x88i.] 
495 
Analyses of Books. 
We close this book not without regret. We are, we trust, 
open to any new truth. But unless the disciples of occultism 
can speak more intelligibly they had surely better keep silence 
altogether, and not raise expectations which they have always 
such a wealth of good reasons for not gratifying. But how pro- 
found soever may be the Science of the Oriental adepts, what 
would be the use of their communicating it to Englishmen ? We 
should simply incorporate it in our different grades of cramming, 
and examine unfortunate young men in it. So long as we put 
our knowledge to this use it may fairly be contended that the 
less we have the better, 
Songs and Sonnets of Spring-time. By Constance C. W. 
Naden. London : C. Kegan Paul and Co. 
Here surely is a twofold marvel — that a poet should care for 
notice in our highly prosaic pages, and that the subjedt-matter of 
some at least of the poems in question is such that we may 
examine them without inconsistency on our own part. It must 
not by any means be supposed that all men of science regard 
poetry as “ mere sensuous caterwawling.” The thoughtful 
ethnologist sees in it an index of national life : where it ceases 
to appear, or, if appearing, to be appreciated, — as in modern 
England, or in Greece of the post-Periclean epoch, or in Rome 
after the days of the twelve Caesars, — such national life is fading. 
Where it never has appeared the nation, as a whole, has not yet 
begun to live, in the higher sense of the word, and perhaps 
never may do. 
The “ Songs and Sonnets ” before us have an especial interest 
as dealing, to no small extent, with certain scientific and philo- 
sophic subjects. Let us not be mistaken : we have here no 
elementary treatise or handbook done into verse. Miss Naden 
pictures the man of science clinging with devotion to his chosen 
pursuits, and yet ever and anon regretting to what an extent his 
researches cut him off from the sympathy of his kind. Thus, in 
“ The Astronomer,” she writes : — 
“ Bright hieroglyphs I read in Heaven’s book; 
But oft, with eyes too dim for these, 
In half-regretful ignorance I look 
On common fields and trees. 
Scant fare for wife and child the fisher gains 
From yon broad belt of lucent grey ; 
Rude peasants till those green and golden plains ; 
Am I more wise than they ? 
Oh, far less glad ! And yet could I descend 
And breathe the lowland air again, 
How should I find a brother and a friend 
’Mid earth-contented men ? ” 
