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sideration, and in their statement helping to promote the solution of one of the great and increasing difficulties of this age.

Practical Observations on the Intellectual,

Sanitary, and Medical Treatment of
the Deaf and Dumb. By Henry
Samuel Purdon, M.D., Fellow of the
Anthropological Society, London.
Pp. 94. Belfast: Adair, 11 and 13,
Arthur-street.

THE writer of this book published in 1865 a pamphlet on the 'Peculiarities of the Deaf and Dumb, as observed at the Ulster Institution,' and the good reception met with has encouraged him to make further inquiries on the subject, the results of which, obtained by correspondence with medical gentlemen attached to a number of deaf and dumb asylums, as well as by his own further observations at Ulster, he now lays before the public. The book contains seven chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion. There are a brief historical sketch of the deaf and dumb; an account of the congenital or acquired conditions of the ears of mutes, with the various remedies which have been proposed for their cure; a description of the manifestations of disease occurring in deaf mutes; and of the diseases to which the deaf and dumb are peculiarly liable; and some chapters on medical treatment, sanitary management, and dietetic regimen. The tables in which the results of information, derived from many of the existing deaf and dumb schools, are collated and compared, are very interesting, and give this work a special value.

A Woman's Thoughts on the Education of Girls. By Mrs. Roe. Pp. 39. London: F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster Row.

MRS. ROE is wife, we believe, of the Mayor of Derby; and a very excellent woman she must be, too, if at all fulfilling her own programme, as laid down in this excellent little pamphlet. It is full of sound, good sense, and is well worthy the attention of all who have to do with the education of girls.

Sketches from My Note Book. By Geo. Mogridge (Old Humphrey). Edited by his Widow (with numerous illustrations). Pp. 136. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row. CHEERY and rich with practical wisdom, Old Humphrey is always a welcome

visitor.

We are indebted to his widow for the opportunity of possessing his homely lessons in pleasant-looking little volumes, of which the one before us is by no means the least interesting. The Popular Journal of Anthropology. Monthly. London : Trübner and Co., 60, Paternoster Row.

DEVOTED to the exposition of the practical value of the science of man, and the diffusion of facts of interest and importance connected therewith. The public are offered, in its pages, a channel of communication with the students of the science. The plan of the projectors is, frankly to state the truth about the uncivilised races, but not to be the organ of any party, nor to advocate any exclusive set of opinions, General Eyre, however, we observe, is highly lauded for his action in Jamaica.

The Wreck of the 'London. Pp. 100. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row.

THE affecting story of the wreck of the 'London' and the escape of the cutter is told in this volume in full detail. Here are portraits and memoirs of some of the principal persons who perished or were saved; a description of the vessel, and a full account of the last scenes on board, as far as known. The object of the writer has evidently been to teach a Christian lesson as well as to produce a readable volume, and in both directions he has succeeded.

Treason; or, the Image of the Beast. Pp. 28.

ANOTHER attempt to translate the spiritual events seen by St. John 'in the spirit' into worldly history; and, of course, another egregious failure.

The Practical Results of the Total or Partial Abolition of Capital Punishment in Various Countries. Prepared as a Summary of the most recent and authentic information on the subject, and inclusive of Statistics and Reports forwarded to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment. By William Tallack, Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. THIS paper was read in the jurisprudence department of the Social Science Congress of 1865, and is published by the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, at their office, 36, Southampton-street, Strand, London.

The

The Rev. William Knibb, Missionary to Jamaica. A Lecture delivered in the schoolroom of Mare-street Chapel, Hackney, December 19, 1865, by Daniel Katterns. Published by request. Pp. 30. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row. ESPECIALLY interesting in connection with the Jamaica massacres, and should be read by all who desire to take a just view of the action and influence of the Baptist missionaries.

The Church. A Monthly Magazine. Price One Penny. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

A NEW religious and entertaining magazine, under Baptist auspices.

Our Own Fireside. A Magazine of Home Literature for the Christian Family. Edited by the Rev. Charles Bullock, Rector of St. Nicholas's, Worcester.

THERE is no falling off in the management of this interesting serial.

The Appeal: A Magazine for the People. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

A NEW halfpenny candidate for public favour.

Report of the Society for the Abolition of

Capital Punishment. January, 1866. Office, Southampton-street, Strand, London.

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A Working Man's View of Tennyson's 'Enoch Arden. By J. H. Powell, author of Life Incidents and Poetic Figures.' London: Trübner and Co., 60, Paternoster Row.

The Universal Financial Review. No. I., vol. I. London: 4, Bouverie-street, Fleet-street.

Caudwell's Temperance and Alliance
Almanac for 1866. Twopence. Job
Caudwell, 335, Strand.

The Christian's Penny Almanac and
Daily Remembrancer for 1866. Lon-
don: Job Caudwell, 335, Strand.
The Annual Report of the Plymouth
Female Home for the year 1864.
Plymouth: William Brendon, 26,
George-street.

The Temperance Spectator. Monthly.
Twopence. Job Caudwell, 335,
Strand.

The British Workman. Monthly. One Penny. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row.

The Band of Hope Review. Monthly. One Halfpenny. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row.

The Children's Friend. Monthly. One Penny. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, Fleet-street.

The Infants' Magazine. Monthly. One Penny. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, Fleet-street.

Stories for Sunday Scholars. Letty Young's Trials. One Penny. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

Job Caudwell's Threepenny Pledge Book for the Pocket. Suitable for Private Individuals, Advocates, Bands of Hope, and Temperance Societies. London: Job Caudwell, 335, Strand.

Vegetarian Cookery for the Million. Containing What to Eat and How to Prepare it, with Instructions and Recipes for One Hundred and Sixty Different Dishes, suitable for Families, Bachelors, Invalids, &c.; showing the Best, Cheapest, and Happiest Mode of Living. By Job Caudwell, F.R.S.L. London: Job Caudwell, 335, Strand.

Old Jonathan; or, the District and Parish Helper; for the Streets and Lanes of the City; for the Highways and Hedges, to bring in the Poor, and the Maimed, and the Halt, and the Blind. Monthly. London: W. H. Collingridge, 117 to 119, Aldersgate-street.

The Church of England Temperance Magazine. A Monthly Journal of Intelligence. Organ of the Church of England and Ireland Temperance Reformation Society. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 54, Fleet-street.

The Baptist Magazine. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

The Juvenile Missionary Herald. One Halfpenny. Monthly. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

Meliora

ART. I.-ETHICS OF DUST.

1. The Ethics of the Dust. Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation. By John Ruskin, M.A. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1866.

2. Geology for General Readers. A Series of Popular Sketches in Geology and Palæontology. By David Page, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. Blackwood and Sons. 1866.

3. Frost and Fire: Natural Engines, Tool Marks, and Chips; with Sketches taken at Home and Abroad. By a Traveller. 2 Vols. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. 1865.

ACH season of the year has its poetry and its philosophy. Spring, in its waywardness, its gentleness, and its breathing beauty of growth, lies upon us like a loving mystery of life and force. Summer charms us by its richness, its mellowness, and its fragrant suggestions of love, wealth, and power. Autumn wins us by its plenteous smiles, its teeming luxury of colour and form, and sober sadness of prophecy. Winter awes us by its sternness, soothes us by its sleep of power, and pictures out for us, in its snowy crystal-life on grass and pane, a strange elfin dream of all that has given beauty to the past, and lies about us as the magic of the future. The mind revels in these beautiful gradations, in this round of marvellous transformation. Without them the year would be like a dead man's face. Eternal summer, or eternal winter would be as burdensome to us as immortality without youth was to Tithonus. We should catch no magnificent suggestions of ourselves, feel no strange pulses stirring beneath our crisped and shrivelled natures, and no tidal flush around, fresh sweeping from shores we cannot see, yet murmuring of power that fails not, of peace that ebbs not, of love that falters

not.

We miss in cities all this ebb and flow of life, this subtile Vol. 9.-No. 34. efflorescence

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efflorescence of power. A vague, general idea of each season is all that we usually get. We have no almanac of flowers, and trees, and fruits. We cut up the year into arbitrary divisions, and measure nature by fashion. Certain things will come in their season, we know, but we have not watched them. Our senses have been elsewhere. We have been gathering dust, unmindful of the outburst of glorious beauty in the fields. We have seen no soft-blowing zephyr stirring the dead leaves where the violets hide, nor warm air eddying into the spongy woods where the hyacinths bloom, nor spray of sunbeam breaking into loveliest colour on berry and fruit. Here and there a poet, or an artist, or a dreamer, has seen these things and reported them to us; and, with eulogies upon his good taste, and the bestowal of a dust-package, white or yellow, we have passed on. All through spring and early summer we have shielded ourselves from any nature-longings. Our prosy life has been clasped with a more spasmodic clutch. We have been logical and stern, and done resolute battle with such forgotten memories as dared to peep out of their ensconcings. Beauty has embosomed us, we have been islanded in a witchery of radiance and colour; but we have chanted our little lifepsalm and tried to forget it, and the hurrying wheels have run quicker, and the hum of labour rung out louder.

But no piling of pyramids of yellow dust has made us forget the other shining heaps that lie abroad in nature, and shame us with their very profuseness of wealth and cheapness. We are all infected by poetry in some form or other, did we but know it. Right through humanity this spirit runs like a glittering vein; now it is slender as a gossamer, now thick as a cable; now it runs right across each separate fragment, or twinkles as it curves out a corner; but it is nearly always there, had we but eyes to see it. And this spirit gets moved upon in a singular way. Hot days flare upon us, and the azure overhead glows, half in irony and half in sadness. We brace ourself up, and again we resist, and pile up our pyramids. But a new invasion is threatened. It comes upon us everywhere at once. It seems to derive its strength from a malicious memory of despised and abused power. We have hewn the granite hills, and ground them into dust. Over choice specimens of crystal-life in porphyry and syenite, we have bowled along in hot and palpitating haste. The spicula are broken, the foliations are destroyed, the little nests of crystal-life, and fierce little epics of crystal sorrow and warfare, are destroyed; but their particles remain, and troublesome is their resurrection. We can withstand the heat, work down any fitful flashes of poetic musing, but we are conquered by the

summer

summer dust. It penetrates everywhere. We pronounce it fearful, and make crusades against it; but it rises in spite of us, until we falter, deliberate, and yield. Golden dust has enslaved us, but common dust breaks away our fetters. Molecules of matter have overcome us, and we hurry from city and town anywhither, we say from custom, or change, or for health; but we are in reality dust-scattered.

After this invasion we get peace, but the atom-hosts have not done with us. We are more at their mercy than ever. We knew them not before save as a miscellaneous mixture called dust, and legitimately the property of scavengers; but now they are respectable, have ways of their own, fanciful attires, sublime palaces, and pillared shrines. Our eyes are somehow opened, and we begin to see strange things never seen before. We have been packing our dust, and here common dust, ages ago, was packed into loveliest and most wondrous forms. We have got from commonplace into mythological regions, if we are amidst the hills. Here are the Titans whose little progeny blinded us in the city. Here are the heroic forms of their ancestral life. We walk by the seashore, perchance, and can span an entire æon of crystal life. Here we find dust, worn by millions of waves and tides; there we left dust, worn by millions of feet and wheels; and yonder, perhaps, are the unconquered crystals, sealed up in giant masses, tossed into giddy grandeurs, torn into lovely corries, fretted into nooks of tinkling melody, and flecked into hues of wildest beauty. It is now that we seem to emerge from a winter-sloth, and run rapidly in thought through three other internal seasons. If we are not wholly unmanned by fashion, we feel strange tuggings at our heartstrings, strange whimsical desires, and our mental and moral horizon extends until we even get a little bit philosophical and possibly shock our friends. Life has ceased to be a terrible turmoil, a mere conflict of dustatoms, and begins to be soothingly, cheerfully serious, with an occasional dash of pure sadness which springs from a conscious waste of higher power and smothering of nobler aspirations. This is one form of dust ethics, perhaps its commonest, but by no means its highest. It is a mood that may lead on to the giddiest heights of moral and cosmical speculation, or subside into a fitful imaginative fever over the last new novel. may swell the soul until it is almost able, with Puck, to put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes,' or dwarf it until it finds dainty employment in discovering 'Who's who,' and revels in littlenesses of gossip it usually treats with disdain.

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