passed my nineteenth year; and so vivid an impression did the patient sorrow of her life make on me-so thoroughly did I learn to loathe and detest the barbarous practice that consigned her to a premature grave, that it scarcely required the solemn promise she obtained from me, as the last sigh trembled on her lips, to make me resolve never, under any circumstances, to fight a duel. As to my behavior during the unfortunate conflagration of the Neptune, which my friend Mr. Desmond has spoken of so flatteringly, I can only say that I did no more than my simple duty in the matter. Both he and I belong to a maritime race, one of whose most peremptory maxims it is that the captain must be the last man to quit or give up his ship. Besides, I must have been the veriest dastard alive to have quailed in the presence of-ofthat is, in the presence of-circumstances which-in point of fact-that is ". Here Captain Starkey blushed and boggled sadly: he was evidently no orator; but whether it was the sly significance of Senor Arguellas' countenance, which just then happened to be turned towards him, or the glance he threw at the gallery where Senora Arguellas' grave placidity and Donna Antonia's bright eyes and blushing cheeks encountered him, that so completely put him out, I cannot say ; but he continued to stammer painfully, although the company cheered and laughed with great vehemence and uncommon good-humor, in order to give him time. He could not recover himself; and after floundering about through a few more unintelligible sentences sat down, evidently very hot and uncomfortable, though amidst a little hurricane of hearty cheers and hilarious laughter. I have but a few more words to say. Captain Starkey has been long settled at the Havana; and Donna Antonia has been just as long Mrs. Starkey. Three little Starkeys have to my knowledge already come to town, and the captain is altogether a rich and prosperous man; but though apparently permanently domiciled in a foreign country, he is, I am quite satisfied, as true an Englishman, and as loyal a subject of Queen Victoria, as when he threw the glass of wine in the Cuban creole's face. I don't know what has become of Dupont; and, to tell the truth, I don't much care. Lieutenant Arguellas has attained the rank of major: at least I suppose he must be the Major Arguellas officially reported to be slightly wounded in the late Lopez bucaneering affair. And I also am pretty well now, thank you! From the Critic. THE NORTH BRITISH, THE BRITISH QUARTERLY, AND THE ALTHOUGH The Edinburgh still preserved | two or three hundred members of the Genea title which seemed to connect it intimately with Scotland, it had, some time before 1842, ceased to be in any sense a Scotch Review. Not only was it published in London, but its editor was an Englishman, and never in any way very peculiarly Scotch, especially under the influence of a light cosmopolitan thinker like Jeffrey, it was now in no way to be distinguished from the professedly English Quarterly, save by the difference of its political tone. But in 1843 there happened an event which shook Scotland from its circumference to its centre, even to the making of it subscribe two millions of money; and it must have been something that made Scotland do that. In the May of that year, some ral Assembly took sad and solemn leave of their old ecclesiastical parliament, and, with Dr. Chalmers at their head, proceeded to set up the "Free Kirk." Scotland was now suddenly rent asunder into two mortally hostile camps: Under which kirk, "Bezonian live or die?" The chief "organ" of the disruption was an Edinburgh newspaper called The Witness, conducted with considerable nerve and talent by Hugh Miller, of Old Red Sandstone notoriety, a man great no less in theology than in geology, whom his native abilities and Lady Gordon Cuming, of Altyre, herself geological, and mother to the SouthAfrican lion-hunter, had helped up from a very humble obscurity. The Edinburgh, of course, looked coldly, and The Quarterly | Sir David Brewster, the noted savant, was inimically, on the seceders; and the friendly zeal in their behalf of Mr. John Robertson, in the pages of The Westminster, was of too purely secular a kind for the chiefs of the Free Kirk. After two years, when it had been found that the most potent furtherer of the secession was not any minister, however eloquent, or any layman, however influential, but a mere newspaper like The Witness, it was resolved to start a quarterly organ, and to call it The North British Review. Noblemen and gentlemen, enthusiastic for the Free Kirk, like the Marquis of Breadalbane, and Mr. Campbell of Monzi, subscribed a portion of the needful. Mr. Blackie, the Glasgow publisher, and Mr. Cowan, the Edinburgh paper-maker, gave their aid. It was this Mr. Cowan that ousted Macaulay at the last Edinburgh election. He guaranteed the carrying on of the speculation for a certain period. Whether it was paper of his own manufacture that was to be used is unknown to Herodotus Smith. A Dr. Welch, who had suffered losses in the cause of the Free Kirk, who was a writer in The Edinburgh Review, and the biographer of Dr. Thomas Brown, was pitched upon for the editor. Indeed, it was something done to him that heated the Free Kirk enthusiasm so as to boil over and form The North British Review. Dr. Welch, when the disruption took place, was " Moderator," that is, President or Speaker, of the General Assembly, Professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh, and Secretary, with a salary of five hundred pounds per annum, to the Scotch Bible Board. At the secession, he, of course, cheerfully surrendered the Moderatorship and the Professorship, but saw no reason to surrender the lucrative Secretaryship, of which, however, Sir James Graham took the liberty of forcibly relieving him. Whereon The North British was hastened into existence. Welch was a man of ability and tact, and began operations with a promising staff of veterans and others. He did not fall into the error which, in his circumstances, might have easily been committed, that of making his review too theological. His great gun, Dr. Chalmers himself, fired off articles chiefly on politico-economical subjects, his first being one on Sterling's Philosophy of Trade; but his most famous was that on Morell's History of Philosophy, which was considered as an annihilating manifesto against Continental speculation. In physical science, the biographies of its heroes, and books of scientific travel, mainly depended on; he wrote the papers on Cuvier, Humboldt's Cosmos, Watt, Cavendish, and the like, and is still a contributor. Hugh Miller led off his series of performances by a vivid paper in which herring-fishing was made poetical. Mr. Moncrief, now Lord Advocate, reviewed Jeffrey's Essays, the first of a set on the light literature of the day. Dr. Heugh, of Glasgow, recommended "Christian Union," and Welch himself dealt with Archbishop Whately. Among the early contributors too, if we are not mistaken, was Dr. Samuel Brown, of Edinburgh, a singular and gifted individual. With the zeal of an old alchymist, (but with a purer enthusiasm,) he has been occupied many years in endeavoring to effect the mutual transmutation of some of the primary chemical elements, and by some of the good people of Edinburgh is looked upon as one in search of the philosopher's stone. He is a man, however, of sane, clear, and subtle understanding, of varied accomplishment, and deeply versed in his own science, the chair of which, in Edinburgh University, he narrowly missed attaining. He sometimes lectures with success in public; he published, a good many years ago, a series of tracts by "Victorious Analysis," with a high and beautiful meaning, and more recently the tragedy of Galileo Galilei; and so he lives on there, in Edinburgh, with one believing and helpful disciple, a life of scientific romance in an age of scientific prose. But to return. In religion, the aid had been secured of the well-known Isaac Taylor, the author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm. So that, on the whole, The North British Review started under good auspices, and with very fair promise of success. Dr. Welch died the year after he had commenced the labors of editorship, and it passed for a short time into the hands of Mr. E. Maitland, an Edinburgh advocate, whence it was received by Dr. Hanna, the biographer and sonin-law of Dr. Chalmers; so that three of our chief reviews were being conducted by sonsin-law of distinguished men--The Quarterly, by Mr. Lockhart, a son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott's; The Edinburgh, by Mr. Empson, a son-in-law of Lord Jeffrey's; The North British, by Dr. Hanna, a son-in-law of Dr. Chalmers; while a son of James Mill was editing The London and Westminister. So powerful in literature, even, is the hereditary principle! Somewhat more than a year ago, The North British ceased to be edited by Dr. Hanna, and was transferred to Professor Fraser, its present conductor. This gentle man is the son of an Argyleshire minister, | English Dissenters, but this was soon found was educated for the Scotch Church at Edin- to be impossible. Doctrinally, there was no burgh University, where he was a favorite great difficulty, but a radical difference of student of Dr. Chalmers, whom he followed opinion on ecclesiastical polity presented an into the Free Kirk to become Professor of insuperable obstacle. The Free Kirk was Logic in its metropolitan college. In England friendly to the principle of an Establishment, as well as in Scotland The North British the great bugbear of English Dissenters, or is said to be doing well among reviews, not at least of English dissenting laymen. Stimat present a very prosperous class of publi- ulated by the appearance of The North cations. In politics, its principles are liberal; British, some wealthy English Dissenters it recognizes the interest and importance of founded The British Quarterly Review, the the new social theories, without committing first number of which came out in Februrary, itself to any of them. It acknowledges the 1845, then, as now, under the editorship of right of the State to supervise industrial ar- Dr. Vaughan. The Doctor (a man surely rangements, and tends towards the advocacy of more energy and industry than parts) of a general system of education, although is the Principal of the Lancashire Indeits religious views are orthodox, without, pendent College, a leader of the Congregahowever, being sectarian. In addition to the tional dissenters, and formerly preached in contributors already named, we can mention a chapel at Kensington. He is said to have that most shrewd and hearty observer, Mr. been patronized, when in London, by the Samuel Laing, the Norway tourist; Principal Duchess of Sutherland and the late Lord Cuningham, and Professors Fleming and Mc- Spencer, and it may easily therefore be Dougall of Edinburgh; Dr. Hamilton, the supposed that he makes some figure in Lanearnest minister of the National Scotch Church cashire, where he is a frequent preacher, and in Regent's Square; Dr. Kitto, versed in an orator no less-in this latter capacity Palestine; Thomas de Quincey, who has mainly on behalf of Kossuth, Liberty, and contributed some half dozen articles or so, that sort of thing. He writes a great deal among them a striking one on Pope; the in his own review, and chiefly with the aim Rev. Charles Kingsley, the author of Alton of diminishing the influence of such living Locke, whose hand we recognized mauling authors of renown as he considers, from their Festus-Bailey; and Mr. Anthony Panizzi, insinuating skepticism, dangerous to the faith the Librarian of the British Museum, who of the rising genaration. The more marked writes upon Italian literature and Italian of his papers in this branch are those on affairs, and in a review of Sir Harris Nicolas's Theodore Parker, Emerson, and Carlyle. Nelson Despatches, is said to have "settled" Yet an article from his pen in one of the the question whether our naval hero was earliest numbers of his review, entitled "The right or wrong in hanging some Neapolitan Priesthood of Letters," said a good many prince or other. Indeed the library of the things which were looked on by his friends British Museum sends more than one con- as far too bold. In theological and biblical tributor to The North British. Thus Mr. literature he has had the assistance of Dr. John Jones lately explained in its pages the Davidson, likewise of the Independent Colsystem pursued in his own department, and lege. In political and social economy, a there, too, figures Mr. Coventry Patmore, good deal has been done by that striking whose ingenious and subtle essays on archi- personification of prosperous mediocrity, Mr. tecture are, we confess, more to our taste Edward Baines, the editor of The Leeds than his poetry. Last, not least, among the Mercury. Mr. Edwards, formerly of the contributors to The North British, is Mr. British Museum, and now at the head of the David Masson, a searching and meditative Manchester Free Library, contributed an in writer, chiefly on social topics, yet the critic, structive paper on public libraries. And here, too, of Wordsworth and Carlyle's Latter-Day too, in these dashing sketches of Macaulay, Pamphlets. But stop-we are forgetting Carlyle, and D'Israeli, do we not once more one of the cleverest articles that have been recognize the hand of the omnipresent Mr. recently published in any review-that on Lewes ? "The Literary Profession," which appeared about a year ago, and is from the pen of a Mr. John W. Kaye, of whom we are likely to hear more. It had been one of the designs of The North British to secure the support of the VOL. XXV. NO. III. The same month of the same year that witnessed the birth of The British Quarterly, welcomed to the light the first number of The Prospective Review, the organ of English Unitarianism, as the other is of orthodox dissent. This small and modest-looking pub 23 lication has been and is managed by a trio of Lancashire Unitarian ministers, the Rev. John James Taylor of Manchester, and the Rev. Messrs. Thom and Martineau of Liverpool. In general talent, although it is of a refined rather than of a vigorous kind, Mr. Taylor is considered to stand at the head of his class; and certainly none of his brethern have produced a work displaying as much acumen as his Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, although as sermons many Unitarians would rank Mr. Martineau's Endeavors after the Christian Life, higher than Mr. Taylor's Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty. But we must leave these questions of precedency to more competent judges, and conclude with saying, that while The Prospective, by the nature of the case, circulates almost exclusively among the sect of whose doctrines it is the organ, yet it occasionally contains articles on neutral topics which, from their calm elegance of style and discriminating intellectuality, might be perused with pleasure by even the most orthodox. From the Westminster Revie SHELL-FISH-THEIR WAYS AND WORKS.* Ir is reported of the Orcadians that they hold in utter contempt a certain people among the Thuleans, who satisfy hunger by eating limpets, an act regarded by the prouder race as the last extremity of human meanness. The self-exaltation of the Orcadians above their couchivorous neighbors may be paralleled intellectually by the proud disdain with which naturalists have looked down upon conchologists. Your dry and prosaic mathematician, in his turn, slights the naturalist, whose studies he is apt to rank among the more trifling exercises of human intellect. The idle and self-satisfied satirist has his fling Lall, and spins his filmy rhymes and pithy verses in happy ignorance, or unfeigned dislike of natural knowledge and the Royal Society. Yet if any one of these wise men, be he Orcadian, or conchologist, or naturalist, or mathematician, or satirist, have the good fortune, so far as his stomach is concerned, to partake of a feast aldermanic, in the Egyptian Hall of the temple wherein the Neo-Babylonians annually erect a Lord Mayor, and worship him with baked offerings of venison and steaming censers of odorous turtle-soup, he shall find a wiser man in his generation at his elbow; one who holds. Thulean, Orcadian, conchologist, mathematician, and satirist alike in contempt, and makes no distinction or bones between mortals, unless they have been money-producers. Now, to our way of thinking, all the various kinds of knowledge distinctive of each of these varieties of men are good, respectable, and worthy of mutual esteem. The knowledge of the Thulean that there is nutrition even in a limpet; of the Orcadian, that there is something better than a feast of limpets; of the conchologist, that shells are worthy of examination and admiration; of the naturalist, that there is a philosophy in shell-fish over and above their jackets; of the mathematician, that his own is among the profoundest of sciences; of the merchant, that money making requires forethought, energy, and skill. Nor do we admit the right of any kind of knowledge to puff itself up and stamp upon any other sort, however apparently mean. There are facts worth knowing, and a philosophy worth evoking in all things, small and great; even in shell-fish and conchologists, two despised categories of individuals, often brought into contact with each other, with more advantage, however, to the latter class than to the former. Look at an oyster. In what light does the world in general-not your uneducated, * An Introduction to Conchology, or Elements of stolid world merely, but your refined, intelthe Natural History of Molluscous Animals. Blectual, cultivated, classical world-regard George Johnston, M.D., LL.D. London: J. Voorst. it? Simply as a delicacy-as good to eat. an oyster bed, entirely composed of choice unchipped specimens, all shells and no insides! Lucian ridiculed the philosophers who spent their lives inquiring into the souls of oysters. The satirist overshot his mark. Such wiseacres were respectable when compared with their brethren, who care for neither an oyster's soul nor body, but concentrate their faculties in the contemplation of its shell. The The most devoted of oyster-eaters opens the creature's shell solely to swallow the included delicious morsel, without contemplation or consideration. He uses it as a candidate for orders does an article of faith; he bolts it whole and without a question. He relishes, with undisguised gusto, the good living that lies embodied in a barrel of Colchester natives. He gratifies his palate, and satisfies a craving stomach. He takes neither note nor notice of the curious intricacies of And yet there is a philosophy in oysterits organization; he neither knows nor cares shells undreamed of by the mere conchoabout its wisely-contrived network of nerves logist! A noble and wondrous philosophy and blood vessels. He clips its beard, that revealing to us glimpses of the workings of wondrous membrane of strange and curious creative power among the dim and distant mechanism by which the creature breathes, abysses of the incalculable past; speaking as thoughtlessly as he would shave his own. to us of the genesis of oyster-creatures ere He gulps down its luscious substance un- the idea of man occupied the creative mind; mindful that he is devouring a body and giving us a scale by which to measure the organs, which all the science of man can building up of the world in which we live, only dissect and destroy, without a hope of such as the mathematician, and the natural being able either to recompense or reanimate. philosopher, and the astronomer, all comMoreover, were Cuvier, or Owen, or any bining, could not furnish; unfolding for us other philosopher deeply versed in the the pages of the volume in which the history mysteries of the molluscous microcosm, to of our planet, its convulsions and tranquilremonstrate for a moment against the canni-lities, its revolutions and gradualities, are bal act of one soft body swallowing another inscribed in unmistakable characters. without understanding, and endeavor to letters of that book are shaped in the likeenlighten our ostreophagist, by discovering nesses of extinct and existing beings; plants to him the beauties of his victim's conforma- and animals; not written slovenly and tion, he would regard the interruption as ill- shapelessly, but drawn by a firm and sure timed and impertinent, and hold by his hand. The sentences of that book are all original intention of bolting his oyster with consistent and inseparable verses of one out inquiry or investigation. The world is eternal and symmetrical psalm; of a grand mainly made up of such ostreophagists. and harmonious hymn, plenarily inspired. Yet could we persuade them to hesitate to There can be no question about the plenary listen for five minutes-we feel sure that they inspiration of the Book of Nature. Yet the would live and die wiser and happier men, letters of those sublime sentences without the slightest diminution of the keen great part despised oyster-shells and similar relish with which, in the days of their dark- relics. The alphabet that we use ourselves, ness, they enjoyed their testaceous prey. could we read what passes in the mind of an infant, would seem bizarre, fantastic, and incomprehensible, if looked upon without understanding of its meaning and purpose. The great majority of grown men, educated and uneducated alike, are to the alphabet of nature in the position of children. To them the oyster-shell is a mere rude and sportive device. But teach them to read and spell, to peruse and study the great Bible of Nature, and that device becomes a sign pregnant with meaning. Assuredly there is a philosophy in oyster-shells. On the other hand regard the mere conchologist. He eviscerates his oysters as earnestly and gloatingly as the veriest Dando. Nay, worse! he rejects, without either inspection or deglutition, the soft and tempting substance, and contents himself with the hard and unprofitable shell. He counts all its little waves and scales and ribs, without heeding whether they ever inclosed a living body. He cares not to know how they have developed with the creature's growth, and what were the features of the incipient germs. His whole ambition is centred in the wish to possess a fine example oyster-shell. He has gained his inglorious aim, and, after one more gaze at his beautiful treasure, goes to rest happily for the night, to dream that he is reposing upon of an are in And then the oyster itself-the soul and body of the shell-is there no philosophy in him or her? For now we know that oysters are really he and she, and that Bishop Sprat, when he gravely proposed the study of oyster beds as a pursuit worthy of the sages |