Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, August 1849Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, August 1849
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
The author of this valuable Manual is Professor of Physical Geography
and History in the same institution to which Agassiz is attached, and
originally delivered the present lectures in French to an audience in
Boston. They have been elegantly translated by Professor Felton, of
Harvard University, and are very warmly recommended by the New England
Savans for their union of profundity and simplicity. The subject is one
of the most important in the whole range of science, and is one in which
all can take an interest, and all obtain information, as popularized by
Professor Guyot. Agassiz says of the book and its author: “Having been
his friend from childhood, as a fellow student in college, and as
colleague in the same university, I may be permitted to express my high
sense of the value of his attainments. Mr. Guyot has not only been in
the best school, that of Ritter and Humboldt, and become familiar with
the present state of the science of our earth, but he has himself in
many instances drawn new conclusions from the facts now ascertained, and
presented most of them in a new point of view. Several of the most
brilliant generalizations developed in his lectures, are his; and if
more extensively circulated, will not only render the study of geography
more attractive, but actually show it in its true light, namely, as the
science of the relations which exist between nature and man, throughout
history.”
* * * * *
_The Life of Maximilien Robespierre. With Extracts from his
Unpublished Correspondence. By G. H. Lewes. Phila.: Casey &
Hart. 1 vol. 12mo._
The author of this biography is but little known in this country, and
has hardly received his deserts from the critics on either side of the
water. He is a clear, close, vigorous thinker, an accomplished scholar,
and a nervous, condensed and brilliant, though slightly aphoristic
writer. Though his ideas and style occasionally betray the influence of
Carlyle, and though his English nature has been a little modified by an
infusion of French metaphysics, he generally appears as an independent
as well as a forcible thinker. In the present volume, though he appears
largely indebted to the works of Lamartine, Michelet, and Louis Blanc,
he has still produced a book original in the main, and has been
especially happy in steering a middle course between those writers who
have represented Robespierre as a monstrosity of malignity and cruelty,
and those who have tried hard to make him appear a persecuted and
virtuous patriot, whose most questionable acts sprung from exalted
motives. The reader closes the book with the feeling that he has gained
a better insight into the character of the immortally infamous
revolutionary leader than he had before. The letters of Robespierre,
which the author obtained in MS. from Louis Blanc, and the extracts from
his speeches in the Convention, add much to the interest and value of
the volume.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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