chronicle runs parallel with that of Diedrich Knickerbocker; it is sometimes hard to say whether the literal record of the days of Van Twiller and Kieft or the mock-heroic history is the more grotesque. Some idea of the relative value of commodities of the market and the loom in 1638 may be formed from a legal transaction of that date, described as follows: "Cornelius Petersen appeared before the Secretary Van Tienhoven, and declared with true Christian affirmation, in lieu of a solemn oath, that it was true that he had purchased a hog from Ann Jackson, in payment of which she took from his store so much of purpled cloth as was sufficient for a petticoat." It is easy enough, as every one knows, by mere excerpts such as this from antique records and documents to insure a certain kind and measure of interest for a book treating of local habits, customs, and institutions; but our author succeeds not less in giving entertainment to his readers as he approaches our own times, and narrates the results of his own observation and experience within familiar precincts.

The book is really a curious one, and to be commended to the student of manners and customs. We trust that Mr. De Voe will not disappoint us of a second volume. Some of the material which he collects and preserves is of a kind to amuse and entertain, if not greatly to instruct posterity.

LIST OF SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

1. Martin's History of France. The Age of Louis XIV. By Henri Martin. Translated by Mary L. Booth. Boston: Walker, Wise, and Company. 1865. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. xxii., 563; viii., 543.

2. History of the Peace; 1815-1854; with an Introduction, 1800-1815. By Harriet Martineau. Boston: Walker, Wise, and Company. 1864. 2 vols. Post 8vo.

3. The Correlation and Conservation of Forces: a Series of Expositions by Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig, and Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction by Edward L. Youmans, M. D. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1865. 12mo. pp. xlii., 438.

4. Essays: Moral, Political, and Esthetic. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1865. 12mo. pp. 386.

5. Arctic Researches and Life among the Esquimaux: being the Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, in the years 1860, 1861, and 1862. By Charles Francis Hall. New York: Harper and Brothers. 8vo. pp. 595. With Map and Illustrations.

[A very curious and entertaining narrative, with excellent illustrations.] 6. Harper's Hand-Book for Travellers in Europe and the East. By W. Pembroke Fetridge. With Maps. Third Year. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1864. 12mo. pp. xxiv., 619.

[A compact and well-designed Guide-Book; but so full of errors, irrelevancies, and the marks of ignorance, as to be practically worthless. If put into the hands of a competent person to revise unsparingly, it might be made a useful book for travellers in Europe.]

7. Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays prepared for the United States Sanitary Commission. Edited by William A. Hammond, M. D., SurgeonGeneral United States Army, etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo. pp. viii., 552.

[A most valuable series of essays, the preparation and publication of which are not the least among the good works of the Sanitary Commission.]

8. The American Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1863. Volume III. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1864. 8vo. pp. iv., 865.

[History does not easily consent to an alphabetical arrangement. The execution of the book seems better than its plan. Why not give us an American Annual Register?]

9. Apologia pro Vita sua: being a Reply to a Pamphlet entitled, “What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?" By John Henry Newman, D.D. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1865. 12mo. pp. 393.

[An important contribution to the knowledge of religious opinion in England, and interesting as a study of a strongly marked and peculiar character.]

10. The Poetical Works of John Milton: with a Life of the Author; Dissertations, Notes, and a Verbal Index to all the Poems. By Charles Dexter Cleveland. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt. 1865. 12mo. pp. 688.

[The editor has succeeded in his aim "to make the most useful edition" of Milton's English poems.]

11. The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. By Jeremy Taylor, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1864. 12mo. pp. xix., 451.

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. By Jeremy Taylor, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1864. 12mo. pp. xxvii., 373.

[The most accurate and tasteful edition ever published of these excellent books.]

12. The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. Revised and Enlarged Edition. With a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. New York: W. J. Widdleton. 1865. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 440, 430. 13. Looking Toward Sunset. From Sources old and new, original and selected. By L. Maria Child. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. Sq. 12mo. pp. ix., 455.

[A very pleasing volume.]

14. Following the Flag. From August, 1861, to November, 1862, with the Army of the Potomac. By Carleton. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 16mo. pp. viii., 336.

15. A Tribute to Starr King. By Richard Frothingham. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865. 16mo. pp. 247.

16. Studies for Stories. By Jean Ingelow. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1865. 16mo. pp. 404.

17. Diary of Mrs. Kitty Trevylyan: a Story of the Times of Whitefield and the Wesleys. By the Author of "Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family," etc. With a Preface by the Author for the American Edition. New York: M. W. Dodd. 1865. 12mo.

18 John Godfrey's Fortunes, related by himself. A Story of American Life. By Bayard Taylor. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd and Houghton. 1865. 12mo. pp. viii., 511.

19. The Lost Love. By the Author of "John Drayton." Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers. [1864.] 12mo. pp. 400.

[A very fair novel, but hardly likely, as is asserted on the title-page of this edition, to carry the name and fame of its writer down to the latest posterity. It is not to be confounded with "A Lost Love," a story that deservedly ranks among the best modern fictions.]

20. Cabiro. A Poem. By George H. Calvert. Cantos III. and IV. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1864. 16mo. pp. 87. By Fitz Greene Halleck. New York: pp. 49.

21. Young America. A Poem. D. Appleton and Company. 16mo.

NOTE TO ARTICLE III. No. CCIV.

WEST WICKHAM, London,

August 14, 1864.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

66

GENTLEMEN:- In an able article upon the origin of our notions of Space and Time, contained in your current number, the solution of this problem, proposed by me in a work called the " Analogy of Thought and Nature," is alluded to in terms conveying an impression so different to that which I at least intended to convey, that I ask the favor of a few lines in your pages to state more clearly my views on this subject. And I do this with the less diffidence, because my solution has a direct bearing upon a question hitherto little considered, but which must, I think, be admitted to be of great importance in metaphysical inquiries, namely, the constructive action of thought.

66

Your reviewer alleges that I resolve the idea of Space into a sensuous imagination," because I have said that "the thought of Space is no sooner formed than it resolves itself into the opposite thoughts of Centre and Circumference." I allow that my too unguarded employment of these words justifies the criticism, and the more so, that I have not drawn in my book with sufficient clearness the distinction between Space and Motion which I am about to draw here; but I cannot allow that it justly applies to my conceptions as I apprehend them.

Every thought involves an act of will, we will to think. But of what do we think when we thus will? what forms the substance of our thoughts? I reply, motions, either produced directly by the action of our wills, or called forth by sensations or emotions, i. e. agencies independent of our proper wills, by which they are affected. The will to produce motion is a power of which it is impossible to suppose ourselves deprived so long as we retain conscious being. All thoughts not traceable to sensations or emotions are expressions of or reflections upon motions. And all thoughts about our sensations or emotions resolve themselves into the reproduction, rearrangement, or analysis by the aid of language of the motions called forth in us by sensation or emotion. Now, if this be a true account of thought, it cannot be surprising that our first thought, the logical condition of all that follow, is the thought of that in which motion is possible, a thought which, according to the principle of opposition pervading all thought, falls into two great opposites: 1. The thought of Space, that in which coexistent motions are possible; 2. The thought of Time, that in which successive motions are possible. These opposite conditions unite in the thought

of a motion willed, which must be thought of as willed in Space and Time; while each of these falls within itself into a new opposition ; — the thought of Space into that of Centre and not Centre, which unite in the thought of motions emanating from any assumed centre; the thought of Time into the opposition of Past and Future, which unite in the thought of the present.

The unions thus produced necessarily begin to assume what your reviewer calls a "sensuous image"; the complete absence of such an image belonging solely to the principle of Will, of which we become conscious only by intuition, not by presentation. For since this power acts by determining itself, and every determination is, as Spinoza said, a negation, every such determination must partake of the character of a thing, that is, of that which being determined both qualitatively, or as to the direction of the motions concerned in its production, and quanti tatively, or as to their magnitude, may become an object to sense.

But until this double determination has been effected we have only objects of thought, not of sense; though the objects of sense may be used as illustrations, to shadow forth the more subtile conceptions of thought. Thus I justify the use of Centre and Circumference in reference to Space. God has been said to be a Being who has his centre everywhere and his circumference nowhere. So the centre of Space is only the point assumed by the will as the origin of motion, which may be taken anywhere, and its circumference is determined only by the distance to which the motion is willed to extend. There is no true "image" in this thought, because there is no expression either of Quality or Quantity; no particular movement willed, but only an unlimited place for motion: and the word circumference is used only to denote that this possibility of motion is thought of as equally possible in all directions.

I am, with much respect, yours,

EDW. VANSITTART NEALE.

[The passage referred to by Mr. Neale is contained in the North American Review for July, 1864, p. 114, and is expressed as follows: "To a limited extent, E. V. Neale accepts Trendelenburg's psychological theory (Analogy of Thought and Nature, 1863, pp. 28, 29): As Trendelenburg has shown,.... all attempts to explain the thought of Space made by the profoundest thinkers either imply the thought of Space, or fall into absurdity..... The thought of Space is no sooner formed, than it distinguishes itself into two opposite thoughts, that of centre and circumference; which imply, while they deny each other.' Such a thought of Space' is clearly a sensuous image of Extension."