CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Universal Review for March has two most readable papers, one, intended to ridicule the special vanity of the nineteenth century, being as humorous in conception as anything which has lately appeared. Mr. Traill dreams himself to be in the primeval
world, and hears naked savages sing their own praise over their feast of roasted elk. And they sing in this wise :—
" Hard was the lot of our fathers, the men of the early world, Beast-like, scratching the earth for a niggardly dole of her fruit. Wedged in the clefts of the hills, in the hollows of tree-trunks curled, Groping in glooms of the cave, starving on berry and root.
Shelterless, weaponless, weak, a haggard and wandering brood, Seared by the brand of the sun, by the whirlwind scattered and toss'd, Buried in drifts of the snow, whelmed by the rivers in flood, Flayed by the scourge of the storm, scarred by the dagger of frost.
A wretched and barbarous race, unskilled, at the mercy of all, In haste to escape from its foes to the hiding-place of the dead ;
Hunted of hanger and lean, whose We was a piteous crawl
From the dark of the womb to the dark of the grave through the shadow of dread !
But we! we are cunning and strong, we have made all wisdom our own, We have mastered all arts, we have tools and raiment and roof overhead, We laugh at the shriek of the winds, we dance on the brute overthrown, With his skin we have clothed ns about, with his flesh we are filled and fed.
Our fathers, the cowering men of the caves, were the cave-bear's prey; They fled him, we seek him ; the snows with his blood, not ours, ehall be dyed; We follow his tracks through the drift—ha! ha !—we spear him and slay; We feast on the fat of his ribs; we comfort our loins with his hide.
0 marvellous progress of Man ! 0 rate of unspeakable craft ! 0 strikers of Fire from the heart of the rock in a fortunate hour !
Who have fitted the sharpened flint to the wonderful pine-wood haft—
In the day of your weakness and want, who dreamt of the day of your power ? "
On another occasion, when, a primeval youth has run away from a mammoth, a primeval Tory sings of the decay of the race in manliness, a primeval youth declares that " as we are more wise than our fathers, our sons shall be wiser than we," and the middle- aged primeval discourses with the dreamer of early Comtism, ending with the decision, d propos of the "lake of knowledge," " for that which is not in its waters is greater than all they con- tain." It is thin staff, perhaps, but there is wisdom hidden in it; and even those who do not perceive it may enjoy that rarest of luxuries in our age, genuine but good-humoured satire, clothed in mellifluous verse. —Mr. Buchanan's bludgeon attack on " The Modern Young Man as Critic," will interest all whom it does not bruise. In brief, Mr. Buchanan holds the new generation of young critics, from Mr. H. James to Mr. Moore, to be so many literary 'Arrys, noisy, vain, and salacious, from the superfine young man—Mr. James—to the barbarous young man, the true 'Arry, Mr. Moore. The blows are often unjustly heavy—e.g., those on Mr. James—but no one can read the attack without feeling that part of it is only too well deserved.—Mr. Bodley's exces- sively slight sketch of men and things in Zanzibar brings the external aspect of places very clearly before the reader, who
perhaps hardly realises how nearly Zanzibar has been made a British possession. We have never even tried to take it, but "the British Resident is all-powerful ; and well he may be, seeing that the Indian British subjects in Zanzibar, who possess all its wealth and conduct all its commerce, number fifteen thousand. The English court, in which all matters relating to them are settled, is the chief tribunal in the island ; and the British post- office, in which the stamps of the Indian Empire alone are used, is practically the sole agency for communication with the civilised world."
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