offered aid in the New Church writings; and while remembering its despair, and filled with delight and astonishment at its deliverance and grand acquisition, the emancipated mind will exultingly cry out, "What hath God wrought?" W. M.

REVIEW.

THE GENERATIVE ORGANS, considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically. A Posthumous Work of Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Latin by James John Garth Wilkinson. London : WILLIAM NEWBERY, 6, King-street, Holborn. 1852. pp. 313. ALTHOUGH this work has been published in English some months, we have only very recently heard of its publication, or seen it in the translation. Does not the Swedenborg Association advertise its works, especially when new ones leave the press? Although the work before us is of a verecund and recondite nature, nevertheless there are minds who wish to see and to study it; and these minds, when aware of the fact that so important a work has been translated with so much ability and care, and printed at so much expense, will no doubt desire to procure it.

That we may give to our readers a proper view of this work, we cannot do better than subjoin the Advertisement by the able translator, which says all that we could possibly say to the general reader on the subject and nature of the work :—

"A particular account of the MS. volume from which the following Treatises are taken, has been given by Dr. Tafel in his edition of the originals. In executing the translation we have aimed to represent the author's meaning as closely as possible; but there are passages here and there where the sense is doubtful; and in these we have been literal, as the nearest approach to being faithful. The reader will occasionally find difficulties in his way; and he will kindly recollect that he is reading a manuscript which there is reason to suppose was a first draft, and which would certainly not have been issued by Swedenborg in its present unfinished state. For this reason also the reader will be indulgent to the translator.

"Yet the work as it stands is a worthy integrant part of that extraordinary series of works which more than a century ago appeared in Latin, and which within the last ten years has been coming forth in the English tongue. What its precise merits may be, we will not prejudge; that is a question which belongs to the future. We see in it great intuitions of order, with a most ingenious application to details: much that is as new to the human mind now, as when the manuscript was written. We see in it also a constant amalgam of physics and meta

physics, like what there is in the human body itself; but which we do not know where to find iu any author but Swedenborg. And moreover we recognize in it an affinity to Man, an addiction to central truths and principles, which is too absent from the corresponding works of this age. Yet we own that it is worth but little as a hand-book for the kind of information now sought in the medical schools.

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In truth the work is non-medical: it is one of those productions which must exist more and more in all departments, and which are designed to promote a non-professional, public, or universal view of the matters in hand. Science in its universals is no tradesman, and works not for the improvement of any calling; but solely because truth is good. Such science for the human body has been cultivated by the non-medical Swedenborg.

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"It is a delicate subject which the present treatise embraces, but it is one which cannot be unknown. When we are little boys and girls, our first queries about our whence are answered by the authoritative dogma of the silver spade:" we were dug up with that implement. By degrees the fact comes forth. The public, however, remains for ages in the silver-spade condition of mind with regard to the science of the fact; and the doctors foster it by telling us that the whole subject is a medical property. Swedenborg wants to tell us, on the other hand, all about these mysteries; and we suppose the time has come when we may begin to know. There is nothing wrong in the knowing; and though the passions might be stimulated in the first moments by such information, yet in the second instance they will be calmed by it; and ceasing to be inflamed by the additional goad of curiosity and imagination, they will cool down under the hydropathic influences of science. Well stated knowledge did never yet contribute to human inflammation; and we much question whether the whole theory of the silver spade be not a mistake; and whether children should not be told the truth from the first; that before desire and imagination are born, the young mind may receive in its cool innocency the future objects of powers and faculties which are to be subject afterwards to such strong excitements. Vegetable generation supplies a beautiful and most decorous set of analogies for instruction in animal and human. But we repeat, it will not be the great doctors as such, but the great educators, from whom this information suited to the public, and the children, can be obtained. "For the rest, the present treatise shines for us with the clear mild genius of Swedenborg. We have so often written our best about him, that we feel, were we to expatiate here, that we should be travelling upon the same lines, and weary the reader with our repetitions. It requires new voices from time to time to illustrate matters and men of world-wide importance. We are senile in the present service, and have already passed on to fields where we feel a little younger.

"But with our last literary accents we would fain claim the attention of the new men of this age, to what there is in Swedenborg's scientific works, accordant with their own necessities and discoveries. In particular we suppose that there is no writer before or since who has treated as he has done, of the continuity of the body on the one hand; or of the

permeation and penetration of vibrations aud living influences through it, on the other. Let us ta'.e a common example. A man catches cold: straightway he feels stiffness and pains in every joint of his body: his whole head is sore; his nose runs with serous defluxion, &c. &c. Now, strange as it may appear, the present science does not present any physiological knowledge of what these pathological states may be. What is the condition of his periosteum, of the sheaths of all his stiff muscles, and of his creaking joints? How does it all happen? Neither science nor imagination knows. The feelings of the patient have no commerce with the skill of the doctor. This demonstrates at any rate that the science which lies at the basis of pathology is not yet opened. Pains, aches, swellings, and symptoms generally, glide along the body by terribly broad bridges of structure of which the anatomist wots not. Well, then, there is wanted somebody besides this prim anatomist, to unfold the case. Our Swedenborg, Licentiate of No College, is one of the men in whose works we have found a beginning of instruction on this subject. He has wonderfully indicatel to us many of the great bridges and highways of vibrations and influences, and in so doing has thronged with living states and forms parts which were previously dispersed, lying in sand heaps of cell germs. To the new pathology, which chronicles the passage of states through Man, he is as yet the most important contributor from the physiological side.

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It gives us pleasure to end these brief lines by recording publicly that the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm, the body of which Linnæus and Berzelius were alumni, has lately paid a fitting tribute to the memory of Swedenborg. We excerpt the following from the official account of their last annual festival :—

"1852. The Academy has this year caused the annual medal to be struck to the memory of the celebrated Swedenborg. It represents Swedenborg's image on the obverse: over it his name: under it Nat. 1688, Den. 1772. On the reverse a man in a dress reaching to the feet, with eyes unbandaged, standing before the temple of Isis, at whose base the goddess is seen. Above it: TANTOQUE EXSULTAT ALUMNO; beneath MIRO NATURE INVESTIGATORI SOCIO QUOND. ESTIMATISS. ACAD. REG. SCIENT. SVEC. MDCCCLII.'

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The eulogium on Swedenborg was delivered by the President of the Academy, General Akrell. It is to the liberality of this same Academy, who lent us the original manuscript, that the reader is indebted for the possession of this and many other of Swedenborg's works. Justice compels us to add that a munificent Englishman, Joseph Senior, Esq., of Dalton, impressed with the value of these works, has defrayed the entire cost of the present translation.

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MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION.

fact, the cry lacks sincerity in the best is also in the Word of God, as well as sense of the word.