EDI2B1DIGH ESSAYS BY MEMBERS OF THE - UNIVERSITY. * This publication, as

regards design and general objects, is a confessed. imitation of the Oxford and Cambridge University Essays. The peculiar discipline or no-discipline of Edinburgh allows a somewhat lamer rule as regards contributors, who need not strictly be members, it being enough if they "have been alumni of the University, or now hold office in it"; ; but there is the same individual freedom of opinion allowed to contributors as in the English Essays; the responsibility extending no further than the writer, who avows his name. The general tone of the publication and the character of the articles are somewhat inferior to the prototype. The tone often seems somewhat more provincial than that of the English University Essays; while the individual papers have the air of professional writing, the subjects sometimes partaking of the same character. The Oxford and Cambridge Essays varied greatly in the respective interest of their subjects, as well as in the merit of the execution. The majority, however, had the appearance of being the result of some special consideration given to subjects that had more or less of a catholic range, and of being thrown off from a certain interest in the question. Speaking generally, the Edinburgh Essays have less of this character; several have the air of articles, that might have been composed for any quarterly journal or superior magazine. For instance, the essay of Sime on the "Progress of Britain in the Mechanical Arts" is a workmanlike paper, presenting a brief contrast between the habits and fashions of people and. their means of locomotion at present with those of the last century, and running rapidly over the inventions of Watt, Arkwright, and others, as well as the works of Smeaton, Brindley, and Stephenson. It contains no originality of view; nothing that is not obvious, or that we have not met before though possibly in more fugitive shape. The same may be said of the facts; a few well-known publications—as Baines's Cotton Trade, Serivenor's Iron Trade, and. the Memoirs of Watt—furnishing the leading facts, without any of the floating knowledge not yet reduced to writing, or of that which arises from special research. Homceopathy, by Dr. Gairdner, is a good exposition of Hahnemann's principles, and a sensible judgment upon the system from the regular medical point of view: but here again there is nothing new. Further, it seems to be the summary or sequel of a controversy that has been carried on elsewhere. Andrew Wilson's " Infanti Perduti " is an attempt to explain that everything in individual men must be as it is, and as it has been; that the irregularities and. misfortunes of poets are matter of necessity, according to the circumstances in which they are placed, and. without which they would not have sung. This expansion of the text "they learn in suffering what they teach in song" has more peculiarity than several of the other papers, and we think there is a substratum of truth in the view. But the idea is advanced paradoxically, and not very accurately argued. Alexander Smith the poet furnishes a paper on Scottish Ballads, chiefly distinguished for its pictures of the social state in which the poems were written, drawn from the ballads themselves, and a panegyric on their merits, which seems occasionally to originate in the poet's imagination, struck by the capabilities in the "facts" " of the stories, rather than in the narrative itself, whose "directness" appears to us something like the " straightforward " statement of a witness. There is one nice and judicious bit of criticism. "The most profitless work on this planet is the simulation of ancient ballads ; to hold water in a sieve is the merest joke to it. A man may as well try to recall Yesterday, or to manufacture tradition or antiquity, with the moss of ages on them. It has been attempted by men of the highest genius, but in no ease with encouraging success. If ever a man was qualified for the task, it was Sir Walter Scott. No one lived more in the past than he. He was more familiar with the men of the middle ages than with the men who brushed past him in Princes Street ; and yet his efforts in the ballad form—beautiful and spirited poems they all are—are devoid of the homely garrulousness, the simple-heartedness, the carelessness and unconsciousness which give such a charm to the productions of the old minstrels. There is no modern attempt which could by any chance or possibility be mistaken for an original. You read the date upon it as legibly as upon the letter you received yesterday. However dexterous the workman, he is discovered—a word blabs, the turn of a phrase betrays him. Simplicity, which is seen at a glance to be affected, carelessness elaborately laboured, and modes of thought and expression which have no correspondence with the

• Edinburgh &mays. By Members of the University. Published by Black. feelings or the language of living men, are not ornamental to any form of composition. Why should we go to steel-clad barons and rough-riding moss-troopers; is there not sufficient poetry in the life which environs us today ?"

"Sir William Ramilt,on," by Mr. T. S. Baynes, is not an account of that great metaphysician's philosophy, but something that the majority of readers will like much-better—a sketch of his life, a portrait of the man, and an account of his mode of lecturing and method of teaching, mingled with some hits at the Town-Council of Edinburgh. Mr. Skelton's " Early English Life lathe Drama" is in form a review of the most remarkable ancient mysteries, with an account of the home life they really depict while seeming to paint the shepherds of the Annunciation and the like a defence of those religious plays against modern puritanical objections, and an estimate of their influence upon the English drama. The plan may have something of the common review, but it is one of the few essays in the number that have been the result of much thought, special study, and curious research, stimulated by a particular taste, and not undertaken for an immediate object. The purpose of the essay is to exhibit English life under the first Tudor ; and here is the opening picture of the state of the land. "The changes that have taken place in the external aspect of this country since the close of the fifteenth century are sufficiently remarkable. A more complete metamorphosis has not been effected in the character of the English people than in the character of the land which they inhabit. Great forests, such as now clothe the American savannahs, stretched across whole counties. The traveller might wander for days through the open straths by which they were traversed without encountering a single human habitation, except the wooden lodges of the keepers who protected the game. The Normans, in their passion for field-sports, laid waste entire districts which had been rescued from sterility by the industrious energy of the Saxon ; and though the later sovereigns had forced their nobles to adopt a more sagacious policy, so that large tracts in fertile situations had been and were being ' disforested,' yet to the end of Henry's reign the woods and marshes occupied a good half of the land of England. The fens were of even greater magnitude than the forests. Many of them extended continuously for more than thirty miles, and travelling was much impeded, as it was necessary to skirt their borders. The city of Elie stood in the midst of one upwards of sixty miles in length, and was, like the ancient capital of Mexico, approached by three great dykes thrown across the marshes. The rich meadow pastures which now surround the town were overflowed for months together ; the cormorant and other sea-birds haunted the eaves of the abbey and the precipitous towers of the cathedral ; and from the walls the eye embraced a vast expanse of water, dotted with green wooded islands, and traversed by the narrow lines of the causeways which led to the mainland. A desolate waste indeed-! and the picture of that inland sea which the old chronicle enables us to reconstruct, communicates a peculiar charm to the well-known fragment which describes King Canute and his knights lying on their oars and listening to the even-song of the monks."

Professor Blaekie's " Plato" is another essay which appears the result of long previous thought. Its object is to defend the character of the Greek philosopher and moralist against the utilitarian criticism of this age and indeed of this country. The object, as the Professor admits, is not very hopeful ; for he says that few men in England, still fewer in Scotland, can be brought to understand Plato, or to relish him if they could understand him. The expositional defence does not strike us as happy. The Professor does not seem to have correctly grasped the doctrine of what he calls innate ideas.

"The value of the Platonic idea may be shown by an illustration from the region of the Beautiful. The marble figure, which some stone-working poet has baptized a Corinna or a Sappho, and whose features, expression, and attitude, combine all that is most dignified in a queen, all that is most simple in a shepherdess, all that is most inspired ins poetic thinker, and all that is most attractive in a Venus,—this figure, for the possession of which, to adorn their museums, the heads of great monarchies will contend with rival diplomacy and emulous gold, when dashed to pieces by a sudden precipitation, is only so much lime which the farmer may fling upon his land, like straw, or dung, or any other refuse. Its value is gone as soon as it has lost its form ; the material is common and worthless. Whence, then, is this form, this I oks, (species,) the superaddition of which imparts so much value to an otherwise trivial material ? Whence did it come, and what is it ? It is plainly neither more nor less than an image impressed by the plastic power of mind on a material utterly destitute of formative force ; and the value of the work consists altogether in the amount of this formative force, or organizing intellectual energy, which has been made to act upon it from without. But this formative force is a thing altogether bodiless and untangible. Shatter the substance of the finest statue in the world to pieces, and the amount of calcine substance, or earthy matter of lime, remains the same as before the disintegration. It follows, manifestly, that the only real element in the admired object is that which, according to common phraseology, has no reality in it, viz, the idea in the mind of the artist which has been transferred to stone. This idea is, in fact, the alone thing which truly exists, so far as the work of art is concerned."

No thinking person disputes the existence of an intellectual effect as distinct from the material medium by which it is conyeyed ; but the acquired power of a poet or artist mentally existing, though exercised by means of matter, is a very different thing from an innate idea. Equally so is the abstract idea of the philosopher. The article, however, exhibits considerable thought, fancy, and knowledge of Plato.

Clear in its composition, but of necessity rather abstruse in some of its expositions, Dr. George Wilson's "Chemical Final Causes" is the paper which strikes us as the most appropriate to a collection of essays emanating from the members of a learned body. It exhibits indirectly the results of much professional knowledge, and directly of much thought devoted to a special subject; the speculation is important and full of suggestion, opening up a fresh field of chemical research : it is evidently the composition of a man anxious to bring forward an idea with which he is fully possessed, rather than to write an article or to accomplish some secondary object.

The question raised by Dr. Wilson is this—Why out of the sixty " elements " known to chemistry should less than one third be found in organic bodies, and why are those selected ? The question is only tentative ; nor can it be otherwise, for animal and vegetable bodies have not been sufficiently analyzed to speak universally, nor perhaps has chemical science thoroughly analyzed what it could operate upon. Neither does Dr. Wilson attempt to consider the whole subject even so far as is known ; indeed, he chiefly confines his investigation to three elements— phosphorus, nitrogen, and iron. The exposition of the probable causes why these tee elements form a part of living bodies in preference to other acids in the case of phosphorus, and of other metals in the case of iron, is a most lucid, full, and convincing piece of scientific argument, almost amounting to demonstration especially as regards phosphorus ; although if what is advanced. of phosphorus were proved of all the other " organismal elements,' it might hardly amount to final causes, so long as we do not know whether the elements themselves are really elements—that is, do not admit of further resolution. The least elaborate exposition is so connected together that it cannot properly be presented by parts ; but the summary of iron will indicate the drift of the argument.

"In virtue of those properties, iron can accommodate itself, as few met4ls can, to the metamorphoses of the organism. In the arterial blood full of oxygen it can become a peroxide, cleaving like a dyer's mordant to the organic matter of the corpuscles or blood-cells. In the venous blood, containing little oxygen, it can become protoxidc, perhaps combining, as has been suggested, with carbonic acid. At both sets of capillaries, it may at the crisis of change of the blood from venous to arterial, and from arterial to venous, transiently become the intermediate magnetic oxide. In one or other of those forms, or in similarly variable states of combination with other elements than oxygen, it can enter into the composition of the various solids and fluids of the body in which it is found occurring, andperform, us it does even in the inorganic ferrotyanides, exactly opposite functions in neighbouring portions of the same tissue. At the same time, its combinations are far removedirom the category of fragile chemical conTounds; even those with organic substances, such as the dye-mordants, resisting the decomposing ac tion of powerful acids and alkalies. * • * "Iron then is a unique metal. We could replace it by no other without a sacrifice of properties which are serviceable to the higher organisms. More than this it might be unreasonable to affirm. But there is one feature of its uniqueness which is worth a moment's further consideration. Except nickel and cobalt, it is the only decidedly magnetic metal, and it is more magnetic than they. It must influence the body in virtue of its magnetism in a way no non-magnetic metal could, and its magnetic condition must be continually altering. * * • • The observations of Faraday on the magnetic condition of flesh and of living animals demonstrate that the organismal iron is magnetically active. We know also that magnetism cannot be developed without a simultaneous development of electricity, so that magnetic changes in the ferruginous blood and flesh must be accompanied by electrical changes. Electricity also invariably develops magnetism and we know that electrical currents art) constantly traversing the muscles and other organs."

WILKINSON'S EGYPTIANS IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS, AND BIRCH'S HIEROGLYPHS.* THIS sketch of ancient Egyptian manners and customs, undertaken as a companion to the Egyptianexhibition in the Crystal

Palace, is founded on Sir Gardner Wilkinson's great work, fur ther enriched by the new discoveries of the last twenty years. For the Crystal Palace purpose, for the general reader, or for the young student of Egyptian antiquities, the part is better than the whole. There is not the bibliographical gorgeousness of the original work; • there is much less of type, and. it may be

of curious illustrative details ; but the cream of -the three volumes is here, thrown off with that condensing power which most writers. possess of presenting the pith of their own works, while other persons can only abridge them. Bacon says, "writing makes an exact man " ; and writing a book of hiformation, not of imagination, gives clearer and completer views of the subject than any mere study can attain: it is the actual voyage compared with the examination of the chart. We never met a better instance of the fact than in this essay of Sir Gardner Wilkinson. Sir Gardner presents the salient points of the manners, customs, and daily life of the ancient Egyptians, as exhibited on their tombs, with glimpses of their polity and regal and priestly modes, as displayed in their temples, and what may be called their mausoleums ; the "ultima domus " of the great not exhibiting the work-a-day doings or amusements, dashed with satire, of the common tombs. This rapidity, conjoined with the easy mastery of the author over his subject, infuses great interest into his account. The exposition of manners, with an occasional comparative commentary, has the sustained attraction of a story. The survey is not flattering to the supposed advancement of mankind, at all events till our own wonderful rem. In Sir Gardner's opinion, we shall never attain to any knowledge of the primitive or archaic condition of the Egyptian people. Four thousand years ago, their civilization was the same as in later days : advances might be made with advancing riches, but there was no change ; the manners and modes of civilization were the same. And what a height that civilization had reached, when Greece was in a state of barbarism, and all Europe, where the soil could grow trees, was covered by dense forests, inhabited by tribes on a par with the Red Indians or the New Zealanders when first discovered ! In Egypt there were then sideboards of plate displayed, as the paintings intimate, with a little ostentation, since it does not always seem that the occupations of the company had immediate use for it. There were assemblies of both sexes in elegant apartments, without that strong line of demarcation which even yet obtains in the North and East centre of Europe.

* The Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs : being a Companion to the Crystal Palace Egyptian Collections. By Sir 'J. Gardner Wilkinson, D.C.L., &c., Author of the Private Life, Manners, and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. To which Is added, an Introduction to the Study of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. By Samuel Birch. Published by Bradbury and Evans. That great test of social security, the discontinuance of arms except for war, was shown not only by civilians ceasing to wear them but the military not bearing them in cities,—a proof of civilization in which a large portion of Continental Europe would even now fail. The wisdom of the Egyptians had. even reached our fashion of cheapness : veneering—that is, covering inferior woods with a thin sheet of it precious kind—was practised. In implements, Egypt had invented the blowpipe, the valve, and that whilom reliance of the housebreaker, if modern science has yet superseded it, the centre-bit. The Egyptian glass, waved and coloured, surpassed all ancient and modern manufacture. They had all the conveniences of the toilet, all the nicknacks of the boudoir ; they had even got as far as wigs. The villas and gardens of the wealthy were quite on a par with those of modern Babylon. "The wealthy part of the community, consisting mostly of the military and priestly classes, had large town-houses and spacious villas; and their extensive gardens were laid out with every attention to taste, and ornamented with numerous beautiful plants. Avenues of trees shaded the walks, and a plentiful supply of water was always kept in large tanks, cased with stone and furnished with flights of steps, to enable them to reach the water when low, and to clean out the tanks when empty. The water when required for irrigation was sometimes raised with the pole and bucket, (the modem 8hadbof of Egypt,) and was conducted by small channels to various parts of the garden, as was the custom in the fields; but the flower-beds were generally watered by means of buckets or earthenware jars, attached to a wooden yoke borne on men's shoulders,—a method common to water-carriers and milkmaids in this country, and one which was very frequently adopted-by the Egyptians even for carrying heavy burdens. This was always the method used for watering choice plants; which were often placed in rows in red earthenware flower-pots, in colour and rude form exactly like

"The flower-garden was one of the most important features of the pleasure-grounds ; for the Egyptians took the greatest delight in the cultivation of flowers, and the great variety they succeeded in raising is mentioned by more than one ancient writer. .Athenrous attributes this to the nature of the climate, as well as to the skill of their gardeners; and 'while other countries produced them only in small quantities at any season, Egypt bad at all times of the year the greatest abundance ; and roses, violets, and other flowers were always to be had, even in winter.' • * •

"The flower-garden was placed conveniently near to the house, to enable the master and his friends to walk through the shady avenues that traversed it, and to receive the morning offering of bouquets from his attendants without exposure to the sun. Adjoining it was frequently a piece of water fed by a canal from the Nile, on which they amused themselves by angling or spearing fish ; and the canal communicating with the river enabled them to pass during the inundation in their painted boats' into the Nile itself."

The mechanical skill of the Egyptians in moving immense masses and raising them into their places is well known, and was till lately the wonder of the world, as it is now except to some gentlemen of Manchester. Their alleged power over animals is less generally known; yet if half of what is said is true, it is more wonderful than their mechanical skill.

." Great attention was paid to the rearing of cattle and sheep ; and many wild animals, as the gazelle, the ibex or wild goat, and the oryx, formed part of the stock of the farm-yard. All these last were bred in considerable numbers ; and supplies were constantly added whenever the huntsman could catch them young in the deserts, where they abounded. We are informed by the paintings, and the accounts of old writers, that experience had imparted to them many useful secrets in taming and training animals and birds ; and if lions were taught to perform the part of hounds, and of the ehita or hunting leopard of India—if cats could be made retrievers in fowling excursions among the fens, and snakes were charmed, (as they still are in the East)—if monkeys helped to gather fruit, and if crocodiles could be taught to come out of the water when called by name, and submitted, like young ladies, to have their ears bored for the display of an ornament—we must allow that our modern Van Amburgh,s fall far short of the Egyptians. But, even admitting that much of their reputed skill was exaggerated, there can be little doubt that they studied the habits of animals with great success ; and the veterinary art was well understood."

Amid all these advances in civilization, manners, the fine and the useful arts, it seems strange that the ancient Egyptians should have missed money. They had no coins, using weights to weigh the precious metals. No doubt, it is possible for a people to attain a state of great material comfort and of simple refinement with little interchange of commodities : it is the poet's paradise

"When every rood of ground maintains its man."

Ancient Egypt, however, had long passed beyond this Arcadian simplicity. Its various classes of society, its numerous productions of art, manufactures, agriculture, &c. as well as its foreign commerce, would all seem to indicate extensive exchanges. In those days, indeed, the weighing of metal would not impede the operations of foreign trade ; nor would it in oars, but that "payment on the nail' has been superseded by credit and bills of exchange. It seems difficult to imagine how the infinite petty transactions of daily life amid have been carried on without some measure of value—if only tokens, as the cowries of Africa. Their intrinsic worthlessness might have caused their total loss, and Sir Gardner states that very many of the transactions of life are not noticed in the paintings of the tombs • the exceptions seem all to lie in the direction of mechanical or sordid employments. The Introduction to the Grammar or Key of the "Ancient Hieroglyphs," by Mr. Samuel Birch, occupying rather less than half the volume, mist not pass without notice. For those who have faith in the discoveries it will furnish a clear succinct account of the principles on which the interpretation rests, followed by a species of grammar and vocabulary of the hieroglyphs. To us the most interesting part is the introduction to the introduction. It gives a brief and rapid sketch of what the ancients knew of the Egyptian language and writing, (traces of which knowledge surviveil to about the year 1000 of our iera at least,) as well as an account of the literature of the Egyptians known to the Greeks and Romans. A summary of the wild and groping or tonjectural efforts made to penetrate the secret of the hieroglyphs, from the revival of learning till the discovery of the Rosetta stone, follows ; the progress in true discovery by -Young, Champollion, and, their numerous successors, completing the coup d'ceil.