fellows have got up an opposition club and called it
"The Jolly Oysters." No member is allowed to open his mouth except at
high-tide by the calendar. We have biennial festivals on the evening of
election-day, when the constituency avenges itself in some small measure
on its Representative elect by sending a baker's dozen of orators to
congratulate him.

But I am falling into the very vice I condemn,--like Carlyle, who has
talked a quarter of a century in praise of holding your tongue. And yet
something should be done about it. Even when we get one orator safely
under-ground, there are ten to pronounce his eulogy, and twenty to do it
over again when the meeting is held about the inevitable statue. I go to
listen: we all go: we are under a spell. 'Tis true, I find a casual
refuge in sleep; for Drummond of Hawthornden was wrong when he called
Sleep the child of Silence. Speech begets her as often. But there is no
sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let
there be written on my headstone, with impartial application to these
Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory and to our
equestrian statues,--

_Os sublime_ did it!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita_. Vol. I, Containing,
I. _Opus Tertium_,--II. _Opus Minus_,--III. _Compendium Philosophiae_.
Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's
College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of
the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction
of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and
Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.

Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished
works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great
Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of
publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important
memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but
incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great
value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the
modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.

The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long
since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle
Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real
brightness and distor