still uncertain whether the whole of the oxygen is employed in the formation of the carbonic acid gas, or whether a part is permanently absorbed by the blood.

From the mechanical and chemical functions of the animal world, Dr Roget's plan leads him to the Third Part of his Treatise, on the Sensorial Functions.' In adding to the mere physical existence of animals, the functions of sensation, perception, and voluntary motion, the medullary substance composing the greater part of the brain, the spinal marrow, and the nerves, has been organized and endowed with strange and mysterious properties. This substance in the brain enables it to receive through the medium of the senses impressions from external objects, and thus to furnish the mind with the materials of thought. What the mind is, and how the brain acts as its organ, it is in vain to enquire. The all-wise Creator has placed here a barrier to human genius, and man exhibits only his weakness when he presumptuously attempts to surmount it. Dr Roget confines himself to the legitimate objects of philosophical inquiry; and treats successively of the senses of Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, and Vision. The four chapters in which he discusses these subjects evince great learning and science; and we would particularly distinguish the chapter on Vision as an able and accurate dissertation, which very few of his contemporaries could have composed. The section on the Comparative Phy'siology of Vision' contains much curious information on the compound Eyes of Insects, which consist of a great number of separate cylinders, closely packed together on the surface of a central bulb, which may be regarded as a part of the optic nerve, while the outer ends of the cylinders form a hemispherical convex surface corresponding to the cornea of common eyes. Each cylinder consists of a transparent horny substance, convex externally, and the form of each is hexagonal, like the cells of a honeycomb. Each of these cylinders performs the part of a convex lens, and converges the rays of light upon the retina; and hence each point of an object is seen through the cylinder which is opposite to it. In some of the crustacea, these horny eyes are placed at the end of movable pedicles; and there is a species of crab in the Mediterranean, which has its eyes supported on a long jointed tube, having two articulations, enabling the animal to direct them like the arms of a telegraph to different quarters.

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We would willingly detain our readers a little longer in giving them some account of the last part of Dr Roget's work, on the Reproductive Functions, and the Organic Developement of Animal Bodies; but the nature of the subject, as well as our limits, compel us to bring our observations to a close. We

cannot do this, however, without recommending, in the strongest manner, the perusal of Dr Roget's work to all classes of readers, and earnestly requesting its author to publish a popular abridgement of it for the benefit of those who are either unable to purchase the original work, or whose attention could not be sustained during the perusal of two volumes. The knowledge which fits us for the world must always be deemed worthy of acquisition; but that which prepares us for quitting it is still more deserving of our anxious study. Science, like the thread of the spider, enables us to maintain a communication with regions otherwise inaccessible. It connects us with what is remote in the past, and interests us in what is distant in the future. While the vulgar gaze in mysterious wonder at the results of creative power, the student of nature perceives the unity of design and of purpose which pervades the whole; and he is permitted to trace the steps and pursue the laws by which the Omniscient Spirit has accomplished his Work. Had the stately tree or the perfect animal stood before us at the instant of its creation, our wonder would doubtless have been raised by their beauty and their grandeur; but when we see the one gradually unfolding itself from the tiny seed, and the other developing the organs of life, and motion, and sensation, till it passes from a gelatinous molecule to a living, a moving, and a thinking being, we recognise the continued exercise of unparalleled skill and unlimited power. When the mind has been trained to such humbling enquiries, and has been thoroughly imbued with the precious knowledge which they bring, the doubts and fears which have darkened its path gradually disappear. The reconstruction of the body from its mouldered elements becomes more easy of belief than its known developement from a transparent grain; and we at last learn the important lesson, that if ignorance was the cause of our early scepticism, Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly 'to Heaven.'

ART. IX.-1. Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical. By MRS JAMESON. 2 Vols. 8vo. London: 1832.

2. Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad. By Mrs JAMESON. 4 Vols. 8vo. London: 1834.

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IF it be true, as some Catholic divine maintained, that the streets below are paved with good intentions,' we fear we have ourselves, in the case of Mrs Jameson and some others, contributed a few stones to the causeway. We plead guilty to the fact of having only lately become acquainted with her Diary of an Ennuyée;' we have yet to make our acquaintance with her Female Sovereigns; but her striking and eloquent Characteristics of Women,' which we did peruse immediately on their publication, impressed us at once with a high idea of her powers, and a wish to express in a more public form the pleasure they had afforded us. But our intention of noticing them, though honestly entertained, was never executed,-forgotten, we confess, among the many topics of immediate interest, which in the last two stirring years have solicited attention. Now, however, the appearance of another work from the same pen at once reminds us of our omission, and enables us, though tardily, in some measure to redeem our error.

In no point, we think, is Mrs Jameson's talent more conspicuous, than in her correct appreciation of the bent of her own powers, and the department in which they might most efficiently and conspicuously be exercised. Minds of less discernment follow in the track of some popular fashion,-adding their historical romance, novel, play, or poem, as the case may be, to the multitude which already loads the table of the reading public, or piles the groaning shelves of the publisher. In such a crowd, even persons of some note can hardly expect to attract observation; the uniformity of garb seems to place all upon a level; and if some individual by his grotesque manner, or more eccentric movements, succeeds for a moment in fixing the public eye, he is sure in a short time to be surrounded with imitators, who copy his strange raiment and evolutions so exactly, that we are ready to swear there be six Richmonds in the field,' and no possibility of knowing the true prince.'

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Whether Mrs Jameson could have written a good romance, or a popular poem, we can hardly say; but we are quite sure she has acted more wisely in choosing a different department, -one of the few in which there really existed an opening for female talent in English literature. As a novelist or a poet, she

would have been surrounded by female rivals, not to mention the numbers beyond number of the ruder sex, who haunt those walks of literature, jostling with little ceremony every new intruder, and who, worse even than the Turk, will not bear a sister near the throne. In poetry, what corner is not at the present day illustrated by female genius,-from stately tragedy or not less stately lyric, to the most simple strain of domestic tenderness, or artless expression of feeling; from scene un'dividable,'-to use Polonius' comprehensive classification-to poetry unlimited ?' In the novel or romance, may they not say with just pride, as they point to the circulating libraries, Qua terra nostri non plena laboris? What remains to be gleaned where Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austin, Miss Ferrier, Mrs Shelley -(we stop here, because we perceive the line might lengthen inconveniently,) have reaped already? We must now wait till the changes that are going on without and within us have created new manners, have brought into play new opinions, or motives of action; have created, in short, a new mine of fiction -before the prospects which that department of literature holds out, will be flattering enough to tempt the possessor of high talent into that all but exhausted field.

But in the path of eloquent and philosophic female criticism, there has certainly existed a great gap in literature since the death of Madame de Staël. The quick observation and discrimination, the lively sensibility and warmth of imagination, the command of eloquent expression and illustration requisite for philosophic criticism for any criticism indeed, of a high and original character,-found a vent so much more popular and attractive in poetry or novel writing, that the void left by the death of Madame de Staël seemed likely to remain not only unfilled up (for with all our admiration for Mrs Jameson's fine talents, it would be absurd to represent her as a fit successor to that remarkable woman)-but absolutely untouched, yawning in all its original length, breadth, and depth: no female Curtius being to be found self-devoted enough to sacrifice her popularity in such a cause. But Mrs Jameson had sufficient faith in herself, and the public, to think that the experiment might be made, and that too on a theme at first sight the most threadbare and unpromising the characters of Shakspeare. Not that profit and popularity were in this way the most likely to be obtained; but that she felt that if she could, from her own resources, her own thoughts and feelings, contribute any thing towards the better elucidation of those immortal creations-if, by studying them in the spirit of love and veneration, she could find the clue to any of the enigmatic appearances they present, or call forth any of their

hidden beauties, the world would not willingly let it die ;' and that her fame, connected even by this remote affinity with that of Shakspeare, might be remembered when many of the popular Romancers of the day were forgotten. Not now nor ever,' she says, in her lively introduction, have I written to flatter any prevailing fashion of the day, for the sake of profit, though this is done by many who have less excuse for thus coining their brains. This little book was undertaken without a thought of fame or money: 'Out of the fulness of my own heart and soul have I written it. In the pleasure it gave me in the new and varied forms of 'human nature it has opened to me—in the beautiful and soothing images it has placed before me-in the exercise and improvement of my own faculties-I have already been repaid.'

To say any thing new on the subject of Shakspeare's characters, is not an easy task-to say any thing both new and true is indeed most difficult-and yet Mrs Jameson has done both; simply because she has viewed them from a point from which they have not been contemplated before, and brought to bear upon them a light to which they have not hitherto been exposed.

The critics of Shakspeare hitherto have been men. For though we have a great respect for Mrs Montagu, we really cannot consider her lucubrations as an exception. She deals more in generalities, in defences of what nobody would now think of attacking such as Shakspeare's violation of the unities, or his blending of the comic with the tragic than in the criticism of character; and her opinions are much more those of the literary men with whom she mingled in society, than the reflections of her own breast, or the expression of her feelings as a woman. Shakspeare's characters therefore, we say, have hitherto been viewed and criticised only on the male side. All that could be seen from that point of view, and by the light of masculine genius or reasoning, has been noted with singular sagacity, and portrayed with the most forcible colours. What man could say

of

6 man, or woman either,' has been said, and said well a hundred times. What escaped the strong grasp of Johnson's powerful reasoning and knowledge of life-seldom erring save where it dealt with creations beyond the visible diurnal sphere-could scarcely fail to be gathered up by such followers as Schlegel, with his imaginative and elevated principles of criticism-Tieck, with his genial and glowing sensibility-and Goëthe, with his intuitive poetical perception, and comprehensive sympathies.

But a wide field still remained unexplored-a cloudy and perilous limbo, in which masculine sagacity was at fault a labyrinth that could only be traversed with assurance, by those to whom was given the clue of a congenial nature,—the same weaknesses,