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of France. It is an eminently curious subject; few among us can realise the complete distinctness of race maintained inviolate at this day in the neighbourhood even of a city like Lyons by some of this remarkable survival, descendants, as traditionally considered, of the Saracens; but it is not our province to supplement Miss Edwards's pleasant pages.

She takes us to Nantua, near this same Bourg, and to the little visited, most wondrous church of Bron, with its sumptuous monuments-the tombs of Margaret of Austria, the famous Governor of the Netherlands; of her husband, Philibert le Beau, a masterpiece of sculpture; of her mother-in-law, Margaret de Bourbon, wife of Philip of Savoy, who made the vow which her daughter fulfilled by building the church. Constructed between 1511 and 1536, it is at once an example of the latest Gothic and the earliest Renaissance. We only regret that, when writing her description, Miss Edwards had not at hand the first volume of Didron's "Iconographie;" it would have preserved her from some few mistakes into which she has, not by her own fault, unavoidably fallen. This very tomb of Margaret of Austria has given rise to a strange piece of false circumstantial evidence touching the cause of her death, and yet carrying with it means for its own refutation. We should have been glad if it had come before Miss Edwards; it escaped even Didron. We may possibly some day give it to our readers in some future number of this magazine. Meantime, we are warned by diminished room to close our mention of this charming, graceful record of a well-spent holiday. We hope many will profit by it in the coming months of holiday and of travel.

Copyrights and Patents for Inventions. Edinburgh : Clarke. 1879.

This title expresses a double subject, but copyright alone is treated of, and the book itself is labelled "Volume I." This is judicious, for though allied, patents, or rather patent rights, and copyright, are distinct subjects. Almost exhaustive upon copyright this will be a fit prelude to the sequel on the rights of patents; it gives at once the history, and even the literature, of its subject, and the laws affecting it, as well as the projects for laws to deal with it; it gives the substance of big bluebooks, with the evidence taken by the Royal Commission, itself a fund of information; tables illustrating the past and present book trade, with potential as well as actual estimates; opinions and brochures on international copyright, in all which there is much instruction, and even in some parts considerable amusement. The Pulpit and the Press, the trade of the Religious Tract Society, and its keenness; not only Belgian projects of law, and those of the United States, with the overture of Harper Brothers, the trade rings, and their desire to encourage home manufactories, but matters so distant as the publishing houses in China, all find place; in short, almost everything bearing on the origin and progress of literary property is touched upon, and partly discussed. All this agglomeration of materials we owe to the care of Mr. E. A. Macfie, of Dreghorn, and, we may add, of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, who modestly calls himself "The Compiler." The book itself is curious from the absence of the ordinary formula of "rights reserved "a tribute to the principles it advocates; and the compiler, in his few words of preface, only asks

that "if quotations are made, the source whence derived will be acknowledged in fairness to all concerned." It is such a repository of facts and ideas concerning copyright, that it cannot fail to be inade use of, and common gratitude for collecting such a mass-a real depôt of information should secure ample acknowledgment. It is not, of course, a book to be read through, but for (e.g.) any speaker on the subject, and for every one who has occasion to make up his mind about it, or to come to a decision, the book is one for which he will be thankful, while to the mere ordinary reader it is full of interest. It is confessedly a work compiled for a purposeas a plea, namely, for cheaper books; property in ideas is (p. 385) stigmatised as a 66 cancer. All the same, those who do not accept such a notion, may even derive arguments against it from the materials collected to enforce it. The volume opens with an essay by Lord Dreghorn (a Lord of Session) of the date 1798; it is very pertinent to the present discussion, and very significant is the contrast of then and now.

We have ourselves, in a recent number, spoken of the copyright question in a review of another work on the subject, and we shall wait the issue of the sequel volume on Patent Right to speak of the general idea which we conclude to underlie that, as it does this, its predecessor volume. Meanwhile, of the great industry here displayed, and its worth, that is, of the utility and value of what has been here gathered together, there can be but one opinion; the compilation is very much to be commended. The object set forward to be attained is cheap books; the means to attain it is the royalty copyright system; with that it is considered that free industrial competition at

home and abroad is legitimate and helpful, as well as right and

proper.

The Hamnet Shakspere: Part III., Cymbeline. Edited by Allan Park Paton. Edinburgh, Edmonston and Co., 1879.

Mr. Paton has proposed to add another to the many theories for geting at the truth in regard to Shakspere's plays. He insists that Shakspere used a capital letter to a word only where he meant to emphasise that word, and that, rather than make rash emendations, we ought reverently to accept a reading where we find such. Yet it cannot be said that Mr. Paton has put his theory on a sure basis. Of the difficulties that lie in his way, a fair example is given in the continuation of the general preface in this third part. Mr. Payton lays much stress on the number and use of "crowned words" in the Fourth Folio (printed in 1685); and he can only account for this peculiarity by saying that this edition was revised with frequent references to the MSS. This in itself is a bold statement, and rather hard of proof, we should think. Even granting this, we are told in the same sentence, that "it (the Fourth Folio) is, in parts, so monstrously disfigured by typographical errors, as to raise the thought that the edition must have been completed in such hot haste as to preclude all correction whatever." We are apt to think thereupon that there is in an argument resting upon such foundations a want of balance and something of the rashness of the theorist. This opinion is strengthened by the peremptory way in which some difficult readings are disposed of. Nevertheless, to students who do not care for the theory of emphasiscapitals, this is a handy and beautifully printed copy of the First

Folio, with the spelling modernised.

Register of Cupar Abbey. Vol. I. The Rental Book. Edited by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D., London. Printed for the Grampian Club. 1879.

We owe this carefully edited volume to the painstaking spirit which explores every nook and cranny of history. Chiefly taken up with the rent roll of the abbey, it is a book for the historian and antiquary, rather than the general reader, and for those its value lies in the light it throws on the agricultural life of the fifteenth century. We see the monks playing the part of careful and well-meaning, if rather strict, landlords, and that in a time when the relations of landlord and tenant were in a fluid state, not yet being crystallised in statute books. Here are conditions of a lease: "At Pentecost, 1466, a fourth part of Syokis is let to Dic Scott for five years, for annual payment of 5 merks and 12 capons at Easter, with the usual services; and if he shall not be sober and temperate, preserving more strictly a kindly intercourse with his neighbours and relatives, and be convicted for this, that assedation shall be of no avail to him for the ensuing terms." Full, though rather colourless, historical

notices of the abbots, by Major General A. Stewart Allan, leave little to be desired in this handsome volume.

Kottabos, Trinity College, Dublin. Trinity Term, War Number. Dublin: William M'Gee, 18, Nassaustreet.

The

The inspiration of the original poems in this number of Kottabos comes, for the most part, from the war in South Africa. Foremost and best of these is the long piece entitled, "At Rorke's Drift." writer is not quite master of the measure he has imposed on himself; he is unscrupulous in the use of language in his eagerness to bring in forcible Saxon words, and there is a lack, sometimes, of the sense of poetical beauty and fitness. But the reader feels that such faults are atoned for by the mens agitans molem, the vigour of the whole, and its vividness of conception. The rather rhetorical" Isandhlwana" is well put. Passing over the scholarly renderings into Latin and Greek verse, we can only mention S. K. C.'s poems, which are the best and most finished in the number, especially the graceful and tender verses, "My Little Owlet," suggested by the birth of Hiawatha. Last, but not least in merit, comes the clever "6 “Light Woman's' Reply."

THE

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1879.

THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF BISHOP BERKELEY.

I.

THE life of Bishop Berkeley does not present much in the way of either adventure or achievement to arrest popular attention, and, as a matter of fact, beyond a small portion of the philosophical world, he is but little known. It is impossible, however, to gain even a slight knowledge of what he was and what he did without regretting that so few are familiar with his history and character. Looking at him in a provincial aspect, he is interesting as a distinguished Irishman. He possesses interest for all thoughtful men as one of the most profound and subtle thinkers known to the historians of philosophy; he is the author of what has been quoted "as an almost solitary example of a discovery in metaphysics." Both directly and indirectly his works have profoundly modified the course of European thought for 160 years. He was the leader of one of the most noblyplanned and unselfish missionary projects which ecclesiastical history exhibits. He is a bright example of one who threw himself with all his might into whatever he undertook his personal life might might almost be called a series of enthusiasms; and, though last not least,

it will be found that the records of his life and words exhibit from first to last one unsullied picture of purity, gentleness, unselfishness, courage, love of truth, almost all the features which one should expect to find in a saintly ideal.

George Berkeley was born March 12, 1685, a few weeks after the beginning of the short and disastrous reign of James II. His family seems to have been a branch of the noble family of Berkeley, of which several untitled offshoots were settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. The future philosopher was born, probably, at Dysert Castle, on the banks of the Nore, and in the county of Kilkenny. "One can hardly picture a place more suited to nourish the heart of the boy by communion with nature than this now classic part of the fair vale through which the Nore descends from the city of Kilkenny to its junction with the Harrow. This old monastic ruin is in one of the loveliest regions in Ireland. It may well be that Berkeley was not a little indebted for his deep-seated love of nature and fervid imagination to the sparkling Nore, and to a childhood spent among the wooded hills that enfold the valley through which it flows." Of the course of

...

that childhood little in the way of authentic fact is known. In the Common Place Book, kept by Berkeley in college, two notable entries occur: "From my child

its

hood I had an unaccountable turn of thought that way." "Mem. That I was distrustful at eight years old, and consequently by nature disposed for these new doctrines " -fit prelude to the development of the mind which produced the startling announcement that all sensible things are ideas, and no more. On July 17, 1696, the boy entered Kilkenny School in the Second of Five Classes. No other instance is to be found in the old Register of such precocity. This child of eleven was placed in a class probably composed of youths between sixteen and eighteen. The school had been the school of Swift, Congreve, and several of the most brilliant Irishmen. Of Berkeley's life there little is known beyond the fact that there began his lifelong friendship with Thomas Prior, the "Dear Tom" to whom so many of his extant letters are addressed. Prior entered the school some months after Berkeley, and left it before him. Berkeley was not the only man who has found that the friendships which are born in the class-room and in the playground have a strength and a sanctity unapproached by those that arise. afterwards "when the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay."

On March 21st, 1700, when he was just fifteen years of age, Berkeley matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, when he found himself again in the society of Prior and some other old school friends. He was elected scholar in 1702; graduated in 1704; obtained a fellowship in 1707 at the age of twenty-two; and between that time and 1712 he was occu

In

pied partly in study and writing, and partly in the discharge of the ordinary duties of a college tutor. During at least the early portion of this period of twelve years it seems to have been a question among the students whether Berkeley was the greatest genius or the greatest dunce in the place. If he stirred abroad he was sure to be followed by a knot of idlers who laughed at his odd ways, and paid no heed to his fretting remonstrances. The course of study laid down by the authorities still included some of the old scholastic commentators against whom Swift had rebelled twenty years before, and whose names are now almost unknown, Smiglicius Kickermanner, Burgersdicius. It is not difficult to imagine the disgust which they excited in the keen young philosopher from Kilkenny. 1705 he and some of his friends started a society for the purpose of studying and discussing the new philosophy of Locke, Boyle, and Newton. The manuscript statutes of the society are still in existence. An anecdote told of him is "at least true to the spirit of Berkeley's keen psychological analysis," and his indifference even to life in the interests of truth." After seeing an execution, he became so anxious to know what the sensations of a hanging man are that he induced his friend Conterini to agree to first help him to try the experiment and then to try it himself. Berkeley accordingly was tied up to the ceiling, and the chair removed from under his feet. But the signal at which, by the agreement, he was to be relieved was not given, for the future bishop had become unconscious, and was on the verge of being hanged outright. He was relieved before it was too late, but fell motionless on the floor. On recovering consciousness, his first

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