HUNT'S PANTHEA. * THE object of this philosophical romance is to

"describe the contest be- tween the False, [in modern philosophy,] seductive by its poetic associa- tions, and the True, as estimated by the standard of the merely useful." This account of the "conflicting views which beset our philosophy" is not pellucid, nor do the incidents of the story illustrate it with demon- strable distinctness; the specific being sacrificed to an idea of beauty and to supernatural "machinery." If we speak from the work itself, we should say that Mr. Hunt intends to place the mystical speculations of some French and German authors, and the strange doings of mesmer- ism, in opposition to that application of science to practical purposes which characterizes many philosophers, especially of the English school. This purpose, however, is more shown by the concluding incident than impressed in the progress of the tale.

This defect may be ascribed to the inherent difficulty of the subject ; but it partly originates in the natural wish of Mr. Hunt to embrace as much as possible of the wonders of science, and to present them in the most poetical form. Julian Altamont, the heir of a noble and ambitious house has received the first of aristocratical educations, under a tutor. He has also fallen in with Laon lElpbage and his daughter /Eltgiva ; who represent the mystical in opposition to the practical philosophy, though in different degrees, Laon being less transcendental than Eltgiva. Of an aspiring and poetical turn with something almost feminine in the refinement of his intellect, Julien indulges in dreamy speculations on the improvement of human nature, not very greatly differing in essentials from the dogma of the ancient Brahmins, that by virtue, temperance, and meditation, a mortal might become a portion of the Divine na- ture, from which he emanated and to which be should return. Universal knowledge, a penetration of the mysteries of creation, a lofty sense of virtue, and an elevated conduct, scent to he the objects Julian proposes to himself; but he does nothing, while he talks transcendentally, and isolates himself, to the anger of his patrician father, the grief of his noble and amiable mother, and the hopeful sadness of his betrothed. He is finally restored to himself by a severe illness, induced by mental excite- ment and exposure to the elements ; and the first occasion on which he shows his conversion from the mystical to the useful, is that of attend- ing a public meeting on the cholera, and carrying off the honours of sensible suggestion and oratory, to his father's great delight.

We need not enter upon the more social parts of the story. They have interest and propriety, the interest being of rather a quiet kind • but in philosophic romances the human parts are subordinate to the scien- tific. In Pant/tea this is of a very mixed kind, owing its attraction to the rapid survey and eloquent notices of many sciences the volume contains, rather than to any skill in structure or management. The pre- ternatural parts are extravagant, nor does the reader know whether they are to be received as verities or imaginations. Lawn himself, with one ex- ception, has not much of the preternatural character : what he does he mostly professes to do by natural means,—by diet, by subduing the flesh and exalting the spirit, and by decoctions that sharpen the intellect. The following incident, where Julian wishes to survey the past, may be

taken as an example of science pushed to the extreme.

"Lion advanced towards a carefully-guarded cabinet, and opening it, took therefrom a small bottle. 'Would you see the past?' said he.

"Have you Asmodeus carefully bottled there ? ' said Julian, smiling.

"'I have in this the essence of the Indian flax; it has strange powers, which have been known in the East for many centuries. The priests of Buddha and Brahma, the followers of Zoroaster, and, I believe,. blahomet himself, drank of such an elixir before they received those visions of the celestial world which re- main to us great soul-searceing poems, powerful for good in their beauty and truth. To know the past, we have but to smell this fluid, and the vapour es- caping from it clears and purifies the brain, and the mind can look back into the great abyss of time.'

"'Julian smilingly asked, Was the vision of the mystery the result of smelling at your bottle?

To see the workings of the Spirit of Nature, spiritual aid must be given to the mind. No merely physical agent can advance the soul beyond the earth; but that which is of the earth may be made visible by the things which this world produces.'

"'But the past has departed; it has become nothing; it is but delusive sha- dows cheating the reeling brain,' said Julian. "'The past has not departed !' exclaimed Lain. The first pulsation of a living thing still undulates in the universe; the first whisper of human love is Still a musical note upon the winds of heaven; the dying groan of Abel still mur- murs on the air. That which was, still is, and will be for ever. The future is unshaped; but as we every moment give it form, it is added to the past, and stands on eternal record. Sound is but the undulation of the air around us; and the song of Latnech still beats in saddening sorrow upon every human ear' but so deadened is that organ by its earthiness that it feels not the tremors. Light exists as undulations of what we must call ether; and those radiations which illumined our First Parents in their blissful Paradise still tremble against the eye; but that orb is so dulled that it is not sensible to the fine emotion.'

• Pauthea. the Spirit of Ettore. By Robert Hunt, Author of" The Poetry of *knee," " Researches on r...teht," Ace. Published by Reevei, Benham, and Eeeee.

/Eltgiva distinctly claims communion with the spiritual world. She professes the worship of Panthea, and to see and hold communion with the Spirit of Nature. Her Pantheism does not seem, however, to be pure ; it is rather a species of mythology combining the grace and life of the ancient Greeks with the fancies of the modern Rosicrusians. A visible Spirit of the Universe appears on occasion, and acts too ; but in addition to this great goddess, creation to Altgiva is pervaded by special or particular gods : the lilybell and the rose have their presiding divinities or beings who become visible to the true adept. Julian,

with the aid of Laon and /Eltgiva, is conveyed by Panthea beyond the visible diurnal sphere ; but it is not altogether clear whether this is done miraculously, in vision, as a disembodied spirit, or during the clairvoy- ance of the mesmerists. Of course, in a philosophical fiction, there is no objection to any " machinery " which answers the end of pleasing or in. structing. The Fairy in Queen Mab tells nothing substantially that might not be told in another way; but she gives variety and dramatic spirit to the form of the poem—greater force to the thoughts, since reflections put into the mouth of gods or heroes affect the reader more, as Addison remarks, than when emanating from the poet himself. The introduction of the Wandering Jew in the same poem of Shelley produces a similar effect, and though logically defective, answers the object of the author, by adding poetical force to the diatribe put into the Jew's mouth. We all know that the Fairy and Ahasuerus are mere fictions, in which no one believes ; but the poetical creations answer a purpose—they improve the work. In Pant/tea, there is a want of certainty and distinctness in the supernatural beings, which leaves the reader in a kind of doubt, and (partly perhaps from this very cause) they accomplish little to justify their introduction. When Panthea exhibits to Julian the process of crea- tion, (a mixture of geology and genesis,) it does not differ from that which any cosmogonist might write as from himself. The Spirit of Nature was not wanted for the exposition ; Mr. Hunt would do as well. The creation of animals and man, with the picture of Eden, is a leaf out of Paradise Lost. The survey of worldly history (the introduction to which we have just quoted) needed no magical preparation ; something like the composition has been frequently done. The Archangel purges the eye of Adam after the Fall; for he not only had much to see, but he had to see it before it happened. Julian Altamont looks into the past, not the future, and required neither euphrasy nor rue nor "Indian flax." He would find all be learns in countless tomes of various types. It must not be supposed from these remarks that Mr. Hunt fails in science or in eloquence. We have seen already how knowledge preserves him, even when the idea is extreme if not extravagant; and there is throughout the closeness of matter and eloquence of style which distin- guished the Poetry of Science. But where the scenes are supernatural, the author does not rise to the height of his argument. This on one of the geological epochs might as well have appeared in a lecture, or even a sermon as to have called up Panthea for the purpose. "'The days you have seen,' said Teatime, 'are ages which man cannot count. We know not time—time is the division of a period. To the Infinite there are no periods; past and present are lost in eternity.' Man finds a bone embedded in a rock,—he learns at length that the world on which he lives is older than his creation, and he strives to reckon the centuries during which the mystery of life may have moved upon the earth: but his arithmetic is at fault; the mind of man cannot reckon the ages which passed before man was. The God of the earth was before the earth. The Creator of man, in pursuing his grand design of framing a creature which should be trusted with a soul, so tried and tempered matter in every form of existence, that the thing which was lives in that which is, and that which exists is that which has existed. The earth was weighed at its creation, and carefully balanced against all other worlds; no grain of dust has been added to it—no atom of matter has been removed from it; but new forms of life have continually sprung up amid the mass. Old things have passed away, and all things have become new. It appeared to Julian that the first created beings of a new race were pregnant with that fulness of life which was to pass through the entire family unto the last one who perished from the ex- haustion of the vital principle. The form of life was then changed, and another round of existence was run. The conditions of the earth determined the cha- racteristics of its inhabitants, and every distinct creation was peculiarly adapted, by its arrangements in strict obedience to the laws of physical force, for its posi- tion in the scale of being.

" Now—a vast ocean rolled beneath a heavy lowering atmosphere; its dense waters, charged with saline matters, beat dully against the naked rocky shore. Its surface was bestrewn with matted masses of vegetation, which sailed slug- gishly along, upon Which strange slimy creatures crawled Wand fro, in a sluggish enjoyment of light. The ocean was inhabited by creatures most wonderfully formed ; some exquisitely symmetric creations Slated on its surface; others like fair flowers clung to the rocks; while many, which were rather remarkable for strength than for beauty, sported in the deep waters. Predacious fish, horned and winged, darted here and there, making the host of smaller things their prey. From a wilderness of waters, the scene was changed to wide-spreading continents and groups of islands. The atmosphere was heavy with moisture, and oppressive heat. Plants of a fern-like character grew with a luxuriancefar beyond that with which is afforded even now by the vegetation of the Tropical deltas. They grew rapidly—they perished quickly, and from their decay. myriads of similar and other species sprang into an excess of life. In the shade of the fern-forests, the hum of animal enjoyment was heard, and a strange variety of reptile life was seen in their deep damp shades."

The following is a powerful summary of the wonders effected by mo- dern science, with a gentle 'dot at the worldly objects of its devotees. It is from the section where Julian, at the desire of his parents, comes to London and mingles with the world of fashion and science.

"This was the age of application. Julian, rather to please his father than himself, sought out the selerted men of the Utilitarian school; he visited the workshop and the manufactory; he saw heat converted into a motive power, im- pelling the car with velocity on the iron road, and the ship on the restless sea, binding and crashing masses of iron, and weaving such tissues as the imaginative painter would fling around the aerial form of a zephyr. He examined all the de- licacies of those machines of which this element was as the spirit to the body ; and he thought he made himself familiar with each mechanical improvement. With the engineer he looked over those great works which promise to tell the story of a busy age to future generations; and railroads, viaducts, bridges, tun- nels, and the numerous works of engineering skill which are spread across the land, were visited by Julian Altamont. He actually learned to make the sun- beam paint the objects which it illuminated; and in studying the art by which this sabtlls pencilportrays the _beautiful, he discovered that the elements of life and the agencies of decay were united in the principles which light envelops in its garment of purity. There was a fascination in these experiments which car- ried him onward; but he found that light, heat, and chemical power, presented such a tangled thread, that he at length, wearied even of actino-chemistry, sighed for a revelation. He found electricity annihilating distance, and promising to bind the world in an enchanted girdle through which the remotest nations could exchange their thoughts, learn to discover the goodness of every human heart, and feel the mystery of universal love. He felt that in the great designs of Him who formed the world, the realization of Christian peace was to be effected through the agencies of physical power. The mechanical works of man show that there was a purpose and a zeal in action; and he constantly regretted that that earnestness which was capable of producing such vast designs should be wasted on the merely earthly,--that man's great energies should be given to the production of sensual luxanes—to the advance of that civilization which leads to idle indulgences, and eventually ends in a complete enervation of national power. Be sighed that so mach energy should be so transient in action,—that the full tide of mental power should not be sustained at its maximum elevation, instead of constantly ebbing as aeon as it was attained. He now regretted Leon, to whom alone he could look for a solution of such problems as these."