Art, by Mrs. Jameson.

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Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. London: 1848.

In order to secure ourselves against being, prejudged of injustice to the subject of this notice, we may at once state our opinion, that as surprising powers of merely sensual perception and expression are to be detected in the poems of Keats as in any others within the range of English literature. Herrick surpassed Keats, in his own way, by fits, and in a few single passages; and Chaucer has pieces of brilliant and unmixed word-painting which have no equals in our language; but the power that these great poets attained, or at least exerted, only in moments, was the common manner and easy habit of the wonderful man, who may claim the honor of having assisted more than any other writer, except Mr. Wordsworth, in the origination of the remarkable school of poetry which is yet in its vigorous youth, and exhibits indications of capabilities of unlimited expansion. We also anticipate objections that might be urged, with apparent reason, against the following remarks, by stating our conviction, that the

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short-comings of which we shall complain, could not have existed in the mature productions of Keats, had he lived to produce them. Indeed, as we shall presently take occasion to show, his mind, which was endowed with a power of growth almost unprecedentedly rapid, was on the eve of passing beyond the terrestrial sphere in which he had as yet moved, when death cut short his marvellous, and only just commenced, career.

To Keats, more deeply perhaps than to any poet born in Christian times,

"Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stained the white radiance of eternity."

His mind, like Goethe's, was "lighted from below." Not a ray of the wisdom that is from above had, as yet, illumined it.

The character of the poet, in as far as it differs from that of other men, is indeed a subject of too much importance to allow of our sacrificing this admirable occasion for

extending our knowledge concerning it, to our |
tenderness, or to that of our readers, for the
young writer of whom Mr. Monckton Milnes
is at once the faithful biographer, and the
eloquent apologist. Mr. Milnes will pardon.
us if our deductions from the data with which
he has supplied us, do not wholly coincide
with his own inferences. We confess that we
are unable to detect, even in Keats' latest
letters and compositions, anything more than
a strong promise of, and aspiration towards
many qualities of character and genius, which
Mr. Milnes regards as already numbered
among the constituents of the young poet's
life and power.

Extraordinary poetical genius, notwithstanding its resemblance to exuberant health, has not unfrequently been found to be connected with deeply seated disease. In most cases, the poetical power seems to have been the result of an abnormal habit of sensation.

"We are men of ruined blood,
Thereby comes it we are wise."

Angelo. Minds belonging to this latter category, the aloe-blossoms of humanity, appear less than others to have been indebted to disease for their pre-eminence.

In almost every page of the work before us, the close connection between the genius of Keats and his constitutional malady pronounces itself. No comment of ours could deepen the emphasis of the following passages, taken nearly at random from the mass of similar passages, of which the letters of the young poet in great part consist:

"I have this morning such a lethargy that I cannot write. The reason of my delaying is oftentimes from this feeling: I wait for a proper temper. I am now so depressed that I have not an idea to put to paper; my hand feels like lead, and yet it is an unpleasant numbness; it does not take away the pain of existence; I don't know what to write. Monday. You see how I have delayed-and even now I have but a confused idea of what I should be about. My intellect must be in a degenerating state; it must be, for when I should be writing about-God knows what, I am troubling you with moods of my own mind-or rather body-for mind there is none. I am in that temper, that if I were under water, I would scarcely kick to come to the top. I know very well this is all nonsense. In a short time, I hope

For that the consumption and insanity which have often terminated the careers of men of genius, have been not so much the consequences as the causes of their superiority, is I sufficiently attested by the fact, that those diseases have been, in such cases, as in common ones, most frequently hereditary.

It is a curious medical fact, which we have heard stated by first rate authorities, that instances are not extraordinary of families, in which, while one member has been afflicted with consumption, a second with scrofula, and a third with insanity, the fourth has been endowed with brilliant genius.

In making these remarks, we no more impugn the transcendent value which the productions of genius usually bear, than the naturalist questions the value of a precious gum, in describing it as the result of vegetable malformations or disease. Nor would we be supposed to imply an ordinary absence in the man of genius of a great general superiority of moral character, when compared with the common rank of men. Genius, however fantastical may be the form which it assumes, is, in essence, an extraordinary honesty; an honesty which too often refuses to exert itself beyond the sphere of the senses and the intellect, and which, then, in its highest energy, produces a Raphael or a Coleridge; but which, sometimes, while it purifies the senses, and perfects their expression, prevents also every incontinence of character, and carries manhood to its height in a Milton or a Michael

shall be in a temper to feel sensibly your menday, to have any interest in that or in anything else. I feel no spur at my brother's going to America; and am almost stony-hearted about his wedding."

tion of my book. In vain have I waited till Mon

·

"I am this morning in a sort of temper, indolent, and supremely careless; I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence;' my passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre

all

over me to a delightful sensation,-about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl, and the breath of lilies, I should call it languor; but as I am, I must call it laziness. The fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree, that pleasure has no show of enticement, and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, of countenance as they pass by; they seem nor ambition, nor love, have any show of alertness rather three figures on a Greek vase; a man and two women, whom no one but myself would distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the mind."

"I feel I must again begin with my poetry, for * *I if I am not in action I am in pain. * live under an everlasting restraint, never relieved unless I am composing, so I will write away."

"The relief, the feverish relief of poetry. * ** * This morning poetry has conquered. I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life. I feel escaped from a new and threatening sorrow; and I am thankful for it

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