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influence there is a concomitant consumption of nerve-pulp. Nerve-substance is destroyed by the transmission of nerveinfluence, as well as by the origination of mental activity.

Different kinds of globules, and different methods of distribution and grouping of their clusters, are distinguished in the brain. But on account of the surpassing minuteness and delicacy of the structure, and the intricacy of its arrangement, it has not yet been possible to map out the different parts of the convolutions of the brain into subordinate divisions corresponding with the different faculties of the mind.

Such are the results which science has attained in this recondite province of intellectual enquiry, but with these results the achievements of physiological investigation end. There is no glimmering yet of the way in which the energy evolved from the destruction of the sensory track of the brain-pulp is changed into the phenomena of consciousness. There is no hint of the plan by which the action of the unstable and combustible base of the brain convolutions is transmuted into the functions of the intellect. There is no explanation of the process by which pulp vibration is transformed into reason and feeling. There is no demonstration of the structural difference between pleasure and pain. An unfathomed abyss still stretches out beyond the most advanced ground won by the adventurous explorations of physiologists. Dr. Maudsley, as the expositor of the latest progress in mental physiology, honestly and unreservedly admits that this is the case when he says:

'Of what may happen in a world into which human senses have not yet found a means of entering, we are no better entitled to speak than the blind man is to talk of the appearance of objects. In such matter it would be more wise to adopt Tertullian's maxim, "Credo quia im"possibile est," than that too much favoured by human ignorance which affirms “that a thing is impossible because it appears to be inconceiv"able."'

Here, then, we reach the limits to which physical science has attained. The moral and intellectual faculties of man belong to a region for which physical science has no language and no explanation. To investigate them is the task of a higher branch of philosophy, for we still say with the old schoolmen Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu—nisi intel• lectus ipse.'

ART. IV. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, Author of 'Sacred and Legendary Art.' By her Niece GERARDINE MACPHERSON. London: 1878.

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E remember to have read, quoted by Mrs. Hemans, a saying of Mme. de Staël, that for a woman, fame is only a royal mourning, in purple, for happiness.' There is picturesqueness in the expression, and not a little truth; yet we doubt if those gifted women, any more than the authoress of Sacred and Legendary Art,' would have been wise to exchange their talent for any other happiness, real or imaginary. It brought them competence, occupation, independence, variety, influence, troops of friends, and that fame which, if it be but a royal mourning for happiness, is also a love disguised.' The distinction which they attained answers to love in its widest. and most exalted sense, developes much that is best in the writers, and cultivates the readers, while it maintains the communion of cultivated minds. If none had ever possessed such distinction, the past would be, as Joanna Baillie said'A blank, a desert bare, a shipless sea; '

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and all these gifted women were right to wish for it. Supposing them, however, to have been willing to surrender these advantages, it is certain that they could not have stifled the genius which was both their birthright and their vocation. In this matter nature always turns king's evidence. The artistic temperament, with all its pleasures and pains, its trials, temptations, victories, and despairs, is a gift, and the gods them'selves cannot take back their gifts.' Such enthusiastic natures are, however, often unfortunate in their married lives, because they choose their partners very ill in the first place, and then expect from life what it has not to give. Their imagination, which began by painting an imaginary and impossible happiness, serves afterwards to intensify their distress, while their ardent temperament requires a variety and an amount of excitement just as likely to be painful as pleasant. Mrs. Jameson, with her Celtic nature and her perfervid imagination, was no exception to this rule, but she was an amiable, industrious, blameless, and honourable woman, well as a cultivated one. She was known and valued by many of the best intellects of the day, and her appreciation of the merits of others was always frank and generous. It was sometimes felt that her appreciation of herself was not stinted, but it must be remembered that she was compelled to seek in art and literature for the happiness which she had at least

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hoped to find in the domestic affections. When we consider that she began life at sixteen years of age, it is no light merit to have distinguished, as she did, between real acquirements and those sentimental counterfeits which popularly pass current for them. Her own education inspired her with pity, and she remembered, with a surprised regret, that pupils had been committed to her care, when she was herself in a state of relative ignorance of the commonest things, and in absolute ignorance of the art of teaching. But she might also remember, and with just pride, that her energy conquered all these drawbacks, till she made herself at last a good judge of art, and no mean authority on its mediaval history.

Anna Brownell Murphy, the eldest daughter of a clever young Irish miniature painter, was born in Dublin, in 1794, in the midst of the most stormy period of Ireland's stormy history. Mr. Murphy, a hot-headed patriot, belonged to the band of United Irishmen who attempts at revolution came to such a summary and tragical close. The interests of his family had been powerless to sober him, but a professional engagement in England fortunately kept him out of the way at the crisis, and thus saved him from the fate of Robert Emmett. Of his daughters, Anna, the eldest, soon proved herself a quick and clever child. Her parents were proud of her, and her education, if it was wanting in precision, was conducted with greater breadth than was common at that time. She had a lively fancy, a good memory, and superabundant energy; and as those were not the days of Local Examinations, or of the critical tests of a girl's acquirements, Anna worked to please herself, but laid, in her French, Italian, and Spanish studies, the foundations of her future success as the historian of sacred and legendary art in Europe.

Mr. Murphy's fortune was small, and the region of Pall Mall, in which he settled himself, was more expensive than Whitehaven or Newcastle, where the infancy of his children had been spent. Anna, privy to her father's anxieties, conceived, at twelve years old, a plan for assisting him.

'Where she may have heard of the lace-making of Flanders we are not told; probably an account in some encyclopædia or periodical of the time had caught her eager imagination, and suggested the idea. However that may be, she gathered her sisters together on the first occasion possible, and pointed out to them, with all the eloquence of a popular leader sure of the faith of his disciples, the necessities of the position. Their father and mother were, she said, anxious about the family means, and striving hard to make ends meet; while here were four girls, from twelve downwards, eating the bread of idleness. By

this time another baby had been added to the band, a tiny Charlotte in her cradle, too young by far to have any heroic plan suggested to her. Such a plan, however, Anna had all ready to lay before the others. It was that she and her sisters should set out for Brussels, learn the art of lace-making, work at it at once successfully, and achieve in the shortest possible time a fortune, with which to set their parents perfectly at ease for the future. Once more the proceeding was tout simple. She had it all quite clear and easy, as on that former occasion. The plan now would be to take their course straight along by the banks of the Paddington Canal as far as it went, then enquire which was the nearest road to the coast, and there take ship for Belgium. There was not, however, that unanimity in the council which generally prevailed. Eliza, the next daughter, declared that she for one could not be spared, that the mother and baby could not get on without her, and that she must stay behind. But the others embraced the plan, though somewhat tremulous was the adhesion of little Camilla-she whose red shoe had perished in the first adventure.

'The project was fully matured, and even communicated to the parents, who seem prudently to have made no effort to restrain the children's enthusiasm, but permitted everything to on as suggested. Their bags were packed, and the last evening came. Camilla, timid and always wavering, would willingly have renounced her share in the glorious enterprise, but Anna was eager and Louisa firm. It is easy to imagine the gleam of half fun, half sympathy, that shone in the father's eye as he drew the children about him. Louisa, supposed in the family to be his favourite, had some wine put into her glass. It was a sort of farewell pledge at their parting, " for there's no "telling when we may be together again, my darling," he said. This, however, was too much for the child, whose heart sank into her shoes at such an address, and whose inspiration was all Anna's, not her own; she gave a loud sob, and threw her arms round her father's neck. "Oh, papa, I will never, never leave you," she cried. The crisis was too much for a child's courage; Camilla, already so feeble in her adhesion, gave in on the spot; and it is needless to say that Anna, left alone in her valour, did not go forth on this forlorn hope by herself. The story is very characteristic, and I hope the reader will find it as pretty as I do.'

In this childish determination there was a something prophetic, for down to the last day of her life the eldest of Mr. Murphy's daughters was an heroic and untiring breadwinner for her family, while she employed her talents and influence so as to smooth the path for other women who had to follow onerous but honourable careers.

Her education finished nominally at sixteen years of age, and then, when herself little more than a child, she entered the family of the Marquis of Winchester as a governess. She was six-and-twenty when she first met Mr. Robert Jameson, and, as she was at that time again living under her father's roof,

she had leisure to make acquaintance with him. The young barrister was clever, and Anna thought that his tastes corresponded with her own; the young people fell in love, and soon became engaged to each other. But there were difficulties in the way of their marriage. Both were poor, and in the following year the lovers were parted; whether by the desire of Mr. Murphy, or by some perception on the part of the bridegroom of the incongruities that were likely to cloud the lives of both, does not now appear.

To Anna at least the step was a painful one-so painful that she again left home, and started with a family about to make the grand tour and to visit Italy in the costly and leisurely fashion in which the journey was then made. She began her travels in a melancholy mood, but her spirits were soon excited by variety and society, by fresh conquests, and by those hundred consolations to which youth is open, and which it knows how to procure. She called her diary that of an 'Ennuyée,' but in truth its heroine is represented as making exertions worthy only of the most robust health and of the most buoyant spirits, and we are sure that the writer, in spite of the melancholy in which she indulged, must have soon begun to suspect that she carried about in herself an anodyne for many griefs, a compensation for many of the pains and errors which her enthusiasm cost her. Her unformed taste, as yet, was not a trustworthy guide; her criticisms were not original, and hardly got beyond those elementary rules for critics which Goldsmith laid down when he advised a tyro always to praise the works of Pietro Perugino, and to say that the picture could doubtless have been improved had the painter bestowed more pains on it.' But the book was attractive, and when, after her marriage, it came before the public, it had a great success. So fresh and vivid were some of the pages, that one day, when it fell into the hands of Edward Irving, he devoured it eagerly, and laid it down full of sympathy for the love-griefs and for the early death of the poor Ennuyée. A few days later, at the house of Mr. Basil Montagu, he was presented to Anna Jameson, and told that she was the Ennuyée of the Diary.' His face fell, and, turning to the master of the house, he fairly reproached him for ever having allowed him to sympathise with the book and its heroine, whom he believed to be buried in a convent garden! Sir,' he cried, I cannot forgive you; you have robbed me of my honest tears.' ·

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The happiest period of the author's life may be said to have been the years that elapsed between the preparation and the publication of her first book. They were passed in

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