The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-22 00:00:00

by side, eye fixed on eye, with speechless lips and speaking
looks.

"A dreadful inutterable dialogue was passing then be-
tween the eyes of those two brothers. They understood
each other."

The situation is powerfully conceived and most
vigorously depicted. We had intended to say
more of the admirable working out of the
moral, but we forbear rather than betray the
secrets, of what is, at first, an over-complicated,
but eventually a wholly enthralling plot. Over any
minuter analysis of the work, however, than
has been here attempted, we are in no way
whatever disposed to loiter. From the gifted
hand of Owen Meredith, we look for far
nobler and worthier manifestations of a genius
that, to a very great extent, appears in some
sort to be hereditary. While saying this, how-
ever, we would add that the originality marking
may of its loftier attributes is unquestionable.
The hand of Owen Meredith, howbeit, will wield
the pen, we doubt not, more freely and far more
effectively,
.now that by .the completion of these
dreamings in an unwholesome atmosphere—it is
lightened of the perillous weight of this balefully
glittering Ring of Amsis.

A Manual of Popular Physiology. By Henry
Lawson, M.D. One vol. pp. 168. Hardwicke.
When we can say, as we do, that Dr. Lawson's
"Manual of Popular Physiology" is worthy of a
place upon the same shelf on which
Already stand Dr. Andrew Combe's well-known
treatise upon the same subject, Mr. Lewes's
two larger and more philosophic volumes upon a
kindred theme, and that charming little anonymous
book called " The House I Live In," we have
spoken in high praise, indeed, of the work
now under consideration. It is deserving
of this praise, however, if only by reason
of the exceeding simplicity of its general
arrangement. The outlines of the subjects here
t•ketchE d, as those selected for delineation, are well
drawn: but, more than that, they are well filled
in, so to speak, with an easy but buld and delicate
pencilling. What Dr. Lawson has here at-
tempted to do in this book is, as he himself'
tells his reader, nothing more and nothing less than
to explain the Science of Life in untechnical lan-
guage. The text of the work throughout, there-
fore, is singularly familiar, is, we might almost say,
from the first page to the last, purely conversational.
And the descriptions given, in themselves remark-
able for their lncidity, are rendered yet more in-
stantly comprehensible to the unlearned, or, as we
may say, unprofessional student, by a great variety
of cleverly-Executed woodcut illustrations
scattered about the pages among the letter-
press. One habit the author has, unhappily,
dropped into, in common with so many
other 'writers of nowadays—the profuse in-
dulgence here and there of extravagant peri-
phrases, evidently under the mistaken idea that
it has about it some!hing irresistibly humourous.
For example, in this very preface, instead
of saying, in so many plain and compre-
hensible words, " Give a dog a bad name
and hang. him" (he wants, in the passage referred to,
quite incidentally to make some passing allusion to
the old saying) Dr. Lawson insinuates a hint at the
proverb he has, at the moment of writing, in his
mind's eye, he insinuates a delicate hint at it by this
astounding display of circumlocution! "There is
an old and familiar proverb," he says (and so
far so good, but then—listen !) " regarding the stran-
gulation of that number of the canine genus which
has through some mischance been deprived of its fair
reputation." And so forth—the whole of this same,
unhappily but too frequent, twist or trick in writing,
being clearly a mistake the most eggregious on the
part of our otherwise highly meritori As author, the
writer of this "Manual of Popular Physiology."
If Dr. Lawson would but take our hint in good
part, he would carefully eliminate passages of this
faulty kind from any future editions of a work that,
really and truly, to our mind, is deserving of being
very frequently reprinted. He would do this for
certain if he would but take our word—here very
confidently whispered by us in a sort of stage
" aside "—that the fault of style alluded to is to the
last degree tedious and intolerable, instead of being
in any way humorous or emfailiarating.