Railway bustle past his grave, and the flaring light of ironworks cast their glare upon it. One of the most gifted of Germany's dramatic poets-a worthy inheritor of the muse of Schiller-Frederic Hebbel, has been called from the theatre of time. He had a rich and vigorous imagination, a style original and strong, and thoughts of worth. He was, perhaps, a little too gladiatoresque, and loved to show too much of the muscle and sinew of his characters. His situations are often sensational, and his plots founded on horrors in which, sometimes, the moral is not carefully wrought out. But the theatre in Germany, as elsewhere, presents difficulties to an author, which materially interfere with conception and dénouement, in the need for writing according to the specialities of actors, rather than the teachings of the poet's better genius. He kept the stage with greater force than most modern writers, and adhered with more self-will to his own views than many. He was peculiarly related to the stage, as the husband of Christine Enghans. He has left a play with the closing scene unfinished, though the plot of his own life is spent. William Robson, after a toilsome and little joyful life; after a round of labours and woes, little lightened by prosperity, or spoken of by fame; after a drudging but not valueless series of efforts, the results of which scarcely saved him from the woe of want, fell in his old age into ill-health, and its ill neighbour, poverty. Attempts were made-not unblessedly, we hope to ease the few remaining days of this man of letters, who had done the double toils of schoolmaster and of author, and thus to cast a gleam of sunshine over the last days of the old man. His end came, and he was placed in his grave by charitable hands. So ended his uneventful life on earth. Weary lives are often sustained by hope, and it is sad to see the hand touch the very key-spring of success, then wither in the palsy of death. Careful industriousness and pure humility formed the main characteristics of the Rev. A. McCaul. He had given his life's best days to study and labour; he was "not discontent, nor wroth, nor gloomy-hearted;" though the preferment he merited eluded his grasp. How often is the saying realized, "I have no man to help me when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming another steppeth down before me. Nevertheless, the Great Healer may come, and visit His own with His salvation. So was it with the great Hebrew scholar, who had waited long and patiently. Man neglected, yet God remembered him, and he was taken to his own place, to "see into the life of things.' Christmas-tide was approaching, with all its memories and hopes, Thackeray, rejoicing in his strength, spoke of his labours, prospects, futurity, and intentions with glad heart and ready tongue. He had laid his account for renewed health and increased happiness ; "But, mortal pleasure, what art thou, in truth? So was it with Thackeray; the fragile springs of being unloosed 1864. L their clasps, and the spirit departed. The heart that had often made another's leap for joy, while itself was aching with a nameless grief, had become still in the lonely night-time; the pulses that quickened at the thought of right, and throbbed indignantly when wrong was done, were moveless in the morning, and the ruddy current was still in the frost of the inevitable. An unbelievable hesitancy held every spirit. Men refused to recognize the possibility of such an exit for one so "wise and just, so free and mild,” who knew so well to wield "Wisdom, the mirrored shield; or scorn, the spear." Yet it was true; and in him no more "the passion-winged messengers of thought" would stir himself to stir the world. How seldom we associate the kindlier feelings with satire! How readily we assume the badness of another's heart, yet claim exemption for our own! How easily we fasten the provoking nickname to the truest men! This cynic and satirist, it is said on good authority, was one of nature's choicest children for acts of love and deeds of charity. We do remember well the emphasis with which he once talked of the author of "Vanity Fair," as one 86 who has been miscalled as a railer and a misanthrope, who finds no good anywhere; who says the sky above you is green instead of Blue, and only miserable sinners round about him;" he said, "Miserable sinners! so we are; so is every writer and every reader I ever heard of, save ONE. I cannot help telling the truth as it appears, and describing what I see. To describe it otherwise would, as it seems to me, be falsehood to that calling to which it has pleased Heaven to call me; treason to that conscience which sees men as they are, and which says truth must be told, falsehood must be checked, that pardon must be prayed for, and that love reigns supreme." he spoke and thought. "Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise." "What he dared do and think, though men might start," "He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes. Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, And to his dearest friends (who loved him well) Thus The world is famous for false judgments; but a true Judge overrules all. Seldom have men a benediction for their fellows, and slander seems more pleasant to the mouth than praise; yet, despite this, justice oftentimes comes uppermost, else it would be indeed a sad world, with so great a multitude of sins to hide, and so little charity to cover it. In all cases kindly judgment is best. "What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." In our word of mourning for the most translucent writer of our 66 age, the keenest yet the kindliest censor, the creator of many exquisite forms of life, the great charitable spirit that left us in time to share the Christmas angel-song, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good-will to man," let us say no word that shall require unsaying, but join our voices, and our hearts as well, in that same hymn, which suits so well all seasons on an earth like ours. An eminent French philosopher, whose thoughts had rounded and sounded the whole sea of scepticism, has returned to the sure haven. He has shown that philosophy, as a preamble to the faith," teaches us to regard with distrust every effort to incline us to think of the universe as fatherless, and man as the intellectual orphan of time. Saisset had detected many of the word-juggles with which the Pantheist encompasses the name of the All-father, and tested the points of strength and weakness which theism, as a philosophy, shows. In the domains of speculation, of moral and political thought, and of religious philosophy, he has erected a monument which shall preserve him from being "forgotten as a dead man." While not resting his own faith on the precarious deductions of reason, he has found sufficient to show that faith, hope, charity, and reason, though, like the four sides of a pyramid, they angle off from each other at their base on earth, unite as one in their pinnacle in heaven. He believed in no shadowy God, constructed out of philosophic formula; and now the shadows of earth have fallen away, he beholds eye to eye "the unlikenable One” in whom he trusted. We have named and spoken of some of those who in the past year have become the tenants of the grave, and of eternity, for weal or woe; let us not forget, however, that to us-writer and reader both -a like hour cometh, when we must feel "Life last pale hope pass shivering from our heart,” and let us learn thence the worth of life as the season of duty, improvement, and thought. To us" death's dim walk" yet remains. The only true preparation for that drear journey is the possession of a reasonable faith, resulting in a reasonable service to the Master of life and of death. Sustained by that faith in life, we shall so live as to be ready for this last of earthly woes. Sustained by this faith, in the supreme anguish we shall feel that, "Though 'tis an awful thing to die, Yet, the path once trod, Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, And bids 'the pure in heart behold their God.'" We shall have said enough if these thoughts of ours, spoken in love, faith, and charity, be retained alike by writer and reader 66 in memoriam." N. L. The Reviewer. True Strength: a Sermon to Young Men. Second Thousand. By the Rev. JAMES DODDS, Dunbar, N.B. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. SERMONS to young men have somewhat fallen out of vogue, without, as we think, good reason. This sermon was preached in Boston Free Church, Dunse, at the request of the Young Men's Christian Association of that Berwickshire town. It is published (price threepence) at their request, and, we believe, for their benefit, pecuniarily as well as spiritually. The text is peculiarly appropriate, 1 John ii. 13, and the handling of it, for its purpose, is admirable. It is more hortatory than expository, and abounds in good, plain, strong, well-stated matter, of which the following is a summary: "Be strong, not in your own strength, but in the strength of God; be strong through faith in Christ your Saviour; be intelligent readers and prayerful students of the word of God; seek to have that word abiding in your hearts as an element of life and power, as a weapon of war, as a means of victory. Then, in the strength of faith and by the sword of the Spirit, resist temptation, overcome the wicked one, crucify the flesh, rise above the world, and be more than conquerors through Him that loved you." The Analogy of Thought and Nature Investigated. By EDWARD VANSITTART NEALE, M.A. London: Williams and Norgate. THIS is an important book, full of careful thought, and the result of extensive and well-mastered reading. It consists of three parts, of which the first contains speculations on "the law of thought;" the second supplies a concise "history of thought;" and the third treats of "the divination of thought," in the sense of the rising of thought to a conception of the Divine Being, not in the sense of intuitive sagacity and foreseeing guesswork or prophecy. In the introductory chapter the author maintains that there is a law of thought, a law brought to light by Hegel." "The characteristics of thought," we learn in Chap. II., "are twofold: the first constructtive, by which we present to ourselves objects of thought composed of different parts; the second analytical, by which we dissect these objects or their parts, and contemplate the results of our dissection in their mutual relations, for the purpose of tracing out the bond or principle of union existing among them." "The conditions of thought" are given, in Chap. III., as space and time. Time and space are, in truth, the two forms of the separating action of thought, the thought of space arising when the parts separated are conceived to be simultaneously co-existent; the thought of time, Hence each is when they are conceived to exist successively. involved in the other." In Chap. IV., "the development of thought" is given as threefold, viz., Relations of-1, Co-existence; 2, Succession; 3, The union of both, resulting in ideas of reality, causality, and individuality. "The process of judgment" is explained, in Chap. V., as consisting of sensation and perception, and as forming a fourfold series,-i. Qualitative; ii. Quantitative; iii. Inductive; iv. Necessary. Chap. VI., on "Inductive thought," shows how "syllogisms form three groups,-i. The syllogisms of perception; ii. The syllogisms of induction; iii. The syllogisms of necessity, corresponding to the last three groups of judgments, and constituting together the process of inductive thought.' The character of deductive thought" is traced, in Chap. VII., through the ideas of design, change, and will, till at last the law of thought is evolved as follows, viz.:- The action of thought consists in producing a unity of subject and object through a perpetual process, wherein the subject continually distinguishes itself from itself to form its own object, setting itself over against itself as the other of itself, in order to use this other as the means of its own realization. This is the Law of Thought." 66 3 Part Second goes on to explain the successions in which "thought leaped out to wed with thought." It is impossible to supply the essence of that which is an essence in its utmost condensation. 66 Chap. VIII. reviews " Greek Philosophy," from Thales to Proclus -a space of a thousand years-in ten pages, as one revolution of thought, one great year of philosophic speculation." Chap. IX., on "Modern Philosophy," proceeds from Boethius to Hegel and Schoppenhauer, giving great prominence to the German hierarch of logical deduction, Hegel (whose disciple the author is), and his successors. In Chap. X. "the Baconian Philosophy" is estimated more fully and apart; and the influence of his system is traced to the present day through the chief thinkers of Britain and France. In Part Third the author says, in Chap. XI., on "The Interpretation of Nature," "Our investigation has brought us to the conclusion that the faculty of thought, of which we are conscious, has à law of action, whence it may be possible to compare the 'me' of our consciousness with the 'not me' of Nature. "We establish the existence of this law on three grounds: "I. Because, by means of it we can assign an intelligible meaning and logical connection to certain thoughts, which have left their impress on all cultivated languages, and which have this peculiar character,-that while we are conscious of their presence every where, we can nowhere catch hold of them; that they cannot be got rid of, and yet, when questioned, seem to melt into nothing-a character suitable to thoughts expressing the action of thoughts, and to no other kind of thoughts. "II. Because we find these same thoughts, in the same order, forming the characteristics of a double series of systems of thought, extending over a period of two thousand five hundred years, through which men have attempted to account for the universe upon two opposite assumptions-1st. That the true reality is a physical being; 2nd. That the true reality is a spiritual being. |