(The Privateer.) 'A cry comes up to the ear of America,—a long, piercing cry of amazement and indignation,—recognizable as one which can come only when the profoundest depths of the human pocket are stirred. The privateers are at large! They have taken away my coffee, and I know not where they have laid it. They have taken my India goods with swords and staves. For my first-class ship they have cast lots!
'Was such depravity ever known before? So long as it was a human soul, launched by God on the eternal sea, that they despised; so long as it was only a few million bales of humanity captured; so long as it was but the scuttling the hearts of mothers and fathers and husbands and wives,—we remained patient and resigned,—did we not? But coffee and sugar—Good God! what is that blockade about? To seize a poor innocent sloop—has Slavery no bowels? And its helpless family of molasses barrels;—can hearts be so void of pity? Slavery must end. The spirit of the age demands it. The blood of a dozen captured freights crieth to Heaven in silveriest accents against it.
'Brothers, there is a laughter that opens into the fountain of tears.'
In a letter to the President, in which the Executive is reminded that it is not often in this world that to one man is given the magnificent opportunity which the madness of a great wrong has placed within his reach,—as indeed in every chapter,—the real crisis in which this country is now involved, and the only means of prompt and effectual extrication, are pointed out with irresistible vehemence and shrewd intelligence. The author declares, and truly enough, that there are resources in this land, did we only draw on them, which would close this war with the closing of this year. The futile and frivolous objections which have been urged against this great scheme of warfare for the present, and of national progress in future, are most ably refuted; while through all runs the same vein of satire, wit, scholarship and manly sincerity. It is, in a word, a good book, and one fully suited to these brave and warlike times.
The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans and Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding, M.A., Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., and Douglas Denyn Heath. Boston: Brown & Taggard. Volumes I. and II.
Much has been said in praise of the monks of old for preserving works of solid wisdom; but why can not a good word be said for those publishers of the present day who confer a service by not merely embalming, but by reviving and sending forth by thousands into real life the best books of the past? There are many authors who are quoted by everybody, and read by very few, simply because good modern editions of their works, at a moderate price, are rare.
Bacon is preëminently one of these; so much, indeed, is he a case in point, that Bulwer in speaking of the celebrated axiom, Knowledge is Power, employs him as an example to warn a young scholar from quoting at second-hand an author whom he has never read.
The present edition includes all the works extant of Lord Bacon, embracing, as we learn from Spedding's preface (which has the rare defect of being much too brief), a biography, which in minute detail and careful finish, and facts hitherto unpublished, will far surpass any before written. Yet, to stay the appetite of the reader, anxious to revive the main points of Bacon's life, he gives in this first volume the short biography by Dr. William Rawley. In addition to these introductions, we are gratified by a general preface to Bacon's Philosophical Works, by Robert Leslie Harris, one to the Parasceve by James Spedding, and a third to the De Augmentis Scientiarum, in which Bacon's claims to be the creator of what is popularly and generally understood as the Inductive Philosophy are most fairly examined; not in the spirit of the common biographer who always canonizes his subject through thick and thin, but in that of an impartial seeker for truth, resolved to naught extenuate and set down naught in malice. It is believed by many that Bacon was simply so fortunate as to have his picture stand as the frontispiece of the new Philosophy, when in truth other contemporaries, who made great discoveries by following precisely his method, as, for instance, GALILEO, were quite as much entitled to the glory. But examination of Bacon's works proves that though the great work of proof never was completed by him, that which he embraced, foresaw, and projected, was of that vast comprehensiveness which fully entitles him to be regarded, not merely as the most proper of names whereby to indicate the author of Induction (since the world must always have a name), but in reality the one of all others who best understood what form the development of science must assume to become perfect. The treatment of this question by the editors is truly interesting, and worthy their great undertaking.
The two volumes before us, in addition to the prefaces and biography, embrace the Novum Organum, 'the Parasceve,' and the work De Augmentis Scientiarum. It is to be regretted that the English versions, corrected by Bacon himself, were omitted, but those who would read the translations are mostly capable of reading 'Baconian Latin.' As they are, they will be most gratefully accepted by thousands. The forthcoming volumes will embrace the English works. We would here wish that the editor had not, as he informs us he has done, modernized the spelling,—but here the majority of readers will perhaps be thankful that such is the case. As regards typography, paper, and all outward grace, this edition leaves literally nothing to be wished for, while a short critical article on the portraits of Bacon leads us to infer that the exquisitely engraved head of the philosopher, given in the first volume, has been made accurate at the cost of great research and labor.
The Old Log Schoolhouse. By Alexander Clark, Editor of 'Clark's School Visitor.' Philadelphia: Leary, Getz & Co.