one who pleads for childhood and reverences its it-and as for earthly counsel or comfort I never possibilities, of one who deeply feels that we had either when most wanted.

do not sufficiently consider that our life is not She further represents herself as having had, made up of separate parts, but is one-is a pro-"like most children," confused ideas about truth, gressive whole. When we talk of leaving our childhood behind us, we might as well say that the river flowing onward to the sea had left the fountain behind."

more distinct and absolute ones about honorto tell a lie was wicked, and, by her infant code of morals, worse than wicked-dishonorable.But she had no compunction about telling ficMrs. Jameson here puts together some recol- tions, in which practice she disdains "Ferdinand lections of her own child-life, not, she says, be- Mendez Pinto, that liar of the first magnitude," cause it was in any respect an exceptional or re- as nothing in comparison to herself. Not markable existence, but for a reason exactly the naturally obstinate, she records how she was reverse, because it was like that of many child punished as such-whereby hangs a tale well ren; many children having at least come under worth noting for the sake of the moral. An esher notice as thriving or suffering from the same pecial cause of childish suffering again, was fear, or similar unseen causes, even under external fear of darkness and supernatural influences" conditions and management every way dissimi--at first experienced in vague terrors, "hauntlar. She describes herself as not being "partic-ing, thrilling, stifling"-afterwards in varied larly" anything, as a child, unless "particularly form, the most permanent being the ghost in naughty" and that she gives on the authority Hamlet, derived from an old engraving: "O, of elders who assured of it twenty times a day, that spectre! for three years it followed me up rather than from any conviction of her own; and down the dark staircase, or stood by my bed; looking back, she is not conscious of having per-only the blessed light had power to exorcise it. petrated more than the usual amount of so-called Another grim presence not to be put by, was the mischief" which every lively, active child per- figure of Bunyan's Apollyon looming over Chrispetrates between five and ten years old.-tian, also due to an old engraving. And worst She had the usual desire to know, and the usual dislike to learn; like her coevals she loved fairy tales, and hated French exercises. But she goes on to say, "but not of what I learned, but of what I did not learn; not of what they taught me, but of what they could not teach me; not of what was open, apparent, manageable, but of the under current, the hidden, the unmanaged or unmanageable, I have to speak.”

of all were certain phantasms without shape," like the spirit that passed before the seer, which stood still, but he could not discern the form thereof,-and inarticulate voices, whose burden was the more oppressive because so unintelligible-voices as emphatic in sound as indistinct in utterance.

These were the dread accessories of darkness to the imaginative child; the thoughtful woman's Very early memories she thus brings before account of which will excite sympathetic recolus, with a sacred freshness and vivid reality; lections in many a woman, and man too, and for she can testify, as so many have testified al- may avail to ward off increase of suffering from ready, that as we grow old the experiences of in- many a child. Mr. Leigh Hunt has wisely said fancy come back upon us with a strange vivid- that such things are no petty ones to a sensitive ness; a period indeed there is, when the overflow-child, when relating how himself was the victim ing, tumultuous life of our youth rises up between of an elder brother's delight to "aggravate"us and those first years—“but as the torrent sub- the big boy taking advantage of the little one's sides in its bed we can look across the impassa- horror of the dark, and (like Mrs. Jameson in ble gulf to that haunted fairy land which we shall this also) of dreadful faces gathered from illusnever more approach, and never forget!" She trated books-which brotherly attentions helped can remember in infancy being sung to sleep, largely, he says in his Autobiography, "to morand even the tune which was sung to her, and bidize all that was weak in my temperament, and she begs "blessings on the voice that sang it!" cost me many a bitter night." By day, Mrs. She recalls the afflictions he endured at six years Jameson describes her little self as having been old from the fear of not being loved where she "not only fearless, but audacious, inclined to dehad attached herself, and from the idea that fy all power and brave all danger," provided another was preferred before her-such anguish always the danger could be seen. She rememit was, she says, as had nearly killed me," and bers volunteering to lead the way through a herd which left a deeper impression than childish pas- of cattle (among which was a dangerous bull, sions usually do; and one so far salutary, that in the terror of the neighborhood) armed only with after life she guarded herself against the ap- a little stick; but first she said the Lord's Prayer proaches of that hateful, deformed, agonizing fervently. In the ghastly night," she adds, "I thing which men call 'jealousy,' as she would never prayed; terror stifled prayer. These visfrom an attack of cramp or cholera."" ionary sufferings, in some form or other, pursued With a good temper, she was endued with the me till I was nearly twelve years old. If I had capacity of "strong, deep, silent resentment, and not possessed a strong constitution and a strong a vindictive spirit of rather a peculiar kind "-understanding, which rejected and contemned the latter a source for several years of intense, my own fears, even while they shook me, I had untold suffering, of which no one but the suf- been destroyed. How much weaker children sufferer was aware: "I was left to settle it; and my mind righted itself I hardly know how; not certainly by religious influences-they passed over my mind, and did not at the time sink into

fer in this way I have since known; and have known how to bring them help and strength, through sympathy and knowledge, the sympa thy that soothes and does not encourage-the

knowledge that dispels, and does not suggest, the evil."

satirist, and taught her so impressively how easy and vulgar is the habit of sarcasm, and how In her own case, the power of these midnight much nobler it is to be benign and merciful, that terrors vanished gradually before what she calls she was, by the recoil, "in great danger of falla more dangerous infatuation the propensity to ing into the opposite extreme-of secking the reverie; from ten years old to fifteen, she lived a beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and double existence; like Hartley Coleridge with the repulsive." "Pity," she continues, "a large his dreamland Ejuxria, like Thomas de Quincey element in my composition, might have easily with his dreamland Gombroon, she imagined degenerated into weakness, threatening to subnew worlds, and peopled them with life, and vert hatred of evil in trying to find excuses for crowded them with air-castles, and constructed it; and whether my mind has ever completely for the denizens a concatenated series of duly de- righted itself, I am not sure." Nor must we veloped action and carefully evolved adventures; forget to add, as characteristic of the quality and this habit of reverie, so systematical, so of her child-life, her sensibility to music; and methodical, grew upon her with such strength. how Mrs. Arkwright used to entrance her that at times she scarcely took cognizance of with her singing, so that the songster's very outward things and real persons, and, when pun-footfall made the tiny listener tremble with ished for idleness by solitary confinement, ex-expectant rapture. "But her voice!-it has ulted in the sentence as giving thrice-welcome charmed hundreds since; whom has it ever scope for uninterrupted day-dreams. She was moved to a more genuine passion of delight always a princess-heroine in the disguise of a than the little child that crept silent and tremuknight, a sort of Clorinda or Britomart, going lous to her side? And she was fond of meabout to redress the wrongs of the poor, fight fond of singing to me, and, it must be confessed, giants, and kill dragons; or founding a society fond also of playing these experiments on me. in some far-off solitude or desolate island, inno- The music of Paul and Virginia' was then in cent of tears, of tasks, and of laws,-of caged vogue, and there was one air-a very simple air birds and of tormented kittens. -in that opera, which, after the first few bars, always made me stop my ears and rush out of the room."

From her earliest days she can remember her delight in the beauties of nature-foiled but not dulled by a much regretted change of abode from With her wonted candor, and didactic intent, country to town-which intense sense of beauty Mrs. Jameson owns, that she became at last gave the first zest to poetry-making Thomson's aware that this musical flight was sometimes Seasons" a favorite book before she could yet done to please her parents, or amuse or interest understand one-half of it-and St. Pierre's "In- others by the display of such vehement emotion; dian Cottage," and the "Oriental intoxication" her infant conscience became perplexed between of the " Arabian Nights." Shakspeare she had the reality of the feeling and the exhibition of read all through ere she was ten years old, hav-it; people are not always aware, she remarksing begun him at seven; the Tempest and Cymbeline were the plays she liked, and knew the best. Shakspeare was, indeed, on the forbidden shelf; but the most genial and eloquent of his female commentators-not to throw in, as some will think we might, the worser half of creation -protests once and again, with an emphatic "bless him!" that Shakspeare did her no harm. But of some religious tracts and stories by Hannah More, the loan of a parish clerk, she asserts: It is most certain that more moral mischief was done to me by some of these than by all Shakspeare's plays together. Those so-called pious tracts first introduced me to a knowledge of the vices of vulgar life, and the excitements of a vulgar religion-the fear of being hanged and the fear of hell became coexistent in my

mind."

and if a truism, it will stand another reading-
of the injury done to children by repeating be-
fore them the things they say, or describing the
things they do; words and actions, spontaneous
and unconscious, become thenceforth artificial
and conscious. "I can speak of the injury
[thus] done to myself between five and eight
years old. There was some danger of my be-
coming a precocious actress-danger of perma-
nent mischief such as I have seen done to other
children-but I was saved by the recoil of re-
sistance and resentment excited in my mind.”
From beginning to (too speedy) end, this "Re-
velation of Childhood," however uneventful
in outward circumstance, is so gracefully and
genially told, with such engaging frankness,
and fresh-hearted earnestness, and sagacious
self-analysis, that we hope some day to read
other and fuller autobiographic sketches in the
same fair autograph.

She adds her conviction, that she read the Bible too carly, too indiscriminately, and too irreverently; the "letter" of the Scriptures being There are one or two isolated scraps of the familiarized to her by sermonizing and dogma- same personal and subjective interest occurring tizing, long before she could enter into the "spir- in the varied pages of the Common-Place Book. it." But the histories out of the Bible (the Para- For this interest, as part "revelations" of inner bles especially) were enchanting to her, though life, as shadows of idiosyncrasy, we quote the her interpretation of them was, in some instan- following: "Those are the killing griefs that do ces, the very reverse of correct or orthodox. not speak,' is true of some, not all characters. A tendency to become pert and satirical which There are natures in which the killing grief finds showed itself about this age (ten), was happily utterance while it kills; moods in which we cry checked by a good clergyman's seasonable narra- aloud, as the beast crieth, expansive not appealtion of a fine old Eastern fable, which gave ing. That is my own nature; so in grief or in wholesome pain to the conscience of the young joy, I say as the birds sing :

"Und wenn der Mensch in Seiner Qual verstummt, those he sees vividly, but, as it were, exclusively. Gab mir ein Got zu sagen was ich leide!' All other things, though lying near, are dark, because perversely he will not throw the light of Again: "As to the future, my soul, like Cato's, his mind upon them." Elsewhere she notes it. shrinks back upon herself and startles at de-as very curious to see such men as Arnold and struction but I do not think of my own de- Carlyle both overwhelmed with a terror of the struction, rather of that which I love. That I magnitude of the mischiefs they see impending should cease to be is not very intolerable; but over us. Something alike, perhaps, in the that what I love, and do now in my soul possess, temperaments of these two extraordinary men; should cease to be-there is the pang, the terror!-large conscientiousness, large destructiveness, I desire that which I love to be immortal, whether I be so myself or not."

and small hope." Coleridge, too, is a familiar name, as might be expected; and we have a passage of Tieck's table-talk on the occasion of that illustrious man's decease, and a true and beautiful saying of John Kenyon in relation to the gifted daughter, Mrs. Henry Nelson Coleridge, that "like her father she had the controversial intellect without the controversial spirit."

And in another place we read: "I wish I could realize what you call my grand idea of being independent of the absent.' I have not a friend worthy of the name, whose absence is not pain and dread to me;-death itself is terrible only as it is absence. At some moments, if I could, I would cease to love those who are absent from There is an interesting parallel instituted be me, or to speak more correctly, those whose path tween Theodore Hook and Sydney Smith as in life diverges from mine-whose dwelling- dinner table wits-the wit of the cleric being place is far off; with whom I am united in the emphatically preferred (notwithstanding Mrs. strongest bonds of sympathy while separated by Jameson's personal uncongeniality with him, as duties and interests, by space and time. The a nature so deficient in the artistic and imagi presence of those whom we love is as a double native),-preferred because always involving a life; absence, in its anxious longing, and sense thought worth remembering for its own sake, as of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death." True; well as worth remembering for its brilliant veand yet, as Wordsworth says, and as every heart hicle; "the value of ten thousand pound sterechoes that has once pined for the absent and ling of sense concentrated into a cut and pol-. afterwards mourned for the dead, ished diamond."

Absence and death, how differ they!

If Mrs. Jameson could not "take to" the man, certainly she gives good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, of laudation The nature of this Common-place Book im- to the wit. Of other literary names mentioned plies frequent reference to literary people and passim are Landor, "rich in wise sayings," a few literary topics. Mr. Carlyle is frequently alluded of which are quoted; Balzac, of whom a certain to, with a respect sometimes verging on awe, oft-quoted O. G. said once, with a shudder, to such as his detractors and the lady's admirers Mrs. Jameson, "His laurels are steeped in the will think quite gratuitous. He once told her tears of women-every truth he tells has been his scorn of sending a man to study what the wrung in tortures from some woman's heart;" Greeks and Romans did, and said, and wrote; Robert Browning, whose "Paracelsus" is proasking, "Do ye think the Greeks and Romans nounced incomparable since Goethe and Wordswould have been what they were, if they had worth, for profound, far-seeing philosophy, luxjust only studied what the Phoenicians did be- uriance of illustration, and wealth of glorious fore them?" To which Mrs. Jameson, in her eloquence; Southey, whose Life and Letters the modesty, adds: "I should have answered, had I authoress admires, but with whom as a man she dared-Yet perhaps the Greeks and Romans disclaims all sympathy, and the material of would not have been what they were if the whose character she tells us repels her-(more's Egyptians and Phoenicians had not been before the pity, subauditur); Goethe, of whose Italian them."" If she cannot muster courage to demur travels she says (following Niebhuhr) what so to his theses viva voce, at least she essays to many have felt-nor need the Italianische Reise tackle them, and turn them inside out, in her exhaust the remark-that a strong perception of book of common-places, as in this instance, and the heartless and the superficial in point of feelin the case of her exception to his theory of hap-ing, mars the reader's enjoyment of so much piness, which she believes him to confound with that is fine and valuable in criticism. "It is pleasure and self indulgence; and if she does well," she says, deep and reverent as her apprenot mean the same author, many readers will think she does, when she speaks of a certain "profound intellect weakened and narrowed in general power and influence by a limited range of sympathies"-of one "excellent, honest, gifted," but who "wants gentleness," and whom she depicts as a man carrying his bright intellect as a light in a dark lantern; "he sees only the objects on which he chooses to throw that blaze of light;

*Of which, however, she diffidently says: "I have had arguments, if it be not presumption to call them so, with Carlyle on this point.

ciation of the Weimar Baron is "it is well to be artistic in art, but not to walk about the world en artiste, studying humanity and the deepest human interests, as if they were art."

In her own hints and observations on art in these pages, there is that will repay perusal, else were they not Mrs. Jameson's. Music and musicians come under her notice-especially Mozart and Chopin-but painting and sculpture she more happily deals withal. There is a very fine piece of criticism on the acting of Mdle. Rachel, too long for the reader to read here, but too good for him to miss in the original.

-Some of our English actresses, again, have anced antithesis dear to maxim-makers. Thus: been interrogated by Mrs. Jameson as to the "In what regards policy-government the inparts they preferred to play. Results: Mrs. Sid- terests of the many is sacrificed to the few; in dons replied after a moment's consideration, and what regards society, the morals and happiness in her "rich, deliberate, emphatic tones," "Lady of individuals are sacrificed to the many."Macbeth is the character I have most studied;" Again: "We can sometimes love what we do Mrs. Henry Siddons replied without a moment's not understand, but it is impossible completely consideration. "Imogen, in Cymbeline, was the to understand what we do not love." "I obe character I played with most ease to myself, and serve, that in our relations with the people around most success as regarded the public; it cost us, we forgive them more readily for what they no effort; Mrs. Fanny Kemble said the part she do, which they can help, than for what they are played with most pleasure to herself, was Cami- which they cannot help! Men, it is generally ola, in Massinger's "Maid of Honor; "-and allowed, teach better than women, because they Mrs. Charles Kean's "preferential share" was have been better taught the things they teach. Ginevra, in Leigh Hunt's "Legend of Florence," Women train better than men because of their a play and a part which the gratified drama-quick, instinctive perceptions and sympathies, tist himself saw the actress shed tears over, at and greater tenderness and patience." With one the green-room readings. or two other ethical fragments, quoted almost at Her own sex will be grateful to Mrs. Jame-hazard, we must draw to a close: son, as the eloquent and earnest spokeswoman of their general feeling, felt often, but ne'er so well expressed, for her protest against Mr. Thackeray's women. No woman, she allows, will "In the same moment that we begin to specu-. resent his Rebecca Sharp, "no woman but feels late on the possibility of cessation or change in and acknowledges with a shiver, the complete any strong affection that we feel, even from that ness of that wonderful and finished artistic crea- moment we may date its death;-it has become tion; but all resent the "selfish and inane Ame-the fetch of the living love." lia," and "the inconsistency, the indelicacy of "If the deepest and best affections which God the portrait" of Laura ("in love with Warring-has given us sometimes brood over the heart like ton, and then going back to Pendennis, and mar-doves of peace-they sometimes suck out our rying him!" and the entire history and charac-life-blood like vampires."

"The bread of life is love; the salt of life is work; the sweetness of life, poesy; the water of life, faith."

ter of Lady Castlewood, which elicit from Mrs. Why will teachers suppose that in confessing Jameson an honestly passionate " O, Mr. Thackeray this will never do!"

The social position of her sex, its anomalies and abuses, she discusses as she has done before, with energy of head and heart-going over the old ground, but strewing flowers by the way, and not flowers of eloquence only, but good seed which may take root, as she hopes, and spring up where the brambles and weeds are now, and show first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, and so bear fruit an hundred-fold. Assuredly, these "common-places," of hers, on the education, and the conventional status of women, whether to be assented to or dissented from, are not to be skipped.

Of the apothegmatic and sententious passages in which the book abounds, we have given few or no samples. They are often weighty in matter, and felicitous in manner; in substance full of meaning, and in form at once graceful and impressive. Some of them have the bal-]

their own ignorance or admitting uncertainties they must diminish the respect of their pupils, or their faith in truth? I should say from my own experience that the effect is just the reverse. I remember when a child, hearing a very, celebrated man profess his ignorance on some particular subject, and I felt awe struck-it gave me a perception of the infinite-as when looking up at the starry sky. What we unadvisedly cram into a child's mind in the same form it: has taken in our own, does not always healthily or immediately assimilate; it dissolves away in doubts, or it hardens into prejudice, instead of mingling with the life as truth ought to do."

Like fragments might be added without stint, but for a conspiracy between editor and compositor to hamper our notions of space. So we retire under cover of a Ciceronian phrase: "Multa ejusmodi preferre possum; sed genus ipsum videtis."

The Electric Telegraph Popularized. With one
hundred Illustrations. By Dionysius Lardner,
D. C. L., etc. From "The Museum of Sci-
ence and Art.
[Dr. Lardner's aim in this publication is to ren-
der the subject of the electric telegraph "intelli-
gible to all who can read, irrespective of any pre-
vious scientific acquirements;" and exceedingly
well he has accomplished his intention. The na-
ture of electricity, so far as it is known or con-
jectured, and the principles of its application to
telegraphic uses, are lucidly explained. Descrip-
tions are then given of the principal lines and

modes of working them, as well as of the subaqueous undertakings. To these more strictly scientific topics, Dr. Lardner adds a little of what may be called the gossip of the subject, as its uses in the detection of criminals, and the various messages it transmits. There is also some account of the other purposes to which the electric power may be applied. The book is copiously illustrated by cuts of a very explanatory kind. Altogether, Dr. Lardner's Electric Telegraph is an interesting volume, giving much in a small. compass.] Spectator.

From the New Monthly Magazine. TROPICAL SCENERY BRITISH

GUIANA.*

surface, and much and various contrasted configuration. Such ignorance of the country as would describe it either as an island or a mudflat is now no longer tolerable. It was only so in times long gone by.

T

IT is surprising how little is known of Brit"Before the arrival of the European," says ish Guiana. A distinguished statesman actually spoke, not a very long time back, of this Dr. Dalton, "the lofty mountain heights of the important continental colony as an island! interior, the fertile and undulating valleys of Sir Robert Shomburgk (who if he did not dis- the hilly region, and the borders of the illimit cover, at least was the first to bring home, that able forests and savannahs, were alone tenantpride of its waters, the Victoria Regia) has ed by the various tribes of Indians who were done most in modern times towards making scattered throughout this vast domain. Their us acquainted with the interior of the coun- fragile canoes were occasionally seen gliding try; but his valuable papers are chiefly con- along the large rivers and the numerous trisigned to the pages of the journal of a learned butary streams which intersect the country; a dense mass of unrivalled foliage, comprising society. Take up any modern work on geography and you will find something to the palms, mangroves, couridas and ferns, fringed following effect:- "The whole coast is so flat, the banks of the rivers and the margins of the that it is scarcely visible till the shore has coasts; while a thicker bush of an infinite been touched; the tops of the trees only are variety of trees extended inland over an unseen, and even seem to be growing out of the cleared territory, where the prowling beast, sea,-nothing of varied scenery is presented the dreaded reptile, the wild bird, and the to the eye, little is beheld but water and noxious insect roamed at large. But when woods, which seem to conceal every appear-colonization commenced and civilization proance of land. The same sombre and mono- gressed, the flat lands bordering on the coasts tonous appearance is presented in the interior and rivers were cleared and cultivated, the to those few curious individuals who have en-savage forests and their occupants retreated deavored to penetrate into those recesses of before the encroaching step of civilization and the forest, by the numerous openings which the march of industry, plantations were laid. nature has made by the streams which succes-out, canals and trenches dug, roads formed,. sively augment the Corentin, the Berbice, the Demerara, and the Essequebo."

and houses raised over the level plain of alluvial soil, which, without a hill or elevation of any kind, stretches for many miles between the sand-hill regions and the Atlantic Ocean."

Such a picture of Guiana is perhaps the least correct that could be possibly given. True it is that this extensive territory is largeThe land on the banks of the rivers and ly encircled and intersected by rivers, which along the sea-coasts between the mouths of present the almost unparalleled hydrographic the rivers being entirely alluvial, the whole phenomenon of flowing in almost uninterrupt- line of coast is skirted by mud-flats and sanded communication throughout the land. The banks, soon to form themselves part of the South American Indian, seated in his buoyant great continent of South America. The alluboat-the stripped bark of some forest treevial soil thus deposited is covered with perenmight have entered the broad mouth of the nial foliage, nourished by the frequent rains Amazon, and wending his solitary way along and balmy atmosphere of the tropics. Hence the southern boundary, have navigated the the first indication of land is characterized by broad tributary stream of the river Negro, and a long irregular outline of thick bush, on apascending its waters along the western out-proaching which, groups of elevated trees, line of this tract of country, persevered chiefly palms, with occasionally an isolated through the natural canal of Cassiquiare and silk-cotton, or the tall chimneys of the sugar the southern branches of the Orinoco until he plantations, with the smoke curling upwards, reached that river; and here his course would begin rapidly to be recognized, and indicate be unbroken to the wide waters of the Atlan- to the experienced trader almost the very tic, a few degrees higher to the north than where he commenced his voyage. But, notwithstanding this peculiarity, the interior of Guiana presents a very diversified

spot he has made. On nearing the land the range of plantations may be easily marked by the line of chimneys; the dense foliage of the coast partly intercepts the view of any buildings, the low ground being coverered with The History of British Guiana; comprising a mangroves and courida bushes, ferns, and General Description of the Colony; a Narrative of other plants; but behind this wooded barrier some of the Principal Events from the Earliest Pe- numerous dwelling-houses, extensive villages, riod of its Discovery to the Present Time; togeth- and the sugar manufactories, extend along the er with an Account of its Climate, Geology, Sta-belt of land which, in an unbroken level, conple Products, and Natural History. By Henry G. stitutes the cultivated districts of the colony. Dalton, M.D., etc. 2 vols. Longman, Brown, "Once in sight of the land the scene rapidly

Green, and Longmans.