226 
REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
friends as its declared enemies. Such retarders as those of the latter class'must 
be are truly too contemptible to merit more than a passing notice of pity. Some 
eighteen or twenty years ago there was some excuse for the anti-phrenologists. 
Phrenology being at that time opposed by the great bulk of eminent scientific 
men, and almost unknown, even by name, to the majority of our country-men, 
original observations and careful deductions were required to test its truth, and new 
and apparently plausible objections might be raised against its pretensions. But 
at the present day the face of affairs wears an entirely different, and, to the lover of 
truth, afar more cheering aspect. Now that the phrenologist can adduce thousands 
of facts in support of his system, and capable at the same time of demolishing 
every argument against it, no one is excusable for remaining wholly ignorant of 
so important a branch of knowledge, or for attempting to overthrow it—like too 
many of our opponents—without consulting either the facts of friends or the 
fancies of foes to the doctrine. In short, those who propose reiterating the stale 
and vapid arguments against Phrenology for the thousand-and-first time, might 
receive satisfactory replies to each and all of their objections from the merest tyro 
in the science—replies that would render a man of ordinary candour and strength 
of mind desirous of making every amends for having so long opposed the assist¬ 
ance of so clear and pure a source of light. 
The 'Phrenological Journal has probably contributed little to popularize the 
science to which its pages are devoted, but that it has turned many bitter 
opponents into zealous adherents and ardent admirers of Phrenology, and that it 
has greatly advanced the subject as a science , and proved a valuable chronicle of 
passing events connected with the subject, during a period of fifteen years, can, 
we think, admit of no reasonable doubt. The new series, as we have already 
intimated, bids fair to eclipse even the old, and we trusf that the present Editor 
will not relax his judicious and hitherto highly successful endeavours to render 
his journal as worthy of its title and objects as possible. 
Numerous as are the subjects treated of in the number lying on our table, the 
work contains little that would be interesting to the mere zoologist, that is, to the 
zoologist who feels no pleasure in investigating the natural history of the highest 
of the animal series—Man. He who prides himself upon studying Nature (i. e ., 
animals, plants, minerals, &c. &c.), and who despises the occupations of the 
schoolmaster, the psychologist, and the novelist, never dreams that their study is 
Nature as well as his own, but in a higher department , and that it is not the less 
so because modified by various and almost infinite circumstances. While the 
principal business of the majority of naturalists is to observe facts, a good school¬ 
master or a first-rate novelist has need of an ample development of the same 
faculties in addition to others which are far more important. In making this 
statement, some may suppose that we are depreciating Natural History commonly 
