[21] "_Volume Third The Swedenborg Library._" Edited by B. F. BARRETT. Freedom, Rationality, and Catholicity. From the Writings of Emanuel Swendenborg. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
A book the author of which publishes his own portrait as a frontispiece is opened with prejudice by most sensible men, we believe, and phrenology is not regarded with great favor by the majority of such readers. But here is a book which is able to stand up against both these prejudices.[22] Whatever we may think of phrenology, we cannot withhold our hearty approval of the methods of teaching which are recommended by Mr. Sizer. He would have the teacher study his pupil, watch the action of his mind, detect his propensities, and then direct his efforts accordingly. The author does not content himself with generalities; he goes into particulars; he indicates temperaments, describes mental traits and modes of action, and gives good counsel as to their direction. His views of training include the moral as well as the mental side of the pupil, and also his physical nature. Children trained according to the system here recommended and set forth would have the most made of them that their organizations permit. We commend the book to all teachers and parents. It will interest them, and if they study it and follow its counsels, it will profit their children. As to the phrenology of it, they may let that go. Like the allegory of "The Faerie Queene," it won't bite them.
[22] "_How to Teach according to Temperament and Mental Development_; or, Phrenology in the School Room and the Family." By NELSON SIZER. 16mo, pp. 331. New York: Wells & Co.
In poetry we have before us this month only a sacred tragedy, the writer of which we fear has been misled into verse-writing by an ambition to justify his parents' choice of a name.[23] The incidents of his tragedy are of course derived from the Old Testament, and in every case in which they are in any way modified it is for the worse. His poetry reminds us of that dreary stuff that was written before the appearance of Marlowe and the other Elizabethan dramatists. We wonder that the writer undertook a subject which had been so ably handled by others before him, and particularly by Charles Heavysege, to whose vigorous and highly picturesque dramatic poem[24] we direct the attention of our poetry-loving readers.