THE DEAN OF YORK'S "NEW SYSTEM OF GEOLOGY."* THERE are now upwards of a thousand printed works existing on the subject of geology in the different languages of the world, and these works contain upwards of 100,000 facts, collected by different observers upon which to found the superstructure of the science. The worthy Dean of York would pull down an edifice so laboriously raised, and erect a new one in its stead, in a slim octavo of about sixty pages. The means are wondrously inadequate to the purpose proposed. Geologists have ascertained three great facts which are common to the earth's structure wherever it has been studied. These are, first, that there are rocks of igneous or volcanic origin. Secondly, that there are rocks of sedimentary origin, derived chiefly from the detritus of the former; that these rocks are superimposed one upon another, like the steps of a ladder, and that, both by their nature and by the order of their superposition, they attest successive deposition, or that the lower steps were deposited before the higher. Thirdly, that these different sedimentary deposits reveal within them the relics of formerly existing creatures and plants, which must have lived for some time to have attained full growth, to have fed, and to have left behind them various other traces of their existence, besides their own diminutive or bulky selves; and that the nature and character of these creatures differ in the different sedimentary deposits or steps of the ladder. These are the epochs of geology. In the face of these great facts, elicited by the searching and studious inquiries of hundreds of men of first-rate intelligence, Dr. William Cockburn declares the deductions of the masters of the science to be absurd, and that there was but one "great commotion, whereby the poles of the earth were moved-terrific and oft-repeated volcanoes burst forth from under the sea"- "the fountains of the great deep were broken up," at the same time an immense deluge of rain, poured by an irresistible hand, covered the existing earth, and carried everything upon its surface into the sea; among other things, great quantities of the old red sandstone, which formed a stratum of considerable thickness above the Silurian rocks, which the doctor supposes to have been previously formed by the bursting up from under the sea of a few submarine volcanoes, a cause easily to be shown, if particulars were to be entered upon, to be as inadequate to produce the supposed results as the reverend dean's book is to upset the foundations of geological science. It is obvious that, to establish the worthy doctor's hypothesis, the facts as yet gathered together must be got rid of. Dr. Cockburn labours under a strange mistake when he imagines that geology has to rely upon some hasty conclusions drawn from imperfect data by the original masters of the science. Geology has neither to depend upon a Werner, nor a Hutton, nor a Cuvier for its existence, any more than it has upon a Sedgwick, a Murchison, or an Owen. It stands upon its own basis of great and immutable facts, legible as the pages of a book to all who will consult them, eloquent as the monuments of the olden time of man, to those who carry their inquiries to the age that preceded his advent. These monuments must be controverted to overthrow geology, not the • A New System of Geology. By the Dean of York. Henry Colburn. dicta of this master or of that. It must be shown that each sedimentary deposit occupies only its own geographic district, or that, as such undoubtedly lie upon one another, there was time in the " one great commotion" to form successive great deposits, and then again to break them up, and pile up upon them other great deposits of their own materials gathered up under a new order of circumstances. It must be shown that the marine reptiles, and other animals characteristic of the lias, lived at the same time as the gigantic land reptiles and flying reptiles, and other animals characteristic of the oolitic and wealden formations; he must show that the palaeotheria and anoplotheria of the supra-cretaceous formations lived at the same time as the great pachydermatous animalsthe dinotheria and mastodons- of anti-historic periods; and then, again, that the two later epochs of creation were contemporaneous with the two former. There are no Sedgwicks or Bucklands to get rid of here, but the great monuments of primeval epochs of creation, ready to speak for themselves in the halls of our national museum. Instead of undertaking so laborious a task, the anti-geological dean relates that he knew two brothers once very much alike; the one became a curate with a large family, the other a London alderman. If the skins of those two pachydermata had been preserved in a fossil state, there would have been less resemblance between them than between an asaphus tyrannus and an asaphus caudatus! Would there also have been as little resemblance as between a plesiosaurus and an elephant, between a pterodactyl and a man? MABEL CARRINGTON.* THE situations in this new novel are effective and dramatic, the narrative is well followed up, and the incidents are numerous and startling. There are one or two critical quidnunes who, having pronounced Mr. Newby's establishment to be a revival of Leadenhall-street, invariably detract from the merits of all works bearing his imprimatur. Only the other day was made a most ungenerous attempt to put down a young débutante, and to condemn a new novel-" Family Failings"on the plea that the attempt to read more than one volume had been fruitless; yet the novel in question contained many very clever sketches of society, and some domestic scenes most truly and happily conceived. It is obvious that if the numerous first, second, and thirdrate performances of Acton and Currer Bell, of Mrs. Mackenzie Daniel, Mrs. Crowe, Miss Lynn, Julia Addison, and the anonymous authors of the Hen-pecked Husband," the "Gambler's Wife," "Lady Granard's Nieces," &c., &c., are to be set down simply by inducing the public to believe that they are unreadable, then the same fate would await them, that once befel a redoubtable critic's own great performance; and which total failure it was that induced him to devote the rest of his life to the task of bringing down all other works to his level, and occasionally to the still more desperate game of involving them in the same fate. 66 * Mabel Carrington. A Novel. In 3 vols. T. C. Newby. THE PROTESTANT LEADER.* LIKE all M. Sue's works, this romance has faults of art; and, in the present instance, to these peculiarities are to be added the drawback with the Protestant reader, that the Frenchman has naturally taken throughout the most unfavourable view of the character and principles of John Cavalier. As to the charge of "hideous conceptions and revolting details" on the part of the so-called "Epileptic school" (every writer is now-a-days the head of a school!), the execrable cruelties inflicted by the Abbé de Chayla and Captain Paul are asserted by the editor to be related even with greater minuteness in authentic works. In regard to reality of personages, it is also worth while mentioning, upon the same authority, that the original of Ephraim-a personification of that party among the Camisards who correspond to the party of Burley and Macbriar among the Covenanters -may be found in an authentic hero of the insurrection, Henri Castanet de Mossavanges. The fair Isabelle was also a real character, as was the Marquis de Florac. But Toinon la Psyche, and the whole story of the influence of her personal charms on the events referred to in this work, are, on the other hand, wholly imaginary; and the compassionate will rejoice to learn that there is no authentic record of the existence or sufferings of Celeste and Gabriel. JULAMERK.+ THE proposed object of this work-that of exciting a warmer interest in the welfare of the steadfast and persecuted people of whom it treats -is so laudable, that we should have been inclined to overlook many minor errors, and pass over many ordinary deficiencies. But Mrs. Webb has not given herself the trouble even to get hold of the true state of the case. She has blindly adopted the absurd theories of Dr. Grant, as to the Jewish origin of the Nestorians; an hypothesis which was for ever set to rest by the mission sent to these mountaineers, some years back, by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Royal Geographical Society; and she, most inopportunely, reproduces this hypothesis at a moment when Layard's rich discoveries of Assyrian antiquities have cast an additional interest on those whom that distinguished traveller, like his predecessors, looks upon as the only existing descendants of the Assyrians or Chaldeans of old. Few finer fields for romance lay as yet untrodden than these few followers of a primitive Christianity. Their patriarchal manners-the simplicity of their habits-the antiquity of their faith-the chaste ceremonies of their church-their hardy lives, and the wondrous country in which they dwell-unrivalled in the magnificence of its mountain scenery-afforded materials of the most available character. Then, again, their persecutions, down even to the slaughter of the men, women, and children in that horrid cave near Lizan, as described by Layard, were surely within the domain of the author's proposed objects; instead of which, we have a story, partly of a sentimental and partly of a pious character, of a Nestorian lover and a Jewish maiden, with some brief allusions to Mar Shimon and Nurrulah Bey, the murderer of Schultze, and some still fainter attempts at description; but all of which are rather calculated to have the effect of wearying the reader with the already too much neglected Nestorians, than of interesting him in their cause. *The Protestant Leader. A Novel. By Eugène Sue. 3 vols. T. C. Newby. Julamerk. A Tale of the Nestorians. By Mrs. J. B. Webb. Author of "Naomi." 3 vols. R. Yorke Clarke & Co. Legitimist Revelations of THE LATE FRENCH REVOLUTION LITERATURE.-The Handbook of Travel round the Southern Coast of England.-The Sea-side Book; being an Introduc- tion to the Natural History of the British Coasts. By W. Harvey, M.D.-The Railway Companion from Chester to Holyhead, &c., &c. By Edward Parry.-The Works of G. P. R. James, Esq.: 1. Arabella Stuart; a Romance from English History: 2. Thirty Years Since; or, the Ruined Family 3. Agincourt.-A Manual of Botany. By John Hutton Balfour, M.D., F.L.S.-Casualties Afloat. By Lieut. A. F. Kynaston, R.N.-Confessions of a Hypochondriac. By M.R.C.S.-The Albatross; or, Voices from the Ocean. By Now ready, complete in One Vol. Medium 8vo, bound in cloth, price 16s. A NEW AND REVISED EDITION OF CRICHTON. An Historical Romance. "A third edition of one of the most popular of the popular author's productions hardly needed the farther influence of Hablot Browne's profuse (eighteen) and very characteristic and excellent illustrations to recommend it. But there they are, and certainly ranking with the best things the artist has ever done. The numerous figures in many of them, the well-studied expression of the countenances according to the matter in hand, the general merits of composition, and the spirit of the whole, fully agree with, and happily illustrate, the text. With regard to that text it would now be absurd to remark upon it. It has been left to the public, and the verdict pronounced such as writers most desiderate, and the vast majority long for in vain.”—Literary Gazette. "A happier subject has not offered to Mr. Ainsworth's peculiar genius than the story of the Admirable Crichton, in itself a romance, and from distance of time, and the mystery that hangs about it, permitting to the imagination of the novelist any amount of fiction which he might require for the purposes of his plot. Since Mrs. Radcliffe, there has not lived a writer who could give to the unnatural, the improbable, and the impossible, such an air of truth and such a show of probability as Harrisou Ainsworth. He delights in the wonderful, because he excels in the use of it. Another great merit of Mr. Ainsworth's romances is their dramatic power. The dialogues are always terse and lively,-the talk of men and women is not mere declamation and reverie, like the conversations that occupy one-half of most of our fashionable novels. Crichton' is, perhaps, the best specimen of this that he has yet produced: indeed, it is altogether his best work, as the public appear to have pronounced in the most emphatic manner by calling for the third edition, which has the further attraction of numerous clever engravings after the pencil of Hablot Browne."-Critic. "This exciting romance is now bound up in one splendid volume-typographically and pictorially splendid. The author places the Admirable Crichton' in the most favourable and most inter- ting points of view, and paints him a demi-god of knightly times. He is thrown into Paris amongst the students at the time of the League, and is the prominent actor at the period of the intrigues of Catherine de Medicis, and the gallant struggles for supremacy of the great Bearnais, afterwards Henri Qeatre. The stirring events of this most attractive period of French history are described with graphic grandeur by Mr. Ainsworth; and the romance before us reads like a continuous chronicle, penned by one acquainted with the language and the law of the Middle Ages as a Brantome or a Holished. Mr. Ains worth's enthusiasm for the things of those days makes him write with the correctness of a contemporary and the intensity of an actor, vaunting quorum pars magna fui. The Admirable Crichton is the 'observed of all observers' in a most admirable historical romance."-Observer. "An elegant and very cleverly illustrated edition of Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth's well-known and greatly admired historical romance of Crichton,' has just been published in a form which is at once calculated to render the work more popular, and to place it within the reach of readers who could not, perhaps, before hope to possess it. The renown of this very able and strikingly descriptive novel has been so great for so many years, that it is not necessary here to enter upon any eulogy of it. The work has long been popular; and it was a judicious resolve of its author to revise his admirable production, and to issue it with all the improvements which his matured judgment and great experience could suggest. The result is now before the public in the form of a large handsome volume, which contains the entire romance, carefully and effectively revised. It will prove exceedingly welcome, we feel assured, to large classes of readers; and, as far as enterprising efforts could prevail in producing an attractive edition, the result has been very successful in this instance. The volume, handsomely printed and bound in cloth, is enriched by numerous very clever and striking illustrations on steel-productions from the pencil of Mr. Hablot K. Browne. 'The Admirable Crichton' is still more admirable when beheld in such an attractive guise. The public will be pleased to greet an old favourite in so pleasing, so elegant, and so decidedly improved a form.”—Morning Advertiser. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. |