shops. Indeed, the whole passage with which these lines open is worth extracting :

"He had seen the moon's eclipse
Through the fire from Etna's lips,
With Orion had he spoken,
His fast with honey-dew had broken,
Seen the nether world unveiled,
Nor had fainted nor had quailed;
And here he stands amidst the throng,
On his tongue a wise sweet song.
In his hand a laurel fair,

An opal rainbow round his hair,
Truth reigning from his great mild eye,
And in his heart humility."

One small thing (and yet nothing of the kind is really small) we have against Mr. Scott, and to introduce it we may quote his "Dedicatio Postica" to the three poets whose names will go down to posterity as the poets of this generation:"Not many years ago in life's midday

I laid the pen aside and rested still
Like one barefooted on a shingly hill.
Three poets then came past, each young as May,
Year after year, upon their upward way,

And each one reached his hand out as he passed,
And over me his friendship's mantle cast,
And went on singing every one his lay.
Which was the earliest? methinks 'twas he

Who from the Southern laurels fresh leaves brought, Then he who from the North learned Scaldic power, And last the youngest, with the rainbow wrought About his head; a symbol and a dowerBut I can't choose between these brethren three."

Everyone will allow that this is a very beautiful and graceful tribute; but every one must see that its beauty is sadly marred by the ugly word "can't" in the last line. These purely colloquial contractions are in most cases fatal to poetry, and Mr. Scott uses them rather too often for our comfort.

We have not yet spoken of the designs with which the book is embellished, They are, it is hardly necessary to say, very dif. ferent from the smooth inanities which usually do duty as book illustrations, and which bear "made to order" in legible characters on their faces. We must confess, however, that Mr. Alma Tadema's contributions are, with the exception of "Eric and the Water-Witch," somewhat disap. pointing. In the first, "Janet," the counterpane is pleasing, but we defy the acutest interpreter to identify the face on the pillow In the last, the "Sphinx," the smug contentment of the countenance could not be more unsphinxlike. Many of Mr. Scott's own illustrations are very satisfactory. Recreating Genii" we like particularly, as also "A Study from Nature," and the two etchings which illustrate the series of sonnets called "The Old Scotch House." Not only these, but most of the others, are correctly described by Mr. Scott as "rather pictorial analogues to the sentiment and meaning of the poems than direct representations." And, undoubtedly, this is exactly what illustrations to poems should be.

as a woman's.

Altogether the book is satisfactory both as a production and a possession. It is a worthy effort to help on the golden age when for every moment of a man's life there shall be a song to read, a picture to see, a movement of music to hear and to enjoy. To the furniture of not a few such moments Mr. Scott's volume will contribute.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

On the Class of Rude Stone Monuments which are commonly called in England By

Cromlechs, and in France Dolmens. W. C. Lukis, M.A., F.S.A. (Ripon Printed for the Author by Johnson & Co. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1875.) A FEW years ago died in Guernsey an old man who retained his faculties in a wonderful degree to the last, whose extent of information was surprising, but not greater than his energy in collecting information on all antiquarian and scientific subjects, or his accuracy of observation, or his willingness to impart his knowledge to others.

He had formed a valuable and extensive collection of antiquities, of plans and drawings of ancient remains in Great Britain, the Channel Islands, and France. His sons inherited his tastes, and were from boyhood taught to observe accurately, to delineate faithfully, and to conclude logically. One of these sons is the author of the pamphlet named above. Notwithstanding professional labours he has contributed various papers to antiquarian societies, and no one could be more fit to examine the prehistoric remains which, spread over the world, abound most in the north-west of France.

Having the intention of writing an account of the French monuments, Mr. Lukis has relating to one class of them, which he deems thought fit first to dispel certain "notions"

erroneous.

Why,

and he was aware that such a first at. He was compelled to take a great part, tempt was sure to contain many errors. second-hand, and was unable in most inprobably the greater part, of his evidence to warrant his trusting to them. stances to obtain plans of accuracy enough then, did he erect a superstructure of his own on such foundation, and detract from the value of his work by drawing conclusions from evidence which turns out to be unsound? Mr. Lukis quotes Mr. Fergusson's work, not because Mr. Fergusson alone holds erroneous views, but because the errors complained of are collected in that work and are therein available to the student.

"I venture to say that in the foregoing articles, none of my criticisms of the examples of the three ideal classes have been strained. The greater number I have personally examined and planned, and I am therefore able to speak of them with confidence."

No one who takes an interest in the subject of early sepulture must neglect to give patient attention to Mr. Lukis's pamphlet.

H. DRYDEN.

Rough Notes of Journeys made in the Years 1868, '69, '70, '71, '72, and '73; in Syria, down the Tigris, Kashmir, Ceylon, Japan, Mongolia, Siberia, the United States, the Sandwich Islands, and Australia. In One Volume. (London: Trübner & Co., 1875.)

"It is my object to give, in as concise a form as the importance of my subject will permit, A PERSISTENT diary, interspersed with intellithe result of my enquiries into the nature and gent remarks, not so much profound or origin of those rude stone monuments, commonly speculative as prosaic and utilitarian, necesistent, or of which we have trustworthy record." called cromlechs or dolmens, which are now ex-sarily egotistical-here and there, perhaps, Clearly the first thing to be done in such a study is to make, or obtain, accurate plans of the various structures; and, in the case of the dolmens, to obtain the most accurate account possible of their contents.

"The investigator must have long acquaintance with the monuments, sufficient dexterity in drawing and surveying to make accurate plans, sections, and elevations, be a close and unbiassed observer, and then have leisure to devote his intelligence to the scrutiny."

Those of our readers who have taken the trouble to examine printed plans and delineations, and to compare them with the monuments themselves, are aware how seldom the plans and delineations can be relied on. Mr. Lukis has not only collected all the available information on the subject, but has gone through much manual labour in excavating and examining minutely the contents of many dolmens. He has with assistance planned numbers of lines and dolmens and cromlechs, and has examined the moveable remains contained in the various museums which he has been able

to visit.

There will remain to the end of time men who cannot be made to understand that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third, and to those persons we cannot recommend Mr. Lukis or his pamphlet. They would not be persuaded in opposition to their erroneous notions. Mr. Fergusson, in publishing his well-known work on Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, attempted that which no one had attempted before,

unpleasantly so-prolonged through more than six hundred octavo pages of small close print-such is a brief description of the volume we have to consider. The anonymous author is an unmistakeable traveller. Less than five years is found a sufficient period for him to accomplish three journeys, each of which has in its favour the charm of interest, the warrant of distance, and the pungency of adventure. In the first of these he starts from London, and crossing Mont Cenis, embarks at Brindisi for Alex. andria, whence, after a pleasant détour to Jaffa and Jerusalem, he steams through the Suez Canal down the Red Sea to Bombay, Traversing India, via Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow, to Calcutta, he embarks for Rangoon, Maulmain. and the Straits of Malacca; re-embarking at Singapore, to visit Hong Kong, Saigon, Canton, Shanghai, Japan, and Tientsin-from which latter place he hires a cart for Pekin. From Pekin the journey is made to St. Petersburg by Kiachta.

The second tour commences at Halifax, whence the reader is led, through the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, Chicago, and the Salt Lake City, to San Francisco. From this point he is taken, via the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania, to Ceylon, completing the long ocean circuit in the Gulf of Suez. Revisiting Jerusalem, the author returns to England by Alexandria and Marseilles. Palestine is reintroduced at the opening of the third book. Hence the panorama is made to represent successively Aleppo, Diarbekir, Mosul, Baghdad, Babylon and Karachi.

Scenes from Sind and the Panjab follow; more also from India generally, from China, Japan, Ceylon, and Australia. Finally, we have again Alexandria and Port Said, with a homeward route "by Brindisi, Venice, and Vienna."

This is bona fide travelling, though for the most part in regions often before described,

or over an ocean indescribable in detail. Not the least interesting of the land journeys recorded is that from Pekin to Kiachta and Tobolsk-thrown into the shade, it is true, on comparison with the more remarkable routes of Mr. Ney Elias; and less extraordinary than the elaborated explorations of Colonel Prijevalsky. But the first is a gold medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, and the second has yet to be rendered intelligible in an English dress. Our present traveller proceeded by a tolerably direct road to Urga, through Kalgan, past the Mingen or 1,000 le milestone, near the Salt Lake Iren, and across the desert plain of Thagan Tugarick. From Urga to Kiachta he makes the distance 176 miles. At Troitkosarfsk, the telegraph station of Kiachta, we are told that the electric wire holds communication with St. Petersburg, a distance of 6,200 versts, or about 4,150 miles. The mode of discovering a Lama king, when required, is thus related in the diary kept at Kiachta:

"The Kutuchtú, or Lama King of the Mongols, who, when he is in the flesh, resides at the Lamasary at Urga, died some time this year. He was a young man, not much over twenty, and it was said he had been poisoned. Soon after his death a deputation of Lamas visited Pekin, to learn from the Emperor in what direction they were to proceed in order to find the living being into whose body had passed the immortal part of their deceased Kutuchtú. The Emperor instructed them that they must proceed to Thibet, the home of the head of the Buddhists, the Dalai-Lama, and there they would find the child into whose body the soul of the Kutuchtú had found its way. The journey to Thibet is a long one, and beset with difficulties, if not with some dangers, and this has induced the authorities at the Lamasaries at Urga to consult Mr. Grant as to the best mode of proceeding, and as to the probable cost of the journey; and they would fain have Mr. Grant with them, at any rate up to the borders of Thibet. As we passed through Urga, two Lamas from the Lamasary came to consult Mr. Grant on the subject. It is proposed that a party of some seven or eight lamas shall proceed at once to Thibet, learn the whereabouts of the young child, the incarnation of their Kutuchtú, and prepare the way for the advance of some 500 lamasa number thought adequate to accompany the infant Kutuchtú from Thibet to his future home at Urga. I don't know how they manage at Urga during the interregnum between the departure and the return of their Kutuchtú; but I do not hear that anything has taken place to interfere with or to disturb the good order and quiet of that Buddhist establishment " (pp. 120-21).

Tomsk, the capital of Western Siberia, a city of 20,000 inhabitants and 4,000 publichouses, is famous for its bees, of which "3,000 hives are sometimes kept on one farm, producing some 60,000 lb. of honey in one season (p. 139). The boundary pillar dividing Europe from Asia is situated "within a stone's throw of the road" over the Ural mountains, 1,600 feet from the sea-level, between the postal stations of Taletzar and Behmbrurkia (pp. 158-59).

Very correct is the picture of the Russians of the Kama and Volga:

"They seem never to thin their hair; it is cut or clipped round, and looks as if the operator had placed a bowl on the victim's head to guide him in his work. If a man's waistcoat is buttoned over his shirt, the tail of his shirt is always all. Though the thermometer may be at 90°, he left sticking outside his trousers, and perhaps over wears a great-coat. Boots he almost always wears. Out of a hundred or more passengers now on board, there is only one of either sex whose legs are not encased in a pair of jack-boots, and that fellow can afford nothing better than a pair of bark shoes" (p. 162).

It might have been added that the shirt is commonly of a rose or brick colour, and that the hat, like an inverted flower-pot, is a fit accompaniment to the rest of the attire.

The author is hard upon Persia (p. 374), and we will not dispute his estimate of its poor condition, though his knowledge of the country is limited to the seaports of Bushahr, Lingah, and Bandar Abbas. But when he says: "Were it not that we think it politic to bolster it up against what we seem to consider our natural Eastern enemy, but which many people consider merely in the light of a bugbear-Russia-it would not be long in crumbling to pieces; " we think his criticism at fault. It is, perhaps, not so much to the fact of "bolstering up," as to the mode of applying the bolsters, that exception should be taken.

In alluding to the startling query (p. 34) whether conversion to Christianity should be carried on in a land where the greater liberty allowed to converts necessarily increases their household expenditure, we do so merely to remark that any satire therein contemplated fails in its object by the asso

ciation of Musalmán and Hindú to illustrate the argument. The former, it need scarcely be said, is already one of a "flesheating people," and enjoys his butcher's meat under the laws of Islam.

There is an occasional tone of censoriousness in the book which can hardly add to its popularity. Folly as it flies is fair game to the traveller as to the indoor philosopher; but the sport should be carried on under certain restrictions. The conduct of" young Indian officers" and "youngsters in European regiments" is, doubtless, often amenable to censure; but when, reading of the individuals taken to task for serious offences in the later chapters of this volume (p. 474), we recall the type so rudely handled for mere boyish prattle at the very outset (p. 18), we must be pardoned for withholding judgment on the data given. Nor do we subscribe to the conclusions drawn by the author (p. 476), that the heroism of the past is not sure of repetition in future emergencies. Whatever injury may have been done to the native army of India by stripping its regiments of that corporate character which, when turned to good account, was a warrant of distinction, the spirit which animated its bygone heroes has no more become extinct than has the objectionable treatment of natives become the practice of every subaltern of the present day. We maintain that the Indian officerif the term can be applied, under existing circumstances, to the military man launched

in an Indian career-is true as ever to his calling; and, however sensible to slights, real or imaginary, will not fail to prove his professional worth, if occasion offer. At the same time we are quite ready to recognise much common sense and truth in the opinions expressed on the relative positions of European and native in India in other passages of the diary (pp. 394-5); and to admit the necessity of reform.

Revision of the text might have been beneficially exercised, to avoid reiterations of facts and sentiments; at times, repetitions of the language in which these are expressed. Thus, at page 193, in an interesting account of the forest of Calaveras, the writer states: "One hardly realises the full size of these big trees while they are standing; it is only when stretched upon the ground that we become impressed by their monstrous dimensions." A page and a half further on he says: "It is not until a tree is down, stretched on the ground, that you become sensible of its dimensions." Again, at page 337, we are informed, in a description of Diarbekir: "the population of this place is variously stated as being between 25,000 and 50,000 souls;" and two pages further, 'this Diarbekir should be a place of some consequence, seeing it contains from 25,000 to 50,000 souls." The accurate spelling of native proper names is yet a vexata quaestio, and advantage is here taken of the controversy but this does not authorise the change of "Bishop Milman" into "Bishop Milner," as effected in page 26. F. J. GOLDSMID.

:

Social Life at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century. Compiled by Christopher Wordsworth, M.A. (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co. London: George Bell & Sons, 1874.)

MR. WORDSWORTH deserves the thanks of both Universities for this valuable and amusing, carefully edited and beautifully printed book. A volume of upwards of 700 pages, designed to illustrate simply the social aspects of English academic life, and that too as this life presents itself during a comparatively limited period, would, perhaps, at first sight suggest that a process of condensation or selection might have been advantageously employed; but an examination of the contents will show that these pages very rarely offer us anything which has not a definite value in relation to the subject. We have here a little museum, as it were, of curiosities and relics, showing us what were the habits and customs of Oxford and Cambridge at a time when, notwithstanding the tenacity with which academic traditions have held their own, the points of contrast to the present day are perhaps quite as numerous as those which present themselves on a comparison of the aspects of ordinary life at the same period. "A singular condition," says Mr. Carlyle, in his Life of Sterling, schools which have come down, in their strange old clothes and courses of study,' from the monkish ages into this highly unmonkish one-tragical condition, at which the intelligent observer makes deep pause." By Mr. Wordsworth's assistance every reader

"of

will be enabled to exchange any such feeling of innocent astonishment for one of more satisfactory comprehension. An excellent Table of Contents and Index make the volume easy of reference, notwithstanding its multifarious character; and it is precisely the kind of book which every student on the banks of the Isis or the Cam who wishes to enter into the significance of the features peculiar to such an experience, will gladly place on his shelf side by side with the University Calendar. He will here find an explanation of the process by which a three-legged stool came to transmit its name to the final honour examinations at Cambridge. He will be enlightened as to the academic origin of phrases like "Hobson's Choice" and "Neck or Nothing." Or he may trace and compare, step by step, the career of an eighteenth-century undergraduate with his own; and chuckle over an age when the coach from London to Oxford lumbered in after a two days' journey; when "hall" was at twelve o'clock, and attendance there in white stockings and low shoes was de rigueur; when battledore and shuttlecock, leap-frog, skittles, and bellringing were recognised amusements, and men, if they rowed at all, did so in enormous "tubs "and in square caps; when the college barber went round to call the men for chapel and shave them-the lazy ones as they lay in bed; when private tutors examined their own pupils for University honours, and were, notoriously, not oblivious of their ancient intimacy; when the university sub-librarian received only 107. per annum, and was consequently found by visitors, as Uffenbach found Hearne, "very eager for his fee; and when the Terrae Filius at Oxford and the "Tripos at Cambridge publicly satirised the authorities in compositions the scurrility of which seems but very imperfectly redeemed by their wit.

But while the volume abounds with anecdote, facetiae, and details of obsolete and amusing customs, it also contains much that serves to illustrate the less superficial characteristics of the century. In the first eighty pages Mr. Wordsworth points out to what an extent party politics then prevailed, and with what effects. To professors who think it within the province of the academic chair to discuss contemporary politics, and to politicians who see no sufficient reason for withholding the borough franchise from undergraduates, we may the symptoms of a period when regulations concerning gowns and the closing of taverns produced a lively ferment, solely, it would seem, because they had been recommended by a Whig chancellor and enforced by a Whig proctor. In his next volume, for which Mr. Wordsworth encourages us to look, we shall be better able to understand the causes that led to the low state of the intellectual life at this time, and of those studies which constitute the real raison d'être of such communities. He gives us here, however (pp. 83-87), a glimpse into the condition of affairs with respect to the professorial body. In the eighteenth century it was not often that the professors condescended to lecture at all; though Dr. Parr, in his famous Spital sermon, seems to have held that he had sufficiently vindicated their

66

66

among the latter, they too often preferred the wealthier and idler members. This was found prejudicial to discipline and was consequently discouraged; and then "donnishness" became conspicuous. A formal etiquette, none the less scrupulously observed because it was a lex non scripta, divided the learners from those whom the founder had intended to be their teachers. It was thus that, when the offices of dean, tutors, and bursar had been assigned, the remaining Fellows found themselves entirely without occupation. It was open to them to accept a mastership at some grammar school in the country, but such a position was scarcely regarded with more favour in the last century than in the time of Erasmus. In default, therefore, of influence and connexion, there was little to be done but to take occasional clerical duty, and wait patiently for a college living. And hence at every college there was a larger or smaller number of Fellows of whose life an Oxford professor has left us both the sombre and the brighter picture in his well-known "Progress of Discontent."

reputation-so far at least as Cambridge was concerned when he pointed out that there were really not many instances in which they had "disgraced" their chairs "by notorious incapacity or criminal negligence. Simultaneously with the growth of political feeling and the decay of learning, Mr. Wordsworth notes the first appearance of that peculiar product of university life known as "donnishness." The later age at which students then began to be admitted and "the violence and suspicion" resulting from party struggles, were, he considers, in some measure, the cause of this phenomenon; but there can be little doubt that it was mainly the outcome of a selfish disregard for the true uses of college foundations. The founders of our colleges designed, with scarcely an exception, that these societies should support only those who were either really learners or really teachers. The original seven years training in the subjects of the Trivium and Quadrivium, followed by another seven years of theological studies, during which the Fellow would probably be called upon successively to act as "cursory reader," The qualifications which Mr. Wordsworth "regent,' or ordinary reader,' "in the has brought to his task are of so high an Schools, represented one continuous course order that we cannot but hope they may of study in nearly every recognised branch some day be bestowed on the investigation of learning, combined at regular intervals of the more difficult questions that beset with the office of instructing others. A the enquirer at the earlier periods of uniyouthful bachelor on the foundation of Mer- versity history. Occasionally he traces back ton or Peterhouse in the fifteenth century, his subject to these times; as, for instance, who, after the requisite training in gram- where he quotes the opinion of Anthony mar, logic, and rhetoric, and keeping his Wood that the dress of the scholars is acts with credit, had thought fit to de- supposed to have been in imitation of clare his intention of reposing on his laurels, that of the Benedictines. We should be and leading thenceforth a purely contem- glad if Mr. Planché, in his Cyclopaedia plative existence, would have been very of Costume, could throw any light on this summarily reminded by the authorities that question. The notable decree of the Coun colleges were not meant for monks. cil at Aachen, in the year 817, which drew, by degrees, the subjects both of the Trivium for the first time, a broad line between the and Quadrivium were compressed within a secular scholars and the oblati and the three years' course, while the titles of B.D. monks, would seem rather to render it proand D.D. came to represent little more than bable that an attempt would be made to a certain academic standing, the resident distinguish the first from the latter two Fellow, unless engaged in teaching, found by some difference of dress. But however himself under no obligation or stimulus to this may have been, it seems most probable study. Even his duties as a teacher were that the fashion of the English academic often almost wholly neglected, although the garment, like so many of our early univerrestrictions imposed in many colleges, with sity statutes, and even the rules of our regard to the number of pupils whom each university libraries, was borrowed from Fellow was permitted to take, for a long time Paris. And if we adopt Anthony Wood's led to the majority of the Fellows in resi- theory, it is worthy of note how much more dence having at least nominal duties to per- closely the gown, whether of Oxford or form-duties, it is to be observed, partly Cambridge, resembles that of a Benedictine representing those which the university of St. Denis, as represented in Helyot, than professors had contrived to shirk. Then that of an English Benedictine as given in came a time when men of teaching power Dugdale's Monasticon. and sympathetic minds-like Whichcote and Tuckney at Emmanuel in the seventeenth century, and Richard Laughton, of Clare Hall, in the eighteenth (Mr. Wordsworth's research supplies us with no equally eminent examples at Oxford)-drew around them large numbers of pupils, and, the former restrictions being removed, less popular tutors found their occupations gone; then gradually the function of "tutor" lapsed into one or two hands at each college, while the office became entirely dissociated from that of the "coach" or instructor. Systematic intercourse between the majority of the Fellows and the undergraduate body was thus reduced to a minimum; and whenever the former were willing to find companions

But as,

|

We shall look with much interest for the result of Mr. Wordsworth's research in connexion with the Individual Studies and Religious Life of our universities (on which he is still engaged) during the same period as that whose lighter characteristics he has so successfully investigated.

::

J. BASS MULLINGER.

The Annals of a Fortress. By Viollet le Duc. Translated by Benjamin Bucknall. (London Sampson Low & Co., 1875.) Ir is now a good many years since The Military Architecture of the Middle Ages was given to the English public. Its author, M. Viollet le Duc, was previously known as a