We may attempt to reach what is called the typical form of a species, in order to make this the subject of a conception. But even within the closest range of what may be taken as typical characters, there are still variables; and moreover, we repeat it, no one form, typical though we consider it, can be a full expression of the species, as long as variables are as much an essential part of its idea as constants. The advantage of fixing upon some one variety as the typical form of a species is this, that the mind may have an initial term for the laws embraced under the idea of the species, or an assumed centre of radiation for its variant series, so as more easily to comprehend those laws. Again, abrupt transitions and not indefinite shadings have been shown to be the law of nature. In proceeding from special characters to a general species-idea, nature gives us help through her stepping stones and barriers. In former times, man looked at iron and other metals from the outside only, and, searching out their differences of sensible characters, gradually eliminated the general notion of each, by the ordinary logical method of generalization. But science now brings the elements to the line and plummet, and reaches a fixed number for iron and other elements as to chemical combination, etc. By this means, the studying out of the idea of a species seems almost to have escaped from the domain of logic into that of direct trial by weights and measures. It is no longer the undefined progress of simple reason, with a mere notion at the end, but an appeal to definite measurable values, with stable numbers at bottom, fixed in the very foundations of the universe. So, in the organic kingdoms, where there is, to our limited minds, still greater indefiniteness in most characters, the barrier against hybridity appears to stand as a physical test of species. We are thus enabled in searching into the nature of a species, to strike from the outside detail to the foundation law. The type-idea, as it presents itself to the mind, is no more a subject of defined conception than any mathematical expression. Could we put in mathematical terms the precise VOL. XIV. No 56. 75 law, in all its comprehensiveness, which is at the basis of the species iron, as we can for one of its qualities, that of chemical attraction, this mathematical expression would stand as a representative of the species; and we might use it in calculations, precisely as we can use any mathematical term. So also, if we could write out in numbers the potential nature of an organic species, or of its germ, including the laws of its variables, this expression would be like any other term in the hands of a mathematician; the mind would receive the formula as an expression for the species, and might compare it with the formulas of other species. But, after all, we have here a mere mathematical abstraction, a symbol for an amount or law of force, which can be turned into conceptions, only by imagining (supposing this possible) the force in the course of its evolution of concrete realities, according to the law of development and laws of variations embraced within it. ARTICLE IX. NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. MRS. KNIGHT'S LIFE OF MONTGOMERY.1 THE early life of the poet Montgomery was a checkered one. At the age of six years, he was placed at the Moravian School, at Fulneck, near Leeds, where, after an interval of six years, he received a visit of three months, from his parents, just before they left their country, as missionaries to the West Indies. His parents he never saw after this visit; as they both died in the field of their missionary labors, about seven years after. Young Montgomery had been intended for the Ministry, but he showed so little interest in study that the Moravian Brethren soon gave up the hope of educating him for this purpose, and placed him in a retail 1 Life of James Montgomery. By Mrs. Helen C. Knight, author of "Lady Huntington and her Friends," "Memoirs of Hannah More," etc. Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1857. 12mo. pp. 416. shop in Mirfield. He early evinced a taste for poetry, and sought every opportunity to gain access to the poetical works which had been interdicted by his teachers. His clerkship at Mirfield, had no attractions for him, and he ran away. At Wath, he soon found another situation, though very little better than his former one; except, that here he became acquainted with Mr. Brameld, a bookseller, "in whose humble shop the only evenings he spent from home were passed." Through Brameld, Montgomery forwards a manuscript volume of poems to Paternoster Row, London. Soon after he follows, himself, with a letter of introduction to Hamilton, the publisher. His poems are declined. He writes a story for children; this, too, was coldly looked upon. He is advised to write for men, and he proposes a novel, in the style of Fielding, but this is too profane for publication. But his iron persistency is not yet weakened; he shortly completes an " Eastern Tale," but the "manuscript is too small," and, like the others, is returned. Valuable lessons were learned in London, in less than a year. At the age of twenty-one he is back again at Wath, with his former master; in a short time he makes another change, and engages himself to Joseph Gales, of Sheffield, who is printer, bookseller, and editor of the Sheffield Register; in less than two years his employer, falling under the suspicion of entertaining views against the government, and fearing a conviction of "constructive treason," leaves his country, and at length finds an asylum in Virginia; here he has been long and honorably represented in his eldest son, widely known in the firm of Gales and Seaton, Washington. On the departure of Mr. Gales from Sheffield, the Register was discontinued, and Montgomery commenced a new paper, called the Iris. Owing to circumstances growing out of his connection with this paper, he was twice imprisoned in York Castle, once for three months, and again for six, though in neither case for any thing that reflected discredit upon himself. But we cannot follow this checkered and interesting life further in detail. Much interest is added to his biography from the period at which he lived. He was contemporary with the stirring events of the French Revolution; he lived during the fearful conflicts between freedom and despotism, not merely a passive observer, but an interested and active journalist. Amid what a brilliant galaxy, too, did he live! There have been few epochs like that of Cowper, Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, Moore, Lamb, and Montgomery. He was not a peer among the most distinguished of these, but he certainly held no mean position. He was coeval, too, with the commencement of the great benevolent movements of the day, and took a deep interest in them. He devoted much time to Bible, Tract, Missionary, and Sunday-school Societies. Montgomery has been known mostly in this country as the "Christian Poet;" his sweet hymns have quickened the devotion of many Christian hearts, and will yet give expression to the devout feelings and heavenly aspirations of multitudes of others; but he deserves, also, to be known as a man and a christian citizen; as a man with warm sympathies for all that is good, for all that advances, elevates, and ennobles mankind; as a man of unaffected earnest piety; with a wider and more expansive benevolence, and with more active efforts for the general good, than any of the illustrious poets with whom his name is associated. Of few poets can the remark of Wordsworth to Montgomery be truthfully made: "I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of expressing a firm belief that neither morality nor religion can have suffered by our writings; and with respect to yours, I know that both have been greatly benefited by them." The English edition' of Montgomery's Life, by his friends, Messrs. Holland and Everett, was published in seven volumes, and is too voluminous for general circulation, and would never have been republished here. Mrs. Knight has, therefore, done a valuable service in bringing within the compass of the present volume all the more striking incidents in his life, as well as the prominent traits of his character. The work is an attractive and instructive one, written with vigor and clearness, giving a distinct and well-defined outline of the character it portrays. Those who are familiar with Mrs. Knight's previous writings, and with the distinctness and vividness with which her characters are presented, will not be disappointed here. Her writings always have a point, are never dull, and uniformly leave a happy moral impression. While Mrs. Knight modestly remarks, that "letters, and paragraphs from letters, jottings by the way, form the body and chief interest of the present work," the hand of the skilful artist is distinctly visible in the form and coloring given to the whole picture. Generally the language is remarkably pure and chaste; but we notice a few loose expressions, to which exception might be taken: "ambition not bottomed on ability tried unsuccessfully to lift them” (p. 46); “want of confidence might have been easily scared up by less candid guardians” (p. 32); "Montgomery is re-homed” (p. 65); than which nothing so unfolds the riches of redeeming love" (p. 98); "sadly retrospecting on his fallen greatness" (p. 181). BARTH'S TRAVELS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.1 THE British Government sent out an expedition in 1849, under the command of Mr. Richardson, to explore the regions of Central Africa. This expedition, Dr. Barth, a German scholar and traveller, was allowed to join as a volunteer. Richardson died from the effects of the climate, in March, 1851, and the Government then devolved the charge of the expedition upon 1 Longman and Co. 1854-7. 2 Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, by Henry Barth, Ph. D., D. C. L. Volumes I-III. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts. 1857. Dr. Barth, who steadily pursued the objects in view, till 1855, when he returned to England, and has embodied the results of his travels in a work of five volumes, of which only the first three have been given to the public. Starting from Tripoli, he penetrated the continent in a due south course upwards of twenty degrees, meeting the Bénuwé, or eastern branch of the Niger,--one of the most important of his discoveries. After a careful exploration of the regions and races in the neighborhood of Lake Tsad, and of the great commercial entrepots of Kano and Kuka, he then pushed westward as far as Timbuktu. The remaining two unpublished volumes are to contain the account of these westward travels. It will be seen by a glance at the work that these explorations of Barth go over substantially the whole north-west third of the continent. These volumes are a very important addition to physical geography,-in some respects the most important that has been made during the century. Certainly the region which has been laid open by this journal has hitherto been the most secluded and inaccessible portion of the globe. Little more has been known concerning the descent, language, manners, customs, religion, and government of the races of Central Africa, than if they had been inhabitants of Saturn. But these volumes make the civilized world acquainted with Central Africa in all these particulars; so that the reader, at the close of the journal, feels that he has been travelling through a portion of his native planet, and among his own fellow creatures. One is struck in reading these volumes with the fact that Africa, like the other continents, has its vast ranges of fertile, well-watered, arable land. The European and American too commonly associate the region of the negro with the desert of Sahara. But the following description is only a single one of many instances in which the traveller actually luxuriates in the scenery. "It was a most beautiful morning; and I indulged in the feeling of unbounded liberty, and in the tranquil enjoyment of the beautiful aspect of God's creation. The country through which we passed on leaving Shibdawa, formed one of the finest landscapes I ever saw in my life. The ground was pleasantly undulating, covered with a profusion of herbage, not yet entirely dried up by the sun's power; the trees, belonging to a great variety of species, were not thrown together, into an impenetrable thicket of the forest, but formed into beautiful groups, exhibiting all the advantage of light and shade. There was the kaña, with its rich darktinted foliage; the kadeña, or butter-tree, which I here saw for the first time, exhibiting the freshest and most beautiful green; then the marké, more airy, and sending out its branches in more irregular shape, with light groups of foliage; young tamarind-trees, rounding off their thick crown of foliage till it resembled an artificial canopy, spread out for the traveller to repose in its shade, and many other species of trees unknown to me; while above them all, tall and slender górebas unfolded their fan-crowns, just as if to protect the eye of the delighted wanderer from the rays of the morning sun, and to allow him to gaze undisturbed on the enchanting scenery |