tation of the age in literature." To say that an author is a type of his age, means, we apprehend, that he reflects its character, and more or less adequately expresses its moral and intellectual development. In this sense Don Juan is a type of the age in which it was written; so were the plays of Euripides; so were the satires of Horace; and so, in some degree, is Tennyson's "Maud." Can Scott be said to represent his age in this or in any other sense? Shortly afterwards Mr. Ruskin says,-"Now, I find among the men of the present age this character (i. e. of humility and confidence), in Scott and Turner preeminently: I am not sure if it is not in them alone" (III., 266). Very true; but if it is in them alone, how can they be types of an age which he has just told us (III., 258) is remarkable for levity and despondency, the very opposite characteristics? A similar confusion of thought may be noticed, where he says that 'the slightest manifestation of jealousy, or self-complacency, is enough to make a secondrate character of the intellect." 66 It is difficult to treat seriously his receipt (III., 94) for converting a Scotchman into a Greek, which is effected by subtracting so many things and adding so many others (including a dash of the Jew, and the trifling addition of an Hellenic climate), that the whole operation recalls nothing so much as the process by which, Pope tells us, Sir John Cutler's woollen stockings were gradually converted into silk. In Vol. IV., p. 365, after affirming that "the genuine religious painters use steep mountain distances," he says "the test fails, however, utterly, when applied to the later or transitional landscape schools, mountains being there introduced in mere wanton savageness by Salvator, or vague conventionalism by Claude, Berghem, and hundreds more." Mr. Ruskin (Vol. IV. App. 3), is very severe on the want of "an accurate logical education." If he will consult Archbishop Whately or Mr. Mill, we think they will tell him that the sentence above quoted, as well as one about the Greek mind, at III., 193, is an instance of what logicians call petitio principii, a fallacy which consists in assuming the thing which it is required to prove. If the use of steep mountain distances is not a test of religiousness in later painters, why is it in earlier ones? Simply because Mr. Ruskin has chosen to assume that it is; and then, finding that it also belongs to the works of painters whom he dislikes, he refuses to give them any credit for its occurrence. Such unfairness is quite unworthy of him. As we have alluded to the subject of logic, it may be as well to notice what is said in the Appendix to Vol. IV. about Aristotle, the study of whose Rhetoric and Ethics at the universities Mr. Ruskin visits with severe reprobation. "It would be wiser to permit a code of gambler's legerdemain, and give that for a class-book, than to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever shuffling of the black spots in the human heart, the first study of our politic youth." We might refer to the Stones of Venice," where Mr. Fergusson is told how much better he would have been for the "discipline of the schools; "—but it may be shortly answered, that young men are taught the Rhetoric, not in order that they may puzzle witnesses and humbug constituents, but that they may not be taken in by arguments such as we are sorry to say Mr. Ruskin sometimes uses himself. The theory of the Ethics is next accused of being "so hopelessly untenable that even quibbling will not face it out." Now, "Objections to Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean" is a regular bit of Oxford "Cram," and most lecturers and students could anticipate and dispose of Mr. Ruskin's objections. His first instance is well known, and admitted to be a quibble. As to his second, it is true, that Aristotle gave no name to the character which goes into the extreme opposed to intemperance, because, as he says, it did not exist. The theory, however, does not for this reason break down. That extreme has existed often enough since. Did Mr. Ruskin ever hear of Simon Stylites? and, if he did, what would he call him? In Vol. III., p. 117, he says, that "in multitudes of instances, instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only destroying the fine finish of nature and substituting coarseness and imperfection. For instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather, Nature furnishes it in her own way." "Man comes "- splits it, "rends it into ragged blocks and chisels it into various forms. (The italics are ours). All perfectly true; only he forgets that we calculate, as Nature does, on the effects of weather; and the work of the architect in tearing up the stone and breaking it in pieces, is analogous to that force which upheaved the mountains in the beginning, and left their jagged and shapeless forms to be washed by the rain, planted by the wind, and coloured by the sun. Why, then, are we to be told, that in taking a stone out of a quarry and fitting it into a house, we have "destroyed with utter ravage a piece of divine art?" As a set-off against this, however, it must be said that the rest of the chapter is very good, and the distinction taken between the "completing" a picture and "adding to" it, is subtle and valuable. The point which calls for most attention in these two volumes, is, perhaps, their treatment of one whom we have been accustomed to think not only a great, but a religious painter. The religious idealism of Raphael, says Mr. Ruskin (III., 56), so far as it was received and trusted in by thoughtful painters, only served to chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might otherwise have obtained. To this day the clear and tasteless poison of the art of Raphael infects with sleep of infidelity the hearts of millions of Christians. The objection is, that Raphael's pictures are not representations of historical or possible facts. Certainly they are not; but, we may ask, which method will convey the deeper religious impression, that of literal accuracy to the probable circumstances and accessories, or that of the accumulation of the attributes of beauty and sanctity, to the exclusion of all which can awaken vulgar or ridiculous associations ? Both methods have been tried. Do any of our readers remember an early Pre-Raphaelite picture, in which our Saviour was represented at his work in the carpenter's shop? and, if so, do they not agree with us in thinking that, since it is easier to succeed in painting the texture of wood, or broiled fish, or embers, or wet garments, than the expression of Divinity in a human countenance, it is better that these details should be subordinately elaborated, lest that which is trite and common should overpower the impressions, for the sake of which alone, the picture exists? Why paint everything with equal accuracy, when the effect of such accuracy will be to exalt all that is least valuable and important at the expense of that which is most so? This, indeed, would be pingendi perdere causas. When Mr. Ruskin calls Raphaelesque art "the opera and drama of the monk," he has unconsciously uttered its defence. A good opera, if it were not sublime, would be ridiculous. It is sublime, not because anyone imagines that Lucrezia or Fidelio would have expressed themselves in arias and recitatives, but because tragic ideas can be conveyed with most intensity through the medium of impassioned song. It would be doubtless possible for a painter to represent the facts of the Gospel history with a truth of accessory delineation as minute as that with which Shakespeare's plays are occasionally revived at the Princess's. And if they were so represented, they would touch our feelings no more than these do; perhaps, indeed, rather less; inasmuch as the entourage being supposed equally faithful in both cases, it would be infinitely more difficult for the most devout artist to express the face of Christ, than for Mr. Kean to invest his demeanour with the ambition of Macbeth or the jealousy of Leontes. 66 One of Mr. Ruskin's critics has made it a ground of objection to him, that before prais ing the earlier mediæval painters he did not inquire what doctrines their pictures were calculated to enforce; as if such considerations had anything to do with art. It is curious to see that Mr. Ruskin has fallen into this error in one passage, where he censures Raphael's Charge to Peter," because the figures are arranged" to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy." If Raphael believed St. Peter to be the head of the Church, he was bound to paint him so. We might just as well object to Phidias or Praxiteles for favouring the supremacy of Zeus or Aphrodite. And a Jew, we imagine, ought on such grounds to object to Pre-Raphaelites, Raphaelites, and Post-Raphaelites alike, because they all serve what is to him the Christian heresy, that our Saviour is a divine person. In the sixth chapter of his fourth volume, Mr. Ruskin, who though he is no plagiarist, does not trouble himself to ascertain who has gone before him, gives us a dissertation on the meaning of the word "Firmament" in Scripture, in which there is really nothing_new; and the notion, in Chapter xx., that our Lord's Transfiguration took place on Hermon instead of Tabor has been already expressed by Mr. Stanley, in his late work on Sinai and Palestine, in a manner which unites the skill of the accomplished advocate with the enthusiasm of the Christian traveller. We regret to observe in the author's remarks (IV., 384) on the Mountain Glory," a disposition to sneer at tourists in Switzerland, similar to that in which Mr. Macaulay lately indulged respecting our own middle classes in Scotland: both writers having a tendency to imagine that others are less capable of enjoying and appreciating mountain scenery than themselves, and Mr. Ruskin, in his anxiety lest the Swiss people should be deteriorated by English wealth, apparently forgetting, that if mountains are as well worth studying as he describes them to be, we must go to them, for they will not come to us. We shall be sorry if our remarks so far have given our readers an impression that the work before us is either a mass of fallacies, or in not worth reading. It is, on the contrary, spite of some false reasoning and partial views, eminently suggestive, full of new thoughts, of brilliant descriptions of scenery, and eloquent moral applications of them. How good, for instance, is the first chapter of Vol. IV., where he gives us what may be termed the converse of that pregnant sentence of Longfellow, A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined castle," and shows how the delight of those who seek for the picturesque in disorder and destruction, may wear, in some points of view, an aspect almost of heartlessness. His remarks on the "unserviceableness" of Stanfield's windmill (see the illustration) are excellent, though we cannot confess to a due admiration of Turner's. Little would now be lost, were so hackneyed a subject banished from art altogether. Apropos of windmills, we remember to have heard the tendency to see no beauty except in these worn-out subjects, rather amusingly illustrated by a drawing master, whose pupil described to him an old paper-mill on the Thames, at work at night, with the lights reflected on the water, and asked how it should be drawn. The teacher answered, with great naiveté, "Had you not better make it an old windmill? it would be so much more picturesque." In opposition to this sort of spirit, it is rather remarkable (though we think Mr. Ruskin does not notice it) that Turner, in delineating man's work, seldom chose subjects which are picturesque in the usual sense of the term. He seems to have had little delight in ruin for ruin's sake: but he had the power of giving to a monotonous range of building, or a mere prospect of enclosed fields, a character and expression which other painters are forced to seek in crumbling masonry or desolate moorland. This excellence of his pictures is partly due to the splendid colouring and the unrivalled atmospheric effects with which he invested them; but it is also due to a quality on which Mr. Ruskin (IV., 298) dwells at some length and with great justice, as found perhaps in him alone. Beautiful as they are in colour, graceful in fancy, powerful in execution,-in none of these things do they stand so much alone as in plain, calculable quantity; he having always on the average twenty trees or rocks where other people have only one, and winning his victories not more by skill of generalship than by overwhelming numerical superiority." In most landscapes we can seize the whole at a glance: we have to explore Turner's; some of which, indeed, realize, by their redundance, such a view as Heber describes : 66 "Her eagle eye shall scan the prospect wide, From Carmel's cliffs to Almotana's tide, The flinty waste, the cedar-tufted hill, We have given no precise account of the third volume, for its contents almost defy analysis, and the topics occurring in it have already received very full discussion in the weekly papers and monthly magazines. The fourth volume is more systematic. After five chapters on the Picturesque, the Topography, the Light, and the Mystery of Turner, and two on the "Firmament" and the "Dry Land," Mr. Ruskin gives a minute description of the Alps, with reference, 1st, to their materials; 2nd, to their sculpture; 3rd, to their resulting forms. The first and third divisions would correspond to what is sometimes called geological statics; the second, to geological dynamics; the former comprising the same kind of topics as are treated of in Sir C. Lyell's Elements," the latter those contained in his "Principles," of Geology. The first and third parts, in short, describe the condition of the mountains; the second explains how they came into that condition. Two chapters, respectively devoted to the "Mountain Gloom," and the "Mountain Glory," close the volume. In chapter vii. there is a good passage "on the uses of mountains," to which, not having space to quote it, we refer our readers. The following (IV., 171) is both novel and eloquent : 66 But the longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I examined them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of there being a vast Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon which nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table, removed, in most cases, far back from the edge of the plateau, as if for fear of their falling. And the most majestic scenes in the Alps are produced, not so much by any violation of this law, as by one of the great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the valley in its full height. This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at Grindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse, above the Col de Ferret. But the raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in these apparently exceptional cases; and, for the most part, the great peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain like the keeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by comparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow, foaming about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf of an enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding some fragment of it in the midst. And the result of this arrangement is a kind of division of the whole of Switzerland into an upper and lower mountain-world; the lower world consisting of rich valleys bordered by steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks of mountain, more or less divided by ravines, through which glimpses are caught of the higher Alps; the upper world, reached after the first steep banks, of 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height, have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts of moor and rock, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain. It can hardly be necessary to point out the perfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for the safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the great peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which was struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground, over which no year wonld pass without recording some calamity of earth-slip or avalanche; while, in the course of their fall, both the stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hill sides, leaving only naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping meadow and the chesnut glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast down at once into the warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the spring, causing furious inundation of every great river for a month or six weeks. The snow being then all thawed, except what lay upon the highest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would be supplied during the summer, only by fountains, and the feeble tricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone uuder such circumstances would hardly be larger at Lyons than the Severn at Shrewsbury, and many Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All these calamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has been described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high peaks, instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon the desolate shelves or shoulders which everywhere surround the central crests. The soft banks which terminate these shelves, traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest wood; while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even to the close of the year, in either case supplying constant, abundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath, and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers. The chapter on Alpine precipices sets us right on a point which we do not remember to have seen noticed before, and which is unquestionably of great use in correcting our impressions of mountain form. Most of the summits which seem pyramidal are really only the ends of ridges, which from their immense height cause their perspective lines to assume the appearance of steeply-sloping sides. When we look at the outline of a house against the sky, we are aware that the lines which appear to slant are really horizontal, for we know that houses are so built; but we are apt to forget, or rather we have little opportunity of knowing, that mountains lie in horizontal ridges much more commonly than is supposed, and that a point which we take for the base is frequently a distant vertebral protuberance much higher than the apparent summit. There are "perhaps not more than five summits in the chain of the Alps ascertainably peaked in the true sense of the word." Even the Matterhorn, which is usually described in a manner which would lead us to suppose it a complete obelisk, is shown by Mr. Ruskin to be much more like the roof of a house. The same remark is made respecting the Aiguille Blaitière, a point well known to the Chamouni tourist. Cannot some of those gentlemen who have lately ascended Mont Blanc tell us what is its real shape? We have spoken of Mr. Ruskin's human He has been applications of natural scenes. speaking (IV., 220) of the influence of small mountain streams in the formation of mountains. Hear how he moralizes the spectacle: The importance of the results thus obtained by the slightest change of direction in the infant streamlets, furnishes an interesting type of the formation of human characters by habit. Every-one of those notable ravines and crags is the expression, not of any sudden violence done to the mountain, but of its little habits, persisted in continually. It was created with one ruling instinct; but its destiny depended nevertheless, for effective result, on the direction of the small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in which the first shower of rain found its way down its sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of the drops of dew among its dust were in reality arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with a touch more tender than that of a child's finger,-as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear on a maiden's cheek, to fix for ever the forms of peak and precipice, and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone evaded,-once the dim furrow traced,and the peak was for ever invested with its majesty, the ravine for ever doomed to its degradation. Thenceforward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in power; the evaded stone was left with wider basement; the chosen furrow deepened with swifter-sliding wave; repentance and arrest were alike impossible, and hour after hour saw written in larger and rockier characters upon the sky, the history of the choice that had been directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been turned by a grain of sand. In conclusion, we would wish to part friends with Mr. Ruskin. It would have been in many respects a more agreeable task, instead of dwelling on special points, whether for praise or blame, to have attempted a comprehensive estimate of his gerius, and to have deduced the leading characteristics of his mind from an examination of all he has writ ten. He is still But the time, we think, for such a summing-up has not yet arrived. comparatively young; he has, doubtless, much to learn-and something to forget. We have tried to judge his volumes as we would wish to be judged any work of our own to which we had devoted much labour, much money, much thought, and the best years of our life; and we have tried to avoid what we think does no good, the returning railing for railing, and the description of an author's faults in language as intemperate as that for which he is censured. . The odium theologicum is already notorious. Let us beware lest the quarrels of painters give rise to a similar term of reproach. Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation. DICKIE, A.M., M.D. To those who read with interest the "Vestiges of Creation," we can strongly recommend the perusal of this work. If they were, as few can fail to have been, interested in the theory propounded in the former work, a theory as ingenious as it was attractive, founded upon a selection of facts placed in such a connexion as to give it the best possible support; if the partial view of nature there presented, and the conclusions thence drawn by an unknown pen, engaged the attention of many who had previously given little consideration to a comprehensive view of the works of the Creator;—with how much more pleasure will the present work be received, the combined production of two eminent men, the one as a Metaphysician, the other as a Naturalist, fellow lecturers in the same college, who have assisted each other in examining and comparing created things, and have herein shown, in simple language, the wonderful amount of order which exists where many can see nothing but confusion, and the still more wonderful fitness of the parts of objects, as well as of the objects themselves, for the sphere they are destined to occupy. The subject is so vast and varied, and of such an engaging description, that we must have a care lest we write a book, instead of simply reviewing one: nor is the latter, in this case, an easy thing to accomplish satisfactorily, since, to do justice to this work, we should insert many more extracts than our space will permit. Our authors enter upon their undertaking in a systematic way: they first take a general and discursive view of the order which the works of creation exhibit, and of the adaptation of each for its special purpose; secondly, they enter seriatim upon each of the kingdoms of nature, giving abundant evidence that all things have been formed upon certain plans which have been modified in various ways, but at the same time rarely so far modified as to render the typical form undeterminable;-thirdly, they argue that all these facts indicate a design, or system, which must have existed in the mind of the Creator before the creation; and, lastly, they enter upon the subject of the correspondence which exists. between the laws of the material world and the faculties of the human mind, from the examination of which correspondence they obtain further evidence to support their position, that all things in nature point to one supreme By Rev. JAMES MCCоsн, L.L.D., and GEORGE Edinburgh. 1856. Intelligence, who has suffered nothing to take place by chance. In taking an enlarged view of the constitution of the material universe, so far as it falls under our notice, it may be discovered that attention, at once extensive and minute, is paid to two great principles or methods of procedure. The one is the Principle of Order, or a general plan, pattern, or type, to which every given object is made to conform with more or less precision. The other is the Principle of Special Adaptation, or particular end, by which each object, while constructed after a general model, is, at the same time, accommodated to the situation which it has to occupy, and a purpose which it is intended to serve. These two principles are exhibited in not a few inorganic objects, and they meet in the structure of every plant and every animal. In an analysis of the order which reigns generally in Nature, we may observe that order very prominently set forth in respect of number, time, colour, and form. With respect to number:-Two of the three laws, which have formed, historically, the foundation of modern astronomy, are laws of numbers. Turning to chemistry, we find that ever since it emerged as a science, there has been a constantly renewed attempt to reduce its laws to a numerical expression. We find ten is the typical number of the digits (fingers and toes) of all vertebrate animals: two is the prevailing number in the flowerless plants; three, or a multiple of three, is the typical number of the next class of plants; and five, with its multiples, is the prevailing number in the highest class. The ancients were much struck with the order in respect of time of the celestial motions. There is a beautiful progression in the growth of the young animal in the womb, and the whole life of every creature is for an allotted period. The plants of the earth have their seasons for springing up, for coming to maturity, and bearing flowers and seeds. Colour is not without its significance among the works of man; and we are convinced that there will be found to be some fixed principles in the distribution of colours over the whole surface of nature. This distribution in the vegetable kingdom is in beautiful accordance with the now established laws of harmonious, and especially of complementary colours. Lastly: There is an order in nature in respect of Form. The planets, with their satellites, have a definite spheroidal shape. . . Each mineral assumes certain crystalline forms, and no others. . . But it is among organized objects that we find form assuming the highest significance. Every living object, composed though it be of a number, commonly a vast number and complication of parts, takes, as a whole, a definite shape, and there is likewise a normal shape for each of its organs. It is through a close observance of the order which exists in nature in these several respects, and especially in the last, that classification has made such satisfactory advances of late. The word "form" is used in the widest |