a "Text-Book of Physiology for Schools and Colleges," it is of course without value.
English microscopists, if we might judge by this work and that of Mr. Hassall, are not remarkable for scholarship. The showy and in some respects valuable work of the latter gentleman was disgraced by constant repetitions of gross blunders in spelling. Mr. Goadby is not much above his countryman in literary acquirements, if we may judge by his treatment of the names of Schwann and Lieberkuhn, whom he repeatedly calls Schawn and Leiberkuhn, and by the indignity which he offers to the itch-insect by naming it Aearus Scabiæi. It is not necessary to give further examples; but, if the general statement be disputed, we are prepared to speckle the book with corrections until it looks like a sign-board with a charge of small shot in it.
Nothing that we have said must be considered as detracting from Mr. Goadby's proper merits as an industrious and skilful specialist, who is more able with his microscope than with his pen, and more at home with the latter in telling us what he has seen than in writing a general treatise on so vast a subject as Physiology.
Lettres de Silvio Pellico, recueillies et mises en ordre, par M. Guillaume Stefani. Traduites et précédées d'une Introduction, par M. Antoine de Latour. Paris: 1857. pp. liii, 493. 8 vo.
Silvio Pellico is one of the most touching ghosts that glide through the chambers of the memory. Even the rod of the pedagogue and the imprisonment of the school-room (for it has been the misfortune of "Le mie Prigioni" to be doomed to serve as a "class-book" to beginners in modern languages) have proved unable to diminish the sympathy felt for the Spielberg prisoner.
This volume will increase his pure fame. It will be read with painful interest. It will do more for Italian independence than all the ravings of revolutionary manifestoes and all the poignard-strokes of political assassins which can be written or given from now till doomsday. No one can read it without a swelling heart and a tear-filled eye, for it discloses involuntarily and indirectly the unspeakable unhappiness of Italy. Here are the sad accounts of some loved friend or admired countryman snatched away to prison, or hurried into exile, for a letter written, or a visit paid, or an intemperate speech uttered; while no preparation is made for the long departure, and papers, even the most familiar and prized, are seized and never restored. Another page presents the exile's struggles for daily bread, his privations, his longings for the Italian sun and sky and soil, for the native land; another, the earnest prayer from jail-walls for the Bible, for books upon our Saviour's sufferings (nothing less than voices from heaven can breathe comfort in Austrian dungeons!) Then the moving letters written from one prisoner's family to another's (yesterday unacquainted, to-day near kinsmen in the bonds of sorrow) to sustain each other in the common afflictions, craving with avidity the least intelligence from the living tombs of tyranny, sharing with generous alacrity all their tidings. How musically endearing Italian diminutives fall upon the ear employed in this office! Here we have Pellico's own letters to his parents to calm their natural grief, filled with pious concealment of his own mental and bodily torment, with encouragements to hope an early pardon, and to turn their eyes to Religion, which never yet refused consolation to the afflicted. We have never read a more distressing letter than he wrote to his family, when, at last pardoned, he was once more free. Seven years had passed away since he heard from them; he knew not if one still lived to welcome him home,—if his kindred had forgotten, or execrated him as one who had dragged their common parents sorrowing and gray-haired down to the grave. Has the world among all its manifold sorrows any sorrow like unto this?
The late M. de Lamennais was wont to speak with contempt of Silvio Pellico, as being a weak, spiritless craven, who accepted with resignation when he should have plotted to end the thraldom of his country. Yet what can a man do, when the classes above him and those below him, when noble and priest and peasant, live contented in the silence of despotism, (calling it peace,) without one thought of other days, without one sentiment of pride in the deeds of their illustrious forefathers?
