The Complete Concordance to Shakspere; being a Verbal Index the Passages in the Dramatic Works of the Poet. By Mrs. CoWDEN CLARKE. London: Charles Knight. 1847.

THE name of the lady authoress that heads this notice is familiar to many readers, while we also recognise that of her husband, Charles Cowden Clarke, as the gentleman who gave us, some years ago, the elegant edition of "Chaucer Modernized."

The authoress observes in her preface that "Shaksperethe most frequently quoted, because the most universal-minded genius that ever lived of all authors-best deserves a complete concordance to his works." Sixteen years' assiduous labours have been devoted to this task, which, while it was evidently a labour of love," as the lady expresses it, was also intended to make up for the defects of former writers, particularly her predecessors, Twiss and Ayscough; and we have it before us in a printed state, and, truly, to contemplate it, we cannot but congratulate Mrs. Clarke upon its completion.

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Mrs. Clarke's own words best explain to the reader the most striking and useful qualities of the work. "To what subject (she asks) may we not with felicity apply a motto from this greatest of poets? The divine-commending the efficacy and force of prayer-'to be forestalled, ere we come to fall; or, pardoned, being down:' the astronomer, supporting his theory by allusions to the 'moist star, upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,""&c. &c.

Shakspere! What a great, what a magical name-almost as potent as ever was his own noble Prospero. How wondrous must his young life have been by the Avon-what communings must this young prophet have held with nature in solitude and in silence, while this said nature became to him a sublime goddess at whose feet he sat with upturned face, his earnest soul looking out of his radiant eyes, listening in love and wonder to the mysteries that were unfolded to him! What must that early life have been to him, so full of grandeur, as yet shrouded in gloom-chaos struggling to merge into creation and form-while he sauntered heedlessly in noon and twilight on those pleasant slopes! Within the narrow circumference of his life then, he created for himself a new world full of the sublime and the beautiful; and, from the depth of his struggling soul, where, as if wrestling wrathfully to find voice, there came forth those stormy groanings which at last had sonorors utterances, changed into wild Memnonian melodies that swelled upward, and sang forth, out of his deep human heart-some grand and august, as Coriolanus and Julius

Cæsar others terrible, as the anguish of Lear or the tremendous throes of Macbeth-others, again, as gentle as the dying moans of Ophelia or the broken sobbings of Cordelia ! And this man, as has been finely said, was "not for an age, but for all time." About him was no individuality-no style, no egotism, no prestige-nothing that you could call peculiar or marked was to define this peculiarity: he was a human being of a great cast of mind, with an ubiquitous power and capability that encountered every obstacle, overleaped every opposition, and crushed every difficulty into dust, before him. He spoke no new truths; but he was the voice of a truth indivisible, unalterable, eternal! He created nothing, so to speak; but he used the old matter that he found already existing, and it became plastic under his skilful hand. He invested men with attributes that startled the world by their aptitude, their reality, and their grandeur; he made the old truths speak out like new-old doctrines, old manners, old customs, which had grown despised and thread-bare, because men gave them no heed-rather affected to despise themthese he made to speak out in other mode, so that unbelief changed into belief, and men imagined at first that they saw some fragments of a diviner utopia floating around the space:. like the harmless atoms of Democritus, he made men think, and then they drew their own inference, which pointed to all that was good, great, noble, and worthy of man.

It is with pleasure that we hail all books that have any relation with Shakspere-be they even so weak as to become pitiable, which, after all, is not often the case; but what can we say when a lady, whose literary abilities are so well known as those of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, appears before us? It is very true that the literary-that is the asthetic-merits of a concordance can necessarily not be great; and this is neither designed nor expected: it is the gigantic labour and the patient endurance-the perseverance and correctness-that astonish us: the skill and aptitude with which, upon examining here and there, we discover in this really immense undertaking, the value of which can only be appreciated by its use, and that use will soon be acknowledged by both student and critic.

Of its beautiful typography, as it has appeared in serial parts, the public, to some extent, may already be the judges. We have only to recommend it most warmly to all the admirers of the great poet, and to hope that the expense incidental on the production of such a work may be returned with multiplied amplitude.

The Prize-The Hospital-The Singing Lessons-The Elder Children-A Village Story-The Friends. London: Mozley. THESE are reprints from the "Magazine for the Young;" and we take too deep an interest in whatever is printed for the amusement and instruction of children not to read these little books, trifles though they are, with much earnest attention. Our critical duties enforce upon us all subjects, and the last we would neglect or lightly esteem are the tales now so plentifully provided by the press for very young children. We can report very favourably of the tales whose titles we have quoted. They are highly interesting and very pleasing tales of village life, told in very good and simple language, and have each a moral which the young mind can easily comprehend.

The "Prize" is a sweet little tale, of which the characters may be seen in every well-conducted village school in the kingdom. "Maurice Favell, or the Singing Lessons," is but the experience of half the present race of curates and vicars in the kingdom. "The Primrose, or the Elder Sisters," fully explains why some village girls turn out so well in life, and others, with the same advantages, so ill. "Phœbe, or the Hospital," is a tale of great interest, and we could scarcely love the child who, while reading it, did not shed a tear over it. "The Village Story" and "The Friends" are for well-grown girls rather than babes; and the first is a thrilling story, which keeps the attention alive throughout, and is exceedingly well told from beginning to end. "The Friends" is tame in comparison; but we can strongly recommend those we have named as excellent and useful little works for home perusal or parochial distribution, and should certainly read with a favourable bias others from the same publishers.

A Concise History of the Hampden Controversy. By the Rev. HENRY CHRISTMAS, M.A., F.R.S., S.A. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1848.

WITHOUT pretending to enter into this quæstio vexata, which has already been discussed usque ad nauseam, we may venture to recommend this publication chiefly on account of its embodying, in extenso, most of the documents and letters which are scattered through the columns of the daily press, and which, in their collected form, constitute a sort of "handbook" on the subject. Mr. Christmas is a partizan, but not a violent one; and, on the whole, as far as his own opinions are concerned, he has acquitted himself of his task with as much impartiality as could be reasonably expected in a controversy of such a nature.

Bamfield on the Organization of Industry: a Course_of Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, in Easter Term, 1844. Longman and Co. London.

THE writings of Malthus, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Maculloch, Say, Louis Blanc, and others, have originated in this day a number of new and original thinkers, who, leaving the track of the more theoretic writers, venture boldly into calculations upon the practical part of political and social economy; and truly at this, perhaps, there is more real necessity for clever and lucid works on the subject than we seem to have actually required for many years past.

The continental economists, in the instances of St. Simon, Fourier, and lastly Louis Blanc (as some of our own also), have given to their political theories a mischievous impulse, by means of fine and fervid writings which can be no defence for sophistry, and which must not be allowed to clothe the real doctrines of which they have become propagandists; and it is with no less satisfaction than pleasure that we witness books, like the present, coming from clear and calm-sighted men, who, having studied the important question, come forward and point out where such theories are wrong or deficient.

The date of these lectures is also not so far back but that they may be applicable to the present crisis. As a kind of text from which he argues, his second proposition is, “M. Hermann's adoption of the relations that grow up between man and man is a portion of the wealth and capital both of individuals and of nations," by which he recognises "the economical value of the family and of the national ties."

In this repudiation of the doctrines which equalize all grades of labour and which seeks to lower intellectual superioritywhich strikes at emulation-that source of new inventions and the spur and incentive to undertakings which have made England's merchants and manufacturers of kin to the princely mercantile establishments of Tyre and Sidon-we see that wise conservation which keeps back the audacious innovations of those who, having nothing to lose, wish to gain at the cost of others. It is always well to apply intelligence against that ambition which is based upon an unprincipled desire to drag down to their own level rather than seek to elevate by proper means and by right subjection-thus striking at the root of order, and substituting a flimsy organization of labour which shackles both master and workman: also disorganizing the existing state of things, which to some extent may be bad, but is easier made worse than bettered.

Speaking of association, in objection to Fourier and Owen, he states that" the aim of association is to obtain and secure

individual liberty. Thus associations stand, in some measure, in the same relation to freedom that capital does to income "-that is to say, that the one, by a spontaneous consequence and of necessity, produces the other-an ingenious but also a palpable deduction. He proceeds-"Association is but a means wherewith to attain the end-individual freedom of action and enjoyment."

While wealth and capital fluctuate in unrestricted liberty, like the great tidal waves, all portions of the land and its communities are benefited. Where could the advantage be to any distant district, if the wealth there produced and elaborated never came to them in the shape of new speculations and bolder undertakings-if the capital requisite for it was invested in one sole head-if it never flowed, like another Pactolus, across the country, from north to south and from east to west? It is the freedom of competitive enterprize which, all of a sudden, raises up the population of a suburb, or of a village or rural district, from its still and sordid poverty, into a new life, when factories raise their heads. Workshops, machinery, and all the busy"hum of labour" waken the people from their depression. In a few months' time you see a busy air hath overspread all and each, from the cotter to the shopkeeper-men become important and valuable-and the raw material which slumbered in the mine, or which whitened the plantations of America, as well as the uncultured intelligence, become in both instances literally manufactured. The rise of a small unnoticed district into a "working" importance is a thing of the deepest interest to consider. The politician recognize its existence; and what was only a mere figure in the census is then raised into importance. The factory (of any kind) is built-the church is founded-the school is established, and the electric touch of capital, unrestricted in its operation, gives life to these dry bones, adding another point d'appui to the industrial resources of the country.

The work is written with perspicuity and force-the logical acumen is clearly visible-and that he possesses an accurate knowledge of his subject is guaranteed, not only by the fact of these lectures being delivered to so learned a body with the concurrence of the Professor of Political Economy of the University and the Vice-Chancellor, but also by a long residence in central Europe, where the workings of our political economy at home can be observed, and its consequences, there, more minutely followed. We confidently commend this work, therefore, to the attention of all who are interested in these important questions of the day, and they are all.