than most of his other works. It exhausts its subject, and most thoroughly investigates the doctrines of the English law of evidence. The leading principle which it establishes is, that objections may be made to the credibility of witnesses, but that none should be admitted to their competence. The manuscripts of Mr. Bentham were generally in a state requiring great trouble and labour to render them fit for the press. He often wrote upon the same branch of a subject at different times, adding to and repeating what he had before written. In order, therefore, to bring together all his remarks upon the same subject, much discrimination was required. The temptation to neglect the words of the author, under such circumstances, is necessarily great, and that some of his writings should be published with less attention to them than those above mentioned, can excite no surprise. He ordered, by his will, that his manuscripts should be published by his executors, and left a considerable sum of money for the purpose. One posthumous publication has already shown the difficulty that attends the fulfilment of his directions.

The chief merits of Bentham have been thus stated by Mr. Mill in the Appendix to Mr. E. L. Bulwer's work, entitled England and the English, in the following words:" Mr. Bentham, unlike Bacon, did not merely prophesy a science; he made large strides towards the creation of one. He was the first who conceived, with anything approaching to precision, the idea of a Code, or complete body of law; and the distinctive characters of its essential parts,--the Civil Law, the Penal Law, and the Law of Procedure. On the first of these three departments, he rendered valuable service; the third, he actually created. Conformably to the habits of his mind, he set about investigating, ab initio, a philosophy, or science, for each of the three branches. He did, with the re

ceived principles of each, what a good code would do with the laws themselves; extirpating the bad; substituting others; re-enacting the good, but in so much clearer and more methodical a form, that those who were most familiar with them before scarcely recognised them as the same. Even upon old truths, when they pass through his hands, he leaves so many of his marks, that often he almost seems to claim the discovery of what he only systematised.

"In erecting the philosophy of the civil law, he proceeded not much beyond establishing upon its proper basis some of its most general principles, and cursorily discussing some of the most interesting of its details. Nearly the whole of what he has published upon this branch of the law is contained in the Traités de Législation, edited by M. Dumont. To the most difficult part, and that which needed a master-hand to clear away its difficulties, the nomenclature and arrangement of the civil code, he contributed little, except detailed observations and criticisms upon the errors of his predecessors. The "Vue Générale d'un corps complet de Législation,' included in the work just cited, contains almost all that he has given to us upon this subject. In the department of the penal law, he is the author of the best attempt yet made towards a philosophical classification of offences. The theory of punishments (for which, however, more had been done by his predecessors than for any other part of the science of law) he left nearly complete. The theory of procedure (including that of the constitution of the courts of justice) he found in a more utterly barbarous state than even either of the other branches; and he left it incomparably the most perfect. There is scarcely a question of practical importance in the most important department which he has not settled. He has left next to nothing for his successors.'

His work on Judicial Establishments is one of the best and the most important of those he published; and it will afford the great tests that must hereafter be applied to ascertain the progress of principles which he first expounded. His labours were so much a series of attacks upon the faults of existing institutions, accompanied at the same time with the specific reforms that should follow their correction, and related to matters generally so far removed from the studies of the great body of readers, that they could not be expected to obtain, for many years, that popularity for their writer which he deserved. It is, however, not difficult already to trace the progress of opinions which he was the first to advance, and we may already observe changes suggested and adopted by the legislature, which he many years since proposed. The same reasons which have secured to Bacon a reputation upon questions of physical science, which his contemporaries refused to award to him, will, in legislative science, secure a similar reputation to Bentham. The talents of the latter will appear not less important than those of the former, when their effects shall, in the progress of time, be traced upon the opinions and the institutions of the people of this and of other countries.

GEORGE LEOPOLD CHRISTIAN FREDERIC DAGOBERT CUVIER was born August 23, 1769, at Montbeliard, a small town in Alsace, which then formed part of the territory of the Duke of Wurtemberg. His father was a retired officer, living upon his pension, who had formerly held a commission in a Swiss regiment in the service of France. He had the inestimable advantage of possessing a very sensible mother, who even in infancy attended with sedulous care to the formation of his character, and the development of his mind. He gave early indications that Nature had endowed him with her choicest intellectual gifts. A memory of extraordinary strength, joined to industry, and to the power of fixing his attention steadily upon whatever he was engaged in, enabled him to master all the ordinary studies of youth with facility; and by the

time he was fourteen years of age he had acquired a fair knowledge of the ancient, and of several modern languages, and had made considerable progress in the mathematics, besides having stored his mind by a wide range of historical reading. He very early gave proofs of a talent for drawing, which in after-life proved of material service in his researches into natural history. When he was twelve years old he read the works of Buffon with avidity, and he no doubt received from the writings of that accomplished and elegant historian of nature an early bias towards the study of zoology. While he was at school he instituted a little academy of sciences among his companions, of which he was elected the president: his sleepingroom was their hall of meeting, and the bottom of his bed the president's chair. They read extracts from books of history, travels, and natural philosophy, which they discussed; and the debate was usually followed by an opinion on the merits of the question, pronounced from the chair.

In 1783 the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg visited Montbeliard, and became acquainted with the unusual attainments of young Cuvier, who had then reached the fourteenth year of his age. Struck by the early promise of future eminence, he offered to take him under his own protection. The proposal was readily accepted, and the future philosopher went to Stutgard to prosecute his studies in the university of that place. He continued there four years, and did not fail to turn to good account the excellent opportunities which were afforded to him, of laying the foundation of that extensive acquaintance with every great department of human knowledge, for which he was in after-life so eminently distinguished. The universality of his genius was as remarkable as the depth and accuracy of his learning in that particular field of science, with which his name is more especially asso