353 
REVIEWS. 
Divine Origin of Mnemonics. By WILLIAM STOKES. 
Houlston and Wright, London. 
RECENT parliamentary enactment, combined with 
a verdict more recent still, in our courts of judica- 
ture, has afforded a certain check to medical quackery, but 
literary quackery still runs its course, unrestrained, and as 
far as our experience extends, its seems to have attained 
its culminating point in the volume now before us. We 
confess that we commenced the perusal of this book with 
anything but favourable impressions of the author, and the 
chief cause of our bias lay in the heading, which caught 
our eye, at page 60, set out in large capitals—“ DAMNATION 
THE RESULT OF FORGETFULNESS. A few lines further 
down the page, occurs another heading — “SALVATION 
DEPENDENT UPON MEMoRY.” In each case a scriptural 
quotation is given, but never was the sacred volume more 
abused by a profane endeavour to excruciate the word of 
life into an agreement with some preconceived plan of 
turning a penny. To preserve the mere letter of Scripture, 
and to make it do service for the sale of Mr. Stokes’s book, 
the whole spirit of it has been shamelessly abused. That 
the small volume of Mr. Stokes is not wholly denuded of 
. merit, we readily admit, but we say of that what the great 
Mendelssohn is reported to have said of a manuscript sub- 
mitted for his critical opinion:—‘“ There is much in this 
paper that is good, and much that is new, but what is 
good is not new, and what is new is not good.” 
We advise Mr. Stokes either to read more deeply or to 
give up the idea of pronouncing authoritatively on matters 
relating to Jewish antiquities. Where, in the name of 
wonder, did he pick up the information contained in the 
second proposition of the following paragraph ?—“ Phylac- 
teries are worn by the Jews in the East, to this day, but 
they are generally concealed under their garments.” 
The phylacteries worn by the Jews cannot possibly be 
traced to any biblical authority. That they were used by 
the Pharisees, in the time of Christ, is an admitted fact: 
but many other ritual observances were also in that time 
in vogue, although they had no solid basis in primitive 
Judaism. All commentators, as well as rational Jews, of 
every age, have regarded the passage—“ And thou shalt 
