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intimately associated; the right of manhood suffrage' and political freedom advocated by men whose ancestors bled for the 'divine right' of kings, and attempted to crush the liberties of the people! All this is very remarkable, and we are pretty certain that if Roman catholicism were entirely relieved from the galling exactions of a protestant ascendancy, many of the 'faithful' who are now the advocates of liberalism, would support the 'Young England' notion of adopting the principles and practices of the good old times.' It is very evident, at all events, that Mr. Waterton loves best the feudal and priestly state of society-everything old is venerated, and everything new is regarded with suspicious dislike. Poor Charley Stuart' is referred to in a tone which would do honor to the descendant of the most malignant' royalist-a condemnatory essay of nine pages is devoted to the new chimney-sweeping act'-the enclosure of waste lands is regarded with horror-and the decrease of coachmen (alas! this fine breed is nearly extinct!') is deplored as a public calamity! Mr. Waterton, too, displays a hatred of cotton-mills that would rejoice Mr. Ferrand's heart. 'God help the poor soul,' he exclaims, whom abject poverty forces into those colossal repositories of pestilential vapours (!) where the direful effect of confinement puts one so much in mind of Sterne's 'captive.' He saw him pale and feverish. For thirty years the western blast not once had fanned his blood.' And then he contrasts the happy condition of the 'farmer's boy, so rosy, blithe, and joyous the live-long day!'-and this in the face of the fearful revelations constantly made of the wretched, halfstarved, and demoralized condition of the agricultural labourers! Is not all this toryism, and that, too, of the blindest character? And yet Mr. Waterton calls himself a liberal, and his dislike of Sir Robert Peel is only equalled by his amusing detestation of the Hanoverian Rat, which-out of compliment, we suspect, to 'Dutch William'-he anathematises on every occasion! One thing, however, is quite certain, that except on natural history, Mr. Waterton displays a very narrow grasp of mind, and, we fear, has allowed himself to be blinded by a mass of prejudice.

The other work named at the head of this article is written by Mrs. Lee, (formerly Mrs. Bowdich,) whose Life of Cuvier obtained very favourable notice. Her present volume is intended for the use of schools and young persons, and seems well adapted for the purpose. The classification of the principal groups is given, and the characters of the genera are concisely stated. Mrs. Lee does not seek credit for originality, but has conveyed her information in a plain style which will be easily understood, avoiding as far as possible the technicalities so discouraging to a beginner. She has judiciously selected interesting descriptions

from the writings of Montagu, Jesse, Pringle, Audubon, Gould, Waterton, &c., which cannot fail to be interesting to juvenile minds. We shall give a single passage as a fair example of her style: it occurs under the group Syndactyla.

King-fishers have shorter feet than bee-eaters, and tongue and tail very short. They live on small fishes, which, after bruising them with the beak, they swallow head foremost, and catch by darting on to them from the branch or rail on which they watch for their prey. They occasionally hover over the streams near which they live; nest in holes like the bee-eaters, and are found in almost all parts of the world. They are quarrelsome and solitary birds, store their stomachs with food, and bring it back again into their mouth when they feed their young: they also eject the bones of fishes in the same manner. It is a celebrated bird amongst ancient authors, under the name of Halcyon, or Alcyon, and was in their time invested with the power of quelling storms. was also then believed that while the Halcyon was hatching her eggs, sailors might venture to sea without fear; hence the expression of Halcyon days. There is even now a tradition, that the dead bird, carefully balanced and suspended by a single thread, always turns its beak towards that point of the compass from which the wind blows, and allusions to this are made in Shakspeare.'-Lee, pp. 212, 213.

It

The wood-cuts are very indifferent; but we hope that Mrs. Lee's efforts to popularise the science will meet with success.

Art. V. Pensées, Fragmens, et Lettres de Blaise Pascal, publiés pour la première fois conformément aux Manuscrits Originaux en grande partie inedits: par Prosper Faugere. 2 vol. in 8vo, 58 feuilles (pp. 936), avec portrait et quatre fac-similia de son écriture, Paris, 1844. The Thoughts, Fragments, and Letters of PASCAL; now first published in conformity to the Original Manuscripts. By Prosper Faugère. It is now two centuries, abating one quarter, since the fragmentary writing of that extraordinary man, whose name stands above, were gathered up, after his death, at the age of thirtynine, by his affectionate sister, and published by his friends. They were written by himself, as his meditations suggested, and incidental occasions occurred, on scraps of paper, and filed as it happened, on strings, or otherwise laid aside for opportunities of use contemplated, but which never came. Many of them were extremely brief. The first editors arranged them upon their own plan; and it has been believed that they published all that they could find that was intelligible, without alteration. The sparks of momentary collision, struck from such a mind as Pascal's, were felt to be inestimable. The book was rapidly and widely circulated, translated into the principal languages of

Europe, and reprinted times without number; and it was received with an enthusiasm of admiration almost equally intense, and certainly more diffused and permanent than that which attended his Provincial Letters. Philosophers admired the wonders of intellect which it disclosed, christian believers loved it as a repository of the 'precious faith,' and clever infidels were not wanting, as Voltaire and Condorcet, in strenuous efforts to pervert it into an engine of scepticism. In 1776, Condorcet published an edition, greatly mutilated indeed, but genuine, so far as it went, and with some additions from the manuscripts; and, two years afterwards, Voltaire republished that edition, with his own preface and notes. Both those unhappy men passed the highest encomiums on the genius and talent of the Thoughts, while they indulged their rancorous prejudices against its pure design and the sacred truths which it placed in the light of brilliant evidence. Condorcet's mutilations were intended to represent the 'first of the French classics as to both date and rank,' (Faugère's words) as a secret sceptic. In France and the Low Countries, in Germany and Britain, the book has never ceased to be popular: but lately a regard to it, intensely interesting, has been revived in a Memoir presented to the French Academy, in 1842; also in 1843, in a large volume; both by the celebrated professor of philosophy in the University of France (Paris College), Victor Cousin. With all his admiration, at once enraptured and judicious, of the subject of his disquisitions, he had a morally interested object in view, to make out (we borrow his own words), that the very bottom of Pascal's soul was a universal scepticism, from which he could find no refuge but a wilfully blind credulity :—Le fond même de l'âme de Pascal est un scepticisme universel, contre lequel il ne trouve d'asyle que dans une foi volontairement aveugle.'

In the present year and in our own country, attention has been revived to the character and writings of Pascal, by an article whose intrinsic merits are worthy of its subject, in the second number of the North British Review, and which, without an atom of information, we feel secure from error in attributing to the christian philosopher, one of the prime glories of our age, SIR DAVID BREWSTER. That article also incorporates much of the valuable Discourse on the Life and Writings of Pascal, by Bossut, Paris, 1779.-We have no slight pleasure in citing the passage which gives Sir David Brewster's opinion on the subject of our article; but little did he know, when he penned the following paragraphs, what an accession was just on the point of being made to the subject of them.

He resolved to dedicate the rest of his life to the composition of a great work on the Evidences of Religion.-He had devoted to it

the last year in which he was permitted to labour; and the various portions of it which he had written were collected by his Port Royal friends, and published in 1670, under the title of Pensées de M. Pascal sur la Réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets. This little work, which has been translated into every European language, is pregnant with great and valuable lessons, and has met with general admiration. Original and striking views of divine truth pervade its pages; and fragments of profound thought, brilliant eloquence, and touching sentiment, every where remind us of its gifted author. Appealing to minds of the highest order, his opinions on the solemn questions of faith and duty, cannot fail to have a transcendent influence over hearts, which studies and sufferings like his own have enlightened and subdued.'-North Brit. Rev. Aug. 1844. p. 320.

The Paris Sémeur of the 6th, 13th, and 20th, of the present month, has introduced to our knowledge, and largely commented upon, the new work whose title we have given. We think that it will meet just curiosity, and prepare for the analysis which we propose to make of the two volumes, and for our observations both upon the remains of Pascal, greatly diversified as to subjects, but all more precious than gold and jewels, and upon the excellent editorship which has brought them to our possession, if we translate the first of the three French articles, written by no less a man than ALEXANDER VINET; premising only our words in the Review of his masterly volume, On the Manifestation of Religious Convictions and the Separation of the Church from the State.-M. Vinet has long been favourably known to French literature.--One of the most accomplished, philosophic, and earnest minds which have ever been employed uponthat great subject.'-Ecl. Rev., June, 1843. Vol. xiii. p. 616.

We must add that, in the February and March of the last year, he wrote three articles, in the Sémeur, as a critical examination of Cousin's volume which we have before mentioned.

'We are under great obligations to Mr. Faugère, but have first to thank Prof. Cousin: for it is to him that we are indebted for this complete and unadulterated edition of The Thoughts. It is at least probable that, but for him, we should have had to wait a long time for it. Since the publication of Mr. Cousin's book (On Pascal's Thoughts), it had become doubly necessary. It was known for some years, (but obscurely and vaguely); it had become impossible to doubt, that the world did not possess the genuine text of Pascal; and not a few had begun to inquire whether we had Pascal's genuine thinking. Mr. Faugère's work has just come to put an end to that uncertainty. PASCAL is restored to us; not the sceptical and forlorn Pascal of whom Mr. Cousin had outlined the black profile, but the Pascal of our knowledge, the believing, affectionate, and happy Pascal. Once again then, we thank Mr. Cousin. Even before this new edition,

the positions which we had maintained in opposition to him were by no means to be relinquished; but they are still the better fortified in consequence of the publication which his disquisition has called forth.

'It is now also that we know to what an extent the timorous prudence of the great man's friends had corrupted, if we may be allowed so to say, the text of these immortal fragments. Mr. Cousin had good reason for saying, that there is no sort of alteration which has not been practised upon this text. The first editors had allowed themselves, or better may we say, commanded themselves, to take every kind and degree of licence: to suppress, to fabricate, to transpose, to separate, to combine, -all seemed to them a thing of full right or strict duty. They have, as they thought cases required, formed anew the plan of the work, the style of the author, and his very sentiments themselves. Mr. Faugère is only a scrupulously faithful witness to the truth, when he says, 'there is not an instance of twenty lines together, whether in the first edition or in any of the subsequent ones, which does not present some alteration, great or small.' He might have added that, in those same editions, it is a rare thing to find six consecutive lines exactly conformable to the original manuscript. One feels quite confounded at such daring. But there are two considerations which may somewhat moderate our unavoidable surprise and pain from this first impression.

'The first is that, according to the ideas of the seventeenth century, Pascal's Thoughts, considered merely as he threw them upon his paper, could hardly be said to have been really reduced to writing. He would never have given them to the public in that state; and his friends would have thought themselves wanting in duty to him, if they had not done for him what he would certainly himself have done. No doubt Pascal would have performed the task better, incomparably better. A comparison cannot for a moment be admitted between him and such editors as they were. I should not be forgiven if I were to maintain, that the work finished by himself would have been less valuable than the sketch; but that which I will venture to say is, that it would have been a different thing, a totally different thing; it would have been a treatise by Pascal, rather than Pascal himself, a book and not a man. Though I do not doubt but that he would have put something of himself into his book, still we have the alternative of the book or the man [the impression or the mind that stamped it]. If the labours of those editors leave us to regret above all the absence of the very Pascal, we are safe in saying that he would have still less spared himself, that he would have had more reserve than they had of

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