and that he is an indefatigable worker. A sermon or so may have met our critical eyes, bearing his name on its title, but in philosophy he has his name and fame to make. If it be true, as has been reported, that Mr. Flint has been promoted over the heads of several candidates who have a place in philosophical literature-e. g., Dr. W. L. Alexander, Dr. J.D. Morell, &c., we cannot but wonder at the occult wisdom of the electors who discovered his peculiar fitness. It is our duty, however, to say that though the "Introductory Lecture" which we are noticing does not bear any traces of scholarly research, or any signs of felicitous exposition, the author has marked out a course for himself which is hopeful and well planned. We think if the work he has laid out for himself be well done, he will justify his election, even in the face of candidates of renown. We quote his projected outline: "Moral philosophy I must understand in its widest sense, excluding from its consideration no moral phenomena whatsoever. I define it accordingly as the Philosophy of Man's Moral Nature, Moral Relations, and Moral History. This definition gives us the three great divisions of our science. To construct, in accordance with the strictest requirements of a sound scientific method, a philosophy of the moral nature of man, a philosophy of the moral relations of man, and a philosophy of the moral history of man, that, no less and no more, is the task of the moral philosopher. As comprehending a philosophy of the moral nature of man, moral philosophy is in immediate contact with psychology; as comprehending a philosophy of the moral relations of man, with metaphysics and theology; and as comprehending a philosophy of the moral history of man, with the philosophy of history." The lectures here noticed are fair specimens of academic eloquence, and deserve perusal and preservation by students in science, logic, and morals. Euclid's Elements of Geometry. By ROBERT POTTS, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Longman, Green, and Co. To those who are studying geometry with zeal and earnestness, or who desire to gain a thorough mastery of its principles and method, we commend this book with the utmost confidence. It is in every way a most valuable addition to our educational repertory. Though called "the school edition," to distinguish it from "the university edition," which is larger, handsomer, and dearer, it is most admirably adapted for self-tuition. For the excellence of his works on geometry," the jury of the International Exhibition of 1862 awarded a medal to the author most justly. We are certain that we shall best exhibit the worth and utility of this issue of the universal text-book of geometrical science by a simple statement of the contents of the volume. 66 The preface contains observations on the use, importance, and method of mathematical studies, and on the relations of those sciences to logic. The text-following that of Dr. Simson, of Glasgow-consists of the first six books, and the portions of the eleventh and twelfth read at Cambridge. This text is so printed as to show 66 66 each separate subdivision of the reasoning employed in a separate line, thus disembarrassing the mind of the student of one great demand on his attention, and simplifying the matter to the utmost. The single elements of thought which require to be apprehended and thought as one are clearly and individually presented to the intellect, and their congruity or incongruity can be at once determined. In the notes to the first book, remarks are made "on the definitions," on the postulates," on the axioms," and "on the propositions," which make the whole mystery of geometrical initiation plain. In the latter section especially the logic of geometry receives careful consideration. The "Questions on Book I." supply a most admirable aid to self-educators. To these they can recur again and again as to a tutor's examinations, but with this advantage, that when the conviction of their own ignorance is brought vividly before them they can turn to the book for an explanation, with no other reproach than that of their own conscience. The queries it puts are both testing and exhaustive. He who has found himself able to reply to each needs fear no after examination. To this follows a brief, or rather, let us say, a condensed dissertation "On the Ancient Geometrical Analysis," .full of clearly enunciated and instructive matter. Then there succeeds " Geometrical Exercises [162 in all] on Book I."-practical tests of the student's skill, and stimulants to his inventive and reasoning faculties. Each succeeding Book is followed by notes and exercises, and everywhere, when necessary, dissertations of interest and value are introduced, e. g., the note" on the abbreviations and algebraic symbols employed in geometry" (p. 109); "the Algebraic Exposition of Proportionals" (p. 243, &c.). There is appended to the volume, "Hints on the methods of performing the exercises subjoined to each Book. These exercises have been in a great measure selected from papers set for examinations at many of the colleges and halls of Cambridge University; and an Index furnishes the means of learning the different papers from which the choice has been made. No book on geometry has come within our reach which contains so much sterling matter in the same space and at the same price. We notice that this treatise has been pretty largely drawn on, and in some cases largely copied from, in several recent publications. We think that this itself is a testimonial to the intrinsic merit of the book, though it is a great injustice to the author. There is honest toil of heart, hand, and brain in this edition; there is a sympathy with the student, and there is a clearness of vision regarding the difficulties felt by ordinary minds, which altogether show that Robert Potts is indeed an educational benefactor. We express our decided conviction when we say that we have seen no text-book in geometry so intrinsically valuable. It is the best book, with the best arrangement, and with the best because the most intelligent help, of any we have seen issued on the subject; and no one will regret its purchase, still less its study. Toiling Upward: LESSONS IN LIFE, PROGRESS, AND IMPROVEMENT. SAMUEL DREW, A.M., SHOEMAKER, PREACHER, AND META PHYSICIAN. "DUTIES which demand the vigorous hand of steadfast applica tion" fall to the lot of most men; and to most the honest performance of each day's duties seems task enough. To toil hard for the mere sustenance of animal life and animal function is indeed a bitter fate; and woeful is the condition of a man whom penury dooms to drudgery uncheered by joy or hope. Such lives there are led in this same fair universe, where everything appears sug, gestive of thought and aspiration. All "the fine juices" of human nature are sometimes pressed out of the being of members of the "toiling million." But, thank God, He has made man's spirit so resistant to such bondage, so buoyant even amid adversity's grimmest scenes, that utter hopelessness is rare among men even in their wretchedest condition, and still more rare is passive effortlessness, and "giving way" to fate, fortune, or an unchanged state of mere existence. As a general rule, "hope springs eternal in the human breast;" hope leads to effort; and effort, if it does not bring success, at least excites the energies and keeps alive the stimulant vigour of endeavour, so making life appear worth living for. "Out of the depths" of penury we know that men have risen; from the very jaws of despair men have leaped and fought their way to competence and fame. The stories of all lives are interesting, but a supreme attractiveness belongs to those which exhibit the working and results of the strong will and the endeavour" which fling the fetters of fate from the limbs they bound, and make the very gall of these chains glorious as the evidences of their might and perseverance. No history is so brilliantly bestudded with the records of the self-raised as Britain's. The divine energy, the holy passion of working upwards, of unhalting progress towards something else and other than one was born to, manifests itself in every station in British life. Of course this has most nobly given witness of itself in the classes in which men seemed fixed by fate in meanness, sordidness, and unrelaxing labour, though not in these alone. We hope in the following papers to lay before our readers a variety of instances of toiling upwards, sufficient to act as stimulants to all, and as examples to many. We do not wish, by taking extreme cases, to harrow and distress by mere recitals of sorrow. Our wish is to show the growth, the vigour, and the powe rof true per sonality, the unsubduable might of resolution, and to reiterate the lesson taught to the toiling by their co-mate and exemplar, Ebenezer Elliott, "While round the hearth the woe-nursed virtues move, And all that manliness can ask of love, Remember Hogarth, and abjure despair; Burns o'er the plough sang sweet his wood-notes wild, We take now a common story of a common life-one of less stirring interest than many which we shall afterwards relate, e. g., Speke, Clapperton, and Livingstone; Miller, MacCulloch, and Pillans; Jerrold, Bewick, and Gibson; Brougham, Paxton, and Stephenson; Sturge, Wilks, and Rowland Hill, &c.,-but one which illustrates more forcibly than some others the actual greed for toil which marks some men, and which shows no great elevation above the common platforms of life, an instance rather of progress than elevation, but one which proves the possibility of a passage from penury to competence for the well-deserving. 66 On the 3rd of March, 1765, in a small cottage in the parish of St. Austell, in Cornwall, occupied by poor labouring people, Samuel Drew was born. His daily fare was scant; and his education, which was got at a penny-a-week dame's school, of which the motto was, "It's little enough they pays me, and it's little enough I teaches them," was closed in his eighth year, at which time he was sent to work in a tin mine at three halfpence a day. The need of getting rid of one mouth too many" made his father-his mother had died thus early-glad to get an opening for him as an apprentice to a shoemaker in the neighbouring parish of St. Blazey, when he was little more than ten years old. Here his acquaintance with "short commons continued, and it was very difficult for him to persuade his stomach to feel contentment. To his upbringing little heed was paid, and he was exposed to considerable ill-usage. Misery made him desperate, and he was often in mischief, for which he received severe chastisement. At length his privations became intolerable, and he ran away from his master before his time was out. He got employment for a little from a shoemaker in Liskeard, where his brother Jabez found him out and took him home. When there he resolutely refused to return to starvation and tyranny at St. Blazey. His father, with some difficulty, compounded with his master for the time of his apprenticeship then to run, and he got employment at Millbrook, near Plymouth, as a "turnover," at eight shillings a week, when he was about seventeen years of age. Here he took to cudgel-playing, at which he was an adept, and for which he once won a prize. He was fast falling into vile habits and reckless disregard of the proprieties of life-the energy of a strong mind wasting itself in fruitless efforts to gain outgoing and gratification. Early in 1785 an offer was made to him of a situation which would bring him home again. It was to superintend the business of a person carrying on a small village trade as shoemaker and bookbinder. Jabez, his brother, who died shortly after, stirred in him the desire to recommence his education. He perused greedily the books brought in for binding, and laboured industriously to acquire the art of writing. With the bellows on his knee, as his only available desk, he stubbornly set himself to jot down, by the fireside, his opinions on the authors he had read, even in his vile, spider-leg-like scrawl. By working overtime he managed to get a book or two, often purchasing them at the cost of dinnerless days; and instinctively imitating some of the Indian races, he not unfrequently tightened the leathern string of his hide apron to quiet the murmurs of his unfurnished interior. One book he bought which became a treasure to him, Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding." It moved his whole soul. It gave him new views of the worth of life and learning. It fired his ambition and guided his pathway. He was filled, as it were, with a new purpose, though he knew not what it was. He was groping his way with dim yearnings towards being something other than he was. in fact, like a fledgling feeling the growth of pinions before he had an idea even of the blessed change of flight. Instincts rather than hopes seemed to have prompted him to acquire knowledge and the means of registering it-attainments these far from common then in the humbler walks of life in small towns like St. Austell. He was, Like many young men whose life has been one of toil, little relieved by change, and much embittered by hardship, the burden and the mystery of human existence arose before him as a great enigma, but one which was quite solutionless by man. To harmonize the actual state of things with any overruling power appeared to Samuel Drew an impossibility. Feeling, as he did, the stirrings and strivings of an active intellect, yet finding himself cooped down to lapstone, last, awl, leather, and hammer, for long, toilsome days of twelve and even sixteen hours each for the bare means of living meanly; filled, as he was, with aspirings after a thoughtful career, yet compelled by fate to bodily labour, tense and intense, he found it hard to reconcile the facts of being with any theory which implied a providential superintendence. He was not a disbeliever, but an unbeliever, a sceptic whose balancing of doubt and faith formed part of his training for his life's future. His condition of mind increased his greed for books, and quickened every faculty of thought within him. A mighty thirst excited his soul to know more, that he might comprehend better; but there appeared to him no evidence on earth of God's fatherhood, and he was about to settle himself down in unbelief. At this very time the spark was preparing which was to ignite in his soul the holy flame of faith, and not only change his career, but give him a new interest in life-and beyond it. In 1785, Adam Clarke-a self-taught scholar, whose talents had |