which is sold to Spain, the high duties prohibiting its entrance into France. The republic is not without its arms, which are those of Bearn quartered with those of Foix.”—Vol. i. pp. 160-170. Immediately following these interesting notices we have the account of what the author calls "an adventure;" and it is another specimen of the parturiunt montes, &c. so often exemplified in the relations of his Pyrenean exploits. As soon as Mr. Murray and his valiant companions had retired to the hayloft, of which "The Andorrians are simple and severe in their man- | ners, and the vices and corruptions of cities have not hitherto found their way into their valleys,-still, in comparison with the rest of the world, the abode of virtue and content. The inhabitants live as their forefathers lived a thousand years before them; and the little they know concerning the luxuries, the arts and the civilization of other countries inspiring them rather with fear than envy. Their wealth consists in the number of sheep or cattle they possess, or the share they may have in the iron forges, only very few of them being the proprietors of any extent of land beyond the little garden which surrounds their cottage. Each they were permitted the occupation, they held "a sort family acknowledges a chief, who succeeds by right of primogeniture. These chiefs or eldest sons choose their wives from families of equal consideration with their own, reprobating mis-alliances, and looking little to fortune, which besides is always very small on both sides. The eldest sons have, even during the life of their parents, a certain status, being considered as the representatives of their ancestors. They never leave the paternal roof until they marry; and if they marry an heiress, they join her name to their own; and unless married they are not admitted to a charge of public affairs. of whispering consultation upon the necessity of being prepared in the event of the Spaniards making any attempt" upon them. Some of the party fell asleep; our hero, as we must now call him, kept watch. "The lamp was still burning in a niche in the wall, when the door of the loft opened," and in walked-a Spaniard! We must let the author continue the harrowing narrative. "He seemed surprised when he observed the light; but the snoring of my friends was evidence of their only one; there was no use in disturbing the sleeping being asleep, and he stepped towards us. He was and watched his proceedings. I was in the shade of party, so I merely laid my hand on one of my pistols, the lamp, so that he could not see me distinctly, or discern whether I was asleep or not; but he seemed ans ious not to disturb us, for he trode as gently as possible, and stopped several times before he reached our corner. "When there are only daughters in a family, the eldest, who is an heiress, and succeeds as an eldest son would do, is always married to a cadet of another, who adopts her name, and is domiciliated in her family; and by this arrangement the principal Andorrian houses have continued for centuries without any change in their fortunes, ni plus riche, ni plus pauvre. They are married by their priests, after having had their banns,**** He stood within a few feet of us for a few se as in Scotland, proclaimed in their parish-church for three successive Sundays. The poorest of the inhabitants are, in Andorre, not so badly off as in other countries; their wants are few and easily supplied, the opulent families taking care of those who are not, and they in gratitude honour and respect their benefactors. conds, and then turning round stole away as gently as he had approached us. I thought it was now time to rouse Etienne, which I did, and told him what had taken place, and he instantly roused the others; we did not however make any noise nor alter our position, but determined to remain awake for some time, and by snor The Andorrians are in general strong and well pro- ing in turn" (an odd way of keeping watch, we must portioned; the greater part of the diseases proceeding remark, and somewhat in contradiction to the noiseless from the moral affections are unknown, as well as those tactics just before resolved on,) "lead the Spaniards, from vice and corruption. The costume of the men is should they return, to believe that we were still asleep, simply composed of the coarse brown cloth made from A couple of hours passed over and they came not, so l the wool of their own sheep; it resembles that worn by told Etienne that I did not think that we should see the peasants of Bigorre, with this difference, that the them again, more particularly as the fellow who came Andorrians wear the flowing red cap of the Catalans. to reconnoitre did not carry off the lamp with him." The women dress exactly as the Catalan women do: they are not admitted to any of the assemblies where public affairs are considered; nay, so little has the wisdom of the sage Andorrians coincided with that of the British parliament expressed upon a late occasion, that the ladies are not even allowed to assist at the masses which are performed at the reception of the bishop or the judge. Crime of every kind is very rare, and the punishments awarded to culprits are, although mild, sufficiently effectual. There are no law-suits relative to paternal succession; and should disputes of any kind arise, they are at once referred to the Syndic, whose decision is never controverted. All the males are liable to serve as militia, should they be required, and every head of a family is obliged to have in his possession a musket and a certain quantity of powder and balls. "Commerce of every kind is free in Andorre; but as its industry is only employed in the manufacture of the most indispensable articles, and these are of the most indifferent nature, it has little to exchange for the produce of other countries, excepting its iron, the whole of It turned out that they had all quietly left the cabin, and gone about their business, as soon as the storm subsided! So that all this fearful note of preparation was for just nothing at all. "I could now understand," exclaims the author, "what the rascal was in search of. *** It was for tunate for us that he had not endeavoured to lay his hands upon anything belonging to us, as I should have shot him."-Vol. i. p. 175. Yes, reader, "shot him"!! such would have been the fate of this industrious and naturally well-bred poor smuggler, had he by accident touched even the │ hem of the garment of any one of those half dozen armed men, into whose resting-place he had obviously wandered in search of a quiet corner in which to repose his wearied limbs; but, finding every place occípied, politely retired again, evidently "anxious not to disturb" the snorers or pseudo-snorers, and acting throughout on the true Chesterfieldian principles of politeness. From some experience of the shrewdness of the inhabitants of those districts, and their just estimate of the value of time, we should be inclined to doubt the accuracy of the following trait, had not Mr. Murray vouched for its frequent occurrence from his own knowledge. But we cannot pursue our strictures much further, and shall only stop to notice one instance of grievous insufficiency for the task to which our discoverer has so arrogantly claimed the exclusive honour. We allude to the passage which speaks (passingly indeed) of the Cagots as "a miserable and proscribed race which exists in the Pyrenees, whose origin has been the subject of much controversy. They are idiots, and have in general hideous goitres.”—Vol. ii. p. 81. And this is absolutely all that Mr. Murray has to tell the British public regarding one of the most extraordinary moral mysteries of existing civilization. It is evident he had never studied-perhaps never heard of "Every spring of good water among the mountains is known to the shepherds and chasseurs, and they invariably resort to their favourite wells when they make their repasts; and hungry although they sometimes are, I have often seen them carry a piece of bread or meat untouched for several miles rather than eat it before they reached their usual fountain; and then sitting the elaborate researches of Ducange, De Gebelin, down and pulling out their clasped-knife, eat their dinner: and this they do when they frequently make no more use of the water than to rinse the glass (if they have one,) from which they drink their wine." Vol. i. p. 105. But we differ altogether from the conclusion come to by Mr. Murray-and which is mere matter of opinion-"that the traveller has nothing more to do than to sink his bottle or wine-skin in the waters of those fountains for a few minutes, and he can drink its contents as well iced and cooled as ever the most experienced butler gave him his champagne or hock in England;" unless indeed the English butler was an Irishman, and the champagne or hock was whiskey: that, to be sure, might alter the case and explain the miracle. There is also something too startling for blind belief in the statement that "the Andorrians for centuries have been forgers of iron, and yet they have so little benefitted by the staple production of their country as not even to possess a few nails."—Vol. i. p. 124. We however fully agree, without cavil or comment, with Mr. Murray's opinion, that "a pedestrian's toilet does not in general occupy much time, especially when all the minutia for performing it are fifty miles distant."-Vol. i. p. 120. De Marca, Palassour and other writers, in their vain attempts to elucidate the enigma of which the Cagots are the mot. No one could visit the Pyrenees rightly prepared, and particularly with the intention of bookmaking, without entering into the question of their most remarkable moral feature, and giving some account of the unfortunate beings in question. History and philosophy are alike interested in the inquiry into that extraordinary race, whose origin is lost in the labyrinth of time, and whose existence defies the traces of tradition. It would be perhaps too much to expect any profound research on this or any other question from a writer of Mr. Murray's calibre: but even the authoress of the "Sketches" enters largely, though not deeply, but as usual with good feeling, into this most interesting subject; while the random allusion to it by Mr. Murray is decisive of his having flown at game too high for him, in attempting an account of the Pyrenees and their people. The best thing in the book is the account of the author's passage through the Brêche de Roland and his ascent of Mont Perdu. Out of compliment, we suppose, to the memory of a mighty monarch, he repeatedly marched up the hills and then came down again. To those who have not witnessed the magnificent savagery of those scenes, or read the descriptions of them by Ramond, who was the first to make the ascent of Mont Perdu in 1802, or of other eloquent writers on the Pyrenees, Mr. Murray's hurried sketch may afford some pleasure. It would be indeed impossible to have gone over such ground with a volume of Ramond in his pocket, without feeling and expressing something of the sensations common, in a greater or less degree, to all who have been so situated; and the book has therefore, as we intimated at starting, a certain degree of merit arising from the subject it treats of. There is a very amusing sketch of French This last passage, of the veritable Sir Boyle Roche stamp, and the ice anecdote above extracted, would, we think, have borne us out in believing the Honourable James Murray to have been no less celebrated a personage than the identical "first gem of the sea," so often alluded to in the orations of Mr. O'Connell, had not sundry admissions throughout the work announced it as the production of a "Son of the Tweed." But even in that character we cannot allow the author to take so great a liberty with the Queen's English as to introduce such barbarous gallicisms, such vile grammar and bad spelling as "riant basin," "loose débris," "disagremens," "escarpé rocks" and the like,-phrases fox-hunting introduced; but it appears, by a note, to which would not have been tolerated even in Edinburgh, and in the gallicized times of Mary Queen of Scots. be a reprint from one of the magazines; and had the whole book been cut into fragments, and offered to the public in that way, or reduced to the dimensions we have recommended for the contemporary work, it idea. The two rival leaders of Louis Philippe's late would have a better chance for popularity than in its present cumbrous form. At any rate travellers have here two additional tributes to the attractions of a territory which offers an inexhaustible fund of interest, and opens a yet wide field for enjoyment. Neither work is perhaps quite worthy of the subject; but each, as far as it goes, and in the parts strictly confined to within the mountain districts, is so far valuable, as it gives an example which may prove a stimulus to other writers, and help the wandering tribes of our countrymen towards the attainment of that much sought and important object, -the new pleasure. From the Quarterly Review. 1. Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of 2. Euvres de Platon. Traduites par Victor Cousin. 3. Initia Philosophiæ Platonica. Auctore Phil. Guil. Van Heusde. Vols. 2. Parts 4. Trajecti ad Rhe num. 1827-31. 4. The History of Ancient Philosophy. By Dr. Heinrich Ritter. Translated from the German by Alexander J. W. Morrison, B.A. Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. Oxford. 1838. 5. Deontology, or the Science of Morality; in which the Harmony and Coincidence of Duty and SelfInterest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence, are explained, exemplified, and applied to the Business of Life. From the MSS. of Jeremy Bentham. Arranged and edited by John Bowring. vols. London. 1834. cabinet, and supporters or opponents, as the case may be, of his present one, Messieurs Guizot and Thiers, are the authors of the two best philosophical histories which France has produced. M. Thiers, indeed, in unfolding the causes and principles on which her first revolution turned, has certainly ascribed too much force to the chain of events, too little power of control to the actors, and has thus palliated unduly the guilt of those who enacted its fearful atrocities; but M. Guizot, in his beautiful history of French civilization, while he has equally opened out the hidden germs in which the great progressive changes of society lie, has allowed to human liberty its full play in turning those tendencies to a worse or a better purpose. Nor is his work a mere tissue of abstract theories; on the contrary, he has brought to life, by the use he has made of contemporary documents, the dark ages of Gothic conquest, and those subsequent ages which we are pleased to call dark, while the cathedrals they gave birth to look down upon our puny efforts of meagre imitation. It may give the English reader some confidence in the justness of M. Guizot's philosophy, that though now as good a conservative as France can produce, he foretold, long before Louis Philippe became King of the French, that change of dynasty which would complete the parallel between our own revolution and theirs. Again, histories of a nation's general art or literature are considered by the Germans as requisite for the formation of a fair and well-grounded opinion on the merits of an individual poem or statue produced among that people. They say they cannot judge of Sophocles, or Ben Jonson, or Pope, or Raphael, or Titian, without regarding in the same view Eschylus, Shakspeare or Dryden, Pietro Perugino, or Bellini. 2 They rightly consider the whole of the mental crea tions of a people from its origin to its decay, as a seIt is remarkable that while we of this country have ries of organic phenomena, of which each successive been sinking yearly more and more into natural and member produces and modifies those which follow it mechanical philosophy,—have been numbering and in the lapse of generations, just as the character of an classing (for that is nearly the extent of the science individual is evolved by the succession of thoughts and acquired) shells, and plants, and insects, or circulat- experience in the progress of life. In this philosophy ing descriptions of machines, very useful, doubtless, of learned criticism we are even more behind our neigh themselves for the weaving of stockings and gown-bours than in that of political history, and to those who pieces, but the knowledge of which is not on that ac- are ever so slightly acquainted with what has been count so necessarily useful to the tradesman who sells done on the continent for this science, it does appear these things or to the public who wear them,-our singular that, though indeed Winkelman's History of continental neighbours the Germans and the French, Ancient Sculpture, and Schlegel's Essay on Dramatic by no means neglecting to investigate the works of Art, have been translated into our language, nature, and certainly gaining ground upon us in the England are unacquainted with the ordinary and con processes of manufacture, have thought it also worth venient term by which the French and Germans desig their while to study the philosophy of history, the nate the impression received by the mind from an ob philosophy of the fine arts, and, converting the terms, ject as a work of art-we mean the word æsthetical the history of philosophy itself, of which three great and that, although the distinctive marks of the classibranches of knowledge we scarcely possess even the cal and romantic schools of literature have now been we in like the return to some inexperienced orders for parliamentary accounts, must be comprised in a word of three letters, 'NIL,'-absolutely nothing at all. Our few writers on mental philosophy bravely ignore all that has been written before them; and thus it happens to them, as to all who seek originality in independence of the pioneers who have preceded them, that they scratch out their eyes in the bushes, get knee deep into quagmires, and end by advancing exploded fallacies as bold discoveries. We have, indeed, but one obsolete name metaphysics, with which to designate inquiries into the nature of mind, and that name is almost a term of reproach. discussed since the days of Schiller for full forty years by some of the ablest writers of Europe, who have engaged large parties of their countrymen in the debate on the relative merits of those two schools, we are not familiar, to say no more, even with this distinction, which yet is as plain as the difference between the characters of the Parthenon and of Westminster Abbey. We do not possess a serviceable account of our own literature; and, what is perhaps more strange, -for a nation, like an individual author, may not be most disposed or even best qualified to pass in review the products of its own mind,-we do not possess one introduction to the Greek classics, for Mr. H. N. Coleridge's elegant essay is but a beginning. Yet in our A late English writer conceived that he had disuniversities Greek is more exclusively the staple of covered the great secret of moral science, when he laid education than in any similar institution of Europe-down the principle that you must judge the value of in Oxford especially; and we say it to her honour, be- an action by its effect upon happiness: he tricked out cause in thus exercising that youth, which the country year by year entrusts to her, on the noble pages of antiquity, she acts upon the principle that she is not employed in the menial service of transfusing into them a given amount, or the utmost amount possible, of various notions as you would pack merchandise in a chest, or cram articles into an encyclopædia-but holds the nobler office, by showing them what men of old time have well and wisely thought, or felt, or taught, to insure, as far as in her lies, in the foremost of the land, what the elder Coleridge calls the formation of a manly character. Still, though our public instructors have stood fast by the good old lore, it cannot be denied that classical learning, if it hold its own in England, does not keep step with the advances of other branches of education. We do not believe that it does hold its own, and we attribute its relatively backward movement to the want of that more ample and broadsighted study of Grecian life, and laws, and feelings, which by no means hinders our neighbours from a minute sifting of the Greek texts, (as may be seen by the fact that the main of the editions which issue from the Clarendon press bear such crabbed titles as 'Curâ Schweighauseri, or 'Operâ Stallbaumi,) but rather, we should say, animates them to the microscopic examination of the dead letter by the hope of recomposing from these fractured remains some antique shape of living Hellenic lineaments. Nothing, we believe, but an enlarged, practical, vivid, and therefore popular treatment of classical, that is, Grecian litera-Dutch, and even Low-Dutch titles prefixed to this ture (for the Roman sheds only a reflected light, and derives its value from the sun by which it is brightened)—can enable that literature to retain a place among the host of young sciences and modern interests which court the newly-awakened mind of the middle classes of England. If, now, we ask what has been done in this country for the third branch of knowledge to which we alluded above, the history, namely, of philosophy, the answer, this notable novelty in quaint compounds of words, became the head of a party which possessed an accredited organ; and we have heard one, who is still a cabinet minister, appeal from the Treasury Bench, most solemnly and pathetically, to the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers, or, as it is called for brevity's sake, the Greatest Happiness Principle. There is, however, nothing new in this test. It is the practical canon of most English writers on ethics. It is the touchstone of Dr. Paley, whose Moral Philosophy is, very undeservedly, the text-book of Cambridge. At the very time, however, when this flourish of trumpets was raised, and clever men were enlisted by it, there had been already published by the lamented Schleiermacher an examination of all known systems of morals, and of this, of course, for it is anything but new, in the number; the result being, that no system hitherto devised,-we do not speak of practical doctrines, guides for the duties of life, but that no system claiming to derive a moral code from any one supreme principle could withstand his searching anatomy. What course, then, did that eminent man adopt? If his judgment led him to mistrust scientific dogmatism on the one hand, his reason forbad him on the other to regard desponding scepticism as the true philosophy. He betook himself to the study of Plato; and it is he to whom is owing that renewed ardour for the Homer of philosophers, as Panetius happily called him, to the fruitfulness of which the French, High article bear their testimony. These, indeed, are no more than a handful of grapes from the foreign vintage; but English, alas! only appears among them in a translation. Schleiermacher was the first scholar who, being also more than a scholar, and viewing the works of Plato as a whole, endeavoured to arrange them in their natural connexion; and he conceived that by internal evidence he had found in them the order in which the author's thoughts were developed, being also that institutions, as it were, from his inn windows, and which the several works were written. The assistance wrote his book from public statistical papers. thus afforded to their comprehension would of course The work of Professor Van Heusde, modestly entibe most valuable, and he was so far successful, that tled by him 'First Elements of Platonic Philosophy,' though details of his scheme have been loosened by is written in good Latin, easy therefore, and pleasant later inquiry, the main points are regarded by good like Tulley's, not involved nor stilted like Dr. Parr's. judges as finally fixed. He now published the whole Though we protest against the further employment of of Plato in a German translation, prefixing to each dia- this dead language in classic dissertations, and even in logue a dissertation on its particular scope and on its notes on classic authors, now that the necessity for it connexion with the remainder. These were ingenious is done away by the sufficient market each country and profound perhaps, like almost everything Ger- affords for good books of the kind, by the growing man, too much of both: they gave, however, that valu- acquaintance of scholars with the chief modern lanable impulse to Platonic research which has been since guages, and the increased facility of translation, befollowed up by Ast, Stallbaum, and others; but having sides the certainty of a reprint, since the paper on thus accomplished their end, though they should be which they print at Leipsic is too dingy for us, and read with a view to understand the course which the our hot-pressed pages are too costly for them; and we investigation has taken, we doubt whether much posi-object to it, because the use of a dead language must tive result is to be obtained from them alone. After in many ways hamper a writer's utterance of his own thirty years they have indeed appeared in an English living thoughts; still we rejoice that M. Van Heusde dress, or rather in English words; but translate them has kept to the old practice, since, not being ourselves as you will, the thoughts, and even the language, familiar with Low-Dutch, we should otherwise have must remain so thoroughly German, that we are pretty missed the acquaintance of a very agreeable book, sure they will not tell much to one who is not con- with whose author we heartily sympathise in his versant already with other philosophical works of honest and fervent Platonism. The book is in fact a the country; they are difficult even then; but such a review of the spirit and composition of Plato's works, one would of course prefer to consult them in the origi- rather than a dry analysis of his philosophy. It shows nal. Plato's own character and his views of what human life ought to be. It contains extracts made with taste and judgment from the more picturesque dialogues, and particularly from those beautiful myths, or tradi attaches a higher importance for beneficial influence now to be exercised on the mind of the general reader, than to the other more abstruse and dialectical com positions; in which estimate, we must say, he entirely expresses our own opinion. The work is not unlike Bishop Lowth's 'Prælections on Hebrew Poetry.' We are unwilling to find a fault, but we cannot deny that our Professor's amiable enthusiasm has led him perhaps into rather too constant a flow of praise; and we have a mortal dislike to all panegyrics done as matters of business, from the time of Isocrates we had almost said, but certainly of Pliny the Younger, down to the éloges of the French Academy, and the after dinner speeches of our own travelling British Asso ciation. M. Cousin, the well-known professor and now deputy, follower once, if not still, of M. Guizot, has nearly accomplished in French the same task: he has arrived, after some years, at the eleventh volume of his trans-tional religious fables, to both of which the Professor lation, prefacing in like manner each dialogue with a dissertation. His general view of Plato he has reserved as a bonne bouche for the end. It has been long promised, and we look for it with some interest. The translation is flowing and, on the whole, accurate; the introductions, of course, clear enough, since as the Germans are the worst hands at making a book, though the best at collecting materials of which books should be made, so are the French, when the timber and marble are found for them, first-rate hands at putting them for you neatly together. Still we may be unreasonable, but as we admitted that Schleiermacher is somewhat hard to be understood, so, on the other hand, we are not quite sure that M. Cousin ought to be so entirely easy. It is very pleasant to be led smoothly along; but we cannot forget the high praise awarded by an Oxford examiner to an under-graduate, who, when set on, as it is called, at a passage of some Greek chorus, stoutly maintained that it could not be construed at all. This was perfectly true, he was told, but a worse scholar would have attempted it. We have a sincere respect for M. Cousin's intentions and general views, but we have reason to know, that though Mrs. Austin thought it worth her while to translate his account of the German schools and universities, he saw those in Such is not the fault of the next book we have to notice, Dr. Ritter's 'History of Ancient Philosophy.' We have seen only three volumes of this important work, but it is brought down in four to the close of the Socratic philosophy, that is, to the final establishment of Christianity. A second edition has been com commenced, of which Mr. Morrison has translated the two volumes which have appeared, and which con tains, he states, many additions and improvements. is curious, by the bye, that the second edition of a |