ust be sought in the doctrines themselves.

Fox was not a _rational_ man: but the success of his sect and doctrines
entitles him to a letter of alteration of the phrase which I am surprised
has not become current. When Conduitt,[815] the husband of Newton's
half-niece, wrote a circular to Newton's friends, just after his death,
inviting them to bear their parts in a proper biography, he said, "As Sir
I. Newton was a _national_ man, I think every one ought to contribute to a
work intended to do him justice." Here is the very phrase which is often
wanted to signify that {398} celebrity which puts its mark, good or bad, on
the national history, in a manner which cannot be asserted of many
notorious or famous historical characters. Thus George Fox and Newton are
both _national_ men. Dr. Roget's[816] _Thesaurus_ gives more than fifty
synonyms--_colleagues_ would be the better word--of "_celebrated_," any one
of which might be applied, either in prose or poetry, to Newton or to his
works, no one of which comes near to the meaning which Conduitt's adjective
immediately suggests.

The truth is, that we are too _monarchical_ to be _national_. We have the
Queen's army, the Queen's navy, the Queen's highway, the Queen's English,
etc.; nothing is national except the _debt_. That this remark is not new is
an addition to its force; it has hardly been repeated since it was first
made. It is some excuse that _nation_ is not vernacular English: the
_country_ is our word, and _country man_ is appropriated.]

Astronomical Aphorisms, or Theory of Nature; founded on the immutable
basis of Meteoric Action. By P. Murphy,[817] Esq. London, 1847, 12mo.

This is by the framer of the Weather Almanac, who appeals to that work as
corroborative of his theory of planetary temperature, years after all the
world knew by experience that this meteorological theory was just as good
as the others.

{399}

The conspiracy of the Bullionists as it affects the present system of
the money laws. By Caleb Quotem. Birmingham, 1847, 8vo. (pp. 16).

This pamphlet is one of a class of which I know very little, in which the
effects of the laws relating to this or that political bone of contention
are imputed to deliberate conspiracy of one class to rob another of what
the one knew ought to belong to the other. The success of such writers in
believing what they have a bias to believe, would, if they knew themselves,
make them think it equa