into the history, language, literature, and customs of the Basques, — the broken survivors of nobody knows how many centuries of conquest, the aboriginal freemen, and, ethnologically, the most interesting people of Europe. We have graphic and none too witching description of beautiful San Sebastian, the great watering-place of fashionable Madrid, with its fascination of sea and sky and sunshine. We are taken far up among the mountains, to the birthplace and monastery of Loyola, and are impressed with the deathlike horror of Jesuitism. A glimpse of Pau is given us, and Lourdes, with its hundreds of thousands of modern pilgrims coming on trains de piété and its stacks of crutches and votive offerings, is vividly set forth. Dr. Vincent is the only author we have seen who has done even tolerable justice to the merits of the Spanish flea, -especially the flea of Basque-Land. He remarks that this flea "partakes of the hardy, enterprising, indomitable character of the Cantabrian. Like the Basque mountaineer, the Basque flea has successfully resisted the enervating influences of modern civilization. He is the one drawback to the pleasure of a summer on the Cantabrian coast, except to those happily constituted insensate cuticles on which the poison produces no effect." Has Dr. Vincent fortunate Mr. Hale in mind?

The Pyrenees offer a capital field for a cheap and fresh summer excursion. Let a student or overworked business man who wants the adventure and invigoration of a mountain tramp brush up his French, take one of the Bordeaux line of steamers from New York, excellent Clydebuilt ships, and in twelve days at most he can be in the heart of the Pyrenees, at Eaux Bonnes or Luz, with small expense, in the midst of scenery rivaling that of Switzerland, with bracing air, comfortable inns, and unhackneyed people and customs.

Daniel Merriman.

THE WORKS OF ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D. With a Biographical Sketch. New and Complete Edition. Boston: American Unitarian Association. 1883. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS OF ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D. Edited by his daughter, MARY E. DEWEY. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1884.

We join together in this notice two works, independent of each other, and yet closely related. The first is a selection from the writings of Dr. Orville Dewey, making a volume of more than eight hundred pages. The other is a smaller volume, containing an Autobiography, covering, in a rapid way, nearly the whole of Dr. Dewey's long life, which is still more fully illustrated by his letters, and by notes and connecting passages from the pen of his daughter, Miss Mary E. Dewey.

Dr. Dewey was born in a farm-house in the pleasant town of Sheffield, among the Berkshire Hills, March 28, 1794, and died in the same town, March 21, 1882. Seven days more would have brought him to his eighty-eighth birthday. He serves thus as a fresh illustration of the fact that a half-way invalidism through a large part of one's years is not at all inconsistent with a very long life. In the early part of his Autobiography he gives facts and incidents showing a coarser and rougher style of life and manners, during his boyhood, in the country towns of New England, than now prevails. There are many men yet living who will confirm the truth of his statements on this point.

The childhood and youth of Dr. Dewey were passed under the minis

try of Dr. Ephraim Judson, who went from Taunton to Sheffield in 1789, and continued there in the ministry until his death, in 1813, at the age of seventy-six. Dr. Judson was a prominent man in the Congregational ministry, and a part of his business was to take theological students into his family and instruct them in divinity. Dr. Dewey's recollections of him as the minister of his childhood and youth were not pleasant, though he gives him credit for a kindly heart under a rough exterior.

His daughter, in her brief introduction to the Autobiography, says that her father was "heavily handicapped in his earlier running by both poverty and Calvinism." We venture, however, to think that "poverty," such as he had, which was not severe, and "Calvinism," were both ministers of strength to him rather than of weakness. The Unitarian divines of the early part of the present century, such as Dr. William E. Channing, Dr. Joseph S. Buckminster, Dr. John T. Kirkland, Dr. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, Dr. Joseph Tuckerman, Dr. James Walker, Dr. John G. Palfrey, Dr. Francis W. P. Greenwood, Jared Sparks, LL. D., the subject of this present sketch, and others, passed their days of childhood and youth during the old New England régime. They grew up under the Congregational ministry of the former days, and the Calvinistic elements operating about them were doubtless of varying degrees of intensity. But we have never discovered that the men so reared, for intellectual strength, for scholarly habits, and for sweetness of disposition, were not fully equal to those who were started on their way since the sun of religious liberty is supposed to have risen. Whatever the defects of Calvinism may be, or may have been, it cannot be charged that it has not, on both continents, from generation to generation, reared men, in large numbers, of great compass and strength.

The following is a brief outline of Dr. Dewey's life. After his education in the district schools of Sheffield, his labor on the farm, and his preparation for college, he entered Williams College, Sophomore class, in 1811, and was graduated in 1814. He was the first scholar in his class, notwithstanding a trouble in his eyes, for a long period of his course, made him dependent on the eyes of some one else. In Williams College he was converted in the thorough old-fashioned way. He entered heartily into the religious life of the college, and gave up his idea of the profession of law for that of the ministry. After a year in teaching and a year in business in New York, in 1816 he entered Andover Theological Seminary, and was graduated in 1819. Then, for a few months, he was employed as an agent of the American Education Society. In 1820 he preached without settlement for a year in the old Congregational church in Gloucester. Then for two years he became the assistant of Dr. Channing, in Boston. In December, 1823, he was ordained, and set over the Unitarian church of New Bedford, Dr. Joseph Tuckerman preaching the ordination sermon. Here he continued, with some interruptions from ill-health and foreign travel, till 1834, when he retired to his native Sheffield for rest and recuperation. In 1835 he was settled over the Second Congregational Church in New York, now known as the Church of the Messiah, Dr. James Walker preaching the installation sermon. In New York he had among his parishioners Peter Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. He remained here until 1849, when he retired again to his old home in Sheffield, broken in health and seeking rest.

In this retirement, he was invited by Mr. John A. Lowell to prepare a course of lectures to be given before the Lowell Institute, which he did.

They bore the general title of "Lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny." These lectures were afterwards delivered in many of our large cities, and were repeated, by request of Mr. Lowell, before the Institute. He also prepared another course for the Institute under the title "Education of the Human Race." These were also given in other places. From this time on to the close of his life his home was mainly at Sheffield, though he lived for short periods at Washington, D. C., where the office of Chaplain in the Navy was given him, at Charleston, S. C., and at Boston. In the latter place he filled, for a time, the pulpit of the South Green Church, Dr. Young's. He gave his dwelling at Sheffield the name of St. David's, in token of his Welsh ancestry and in honor of the patron saint of Wales. In his Autobiography, he tells of a discovery he made while traveling in Wales: "I found that our name had an origin of unsuspected dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, which is shortened and changed in the speech of the common people into Dewi." The volume of Dr. Dewey's works, published last year by the American Unitarian Association, to which reference has been made, is a gathering together in one of volumes before published under the personal supervision of the author. The first publication was in 1846, the second in 1864, and the last in 1876. The history of the present volume is briefly stated in the preface, as follows: Very early after the death of Dr. Dewey many requests came, both from this country and from England, that the American Unitarian Association should publish a dollar edition of his works, uniform with a like edition of Dr. Channing's works. We ought especially to mention an official letter received from the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. It seemed desirable, both on account of the great and permanent value and interest of the works themselves, and also from the position and influence which Dr. Dewey had acquired and maintained in our body during a long and useful life, that these requests should be complied with."

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The reader, opening this volume, and taking the most cursory glance at its contents, would be apt to conclude that its author was, by nature and habit, a thinker. The slightest survey of the topics treated would suggest that no other than a man of a thoughtful and philosophical turn of mind would be the author of such a book. And if, on closer examination, the reader should find himself not always agreeing with the writer, it would not change his conviction that he was holding converse with a man of right earnest and solid thought.

The estimate put upon his writings by his Unitarian brethren may be gathered from one or two sentences in the preface: "With the possible exception of Dr. Channing, no person occupied a more prominent position in the early annals of American Unitarianism than Dr. Dewey. As a preacher of practical truth to tried and tempted men and women, he had an almost unique power."

As a Unitarian thinker and preacher, Dr. Dewey kept himself far nearer to the old body of New England faith and doctrine than have many of his brethren of the later years. In his "Discourses upon Questions in Controversial Theology and Practical Religion," he defines the Unitarian belief thus:

I. "We say, in the first place, that we believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost,' claiming, at the same time, that this does not mean or imply the doctrine of the Trinity.

II. "We believe in the atonement. That is to say, we believe in what that word and similar words mean in the New Testament. .. We believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins,' that he 'died the just for the unjust,' that 'he gave his life a ransom for many,' that he is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,' that we have redemption through his blood.'

III. "In the third place, then, we say that we believe in human depravity; and a very serious and saddening belief it is, too, that we hold on this point. We believe in the very great depravity of mankind, in the exceeding depravation of human nature.

IV. "From this depraved condition, we believe, in the fourth place, that men are to be recovered by a process which is termed in the Scriptures regeneration. We believe in regeneration, or the new birth.'

V. “We believe, too, in the fifth place, in the doctrine of election. That is to say, again, we believe in what the Scriptures, as we understand them, mean by that word.

VI. "In the sixth place, we believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. We believe that sin must ever produce misery, and holiness must ever produce happiness.

VII. "Once more, and finally, we believe in the supreme and all-absorbing importance of religion."

These heads of discourse are carefully guarded, but, after all the qualifications are annexed, they show an order and style of doctrinal thought not common, we think, in the Unitarian pulpits of the present day. He was naturally conservative. His daughter says of him, "His clinging to the miraculous element in the life of Jesus, while refusing to base any positive authority upon it, is equally characteristic of him, arising from the caution, at once reverent and intellectual, which made him extremely slow to remove any belief, consecrated by time and affection, till it was proved false and dangerous."

Dr. Dewey's "Autobiography and Letters" reveal wit, playfulness, good humor, love of anecdote, merriment even, to a degree hardly to be expected from the grave and serious character of his ordinary writings. This habit of mind he might very naturally have copied from those supposed gloomy divines of the earlier New England generations. In his Autobiography he relates a story touching Dr. Joseph Bellamy, of Bethlehem, Conn., which we do not remember to have before seen, and with this we will close this notice. Dr. Dewey was apologizing for an uncle of his, who used to say rough things of and to ministers, but who was, nevertheless, a tender husband and father. "It reminds me," said Dr. Dewey, "of an anecdote related of old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days 'a great opposer,' it was expected that the doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. Well,' said Bellamy, Mr. rough, passionate, swearing man, I am sorry to say it; but I do believe,' he said. hardly repressing the tears that started, that there is more of the milk of human kindness in his heart than in all my parish put together.'"

is a

This anecdote may serve a double purpose: that of showing the kindly and generous impulses of Dr. Bellamy, and at the same time showing Dr. Dewey's readiness to report favorably of one of those old Calvinistic divines with whom he had parted company.

Increase N. Tarbox.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNKNOWABLE, as expounded by HERBERT SPENCER. BY WILLIAM M. LACY. Philadelphia: Benjamin F. Lacy, 121 South Seventh Street. 8vo, pp. 235. 1883.

Mr. Lacy states the doctrine of "the Unknowable" to be that "all without the sphere of consciousness is, in respect of its nature, that is, the sum of its attributes minus its existence, absolutely unknowable." He first proceeds to test the possibility of establishing unknowableness as such; from this point of departure to examine the inductive argument as applied to the explanation of the origin of the universe and of causation; also (as applied) to our ideas of space, time, matter, motion, and force. Following the critique in regard to these, he raises the question as to the validity of self-knowledge, and the nature of consciousness and of mental substance, and the competency of a merely "transfigured realism" as confronted by the problems of realism. These inductive investigations are supplemented by deductive inquiry into the capacity of the mental process of comprehension to reach the real as well as the phenomenal ; whether the unconditioned is strictly unthinkable, and what the nature of “unknowable" existence; what the true idea of "life,” and whether thought actually transcends consciousness. These discussions, inductive and deductive, are succeeded by a chapter on the reconciliation of science and religion, which completes the work.

As to Mr. Spencer's claim that "the Unknowable" has "existence," but is unconditioned, it is argued in reply that knowledge is involved in the assertion of existence in distinction from non-existence; and that to declare 66 the Unknowable" unconditioned involves in regard to it even a higher degree of intelligence. To the farther claims that this "Unknowable" is absolute, first cause, infinite, actual, and real, as distinguished from the relative, the finite, the apparent, and phenomenal, Mr. Lacy insists that "this is an amount of information we do not possess concerning many things that are called knowable." Similar implications of knowledge he exposes in Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" and in his declaration that every phenomenon is manifestation of some power incomprehensible, such manifestation involving a recognized capacity, and, as well, an actual causing; indeed, to no part of what is unknown can we bring proof that it will never be known.

The assertion that we can have no knowledge of time as a reality, for the reason that infinite time is absolutely incomprehensible, is met thus: "The infinity of time is not conceived, as it is not discovered, by traversing time exhaustively. By conception of the nature, not the quantity, of time is its infinity discovered and represented." To similar objection that the "first cause isillusive" recurs answer that it were better to call it the Eternal Cause; for eternity, not beginning, is its distinguishing attribute. If causation pure and simple is unthinkable, causation by the "Unknowable" must be preeminently so. Of like tenor is his rejoinder to the claim that matter, by reason of the enigma of indivisibility, is rendered inconceivable. It is this: "To conceive the infinite divisibility of matter is but to realize that matter and indivisibility cannot exist together as substance and attribute." The argument against the recognition of motion (which reminds irresistibly of the puzzle of Zeno of Elea) is met by indicating the illicit logic of rejecting motion "because nothing fixed can be pointed out."