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CRITICAL NOTICE. 



Songs of Science. By Walter Wagstaff. Second edition, with additions. 

 12mo. pp. 96. Baldwin and Cradock. London : 1834. 



This is verily a stirring and extraordinary age. Steam and gas, — the 

 patriotic Whig, with his political pruning-knife, and grand " Russell 

 remedy for constitutional disorders," — and the ** Schoolmaster, with 

 his penny publications," are effecting a revolution as splendid and 

 gigantic, as we trust it will prove salutary, in our habits and 

 institutions. The empire of night, intellectual as well as physical, 

 is rapidly, and for ever, passing from our land. Philosophy and 

 the coal-mine vie zealously with each other in pouring a new and 

 glorious light upon our understandings and our streets. Ignorance and 

 superstition, bigotry and intolerance, imposture and crime, — the imps of 

 darkness, and the ''idols of the den,'* — shrink before the blaze of the 

 rising illumination, and curse it as they retire. From the unwearied 

 press, — that *' mighty steam-engine of the moral world," — light and 

 knowledge, and their attendant power, are hourly diffused to the 

 darkest and most distant corners of the realm. No more shall 

 wandering sibyl delude the warm and simple-hearted village-maiden 

 with crafty predictions of the approaching advent of the " dark man," and 

 the presentation of the wedding-ring. Fiction and romance, the mar- 

 vellous tales of giant-killers and genii, — shall no longer prevail in the 

 nursery, and the village-school. Even now, have the feats of fairy, and 

 the spells of magician, ceased to charm the listening ear of childhood. 

 The fortunes of ** Cinderella," and the moving adventures of the 

 " Children in the Wood," no longer throw alternate light and shade 

 upon its animated countenance, — awake no more its sympathy and its 

 tears. 



Popular introductions to history and the sciences, and elementary 

 treatises on political economy and the arts, are issuing from the press in 

 a spirit, and with a rapidity, which, while they astonish the reflecting 

 mind, are hailed with exultation by every consistent friend of man ; 

 and will, ere long, make '* despotism tremble on its crazy throne." The 

 conduct of princes and of governments, of prelates and of public men, 

 is no longer suffered to pass without scrutiny and criticism. By the 

 dingy mechanic, over his evening-pipe, important questions of state- 

 policy and expenditure are now examined with a freedom, and discussed 

 with a boldness and sagacity, which would not disgrace the most fearless 

 and enlightened spirit that ever led an opposition in the senate. We 

 have seen the lowly plebeian stand forward as the successful advocate of 

 his own unfriended cause against all the talent, and learning, and trickery 

 of the bar. We have heard his indignant voice raised in stern reproof 

 of the titled oppressor, — in solemn protestation against the arbitrary and 

 unrighteous decisions of the judgment-seat. 



For the more elevated and elevating paths of literary and philosophical 

 research, — for pursuits and spectacles more worthy of an intelligent and 

 immortal being, — the degrading scenes of the bull-ring and the cock- 

 pit, — ignoble relics of the manly and perilous amusements of a barbarian 

 age, — are, at length, well-nigh abjured by the rustic squire. That once 

 rude and unlettered being, to whom the terms *' Philanthropy'' and " Pa- 

 triotism,'* " Alluvium" anii " Zoology," would, a few years since, have 

 been scarcely less terrible than a midnight visit to the haunted turret of 



NO. V. 3 b 



