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No . 412 , February 13 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . 061
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Walitv walls four feet thick were erected to form an observatory . Here lieskv ' was always clear , and the radiation of the sun enormous . The erection of the great telescope on this spot was a work of difficulty , but successfully accomplished , and many important experiments were satisfactorily completed . However , Mr . Smyth had resolved to scale the Peak itself amono- its fountains of sulphur-scented steam . A variation m the weather enabled him to test the effects of rains and storms upon this sublime elevation ; the mountain streamed with wet . We have not undertaken to enumerate even the most remarkable of the observations made upon the heights of Teneriffe by this adventurous explorer . The narrative is so uniformly interesting , so orig inal in substance , and pleasing in manner , that even the ordinary reader will find in it nothing monotonous or occult . At the same time it is a striking contribution to the historical literatui-e of science . It should be added that the volume contains one of the best accounts of the dragon-tree we have seen . Altogether it is a rare and fascinating book , which places the learned and philosophical classes throughout the world under very great obligations to Mr . Piazzi Smyth .
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PUBLICATIONS AND REPUBLICATIONS . We have to announce the publication of several important works , which we reserve for special treatment : — Supplementary Despatches and Memoranda of the Duke of Wellitigton—India , 1797—1805 , edited by his son , the present Duke . The first volume is nowissued by Mr . Murray . The History of the Constituent Assembly , 1789 , by Alphonse de Lamartine , translated in four volumes , and published by Messrs .. Piper , Stephenson , and Spence . Parliamentary Governm&it , considered with Reference to a Reform of Parliament . An Essay , by Earl Grey , published by Mr . Bentley . The Descendants of the Stuartst an Unchronicled Page itt England ' s History , by William Townend , published by Messrs . Longman . James Montgomery : a Memoir , Political and Poetical , by J . W . King , published by Messrs . Partridge and Co ., and
Impressions of Western , Africa , by Mr . A . J . Hutchinson , Consul for the Bi <* ht of Biafra and the Island of Fernando-Po , published by Messrs . -j - *? A Cyclopedia of the Natural Sciences . By William Baird , M . D ..,- With a Map and numerous Illustrations . Griffin and Co . Suggestions Towards the Government of India . By Harriet Martineau . Smith , Elder , and Co . - The Life of Mahomet and History of Islam to the Era of the Hegira . By William Muir . 2 vols . Smith , Elder , and Co . The Shareholder ' s Legal Guide . By T . H . Markham , M . A ., Barrister-at-Law . ( Robertson . )—The object of this free-and-easy little law-book is to let shareholders know the nature and extent of their liabilities in every kind of
company . Nothing could be more useful and well-timed than such a manual . When we say well-timed , however , we fear that many a victim will have reason to say , as he reads it , that it is locking the door after the steed has been stolen . Let us only hope that it may assist in preventing further mischief . The law , it is true , is not supposed to protect the infatuated or the unwary ; but it is not the unwary seamen only that are subject to the perils of navigation ; and the rage tor making money fast is continually hurrying people into all sorts of liabilities which they have never sounded or surveyed . Mr . Markham addresses his treatise to the general reader , and on this account he indulges in a vein of familiarity which is occasionally perhaps a little in excess ; ° but we have no hesitation in recommending the motive and utility of the Guide to shareholding readers , who may be interested to hear that a shareholder in the British Bank having one share only was utterly ruined .
Mr . William Cotton has compiled from autograph memorandum-books and from printed catalogues A Catalogue of the Portraits Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds . The catalogue , of great interest to artists , is published by Messrs . Longman , and has an interesting preface . Mr . O'Byrne has commenced the publication of a new and enlarged edition pf his Natal Biography in monthly parts . His original work was restricted to the higher grades of the service ; in the present enlarged edition he comprises all ranks , and places easily within the reach of every one interested in our Navy ( und who is not ?) a faithful record of the services rendered by officers to their country . We think him fairly and honourably endeavour to for
entitled to support in this conscientious and devoted bring - ward the claims of officers , whose interest at the Admiralty is not always com mensurate with their good services into the light of public appreciation , and he bus a right to consider his labours , in valu , e and importance , national . J ho principal republication of the week is a third edition of The Principles and Practical Operations of Sir Robert Peel ' s Act 1844 Explained and Defended , by K . Torrqns , F . R . S ., published by Messrs . Longman . The work hus been revised and enlarged , and includes critical examinations of the Report of the Lords' Committee of 1848 , upon National Distress , and of the chapter on the Regulations of Currency in Mill's ' Principles of Political Economy . '
Mr . Bohn ' s republications are : —the first volume of a new edition , revised , with numerous wood engravings , of The , Poetical Works of Alexander Pope , edited by Robert Curruthors , in the Illustrated Library , and in tho same collection a third edition , with additions , of The Antiquities of Athens and other Monuments of Greece , as measured and delineated by James Stuart and Nicholas Revctt , with seventy-one plates , a work which every student of 11 —aroiroT 3 iW''poWe ¥ sr i '' ' ^~ - ' — " * " — " ^ " ¦ lll ' ~ " ¦ " * " Mr . John Tiinbs has issued his most useful annual Tho Year Book of Facts in Science and Art , published by Messrs . Kent and Co . The contents of this volume are peculiarly rich and interesting , for 1857 was a year which will be marked in tho history of science . A tl ) ird and revised edition of Aytoun's Bothioell : a Poem in Six Parts , has been published by Messrs . Blackwood and Sons . The author , in a pleasant preface , deals frankly but not arrogantly with his critics .
In the Parlour Library , published by Mr . Hodgson , we have a reprint of Mr . S . R . Gleig's well-known and entertaining story Katherine Randolph / or , Self-Devotion . Messrs . Ward and Lock send us Night and Day , or Better Late than Never , a volume of telling every-day romance , by Mr . John Bennett , who has a faculty for writing fictions of this particular class . Messrs . Anelay and Watts Phillips have illustrated the volume . Mr . George Francis Train , who wrote the strange book , ' Young America Abroad , ' now presents himself with Young America in Wall-street , a volume published by Messrs . Sampson Low and Son . It contains a series of letters from Europe and elsewhere , a prqpos of the crisis . He is a rapid , dashing , eccentric , strongly-Bostonian writer , with a good deal of intelligence and large stores of information , and a bad habit of prophesying . He talks about everything—Louis Napoleon , the Leviathan , Lord Palmerston , the Mormons , the Bourse , the Stock Exchange , the Rothschilds , secret treaties , Cawnpore , the Queen , the public journals , and all else of which he knows , or assumes himself to know , anything . Mr . Train is a most amusing gossip , and is occasionally informing and suggestive .
Another singular work from an American pen , published by Messrs . Sampson Low and Son , is The Hasheesh Eater , being Passages in the Life of a Pythagorean . It is wildly and imaginatively written , after the manner of De Quincey , but it is doubtful whether a De Quincey school can be successfully established . The relation of a dream is at all times liable to exaggeration and monotony . Mesmerism in Connexion with , Popular Superstitions , by J . W . Jackson , is a little volume , published by M . Bailliere , in which the writer supposes himself to have formed a connexion between mesmerism and the old beliefs in magic , sorcery , second-sight , death omens , apparitions , and other popular superstitions . His treatment of the subject is at least bold and entertaining . Messrs . Blackwood , of Edinburgh , have published the eleventh volume of The Works of Professor Wilson , containing the tales , rich in pictures of manners and in creations of character . The twelfth volume will contain Professor Wilson's poems .
The' Narrative of the Indian Mutiny , published by Mr . Routledge , has reached a second issue , after * circulating' into extensive popularity . Uncle Jack the Fault Killer , published by Messrs . Smith , Elder , and Co ., is a little book for children , simple , moral , and amusing . The Handbook of the Court , the Peerage , and the House of Commons , published by Messrs . King , and Simpkin and Marshall , which has reached its eighth year of issue , is a neat and useful manual , and reappears for 1858 , corrected from information supplied by the members of both Houses . We must draw attention to a most valuable little book published by D'Sousa , at Bombay , and entitled A Dictionary of Commercial Terms , with their Synonyms in Various Languages , compiled by Mr . Alexander Faulkner . It is full of practical information excellently arranged .
Messrs . Hamilton , Adams , and Co . have published a seventeenth edition of Mr . William Arthur's very popular tale The Successful Merchant ; Sketches of the Life of Mr . Samuel Budgett , late of Kiiigsicood Hill . A new English Grammar has been published by Mr . Routledge . It is constructed by Mr . W . D . Kenny , L . C . P ., and appears to have been designed to meet the requirements caused by the latest developments of our private and public educational system . We only announce , at present , The Letters of a Betrothed , a curious collection of authentic love letters , published by Messrs . Longman and Co .
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PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN FRANCE . Histoire du Gouvernement Parletnentaire en France , 1814-X 84 . 8 . Pre ' cddee d'uno Introduction . Par M . Duvergier de Hauranne . Paris , 1857 . Michel LeVy The pleading for liberty , driven from journals and pamphlets , takes refuge in France in ponderous volumes , which both by law and custom are removed to a certain extent from the influence of the police . M . Duvergier de Hauranne , under the form of an elaborate history , has undertaken the defence of Parliamentary government , in which centre his political affections and , we are glad to add , his hopes . The idea seems to have suggested itself to him immediately after the Coup d ' e ' tat , when shoals of ranting Bonapartists , in a jargon which made the gorge of honest men rise , went about proclaiming the downfal of Parliamentarianism , and the definitive substitution for it of a new sort of representation , which , excluding lawyers , bankers , artists , men of letters , and the enlightened middle classes generally , who had hitherto by their activity and genius too much influenced the course of affairs , should express the will of the rabble by the Empire . M . Duvergier de Hauranne saw that for the time this new and peculiar theory , the hobbyhorse of a man who had five hundred thousand soldiers , hoping to have two sous a day to spend instead of one sou , behind him , ' must prevail . There is no disputing against such hobby-horses . But neither the ex-Minister nor his friends acquiesced ; and in the commencement of this elaborate work we are pleased to discover the presence of a sturdy conviction that sooner or later France , a country in which , as M . Mignet says , " everything comes , but everything passes , which wearies of avwy thing , but returns to everything , " will resume the experiment of a free government , and try once more whether it is not capable of taking care of its own afliiirs . The ' Introduction , ' which occupies the whole of the urstvolumoofM . de Hauranne ' s work , is a history of the endeavours made in , France to found or apply some system of Parliamentary government , from 1789 to 1814 . Between these two periods there was a time of repose of ton years , represented by tho Empire , tho study of which is not , however , without its inetructionj ^—Indeed from-. the-historian Js-poi » t . Qf _ viow ,. thoalescwpMo ^ QL tho institutions of the first Empire is the most interesting pm-tof the subject ; for it contains implicitly the criticism of tho present regime . Wo roler . our readers who wish to read a sober account of the attempts made , at the enU of tho last century , to organize liberty in Franco , to this introduction , whioh roada like an eloquent blue-book , with passives that remind one ot the miniater and the orator . All the melodramatic incidents of the Revolution are suppressed j and , with the exception of some father weak , and wo must
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 13, 1858, page 161, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2230/page/17/
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