prevent their participating in the wealth and comforts of the more eastern parts of the empire. The interchange of national songs may do more than the interchange of penal acts of rival parliaments; and we therefore recommend this little book of ballads to the special protection of the well-wishers of the sister isle.

TORRINGTON HALL: being an account of Two Days, in the Autumn of the year 1844, passed at that magnificent and philosophically-conducted Establishment for the Insane. By ARThur Wallbridge. Fcap. 8vo. J. How. Ir it were not for the dedication at the commencement, and the plan at the end, we should have taken this book for an entire fiction; as it is, it proves to be one of those hybrid works which modern idleness, in its impatience of what it calls heavy reading (by which should be understood serious writing), has called forth. Torrington Hall is an establishment for insane persons, founded by a philanthropic and intellectual physician, Dr. Elstree, on a plan, if not entirely new, yet very greatly so in many of its details. It is, according to the account of Mr. Wallbridge (an assumed name), a palace in the midst of a happy valley, entertaining 700 inmates, who are treated as if reasonable beings. The rational system, which, in spite of all opposition, has been making its way ever since it was first started by Rousseau and French philosophy, is pursued most rigidly: appetites are stimulated by exercise; ennui is expelled by constant useful employment; and the violence of the passions restrained by wholesome example and moral discourses. As the result of the perseverance and talents of one man, Torrington Hall is worthy of a more elaborate chronicler, and of special examination by all who take an interest in social science and social arrangements. There can be little doubt but that this account of it will attract the attention of many of that fast-increasing class of legislators, politicians, and writers, who are convinced that the regulations of dense masses of population must be founded on scientific principles.

Of the work itself we cannot speak so highly. The mingling of fact and fiction, the encumbering the description of so interesting an establishment with theories of government and dissertations on politics, seems crude and out of place. Nor are these subjects very felicitously introduced, nor profoundly discussed. Dummies are introduced, who oppose only just sufficient argument as to insure a triumph to the author's opinions. Questions that have vexed the brains of the hardest thinkers from Lycurgus and Socrates to Bacon and Bentham, are turned off as settled in a few vivacious sentences; and knotty points that the mightiest intellectual fingers have not been able to unravel, are here supposed to be slipped asunder by a very lady-like finger and thumb, as things as easily resolved as the tangles in the ears of a lap-dog Neither madness nor the nature of man are so easily to be disposed of as Mr. Wallbridge seems to consider. It is incumbent to speak thus

plainly to this young author, because he has an agreeable facility of expression, a good deal of liveliness and observation, and above all an earnestness and justness of feeling; all which, when fortified and enriched by profounder knowledge and reflection, will make him a valuable advocate on the side of philosophy and mankind. His Bizarre Tales gave promise of a writer of first-rate excellence; and as we wish him well, we cannot encourage him in a style which, in its horror of heaviness, is likely, if not controlled, to run into flippancy and flimsiness. We thank him, however, for the book, as directing attention to the subject, and should be glad to see a full and scientific account of an establishment in every way so important and interesting as Torrington Hall.

RHYMES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A HAND-LOOM WEAVER. BY WILLIAM THOM, of Inverury. Second Edition with Additions. Post 8vo. Smith, Elder & Co.

POEMS BY ELIZA COOK. Fcp. 8vo. Simpkin, Marshall & Co.

POETRY is a term so vaguely applied, and so indefinitely conceived, that it is made to comprehend any measured language. In this very unsatisfactory application of the word, certainly, both the above volumes may be included within its application. They differ from prose in their syllabic arrangement, but in no other respect, though, being versified, the ideas are a little more enthusiastic and sentimental than is usually the case. Of the true element of poetry, that fusion (or, as a prosaic punster would perhaps say, confusion) of the intellect, the imagination, and the feeling-an utterance proportionately and intensely mingling all into a new product, which is at once felt to be poetry-there is none whatever.

We conclude, and are glad for the authors' sake it is so, that one being the second series, and the other the second edition, that they both have obtained some share of popularity. That they should do so was very natural, for they both of them echo, and oftentimes not ungracefully nor feebly, sentiments and sensations that the affectionate and the enthusiastic feel a pleasure in being renewed. In Miss Cook's poems we have the most homely and common events, and the sensations they produce, given with very little adornment in good Dunstable versecoarse in texture and strong to wear a good serviceable article, that will suit the maid and many mistresses. There is glibness of expression, readiness of illustration, and some warmth of feeling; but still it is to be regretted, that there is not in the language a word that will express this, without affixing the same term to the inspired passages of the prophet Isaiah and Shakspeare.

Towards Mr. Thom we have a warmer feeling; for if not in the strict sense of the word a poet, he is a man of talent, and his vicissitudes have been so terrible that we should regret to throw another shadow across

his path. To write such prose, and to have so far advanced in versification, is no slight proof of abilities, situated as he was in the lowest abysses of poverty and misery. It is a strange thing that this lowly writer has not any vulgarity of expression, whilst Miss Cook, whose education seems to indicate a wealthier if not higher grade of society, abounds in vulgarisms and common-places. This, we take it, arises from the greater simplicity of the Scotch weaver, and because vulgarity itself is an affectation. Mr. Thom's verses are also musical and varied, and the subjects more pleasing. Poverty of diction is so much concealed by the use of Scotch words, that a southern ear may be much deceived as to the intrinsic power of the language. It is most sincerely to be hoped that Mr. Thom will be placed in a situation where his superior literary talent may find profitable exercise; and we cannot refrain, though beyond the critical province, from congratulating Mr. Thom on the friendship of Mr. Gordon, whose valuable assistance is honourable to both parties.

A TOUR THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE MEUSE WITH THE LEGENDS OF the WALLOON COUNTRY AND THE ARDENNES. BY DUDLEY COSTELLO. Post 8vo. Chapman and Hall.

Ir might be supposed that thirty years of constant travelling and as constant publication would have exhausted at all events Europe; and that the opposite realms at least of France and Flanders must have been written dry by successive travellers. But that such is not the case, is proved by daily issues from the press; and the present elegant and lively volume is a pleasing instance to the contrary. The imitative and gregarious nature of man is as much exemplified in the individual traveller, as in any division of the human race; and the grand sights and high-roads are pretty rigidly kept to by the whole mass. Now and then, as in the present instance, an adventurous lover of nature and novelty strikes out of the highway and beaten track, and discovers a region of beauty that, in its turn, becomes the resort of the flock who follow. They cannot have a pleasanter guide than Mr. Costello, who knows how to describe the picturesque, and heighten its beauty by casting over it the associations of remote history and romantic legend. And nowhere do these accessories more abound than in the land where industry and intelligence prevailed, through a most cruel conflict, against the ignorance and ferocity of hereditary power.

The work is very beautifully embellished with a variety of illustrative wood-cuts and other "devices" to render it, what, no doubt, it will become, an inmate of the table library that every lady now indulges in. It is rather strange, that amidst such a profusion of illustration, the "graver" did not afford us a little map, the more readily to track and enable his admirers to follow the new guide to the region he has so tastefully explored. We had intended to have extracted a description or two, but the great pressure of other works has prevented our so doing,

DANTE. Translated by ICHABOD CHARLES WRIGHT, M.A. A new Edition, revised and corrected. 3 vols. Fep. 8vo. London: Longman and Co.

THE very sound of Dante's name is like the sullen midnight bell swung from the loftiest tower of some solemn cathedral. It is associated with night of the intensest gloom and solemnity, although that night sometimes, as in the Inferno, seems of "the dunnest smoke of hell." Again, as in the Purgatorio, it is the mere glimmer of remote stars that light its agonising pages, until in the Paradiso it is still but the splendour of night, though there it is illuminated by all the host of stars. Never do we get to daylight, nor ever escape from the overwhelming awfulness that the gloomy genius of the poet impresses upon one. The grand characteristic of the poem is derived from the grand characteristic of the man: indomitable intellectual might. He is the Coriolanus of poets. He scorns and contemns the mean or the frivolous, and sternly rejects all aids which require him to swerve from his lofty flight. In this directness of purpose, in this disdain of petty arts to attract attention or win applause, he transcends Milton, and every poet we have ever perused. Poetry with him was the utterance of the loftiest truths his soul could conceive. It is the poetry of the prophets, begot of anguish and woe, and the only capable exponent of the profoundest emotions and intellectual conceptions. Poetry with him was a reality, stern and palpable as the spirit of man itself. It was no light fiction for ladies' albums, or the amusement of foppish leisure. It was the utterance of the statesman and the legislator, who had drunk of the bitter waters of experience, and had seen human nature stripped to its lazar-like nakedness. It was the voice of the middle ages, a season of tempest and unrest, when the passions, and the intellect, and the spirits of men were let loose to a saturnalia of riot and violence that would have shaken the axis of the great world itself, did the inanimate sympathise with the animate. It is a solemn thing to read Dante as a reality, and bold must be the spirit that can face such a picture of humanity unappalled. What must have been his state who shadowed forth such pictures, and pourtrayed such scenes of woe and desolation, we can have but faint glimpses, but he was, if not the first, one of the earliest martyrs, not to any particular form of worship, but to the intellect and the abstract idea of justice. Nothing but the spirit of a martyr could have sustained him.

It is from these causes that Dante's poem has become a text-book with the Reformers and the movement party of "young Europe." He waged uncompromising war with wrong. His "Inferno" is an anathema against all kinds of injustice and oppression. And as vice and virtue remain for ever the same in reality, though too often confounded by vile legislation, this great Reformer of the middle ages is an armoury for the modern champions of humanity and justice. In England we have so far advanced, at least in the power of utterance, as regards

freedom, that we need not make any such remote references to urge our rightful claims: and here Dante is merely considered as a poet, and as such has but few readers; from the severity, not to say grotesqueness, of his style, which reminds one of the earliest mode of painting which though real and powerful, is still harsh and unrelieved by perspective or colour. It requires, to at all feel or estimate Dante, that the mind should be abstracted to the simplicity, violence, and earnestness of the middle ages; to the barbaric splendour of the temporal lords, and the secluded fanaticism and intellectual ambition of its powerful priesthood. Mr. Wright's translation has two strong recommendations, its extreme cheapness (considering its form), and its very agreeable lightness. It is not overladen with notes, and though it may not have the weight of Cary's, yet it is much easier reading and more likely to introduce the great poet generally to the English reader.

THE DIARY OF PHILIP HENSLOWE, FROM 1591 To 1609. Printed from the original manuscript preserved at Dulwich College. Edited by J. PAYNE COLLIER, Esq., F.S.A. Printed for the Shakspeare Society.

THE English drama, from the birth of Shakspeare to its temporary abolition in 1647, is in every way worthy of the attention now for some years bestowed on it here as well as on the continent, where, both in France and Germany, it has influenced very considerably the form of literature. It is, in fact, the soil from which has sprung the romantic school, and is the very cradle of modern literature, in contradistinction to the classical. Had it not contained these powerful elements, Schlegel would never have made it the medium of his profound essays, nor would the host of æsthetic commentators have followed him in the same course. The English dramatists of this period were self-projected: it was no imitative literature that they created, but the product " of the very age and body of the time." It is now felt to be so, and as the initiation of a new order of writing, and the opening up of a new region of thought and sentiment, demands the profoundest investigation. Everything that throws light on its origin and foundation, and that reveals the circumstances of its great promulgators, is not only exceedingly interesting, but truly valuable, as a portion of the history of literature. A more interesting work could not well be conceived, than a diary, containing the dates of the production and the proceeds of innumerable plays, and the payments regarding them, revealing the circumstances and condition of the authors, and giving glimpses also of the actual state and condition of the times.

An original document of this sort, with its vile and absurd orthography, and with the stamp in every page of its base and ignorant author's individuality, is worth all the speculative declamation that can be uttered on the subject. Here is a piece of the time cut out and bodily preserved, with all its anomalies. We are here, for a few brief seconds,