the completion of the one, and the support of the other, were embezzled, or applied to other purposes. Every avenue to enterprise was choked by restrictions. The colony languished and decayed. Intemperance and poverty went hand in hand. "A fourth part of the city of New Amsterdam consisted of grog-shops, and houses where nothing could be got but tobacco and beer."

Such are the frank admissions of Mr. O'Callaghan himself. And yet he finds fault with Mr. Bancroft for saying, that "the emigrations from New England engrafted on New Netherland the Puritan idea of popular freedom." To us nothing seems more perfectly demonstrable. on the other hand, claims for the Dutch proprietary system the cherishing of that idea.

Our author,

"It was, then," he says, " to the wise and beneficent modifications of the feudal code which obtained there, and not to the Puritan idea of popular freedom,' introduced by emigrants from Connecticut, as some incorrectly claim, that New Netherland and the several towns within its confines were indebted for whatever municipal privileges they enjoyed. The charters under which they were planted, the immunities which they obtained, were essentially of Dutch and not of Connecticut origin, and those who look to New England as the source of popular privileges in New Netherland fall, therefore, into an error, sanctioned neither by law nor by history. Strange as it may seem, while every colony, and almost every hamlet, had its local magistracy, the citizens of New Amsterdam, the capital of the whole province, continued, greatly to their discontent, without a voice in the management of their municipal affairs. The government of that city still remained in the hands of the Director-general and his council."— p. 393.

In this statement our author may be correct, but we scarcely know how it can be maintained against the evidence furnished by his own work. In the very next paragraph to the one we have quoted, he admits that Kieft was perfectly absolute in his government, and that the only check to which the colonists could look for protection, the right of appeal from the Director's judgment to the court of Holland, was totally cut off by him in 1643. Furthermore, when, in the year 1653, the first popular assemblage that ever took place ventured, under the direction of George Baxter, the man who had been Kieft's English secretary, to ask for some participation in the government, the immediate reply of hon

ors, was,

est Peter Stuyvesant, the last and best of the Dutch govern" Will you set your names to the visionary notions of the New England man?" And he dispersed the meeting at last with the summary declaration, that "he derived his authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects." Surely, this doctrine could not have been safely uttered in a community acknowledging any idea of popular freedom. "Had we been under a king, we could not have been worse treated," murmured the people, when Kieft was exercising unchecked as much absolute power in his degree as ordinarily falls to the lot of any king.

But though we are not able to see the Dutch colony of New Netherland in quite so favorable a light as our author, we very cheerfully accord to him all praise for his industry and zeal in its behalf. Although the outward aspect of the settlement is not promising, owing to the radical defect in its origin, we yet know very well that a great deal of the best of human nature lay quietly under the surface. If the government was indiscreet, or selfish, or vicious, many of the people were quiet and substantial and moral, living in the fear of God and with good-will to man. We hope that Mr. O'Callaghan will continue his labors, and give to the public the remaining and most interesting part of the history, namely, that which embraces the administration of the worthy General Stuyvesant. And if he still find it in his heart to complain of the encroachments of the Puritan race, which ultimately overturned the domination of the Hollander, let him console himself with the reflection, that the colony throve greatly under the infliction. Even at this day, New York will be found to owe a considerable share of its extraordinary prosperity to the spirit of descendants of New England's Pilgrims, who constitute no inconsiderable proportion of the three millions of her population.

ART. VIII. — Explanations:-a Sequel to the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. By the Author of that Work. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 1846. 12mo. Pp. 142.

THE author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, having, in successive editions, explained and more or less modified particular statements, has at length thought proper to publish this little volume, for the purpose of obviating alleged misapprehensions, and of reinforcing the general argument, of endeavouring to make good what is deficient, and reasserting and confirming whatever has been unjustly challenged," in his book. We have read this new volume with attention, and are prepared to offer some remarks upon it.

We must in justice say, that our author preserves an invincible good-temper, equal to his implicit faith. He writes more clearly and soberly than he reasons. Seldom have such extravagant theories been set forth in language so calm and considerate. Seldom has a very winning style been made to cover such a multitude of logical sins. We feel sure that he is thoroughly convinced of the cogency of all his arguments, even where his reasonings are so loose, the special pleading so transparent, and the hypothesis defended so grossly improbable, that we might suspect any other writer of a course of bold experiments upon the credulity of his readers. The author has also made some palpable hits against his various reviewers. His original survey embraced almost all the physical and metaphysical sciences, with none of which does he seem to have more than a general acquaintance; and he thus exposed himself on all sides to hostile attack, with a fearlessness which nothing but an extraordinary confidence in the strength of his position can explain. Some of his reviewers appear to have committed similar faults. Not content with merely repelling the enemy from the ground which they were, from their special knowledge, so well able to defend, they have sometimes, in the eager onslaught, carried the war too far into the enemy's country and from their own; affording our author opportunities which he is quick and skilful in turning to advantage. Yet, however he may thus have rebutted particular

criticisms, he is far from having strengthened his general argument.

To avoid, as far as may be, a similar error, we propose to restrict our observations mainly to a single class of topics. We pass over the nebular hypothesis," not, however, that we at all agree with the writer, who now thinks it unessential as the basis of his entire system of nature, but because it has no necessary connection with the points which we propose to examine. We admit that its overthrow would not refute his theory respecting the origin and development of living things; neither would its establishment lend to the latter any real support. Even if the earth were proved to be made of the most attenuated star-dust, it would be none the more probable that man is "an advanced type" of the monkey race. The two are essential parts of our author's general and thoroughly consistent scheme; but the "nebular theory" and the "transmutation theory" require to be independently established. Although the former must ever remain a gratuitous hypothesis, against which the current of recent astronomical observation is setting strongly, to the manifest annihilation of whatever probability it may once have had, still it may be less open to direct objection than the rest of the book. Nor do we think it so "remarkably illustrated" by the experiments of Professor Plateau, which leave all the real difficulties just where they were before. To show that the world might have been thus made, he still needs an extrinsic agent, the stick or disk with which to stir the nebulous chaos about, and the hand to move it.

But granting that the world is made, we are now concerned only with his plan for peopling it. A formal restatement of his whole theory on the subject is scarcely necessary. Our readers are doubtless familiar with it from the perusal of his original work, and of our former article upon

it.

We cull a few sentences from the new volume, that we may be sure to exhibit his latest and matured views.

"LIFE is everywhere ONE. The inferior animals are only less advanced types of that form of being perfected in ourselves."― pp. 130, 131.

Does our author merely mean to say, in common with all modern physiologists, that the various races of animals are formed according to one type or model, of which the hu

man body may be taken as the highest expression? Is it the ordinary philosophical doctrine of a unity of plan traceable throughout the organic creation, that is here propounded? Or, is it meant that there is no essential difference, except in the degree of development, between a reptile, a monkey, and a man? The following sentences give an unambiguous and explicit answer to these questions.

"I suggest, that a line of organization, analogous to the progress of the embryo of an elevated species, had passed in the course of time through its appointed stages of development, each of which is a small advance upon the preceding, and the type of a form thenceforth to continue permanent." — pp. 67, 68.

The different species of animals are "transmutations," to use his own word, of earlier and simpler species. The land animals, as we shall presently see, are the transmuted progeny of the humbler denizens of the ocean. Are we, then, to infer that the great Author of being has specifically created each higher race of animals out of the next lower? By no means; the idea of specific creation in any form is quite inconceivable to the writer's mind. In his view, every thing points to "some simply natural procedure in the origin of the present tribes.' "The probable fact is, that the modification takes place in an offshoot of the original tribe, which has removed to a different set of circumstances, these circumstances being the cause of the change." In reply to a reviewer who says, "They were created by the hand of God and adapted to the conditions of the period," our author strongly affirms :

"If he here means a special exertion of the powers of the Deity, having a regard to special conditions, we part company, for my object is to show that animals were indebted for their gradations of advance to a law generally impressed by the Deity upon matter, and that their external peculiarities are owing immediately to the agency of those very conditions to which they are supposed [according to the common view] to have been adapted." pp. 94, 95.

And the writer goes on to "contend that there was no more need for a special exertion to produce, for instance, mammalia, than there is for one to carry" on the growth of an individual animal of the class from the embryo and infantile to the adult state. By this we understand, not that the