Volume 53 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY JANUARY 1871 (continued 7)

Christian and eight Englishmen, who remained in the 'Bounty,' went to Pitcairn Island, taking with them some Tahitian women, and founded a colony there. After some dissensions and violence, in which Christian, Edward Young, and others, lost their lives, the colony, under the rule and teaching of John Adams, became singularly peaceful and virtuous. They were not discovered for many years; and were permitted to remain unmolested; one or two adventurers joined them, and the colony remains to this day. It outgrew the small island, however, and a few years since the entire population was transferred, under the auspices of Sir William Dennison, to Norfolk Island; a few of them returned, and were last visited by Sir W. Dilke, who gives an account of them in his 'Greater Britain.'

No wonder that so romantic a narrative, and so picturesque a community, fascinated the muse of Byron, and elicited 'The Island' from his pen.

Lady Belcher has told a plain unvarnished tale, but it is one hardly to be paralleled in the romance of the seas.

European History, narrated in a Series of Historical Selections from the best Authorities. By E. M. Sewell and S. M. Yonge. Macmillan and Co.

This is the second volume of an attempt to render history attractive and popular with young readers, and there is much to be said in its favour. The era of which it treats is from 1088 to 1228. The characters foremost on the scene are Henry II., Frederick Barbarossa, Richard I., Philip Augustus, John, St. Bernard and Abelard, Becket, Longchamp, and Langton. According to the design, we have a set of pictures by hands of very unequal power. Gibbon and Capefigue are side by side with Milman and James, while from Mr. Stubbs's masterly analysis of Henry II.'s character we pass to a portrait of Longchamp by Lord Campbell, and one of Langton by Dean Hook. The result is rather like a mosaic, but of course it could not well be otherwise. The editorial introductions are admirably done; the first, which describes the position and character of our Angevin kings, is a sketch both brilliant and accurate. The chief objection to this method of teaching history is, that writers of historical monographs are too apt to become amorous of their theme, and to indulge in much fine writing in consequence; and this objection specially applies to Mr. Morrison's account of St. Bernard, which is painfully verbose and magniloquent. Undoubtedly the best chapter in the book, and the one that will most severely tax the young student's mental energy, is that which contains Mr. Stubbs's account of Henry II.

On the Trail of the War. By Alexander James Shand, Occasional Correspondent of The Times. Smith, Elder and Co.

This little volume purports to be nothing more than a full and true account of the ordinary incidents in an extraordinary state of things which occur on the trail of the war. To this position the author strictly confines himself, leaving the more stirring events of the front to be described by others. Some of the papers are reprints from The Times, but the greater portion of them are original, and may be supposed to be a veracious account of the progress of the armies as beheld from the rear. The author's departure from London is told with a picturesque dash, which predisposes the reader for the hacking, hewing, and slashing he has subsequently to go through; while the last chapter resumes the situation, as the French say, in a warm outburst of dread, and admiration of the strength of new-born Germany. Mr. Shand evidently sees amid all this ponderous power, the stumbling-block over which she must one day totter and fall. To the paramount passion of nationality from which this gigantic Germany has been created, will likewise be owing her quick decay and sudden dissolution. This feeling makes the wisest of Germans lose his head when speaking of united Germany, and proclaim himself proud to belong to God's chosen people. To this we can only answer from our own personal experience, that if the impatience created by the restless variety and overweening self-laudation of the French, are to be exchanged for the cold pedantry and haughty arrogance of the Prussians, Europe will have made but a sorry bargain. We cannot agree with Mr. Carlyle in his opinion that we may be greatly benefited by this sudden transfer of moral power from light satirical France to heavy overbearing Prussia. We can only pray to be preserved from both.

The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes; with some Account of the Huguenots in the Seventeenth Century. By Mrs. Bray, Author of 'The Good St. Louis and his Times,' 'The White Hoods,' &c. John Murray.

Of all the stirring romances hitherto published by Mrs. Bray, the true history before us is assuredly the most stirring and the most romantic. The single story of Jean Cavalier, the baker's boy of Anduze, contains the elements of a dozen romances. From his first appearance on the stage of history to do his allotted work, to his final sinking into honourable obscurity when his work was done, Jean Cavalier shines out as the true and gallant soldier of the cross, the faithful defender of the right, the constant avenger of the wrong. He was a youth of seventeen, the eldest of three sons of a shepherd of Anduze. 'Altogether,' says Mrs. Bray, 'he was such as we may fancy him to have been, who, armed with the shepherd's sling in the cause of the Lord, overcame the giant Philistine.' None could have thought that such a one could have been chosen to avenge the iniquitous Edict of Nantes, issued by the greatest monarch of Europe, at the instigation of the wisest woman of her day. The boy had been apprenticed to a baker at Anduze, and this circumstance was in itself a fund of amusement at the court of Versailles, where the 'Petit Maître' and the 'Garçon Boulanger' served as whetstones to the wit of the courtiers at the petit lever and grand coucher of the king. But the baker's boy had been endowed by heaven with the strangest and most mysterious of gifts—a military genius untaught, and frank as nature's self—which ere long caused the boldest of the Great Monarch's generals to tremble and turn pale at even the mention of his name. No other account of this extraordinary talent has been given than that during his shepherd life he would love to spend whole hours on the Garden watching the manœuvres of the soldiers, who at that time were stationed in the country in order to force the Protestants into adoption of the Catholic faith. No other lesson in military science had he ever taken, and yet he defeated the boldest troops and ablest generals of the proudest army in the world! The mysterious nature of his mission, reminds one strongly of Joan of Arc. At nineteen years of age he quitted France for ever, leaving behind him the memory of his glory and the grateful affection of the Protestants of the Cevennes, by whom his name is revered and cherished to this very day.

Mrs. Bray has performed her task of biographer of Jean Cavalier in the most satisfactory and conscientious manner, with all the stedfastness of the historian and the enthusiasm of the romance writer. 'The Revolt in the Cevennes' is a charming book, and should be placed in the hands of every Protestant boy and girl throughout the world.

The Correspondence of the Right Honourable William Wickham, from the year 1794. Edited, with Notes, by his Grandson, William Wickham, M.A. Two vols. 8vo. London. 1870.

These volumes are another contribution to the still increasing store of material for the history of the great French Revolution; the first act of that great drama of which another is now being played amid sympathies and antipathies, hopes and fears, perhaps as intense, certainly more widely felt, than those which accompanied the first lifting of the curtain. Now, however, the Revolution and the ancien régime have become accustomed to each other, and know that though it be but as cat and dog, they must awhile lead some sort of life together; and they have modified their reciprocal attitude accordingly. Then each startled by the first apparition of the other, glared at it with the hate, not of prolonged antagonism, but of instant death-grapple. Free England, guided by great and noble-minded men—Pitt, Lord Grenville, and Burke—not only joined in, but led the resistance of the Continental sovereigns, and we have no need to blush for the conduct of our grandsires. Whether, looking from our present coign of vantage, we may judge England's course then wise or imprudent, the evidence afforded by these volumes is enough to show—admitting the hostile prejudice which an established and aristocratic government must needs have against a mushroom democracy—that our statesmen descended to the fray with an honesty of purpose, and an elevated sense of national duty on which we may reflect with grateful and patriotic pride.

Mr. Wickham was twice sent by Lord Grenville as minister to Switzerland; to the comparatively slight duties of which office was added the onerous task of concerting, in correspondence with the Royalists in France, with the Prince of Condé, the Court of Vienna, Marshal Suwarrow, General Pichegru, and many others, the measures to be taken against their common foe—the Directory in Paris. At the time of Mr. Wickham's earlier mission, Bonaparte had not yet risen to power, and if Mr. Wickham could have inspired with his own zeal and prudence the selfish and blind potentates whom he was aiding with English counsel and treasure, the glittering series of Napoleonic phenomena might never have appeared. Mr. Wickham was regarded with the most perfect confidence by his own Government. How dangerous he proved to their foes may be judged from the fact that when at a later period he was named to represent his country at the courts, first of Berlin and then of Vienna, his appointment was objected to because it would be displeasing to the French Government.

By those who are either well acquainted with, or are studying the history of the French Revolution, these volumes will be highly prized, while general readers will find much of great interest in a correspondence which comprises letters from George III., Louis XVIII., the Prince de Condé, and the Duc d'Enghien, the Archduke Charles, Marshal Suwarrow, and many others, besides the despatches and other communications which passed between Mr. Wickham and his chief, Lord Grenville. The present Mr. Wickham has added succinct biographical notes concerning the several correspondents and persons named, some introductory remarks to the several groups of despatches, and a slight sketch of his grandfather's career, written with grace and modest pride. The first volume is embellished with a portrait of the diplomatist; and the second with a very interesting one of the most eccentric of great men—Suwarrow.

Nearly all the letters now published relate to Mr. Wickham's foreign missions. He afterwards served as Secretary for Ireland, and while he held that office Emmet's rebellion occurred. He was also a member of the ministry of 'All the Talents.' If he has left as interesting memorials of his later services as of his earlier ones, we hope that his grandson may at a future time let his present good work be followed by a publication of Mr. Wickham's later correspondence.

Cicero. Select Letters. With English Introductions, Notes, and Appendices. By Albert Watson, M. A. Macmillan and Co. Clarendon Press Series.

The letters of Cicero, on account of the materials they supply for the history of the Roman constitution during its last struggles, the light they throw upon the motives and movements of the partisan leaders, and the insight they afford into the character of Cicero himself, are justly regarded as the most important and instructive of his literary productions. Cicero's correspondence extends over the space of twenty-six years; and of the letters written during this eventful period to a wide circle of literary and political friends and connexions, there are extant upwards of 850, which are undoubtedly genuine. Up to the present time, this portion of Cicero's writings has received but little attention at the hands of English editors. In Germany, excellent editions have been published by Billerbeck, Boot, Frey, Hofman, and Süple; while in England we have only an inferior edition of the letters to Atticus by a Master of Arts, and a selection of 111 letters by E. St. John Parry, intended to illustrate the public life of Cicero, accompanied with notes which are purely historical. The volume before us is also a selection of 148 letters, taken almost exclusively out of the two chief divisions of Cicero's correspondence—the Epistolæ ad Familiares, those ad Diversos, and the Epistolæ ad Atticum—containing together 822 letters. The first letter in this volume is dated July 65 b.c., and the last July 43 b.c. The collection, therefore, covers one of the most momentous periods in Roman history. Mr. Watson, in making the present selection of letters, has been principally guided by considerations of their historical importance, or of their value as illustrating Cicero's character. The collection is divided into parts or groups, each of which is preceded by a lengthy and valuable introduction, furnishing the reader with a digest of the leading public events, and a review of the state of political parties during each period. In this portion of the work, the editor has borrowed largely from the well-known 'History of Rome,' by Professor Mommsen, and from Brückner's 'Life of Cicero.' The works of Zumpt, Drumann, Abeken, and Reen, have also been laid under heavy contributions. In the appendices to those sections, the reader will find discussed with clearness and ability many legal and historical questions, highly important for the right understanding of allusions in the letters—e.g., the legal question at issue between Cæsar and the Senate, the Calendar, the meaning of the terms 'colonia,' 'municipium,' and 'præfectura,' &c. These introductions and appendices add greatly to the value of the volume. The notes are far more numerous, but not so learned and valuable as those of the German editions. Indeed, many are so brief and unimportant that it is difficult to account for their insertion, and seem quite out of place in a work which is evidently not intended for tyros. The only persons qualified to read the letters of Cicero are the highest classes in schools, and students at the Universities, neither of which stand in need of a translation of passages and of words that involve no particular difficulty. The following are taken ad apertram libri:—ὕστερον πρότερον , 'I will answer your last question first;' Ὁμηρικῶς 'after the manner of Homer;' contiones, 'addresses to the populace;' manum, 'crew;' in eo ... erant omnia, 'on that everything depended;' inopiam, 'the neediness;' judicium, 'the trial.' Most of the notes are, in our opinion, too elementary for qualified readers of the correspondence of Cicero. The abundant references to Madvig's Grammar will be found exceedingly useful. On the whole, it is an excellent edition, and cannot be perused without greatly enlarging one's knowledge and deepening one's interest in these unique epistolary writings.

The Life of Richard Deane, Major-General, and General at Sea, in the service of the Commonwealth, and one of the Commissioners of the High Court of Justice appointed for the Trial of King Charles the First. By John Bathurst Deane, M.A., F.S.A., of Pembroke College, Cambridge; Corresponding Member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; Rector of St. Martin Outwich. Longmans, 1870. 8vo.

Another successful attempt to rescue a great historical reputation from the slanders of the scurrilous pamphleteers of the Restoration, and one of which it is no mean praise to say, that it is not unworthy of a place beside Mr. Markham's recently published noble vindications of Fairfax. The 'Goodman Button (a hoyman of Ipswich), his boy' of the 'Mystery of the Good Old Cause,' which would seem to have been the source from whence Bates, Winstanley, Heath, and the author of the 'Lives of the King-killers,' as well as Clarendon, drew their inspiration, turns out to have been the son of a Gloucestershire gentleman, who was connected both by birth and by marriage with such families as the Wickhams, the Hampdens, and the Mildmays; and the 'Hoyman of Ipswich' to have been a captain in the King's service, who was attached to the Royal Dockyard, at Harwich, and was a kinsman of Sir Thomas Button's, a near relative of the St. Johns and the Cromwells. Mr. Deane having been fortunate enough to discover a copy of the elaborate and elegant Latin inscription which was composed for the tablet erected to the memory of his illustrious ancestor in Westminster Abbey, among the additional MSS. in the British Museum, has been directed by it to the entry of his baptism in the register of the parish of Lower Guyting, near Winchcombe. It is as follows: 'Anno Dni. 1610, ye viii daie of Julie, was baptized Richard Deane, ye sonne of Edward Deane.' His mother was a Warre, and his grandmother a Wickham, through whom he was connected with the Hampdens and the Cromwells; and his aunt Joan seems to have married Robert Mildmay, of Terling, the grandson of Sir Thomas Mildmay, one of the auditors of the Court of Augmentation in the reign of Henry VIII., and grand-nephew of Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. We have no knowledge of Deane's career up to the year 1642, beyond the fact of his having served under Captain Button, of Harwich, during some part of that period; nor have we any of his private life at all, except that he married Mary Grimsditch, and that at his death he left two daughters by her, Mary and Hannah, the former of whom died unmarried, and the latter married Goodwin Swift, attorney-general of Tipperary, and uncle to the well-known Dean of St. Patrick's, Jonathan Swift. From the year 1642 to that of his death, however, few names are more frequently mentioned in the annals of his day than that of Richard Deane. He early and heartily espoused the cause of the Parliament in the great civil war, under a conviction that in no other way could the religion and the liberties of the country be saved; and soon proved himself to be 'one of those extraordinary men, produced by revolutionary times, who by the innate force of an energetic character, surmount the difficulties of birth and station, and, rising to authority, seem as if they had been born and educated for it; no one wondering either at their elevation, or at the ease with which they discharge the duties of the highest offices.' His biographer has related his great services to the cause which he espoused with singular impartiality, which renders his work a valuable contribution to the general history of his times. After the trial and execution of the King, in which, as is well known, Deane took a very prominent part, he was appointed, 'in connection with Colonels Edward Popham and Robert Blake, as one of the three generals at sea,' with 'co-ordinate powers.' In 1651, he assumed the chief command in Scotland, where he was the principal means of bringing about the 'eight years' tranquillity' which Bishop Barnet 'so commends and attributes to the (happy) usurpation.' War now breaking out with the Dutch, Deane was hastily summoned to rejoin the fleet. It was in action with the Dutch that he met with his death, June 2, 1653. 'He fell at the moment of victory, sword in hand, in the bow of his ship, as he was waving his sword and encouraging his men to follow him in boarding 'the Dutch Admiral,' Van Tromp. Deane was buried with all honour in the chapel of Henry VII., at Westminster Abbey, on the 24th of February following. 'The corpse,' the authors of the 'Parliamentary History of England' inform us, 'was brought from Greenwich to Westminster Bridge by water, attended by thirty barges in mourning. The procession was saluted in their passage by all the ships in the river, and the Tower guns. In the evening, the body was interred in the Abbey with great pomp; the lord-general and his council, with all the officers of the navy and army then in town, attending the funeral.' After the Restoration, his body, together with those of twenty others of his contemporaries, was removed and re-interred in the adjoining churchyard. The sympathies of his biographer may be inferred from the following comments on this act of Charles II. and his advisers. 'If their bodies had been decently removed from the church to the churchyard, no blame can justly attach to the King for the removal, for he naturally desired to clear his own family vaults of those whom he might undoubtedly regard as intruders. But it is not quite so certain that the removal and re-interment were so decorously conducted as tradition says they were. The present Dean of Westminster, with the laudable desire of ascertaining not only the place, but also the manner of re-burial, caused, in November, 1869, the ground to be opened on the spot supposed to be the grave of the removed, but found no evidence of a decent and careful interment, such as fragments of coffins, and skeletons lying side by side in the order of deposit, but only a confused mass of bones, so mixed together as to suggest an irreverent emptying of coffins into a large common pit. The Dean, and other members of the Chapter who accompanied him, went away, and still remain in the charitable hope that they have failed in discovering the deposit which they sought, but have fallen in with some other not unusual spectacle in crowded churchyards, where the callous sexton of one generation shovels away the coffinless bones of the preceding, to make room for the bodies of his own contemporaries who may have occasion for his services. It is earnestly to be hoped that such was the case here, and that the only indignity to which Richard Deane and Robert Blake were exposed, was the removal of their remains from the burial place of kings to that of ordinary Christians, with no other memorial of their names than that of their deathless renown. Be the case as it may, these facts are certain, they fought on the same deck, died in the same cause, and were buried in the same pit. They had been loving and pleasant in their lives, and in their graves they were not divided.' We congratulate Mr. Deane on the ability, the fairness, and the diligence which he has brought to his praiseworthy undertaking. He has rendered the historical student admirable service.

John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century. By Julia Wedgewood. Macmillan and Co.

The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Founder of the Methodists. By Rev. L. Tyerman. Vols. I. and II. Hodder and Stoughton.

Our literary and ecclesiastical authorities are much occupied at present with the life-work and surroundings of John Wesley, with his relation to the Church of England, and with the probable position that would have been assigned to an ecclesiastical reformer, or revivalist, occupying in the Church of Rome a position analogous to that of John Wesley in the English Church. We do not endorse the big words with which Mr. Tyerman opens up his subject. 'Is it not a truth (he asks) that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ? Methodism has now existed one hundred and thirty years. Is there any other system that has spread itself as widely in an equal period? We doubt it.' Whether the victories of Methodism over other ecclesiastical organizations, or over religious indifferentism, or over the stubborn resistance to God's truth of the barbarian or the idolater, can be paralleled with the past successes of the Apostolic Church or not, and whether numbers or area can now be used as measures of greatness, may be considered open questions, but no ecclesiastical writer pretending to honour truth or candour can hide his eye to the fact of Methodism, or to the vitality it displays at the present moment. We are thankful for this instalment of Mr. Tyerman's valuable work. There is a mine of wealth, a store-house of treasure, in the unimpeachable diary and authentic correspondence contained in this first volume, which will amply repay most careful attention.

Miss Julia Wedgewood, in our opinion, has done very excellent service. She has not attempted to write a memoir of John Wesley or his brother, or a history of Methodism, nor has she kept up a chronological continuity in her fascinating pages, but she has shown us the remarkable figure of Wesley upon a great variety of backgrounds. Methodism at Oxford, with its first obstacles in the painfully exacting conscience and scrupulosity of Wesley himself, becomes a vivid sketch of Oxford life at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Methodism in Virginia becomes an impressive representation of the relation of England to her colonies. The conflict of Methodism with Bristol and Cornwallese colliers; its hand to hand fight with the devils of hysteria and fear, and with those of bigotry and exclusiveness; with Moravian theology, and with Calvinism and its old problem of the universe, are all well told in a succession of bright and thoughtfully conceived pictures. There is very remarkable candour, much good sense, and wise use of material in her work; and the volume will bring the high enthusiasm and glorious earnestness of Wesley into contact with classes that would remain strangers to the more elaborate biographical details of Mr. Tyerman. The subject is so large—so important in all its bearings—that we cannot dismiss these works with a cursory notice; we shall hope, at an early date, to return to the literature and ecclesiastical position of the Wesleys.

Memorials of the late Rev. William M. Bunting; being Selections from his Sermons, Letters, and Poems. Edited by the Rev. G. Stringer Rowe. With a Biographical Introduction by Thomas Percival Bunting. Wesleyan Conference Office.

The characteristic of William Bunting which all who knew him would assuredly mention first was an unbounded power of loving; and as the effect of this as near an embodiment of the 'charity' of the Epistle to the Corinthians as is perhaps possible to men who love truth and the God of truth. 'Grace to all them that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity,' was not only a sentiment upon his lips, it was an instinctive, irrepressible feeling of his heart. Few men were more attached to his own Church; few men had more large-hearted and loving appreciation of the good men and good things of all other Churches. Charity was the 'bond of his perfectness.' Wherever Christ was to be served, the souls of men benefited, faithful preachers to be heard, fervent worship to be joined in, there, according to his opportunity, William Bunting was to be found. Our cathedrals were familiar with his tall, attenuated, intellectual figure. In any Nonconformist congregation in London, where worship and preaching were edifying, he was at any time as likely to be found as in a Wesleyan Chapel. Few of the principal Nonconformist pulpits were unfamiliar with his ministrations. His friends were the best ministers of every evangelical church. He was a lover of all good men, and all good men loved him. He was a kind of tertium quid, around which the best men and feelings of the different sects crystallized into beautiful forms of charity. No one thought of him as belonging to any one section of the Church; the feeling towards him was that he belonged to all. This volume of memorials will be valued by his friends. The brief biographical sketch by his brother is sufficient for the record of his uneventful life; it is racy and piquant in its style, yet fervent and tender in its love and devout sympathy.

As a preacher, Mr. Bunting was diffuse and therefore lengthy, and sometimes tedious, although his brother testifies to his great efficiency.

As a letter-writer he was wonderfully loquacious; some of his letters, as he says, 'as long as a life,' even as abbreviated here, filling eight or ten pages of print. Rarely could he have said with Paul, 'I have written a letter unto you in few words:' but they are wonderfully loving, enthusiastic and brilliant, full of delicate sympathy and beautiful piety and charity.

Chiefly, however, Mr. Bunting excelled as a writer of hymns. Two or three of his compositions have found their way into popular hymnals, and are not likely to be forgotten. The tender pathos of the 'Song in the Night Season,'

has not often been surpassed.

The Life of Arthur Tappan. With Preface by the Rev. Newman Hall, LL.D. Sampson Low and Co.

Mr. Tappan was a New York merchant, of a type which the laudator temporis acti would tell us was once not uncommon, but is now rarely to be met with either in America or England. This we are loth to believe. There are still, thank God, not a few upright, God-fearing, noble-hearted men, who will do and dare whatever righteousness and religion may demand. Mr. Tappan was eminently one who 'feared God and eschewed evil,' whose business was as much a religion to him as church-worship. His one simple maxim was to do right at any cost. He is said to have been the first man in America 'to make use of money in large sums for benevolent objects.' Certainly he was generous, to the verge of prudence; and when reverses came upon him he did not begin retrenchment with the things of God. His high-toned morality did not always square with the morals of Wall-street, and often involved him in perplexing and ludicrous entanglements; but nothing could shake his determination to do right. Several business friends wished to help him in his pecuniary difficulties, but urged upon him as a tacit condition the desirableness of lessening his anti-slavery denunciations. His short and decisive answer was, 'I will be hung first.' He was the prime mover and leader of many things, greatest and best, in the religious life of America. He was president of the Anti-Slavery Society, and one of the founders of the Bible Society, the Tract Society, Oberlin College, and the American Education Society—to all of which he gave large pecuniary and laborious personal assistance. He was a kind of American John Thornton in his religious philanthropy. He fought many a fierce and fearless battle, especially in the anti-slavery cause—when to be its advocate was to imperil life. He was mobbed, and had a price set upon his head. A more beautiful, single-hearted, noble life of integrity, industry, fearlessness, and generosity has rarely been lived. His closing days at Newhaven have an interesting setting of New England Puritanism, and were quiet, devout, and beautiful. In a higher sense than mere amassing of money he was a 'successful merchant.' Our merchants will do well to read this interesting memoir, and to learn anew from it the old lesson that 'the fear of the Lord is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom.'

Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia; with some Account of Corea. By the Rev. Alexander Williamson, B.A., Agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. With Illustrations and 2 Maps. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co.

Mr. Williamson has contributed to the literature of travel and of science another of those thorough, sober, and instructive books which have been one of the incidental results of Christian Missions. To the ordinary advantages over casual visitors, which long residence and familiar intimacy gives to a missionary, and to the conscientiousness which his religious position and character impose upon him, Mr. Williamson, as a highly-educated medical man, adds a higher degree of scientific knowledge than many of his brethren possess, which qualifies him to speak of the configuration, products, and possibilities of the country in a way that will impart valuable knowledge. Mr. Williamson first visited China as a missionary in connection with the London Missionary Society. His health failed after two or three years' residence, and he returned to England. On the re-establishment of his health he returned to China, about seven years ago, as an agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. These volumes are, virtually, the journal-records of eight extensive journeys through various parts of North China, which he has made in the prosecution of his evangelistic labours. It need scarcely be remarked that a man so occupied, the very business of whose life is to travel from place to place, and to cultivate familiar intercourse with the people, has opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge, to which no mere casual traveller, or resident merchant, or professional man can pretend. Accordingly, Mr. Williamson's volumes are full of minute, thorough, and novel information of all kinds concerning the country and the people; they are utilitarian enough for a blue book, while they have the general interest of a book of travels in countries of which we are almost entirely ignorant. We do not, in fact, remember two volumes the information of which is so valuable, and the interest of which is so great, at this particular juncture especially, when our peaceful relations with China are again in peril. Our Government, as well as the general public, may gather from them more accurate and extensive information respecting the sources and character of Chinese feeling towards us, than from any other source whatever—not excepting even the valuable and intelligent information furnished by our diplomatic agents. Mr. Williamson has been among the people as distinguished from officials, and he speaks confidently concerning the peacefulness and friendliness of their disposition towards Protestant missionaries. He travelled unarmed, and encountered no violence or rudeness, nothing more than the occasional attempts at extortion with which travellers are not unfamiliar in London and New York. They are grossly ignorant, and in some places look upon Europeans as a different species of beings. 'In some places they calls us "devils," not in impertinence, but in genuine ignorance of our origin and character; so much so, that they often use this term with complimentary prefixes, as e.g., their practice of calling a friend of ours Kwhe tze ta jen, "His Excellency the Devil." Moreover, they often use this term in our courts of justice. In other places they look upon us as a race of fierce men not quite up to the mark in mental powers. Many a time have foreigners been provoked by Chinamen coming up to them, patting them on the shoulder, and caressing them just as we would a huge Newfoundland dog, or a semi-tamed lion. Nor is this all. They appear in many districts to look upon us as a species of fools. Often have I observed Chinamen address myself and others just as mendacious nursery-maids address children, as if we were incapable of seeing through their barefaced lies and shallow deceit.' The Imperial claim is as preposterous as ever—as shown by the refusal to receive Prince Alfred—and is a serious obstacle in national intercourse. Lord Elgin attempted effectually to destroy this by a march on Peking, which was baffled by the flight of the Emperor to Tartary. The Chinese people sadly lack truth, uprightness, and honour, the fear of God. The opium trade, which has been our great disgrace, and which has, it is feared, extended beyond all legislative or diplomatic control, is the deadly curse of the country. 'There are literally millions,' says Mr. Williamson, 'to whom opium is more valuable than life. The only hope is the creation of a public opinion against it among those who abstain from the poison, and among the young; so that the generation of opium smokers may, in due course, die out. The reformation has already commenced, and only needs to be fostered and systematized.'

The Roman Catholics are much disliked by the Chinese, chiefly because of the outrages committed by the French soldiers during the late war—the fatal blunder into which our neighbours always fall in their dealings with weaker nations, or in their attempts to colonize: wherever they go, they invariably succeed in getting themselves well hated. Another cause of dislike to the Roman Catholics is the assumptions of the priests, and their arbitrary claims to property. 'There is no hostility on the part of the people towards Protestant missionaries.' And Mr. Williamson thinks that 'were the matter of inland residence made a provision in treaty engagements, there would be little or no difficulty in carrying it out.' The hostility of the mandarins during the last year or two, the Tien-tsin massacres, and other indications of dislike in the governing classes, are attributed by Mr. Williamson to 'the ultra-liberal policy of our Government, and especially to that outburst of hostile criticism in the spring of 1869, on the part of our officials and leading politicians and writers at home, all of which was duly communicated to the Chinese authorities, leading them to believe either that we were sure of our strength, or had lost all interest in our countrymen in China.' Mr. Williamson lays great stress on a demand being made for 'inland residence under proper sanction;' and he argues this from the perfect success of the experiment, so far as it has been made. 'Protestant missionaries, British, German, and American, have been labouring unmolested for some years, in many of their inland cities.' The Chinese opponents of missionaries are not the people, but corrupt officials, who oppose everything foreign and everything calculated to enlighten or improve the moral tone of the people. Mr. Williamson's reply to such diplomats and writers as denounce the missionaries in China, or sneer at them, is not only conclusive, it is perfectly crushing. Five powerful foreign legations have for several years resided in Pekin, viz., the British, American, French, Russian, and Prussian. They had very able men and very great facilities. Not long ago, the head of the British Legation thought fit to taunt the missionaries, by urging them to begin by converting the higher classes, adding that 'China would be raised through them, not in spite of them.' Mr. Williamson pertinently asks, what with all their ability and opportunities they have done, and unhesitatingly answers, nothing! All the European books, lesson books, and books of science especially, which it is no part of the missionary's function to produce, have been compiled or translated by them. 'Dr. Hobson has given them works on Physiology; on the Principles and Practice of Surgery; on the Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica; on the Diseases of Children; on the Elements of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Mr. Wylie has given them the whole of Euclid; De Morgan's Algebra, in thirteen books; Loomis' Analytical Geometry and Differential and Integral Calculus, in eighteen books, and also the first part of Newton's Principia which is now in process of completion. Mr. Edkins has translated Whewell's Mechanics, and given them many other contributions on science and Western literature. Mr. Muirhead has produced a work on English history, and another on universal geography. Dr. Bridgman has published a finely illustrated work on the United States of America. Dr. W. P. Martin has translated Wheaton's International Law, and just published an elaborately illustrated work in three large volumes, on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Other missionaries have given them works on Electro-telegraphy, Botany, and elementary treatises on almost every subject of Western science.' Would it not be as well for some of these diplomatic gentlemen to employ their abundant leisure in emulating, rather than in sneering at the earnest philanthropy of these hard-working missionaries. Until they can show something like such a list of contributions to Chinese enlightenment, shame should keep them silent, even if they are incapable of generous appreciation.

These matters, however, are only touched in the introductory part of Mr. Williamson's book, which is an intelligent traveller's account of China and the Chinese. It is full of matter for quotation; but for this we have no space. At one of the temples in Manchuria, Mr. Williamson saw an instrument, which was the famous praying machine. 'Prayers are pasted both on the inside and outside of the barrels, which being turned round, their prayers are presented, as they suppose, to their god.' Some curious church music was aided by 'two trumpets, each of which was about twelve feet long, with a mouth two feet in diameter; they were mounted on small wheel-carriages, like guns, and the players reclined upon the ground when playing.' This was in the famous Temple of Do-la-nor. At one place the landlord, having no clock, fastened a huge fat cock under Mr. Williamson's bed, lest he should oversleep himself. We will add only, that the book is written in a plain, business-like style, that it is full of valuable facts, that, in appendices, Mr. Edkins and others have contributed valuable papers, and that, in our judgment, it is one of the most sterling and instructive, as it is one of the most modest books of travels that has appeared for years.

Westward by Rail: the New Route to the East. By W. F. Rae. Longmans, Green and Co.

The temptations to fulsome eulogy or to exaggerated caricature are, to a writer of a book of American travels, so great and are so rarely resisted, that Mr. Rae, as a signal exception, deserves the very highest praise. His feeling to America and Americans is evidently of the kindest, and yet he has had such a wholesome fear of fulsome praise, that he has put himself under almost undue restraint—the greys predominate in his colouring. He has everywhere manifestly endeavoured to see things as they are and to describe them as he saw them; the result is a sober, judicious, intelligent book, that vouches for its own trustworthiness. Mr. Rae describes only the route across the American continent from New York to San Francisco by the Great Pacific Railway. He tells us that the basis of his book is two series of letters which appeared in the Daily News, revised and recast. He writes in an easy, accustomed style, as men write whose pen is the weapon with which they fight the battle of life. He has imagination enough and descriptive power enough to redeem his narrative from the dryness of a log, and he has sufficiently large and varied knowledge of the world to qualify him to form wise, practical, and genial estimates of things. Much in American life is novel and experimental, and demands in its judge no small power of constructive imagination. Much in American feeling is provincial, wayward, and almost morbidly sensitive, and needs great candour for the appreciation of its fresh, generous, and noble elements. The Americans are rapidly outgrowing some of the follies of their youth; there are still in the practical administration of politics and social economies many things—worse than follies—that belie the noble principles of their constitution, and that the warmest friends of America cannot but look upon with anxiety. The extent of administrative corruption, the unscrupulousness of party politics, not only as towards each other but as towards other nations—such passionate, undignified, and manifestly venal messages as the one just sent to Congress by President Grant for instance, with the political interpretations of which it is susceptible—render it a question of great solicitude whether these are the moral weaknesses of childhood, which experience and discipline will cure, so as to develope a nation high and courteous in political as in social and personal honour, or whether its political maturity will manifest the faithlessness and unscrupulousness which so sadly stain the escutcheons of some European nations, and which necessitate a constant and suspicious vigilance; we strongly hope in the higher developement, but the centenary of the nation's birth is near at hand, and we are longing to see a high-minded government and policy such as we do not see yet.

Mr. Rae describes with smartness, the railways and cars and travelling ways of America as they have often been described. He especially commends to our own greater railway companies the luxury of Pullman's sleeping cars, and we heartily endorse the recommendation. It is no small luxury to be able to go to bed while traveling at the rate of thirty miles an hour in America—of from forty to fifty here—those who cannot sleep may at any rate enjoy a sprawl with disencumbered limbs. We would also add a recommendation of the check system with luggage; what should prevent our companies giving passengers a check, to which a corresponding number is affixed to the piece of luggage, so that the latter might be delivered to the porter or a servant presenting the check? The comfort of being delivered from all anxiety about luggage is a great luxury of American travel. Mr. Rae describes Chicago 'the Garden City,' 'the Queen of the West,' 'the Queen of the Lakes,' as it is proudly called. Forty years ago it was a log fort, to-day 300,000 well-to-do people, many of them as wealthy merchants as any in the States, occupy in palatial residences one of their most imposing cities. Mr. Rae's account of the Mormons is not very eulogistic, and is we suspect much nearer the truth than most of the superficial accounts, the result of an hour's conversation, note-book in hand, that have reached us. Brigham Young's peculiar institution does not commend itself even on utilitarian grounds: the intolerance, jealousy and violence of the Mormon city, restrained only by the adjacent United States' camp, must make it an unenviable residence: while even the vaunted industry of the residents is seriously qualified in Mr. Rae's estimate of what has been done in relation to the condition of the place. We commend Mr. Rae's careful study of Mormondom to all who have been fascinated by the glamour of writers like Mr. Dixon. Mr. Rae has much to say concerning California, the enterprise of the people and their great future; but he gives special emphasis to their ultra-provincialism, and what surprises us more, implies a slighting estimate of their hospitality. Of their literature he speaks in glowing terms—indeed he seems to think the provincial press of the States superior to the New York press. Mr. Rae's book is restricted to the route which he travelled, and to matters connected with it; it is therefore limited in its range. He has also a slight tendency to preach, but, as a whole, his book may be very highly commended as an honest and successful attempt to represent Brother Jonathan as he really is.

A Voyage round the World. By the Marquis de Beauvoir. In Two vols. John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1870.

These charming volumes come before us with every claim to interest. The author is a Frenchman without national prejudice—a mere boy in years without either self-sufficiency or vain-glory—a nobleman of high degree without morgue or arrogance, to whom fortune has allotted an inestimable opportunity of improving the gifts of nature by sending him as companion to the young Duc de Penthièvre, on this easy, pleasant 'Voyage round the World.' All these conditions unite to predispose the reader to a series of novel emotions in traversing an already beaten track. The Duc de Penthièvre is introduced to us as a young man of high intelligence and sterling character, who, in spite of his youth, had already seen six years of service in the United States' navy, and gained promotion therein by merit alone—not as homage to his position as scion of a royal house. The princes of the House of Orleans have been apt scholars in the great school of adversity. It would be well for France if the lessons they have been learning could be turned to account in the government of their own country. We learn from M. de Beauvoir's preface that, during the space of three months, three princes of Orleans left Europe to see if in some distant land they might not utilize their talents and energy, as at present they were unable to devote them to the service of their own. The Duc d'Alençon entered the Spanish service, and took command of the artillery during the glorious expedition to the Philippine Islands; the Prince de Condé went to India and Australia, where death cut him off at the commencement of his career; and the Duc de Penthièvre, the Prince de Joinville's son, started on a voyage round the world. No greater proof of the great change which has come over the social world of France could be found than this announcement made so simply by our author.

The two volumes under review are devoted to Australia, Java, Siam, and Canton. The novel judgments of men and things, attributable to the extreme youth and exceptional position of the writer, gives an entirely original insight into the manners and customs of the higher classes of these different countries. Naturally enough, we turn at once to Australia. Throughout the whole of the volume which treats of Australia, the national pride of the English reader is gratified to its fullest extent, not by empty praise of material wealth and rich produce, but by solid admiration of the perseverance, tenacity of purpose, and high intelligence with which the mother country has resisted all temptation to impose a yoke upon her distant children; and has thereby caused their hearts to cling closer to her own, than those of her nearer and dearer progeny. We can readily sympathise with the pleased astonishment which seizes upon the Marquis de Beauvoir, when he contrasts the wise abstention from all interference in the local government of the colony, with the petty and vexatious pressure of French authority in Algeria.

One instance of the equity of the law as practised in the colony, contrasted with the following of its mere letter, peculiar to the tribunals of Europe, we cannot pass over.

'In going through the workshops we remarked two native blacks, mere children, and utterly hideous, but with a perfectly gentle expression. Their extremely white teeth exposed to view by a mouth split from ear to ear, formed a strong contrast with their black skins, as their jolly and perpetual laugh did with the dress which is worn by those condemned to hard labour for life. Their appearance was so cheerful, that we were naturally much interested in them. Besides, there was a great deal in their novelty as aborigines.' All interest in these merry culprits was, however, at an end, when the visitors were informed that one of them had murdered three sailors, and the other had waylaid and hacked to pieces two white women. They had not been condemned to death, because 'they were natives—and none of the aborigines had as yet been hung—their instincts and belief being so different, that with them murder is no crime; they are tamed more by gentleness than cruelty.'

The Marquis expatiates, with true youthful ardour, upon this generous forbearance, and declares that a government professing such principles after invading, in the name of civilization, a country occupied by a barbarian race, deserves the admiration of all Europe. The records of Sydney law confirm the distinction made between barbarous native and civilized colonist; for a little while after, seven white men, having murdered a family of natives, were hung without mercy, to give a good example to the rising generation of the young colony, who are taught to pity the blind, ferocious instincts of the native race, and to feel contempt and horror of the civilized white men guilty of the same cold-blooded atrocities.

Life in the bush has charms for our youthful author as great as those of the handsome drawing-rooms of Melbourne and Sydney. After much visiting amongst the highest circles of Sydney—banqueting at the Government House, and dancing in the spacious halls of the great officials of the colony—the buoyant spirits of the young Marquis lead him to throw himself, a corps perdu, into the delights of savage life. His enthusiastic description of the visit to Mr. Capel—the arrival of the party at the hut inhabited by the triple millionaire, on the banks of the Murray river—the glee with which he recounts the danger of fording the stream, while the horses were left to swim to the bank as best they could, and the subsequent scramble up the muddy side to Mr. Capel's dwelling, will make many an English boy's eyes sparkle with delight and envy as he reads.

We can only mention the journey through Java, Siam, and Canton. Much of the interest lies in the description of the court of the King of Siam, rendered familiar to the English public by the recent account of the 'English Governess.' At Hong Kong, the author's admiration of English rule again breaks forth. And we take our leave of the distinguished party, of which he appears to have been the very life and soul, with hearty thanks for the boldness with which the young Marquis has dared to assert his conviction that the English alone are fitted to found a colony, and that no other nation is possessed of the patience, the calmness, and true sense of justice which are needed to render the natives submissive to civilization and the yoke of the foreigner.

Fair France. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.' Hurst and Blackett.

At a time when France is torn and tortured by the most terrible war the world has ever known, it seems strange to open a volume of peaceful travel in the beautiful country which most of us know so well, and which has undergone such an unparalleled transformation. The authoress (pace Thackeray) of this charming volume is well known to the public as a novelist, and however critical judgments may vary as to her artistic power, of her purity of tone and freedom from the vicious tendencies of modern fictitious literature, there can be no question. For our own part, we find her even more agreeable as a tourist than as a novelist. She looks at the world with unprejudiced eyes; she finds that even French curés are human beings, and not the frightful demons that they appear to the excited imagination of the honourable member for Peterborough. We have, in these days, been accustomed to travellers of many kinds: there is the sensational tourist, who bursts into mysterious eloquence on the slightest provocation; and there is the cynical tourist, who with upturned nose regards all the world as a gigantic imposture—looking up into the dome of St. Peter's, or down into the crater of Etna, and contemptuously remarking that 'there is nothing in it.' But the truly pleasant traveller is the man or woman who starts with intent to enjoy the trip, who looks at the bright side of everything, and who, writing a book, writes cheerily and gaily. This is precisely what we find in 'Fair France.' The dedication deserves to be quoted: 'I inscribe "Fair France"—France of yesterday—to those heroic and suffering souls in the France of to-day, who yet suffer in hope, seeing light through the darkness, and believing in a new and nobler "France of to-morrow."' That new and nobler France is no dream of the ivory gate. This siege of Paris, to which the siege of Troy seems trivial, will purge the French people of many evil qualities, and leave them greater than before. This is the belief of all who know them well—who know how their higher life has been eclipsed by noxious influences. However this war may terminate, and whatever may be the fate of the country of Lothair, it is pretty certain that the fatal follies which have misguided the French people are now exploded for ever.

The Land of the Sun. By Lieutenant C. R. Low. Hodder and Stoughton. 1870.

This book makes no pretensions to be regarded as a regular diary of connected travel, but is a series of vivid sketches of such places in the East as the author frequently visited. In a succession of interesting chapters he carries us from place to place, describing each locality with many of its historical associations, and his own personal impressions and incidents of adventure. He tells us something of Aden, Massowah, and the Red Sea, the Andaman Islands, and many other places of interest, some of growing importance; leaving us finally at that city of romance, Bagdad. Those who have commercial relations with 'the Land of the Sun' will find valuable information in this volume, especially in the chapters on Aden and Persia. As Mr. Low says, 'The Suez Canal has opened a new era for Aden and Persia, and indeed for all the ports of the Red Sea, and it is impossible to exaggerate the mighty future in store for them.' It did not require that the title-page should inform us that the writer belonged to the navy, for almost every paragraph contains expressions which are possible from only a joyous, enthusiastic sailor-nature. He makes the reader feel as though he were listening to some clever Jack-tar, who can describe the places and people he has visited, and can spin a yarn with startling effect. The lieutenant revels in adventure, and any skirmish excites his vigorous sympathy. Like a true British sailor, he has an infinite contempt for all his enemies, and a supreme belief in English seamanship and courage. Our readers may get considerable instruction and many a hearty laugh out of this capital book.

Two Months in Palestine; or, a Guide to a Rapid Journey to the Chief Places of Interest in the Holy Land. By the Author of 'Two Months in Spain.' Nisbet and Co.

This little volume is what its title indicates. It gives useful information, and records the impressions du voyage of an intelligent traveller. While it does not wholly refrain from historical reminiscence and archæological speculation, it touches them lightly, and without dogmatism. It is a pleasant record of experiences in sacred scenes, whose interest no number of travellers' books can exhaust. Readers of 'The Leisure Hour' will be familiar with the papers here collected into a volume.

Daybreak in Spain: a Tour of Two Months. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D. Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1870.

Whatever other distinguishing traits Dr. Wylie may possess, he is at least a famous hater of the Papacy. In several former volumes he appears as the earnest champion of Protestantism, and in his vigorous declamatory rhetoric gives the enemy no quarter. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that the remarkable movement in Spain which preceded and followed the expulsion of Isabella II. should have awakened his most energetic sympathy. With a naïveté perfectly charming he informs the reader that he entered Spain on the anniversary of the Queen's summary dismissal. The coincidence of the two events may be an important historical incident, but as yet we fail to see it. However, he presents to us the results of two months' tour in a light sketchy manner, though in a very readable book. His descriptions of the scenes and people are sometimes vivid, but they leave the impression of haste and effort to be striking. The author also compiles a number of noteworthy facts concerning the progress of the Gospel in that long unhappy land, which enable us to share his prophetic hopes for its brighter future. The book would be immensely improved by the omission of many of those eulogistic paragraphs on the Bible, which mar the continuity of the narrative, and read like the perorations of innumerable speeches. The illustrations by Gustave Doré, which he says (page 12) accompany the first chapter, are wanting in our copy.

History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Vols. VIII.-XII. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1870.

This most admirable and faultless reprint of the classic history of a great period of our annals is now completed. Never have publishers considered more carefully the convenience and comfort of the general reader. The volumes are portable, and the type is suited to the most defective sight. The pleasure of consulting Mr. Froude's works is moreover enhanced by a copious and well-arranged index, which occupies no fewer than one hundred pages. The dates are given on every page, from first to last; and this great work, on which we have so often commented, is now placed within the reach of thousands who have for their perusal of it hitherto had to depend on library copies. Whatever difference of opinion may be entertained as to the justness of certain conclusions, and the good taste of some revelations, the extraordinary merit of this history of the most eventful epoch in the development of the English church, nationality, and constitution, can hardly be exaggerated.

Sketches from America. By John White, Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. Sampson Low and Co.

Mr. White's book has but very little of the character of a tourist's book of travels, although it is, he tells us, 'founded upon a tour that was undertaken without any design of collecting materials for a book.' Personal experiences are but little obtruded. We get the most of them in the second section, 'A Pic-nic to the Rocky Mountains.' The party consisted of newspaper editors and Mr. G. F. Train; who probably is an editor, and a dozen things besides. This personal part of Mr. White's book indicates a keen observer and a graphic pen. We would gladly, had we space, extract some of the amusing incidents of his journey. The first and third parts of the book—on Canada, and on the Irish in America—are disquisitions founded in part upon personal observation, but chiefly upon facts and opinions collected from diversified sources with care and discrimination. They constitute, therefore, a series of judgments by Mr. White, and are to be taken simply as such, quantum valeat. We are bound to say, however, that they are marked by great moderation, scholarly intelligence, and plausible credibility. But clearly, other observers equally well-informed and judicial, might come to very different conclusions. We can only indicate some of Mr. White's opinions. He points out acutely the distinctive characteristics of the Canadians; their many points of difference from the citizen of the States, both in manners, feeling, and political interest. Canadians are strong in a theoretic loyalty, and are proud of their English belongings, while they have very little of patriotic passion. The Irish in Canada are not, Mr. White thinks, so loyal as is often boasted, although they are less hostile than the Irish in America. They feel no affection for the English, and, as a class, desire annexation. The French Canadians are contented without being patriotic. They are not annexationists, and see nothing better for themselves than English rule. The best classes in Canada, like those in the States, studiously eschew politics, and affect indifference, even while the streets of Montreal are crowded at an exciting election. Mr. White conveys no very exalted idea of the dignity of Canadian legislation, by the account he quotes of the behaviour of the members of the Ottawa Parliament singing choruses and indulging in other forms of obstructive boisterousness all night. 'Men, not measures,' is the Canadian political motto, although to a less extent than in the United States. Mr. White gives a good account of the Church legislation of the last few years, and of its beneficial results, which we commend to our Church and State partisans. While admitting that the feeling of Canada is adverse to annexation with the States, Mr. White seems to think that commercial interests and necessities will make it inevitable—a forecast from which there is both room and reason for differing.

Mr. White's book is, throughout, written with an amount of information, a scholarly intelligence and care, and a studied moderation of feeling, which place it above most books of its class, and entitle it to a permanent place in the library. It will have value when the interest of ephemeral books of mere travel has passed away.

POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART.

The Transformation of Insects. By P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.

The metamorphoses of insects comprise some of the most interesting phenomena of the most attractive class in the animal kingdom. They lose none of their attractions in the hands of the enterprising publishers to whose energy the public are already indebted for so many handsome and profusely illustrated works on various branches of natural history.

The present volume, like the rest, abounds in pictures of all kinds, from those which are diagrammatic, and should accompany a scientific treatise, to those which are highly pictorial and life-like; and they are all of high merit. Of course, the illustrations, for the most part, are not original. They do not come from the hand of the author, nor were they designed to illustrate his text. No work with such first-class engravings, drawn expressly to elucidate the meaning of a writer, could be produced at ten times the cost of the book before us. Collected from all sources, and more or less judiciously distributed through the volume, the plates constitute the chief value of the work. The letter-press, however, like the illustrations, is full of interesting matter. Almost all the well-known facts which science has revealed to us concerning the whole life-history of the Arthropoda, are stripped of their technical phraseology, invested in an amusing, and sometimes a grotesque garb, and displayed so as to attract those to whom real scientific study would be repulsive. To our youth, and to that numerous class of casual and unscientific observers of Nature who rather delight in interesting facts than in the causes which underlie them, 'The Transformation' will, no doubt, be found amusing and satisfactory. On the other hand, we are bound to state that there is nothing in the book before us, either in the shape of original contribution to our information, or of philosophic grouping of phenomena into wider generalizations, which will really assist the scientific student.

We have purposely mentioned the publishers rather than the author as the originators of this work, because the resources of the former are far more evident than those of the latter. Probably no one but the publishers could have produced so handsome and entertaining a volume at so small an expense, while almost any one might have been the author of it. We have also designedly made the plates occupy the first place in our commendation. It is evident that the book was made to order from a large stock in hand. We do not wish to disparage the work at all, or any more than is necessary to let the public know exactly what it is. Such a book would not be written except to order, and could not be so good unless there were a large stock of material on hand. Such books have a definite use, and this particular book is good of its kind. It is, as it professes to be, an 'adaptation of M. Emile Blanchard's work.' If the author had done for his own work what he has done for M. Blanchard, i.e., 'eliminated large portions which, although very interesting, do not refer directly to the phenomena of metamorphosis,' we should have been deprived of half the volume; and as the illustrations could hardly have been crowded more closely together, we should have lost them also, and this would have been a great pity. That the letter-press is but accessory, and sometimes hardly accessory, to the pictures is abundantly manifest. Thus, at p. 366, we have a beautiful engraving representing the transformations of Cicada fraxini—an insect belonging to, and even the type of, the homopterous division of the order 'Hemiptera'—incorporated, without reference to it, into the chapter on the 'Neuroptera;' while, in the chapter on the 'Hemiptera,' the metamorphosis of the same species is described without reference to the engraving.

The term 'insects' is used in the old Linnæan sense, and not according to its more modern and definite scientific signification, and so is made to include not only moths, bees, beetles, locusts, dragon-flies, bugs, and flies, and the orders of which they are the types, but also spiders, hundred-legs, and crustaceans. The Metamorphoses of the Arthropoda would be the more correct title, but this would not have been so popular, and therefore not so well suited to a popular work. This dominant idea of rendering the book popular is always kept in view. Thus, when we have a description of the habits of that popular favourite, the water spider (Argyroneta aquatica), it is hoped, no doubt with some degree of confidence, that we shall be so pleased with the wonderful facts, that we shall forgot to ask why a species which has no metamorphosis, and belongs to a genus, family, and order which never exhibit transformations, should have been introduced to our notice at all. Again, when we are facetiously told that Cimex lectularius drops from the ceiling on to sleepers, and grows more or less rapidly according to the temperature of the room and corpulency of its inhabitants, and we have 'to thank Providence that it has no wings,' it would be ill-natured to inquire whether the statements are strictly accurate, and with regard to the latter statement, to whom we are indebted for the rest of the anatomy?

Mr. Duncan thinks it only just that M. E. Blanchard should be relieved from the authorship of opinions as to the nature of metamorphosis contained in this work, but as the only part of the book which treats of metamorphosis philosophically consists of a long, well-chosen, and acknowledged quotation from Newport's 'Essay,' we think this delicate sense of justice somewhat misplaced.

We cannot too highly recommend the 'Transformation of Insects' as a glorious picture-book full of moderately trustworthy anecdotes; but we warn all students of physiology or natural history that there is no such royal road to learning as its pages present.

Rome and the Campagna: an Historical and Topographical Description of the Site, Buildings, and Neighbourhood of Ancient Rome. By Robert Burn, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. Deighton and Co. 1871.

There is something singularly opportune in the publication of this book at this time. Rome, dear to all men of taste, for its countless treasures in the department of the arts—to all scholars, for its multitudinous associations with relics of classical times—to many a Christian too, for its memories of our holy religion, has just passed into new hands, and is henceforth to be subject to other rulers. We will not affect to regret this. We have long despaired of any substantial improvement under the régime now happily brought to an end; but there can be no reason, in the nature of things, why modern Rome should be the worst drained and dirtiest of Christian cities, and why the Pontine marshes, once so fruitful, should now be a pestiferous waste. We believe that a thorough revolution may be worked, both in Rome itself and all around it, not only without any detriment to those precious relics of the old world with which this volume deals, but with great advantage to them; and we hope to read ere long of the appointment of a commission (we are not sure what is the proper Italian word for it) with some such man as the Cavaliere Rosa at its head, whose business it shall be to guard with jealous care whatever already discovered may interest the student of art or of history, and to watch for new matter of a kindred nature wherever public works or private enterprise may lay open the still unworked mines which underlie in all directions the accumulated rubbish of many centuries in this city of Rome. A board of antiquaries and artists, with two or three practical men amongst them, may earn for themselves the gratitude of the civilized world, by an enlightened and earnest prosecution of this work.

As to the book before us, we can hardly find words to express our sense of its varied excellence. It has evidently been a con amore labour with its author; and he has brought to his work the three qualifications essential to its thorough discharge—learning, sagacity, and zeal. His references to the classical writings of Rome, and to those who have been his pioneers in these researches, prove the first; while the accuracy with which he observes and compares both objects and opinions are sufficient evidence of the other qualities.

Starting with a geological discussion of the soil on which the city is built, we are introduced to the original materials for building in Rome and its immediate neighborhood. There is abundant evidence of volcanic action in the tufaceous rock which is characteristic of the region; and this is associated with the depositions of water—both salt and fresh—and in some cases has been manifestly modified by their action. Indeed, there is proof that the valleys between the famous hills were marshes, frequently flooded by the Tiber, down into the early period of Roman history. There are two sorts of tufa, one more granular, and so lighter than the other, as well as a fair portion of a limestone rock, named travertine, harder than either of the tufas; besides these there is capital clay for bricks, and matter which makes the best mortar in the world. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that not only during the Republic, but in later times, when, under the emperors, the wealth and luxury of the Romans was boundless, the main substance even of the most magnificent of their buildings was brick; and marble 'facings,' columns, and pavements came in to give finish and beauty to their solid brickwork. Indeed, to this fact we owe it that so much is still left to us. The barbarous rapacity of the Middle Ages, which ruthlessly appropriated these enrichments, would no doubt have taken all, had all been marble.

Our author regards the myths which connect the early Romans with the Greeks, and with the Trojans under Æneas, as belonging rather to the domain of poetry than history, and confining himself to the facts as illustrated by these ruins, begins with the Palatine, as the hill originally occupied by the first fathers of the Romans; and he gives us, in chronological order, as far as possible, notices of all ruins now uncovered there. He then passes on to the Capitoline, as having been occupied next in point of time, dealing with it in the same manner; after this we return southward to the Aventine; thence, turning east, we cross the valley of the Circus Maximus to the Cælian Hill, and then proceed northward to the Esquiline, the Viminal, Quirinal, and Pincian, in succession. On all these we are introduced to the remains of ancient buildings; their chronology, their identity, their extent, their present condition, and their associations with such historic matter as has come down to us, are all set before us with great accuracy of detail. Then we cross the Tiber, and visit Janiculum and the Vatican Hill; recrossing into the valleys among the hills, we visit the Circus Maximus, the Campus Martius (now occupied by the modern city), and the Via Lata. The 'Forum' (Romanum) is discussed in the earlier part of the work, and with it the Fora of the emperors, which were meant to supersede it and its associations, and did so. The line of the walls of Servius, built mainly of the tufa already mentioned, in large rectangular blocks, is traced all round the city with ingenious care; and then the more extensive walls of Aurelian, with notices of the fortifications of the present day. Before we have done we take a delightful, though hasty, run through the Campagna. We visit Hadrian, at his villa Tiburtina (Tivoli); Cicero, at Tusculum (Frascati); and dear old Horace, at his Sabine farm. At Laurentum we inspect, in detail, the country seat of our communicative host, the unlucky Pliny, who perished miserably when Pompeii was destroyed.

We would gratefully acknowledge our sense of obligation to our intelligent guide; and shall reckon it henceforward as among our pleasantest reminiscences that we have thus visited with him the spot where Virginia bled, where Cicero spoke, where Cæsar fell; that we have, in his company, trodden the Forum, the Capitol, and the Appian way; and wandered, silent and awe-stricken at their grandeur, in the golden house of Nero, the Forum of Trajan, the Coliseum of Vespasian, and the baths of Diocletian.

We must not close our notice without a word about the maps and ground plans, and the illustrations. All are worthy of the work. Here and there, in the ground plans, we miss the arrow-head, indicating the points of the compass, and this, we hold, should always be put in; and if the illustrations, engraved from photographs, as we are told, are a trifle too sharp and hard, we gain in accuracy what we lose in beauty, and would not have it otherwise. We heartily thank Mr. Burn for his valuable work, and his publishers for the style in which they have put it forth; and shall be only too happy to find it in our portmanteau when we next visit Rome.

The Wonders of Engraving. By Georges Duplessis. Illustrated with Ten Reproductions in Autotype, and Thirty-four Wood Engravings, by P. Selher. Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

This translation of 'Les Merveilles de la Gravure' will doubtless, in the words of the editor, be 'acceptable to all lovers of this important and deeply interesting branch of art. It traces from its different origins in wood engraving and nielli, this effort of one high art to become the handmaid and herald of another, until the genius of the engraver has developed a comprehensive department of original design and elaborate artistic work of his own. Our author has told the story of this development as it unfolds itself in the different schools of Italian art in Spain, in Flanders, in Holland, in Germany, England, and France. This necessitates brief sketches of distinguished engravers in wood or copper, belonging to all these countries, with some account of their works. As many of these engravers are far better known to fame by their paintings, we have fresh interesting details concerning the life-work of Leonardo da Vinci, Marc Antonio Raimondi, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Lucas v. Leyden, Paul Potter, Hogarth, Gillray, Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorraine, with very many others. The author rather glories in a clever reference which he made of some anonymous engraving of the early Italian school to the hand of Leonardo himself, and in some interesting and independent confirmation of his guess, which he afterwards derived from other quarters. To those who have not made the art of engraving a practical and prolonged study, many of these chapters may have the appearance of a catalogue of strange names, and of partially comprehended work, rather than of a dissertation to make one wise. The transition is rapid from one great name to another, and the volume will be used as a book of reference rather that as a continuous treatise. The autotype copies of several old engravings, as well as numerous woodcuts, greatly enliven and enrich the pages. It is very interesting to see in this department of human endeavour, how great results have followed accidental discovery. The Italian goldsmiths, who, before running their enamel (nigellum) into the ornamented and engraved gold, tried the effect of their work by staining paper or linen, and by the impressions (nielli) which the engraved surface when first washed with colouring matter would produce, no more anticipated the extraordinary development which their chance trials would receive, than could the early printers have prophesied the marvels of the modern printing-press. M. Duplessis has briefly and clearly enumerated and described all, or nearly all, of the processes of engraving. We are surprised that he has not given some place to the wonderful process of lithography. The volume is a marvel of finish and beauty.

Art in the Mountains. By Henry Blackburn. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

Mr. Blackburn is well-known as a traveller with a special faculty; he has an artist's eye, and his record of wanderings in Algeria, Spain, Normandy, are pages of picture. Hence was he the very man to make a pilgrimage into the Bavarian highlands, and bring back an intelligible account of that strange Passion-Play performed by the peasants of Ober-Ammergau; and excellently well he has done it. There is something strange, something almost weird in the enactment of a mediæval miracle-play in this nineteenth century—by peasants, too, who are some of them before Paris by this time, obeying Bismarck's iron will. Extremes meet in the oddest manner. As to this old-fangled representation, which has come off once a decade for the last two centuries, there seems to be nothing irreverent about it. They are a child-like folk, these Bavarian peasants; they have no Prussian geist; they possess a strong imitative faculty, such as belonged to the first villagers who, in ancient Greece, originated what we now call comedy. Mr. Blackburn's illustrations amply show what sort of people they are. Look at the maiden at page 59, with the mild bovine eye that Homer loves to attribute to Hebe, and the well-shapen yet utterly unlightened face, and the comfortable, unfascinating curves of shoulder and arm, a woman—a dull, good, unimaginative 'young person'—with no tendency towards witchery or ladyhood. Having examined that portrait, you have no difficulty in understanding how it is that a Passion-Play lives alongside the railway and the telegraph. The slow-moving, cow-eyed maiden is typical; that she would heartily and reverently enjoy the show of our Lord's Passion is clear enough. But how long she, and such as she, will crawl on in their snail-like groove, now that our 'own correspondent' has appeared in Ammergau, now that the representatives of Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate have gone together to besiege Paris, is a question not easy to settle. Mr. Blackburn states that there will probably be ten performances of the Passion Play in 1871, and that then it will not be repeated till 1880. We commend anybody who really desires to see it to go to Ammergau next year. We move fast nowadays—that Bavarian village will be quite another sort of place in 1880.

Church Design for Congregations: its Developments and Possibilities. By James Cubitt, Architect. With nineteen plates. Smith and Elder.

The practical divorce of Art and Utility has told nowhere more disastrously than in the building of churches. Gothic buildings with 'long-drawn aisles and fretted roof,' designed and adapted for the processional and ritual worship of the Romish Church, have for three centuries been the dreary reverberating theatres of Protestant reading and preaching. Perhaps few of us could recall a more comfortless ideal than a rural parish church in winter, half the congregation excluded from seeing, and the other half from hearing the monotonous reader of prayers and sermons. Nonconformists, while rightly deeming that the Episcopal Church had no monopoly of Gothic architecture, have not been always wise in their appropriation of it. They have built the old Gothic church with its nave, two aisles, transepts, and chancel, its clustered stone pillars and clerestory, utterly unmindful of the fact that of all styles of ecclesiastical building it was the most unsuited for their worship and preaching. Their dignified discomfort led to the substitution of iron columns, as incongruous, and, in artistic effect, as ugly as anything that could be imagined—'a mediæval church,' as Mr. Cubitt says, 'in the last stage of starvation.' If we must have nave and aisles, as he justly remarks, we seem shut up either to bad arrangement or bad architecture. Fame and fortune await the architect who can create a new order of buildings for Congregational worship which shall avoid both. Mr. Cubitt seems ambitious to attempt this, and he breaks a lance with old conventionalism with great courage and skill. The type that is required, he says, 'does not present itself in the ordinary nave and aisles plan, whether its nave-piers are thick or thin; but it may be hopefully sought in either of these two ways—'by designing our churches without columns at all, or by designing them with substantial columns placed where they will cause no obstruction. The former system is already adopted in small buildings, and there are some signs of its future employment on a larger scale. It allows great variety of form. Its plans may be oblong, cruciform, circular, or polygonal; or still better, a fresh combination of three different elements. On the latter system the columns may be few in number and far apart, or they may be placed so near the side walls as to obscure, not the seats, but only the passages leading to them. We may thus have either the wide nave with narrow side aisles, or the ordinary nave with very wide bays, or both together. We may plan a grand open space before the pulpit and communion table—surely a natural arrangement for a Protestant Church—and we shall find ample scope for architecture in its external and internal treatment.' The subsequent chapters are virtually a development and illustration of these ideas. The writer advocates the admission of the dome into Gothic architecture; he has much to say on behalf of the Eastern mosque; and no one who has stood in the vast and simple area of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, built, it must be remembered, as a Christian church, could fail to have been greatly impressed with its magnificent congregational capabilities. Galleries in theatre form, iron column churches, lanterns, and most other things that perplex church builders, are discussed. The merit of Mr. Cubitt's work is that it is strictly utilitarian. It recognises the actual necessities, not only of Congregational worship, but of Congregational church builders; it boldly grapples with all inartistic incongruities; it avoids 'schools' and 'orders,' and honestly seeks to supply what is wanted under genuine artistic conditions. Abundance of plates and drawings illustrate Mr. Cubitt's theories. We heartily commend this book to all whom it may concern, as the most independent, intelligent, and scholarly attempt in the direction indicated that has been made.

POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.

The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens. Words written for Music, by Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate; the Music by Arthur Sullivan. Strahan.

So many rumours have been for so long in circulation about this volume, and the names of its joint authors are so eminent, that it is not surprising it should have excited much curiosity and many hopes. We venture to predict that neither the curiosity nor the hopes will be disappointed. Mr. Tennyson's songs need not fear being 'tested' in the same crucible with the 'Lotos Eaters,' or 'In Memoriam,' or we may add with 'Maud,' or the 'Princess.' Nor will Mr. Sullivan's music be found less characteristic of his genius, or other than fully worthy of the words to which it has been composed.

The 'Window' is, we believe, the first attempt in English—certainly the first attempt of any eminent English poet—to cast a series of events or emotions into the form of a set of connected songs. Wordsworth's well-known series of sonnets are an approach to the same thing; but the song—a composition of two or three stanzas, suitable to music—is not so favourite a form with English poets as with those of Germany. There the cycle of songs—the Liederkreis or Liedercyclus—is better known. Readers of Heine and Chamisso will remember more than one instance. We are glad to welcome it to English literature, not only as a new form of verse, but also because of the promise which it gives of many a marriage between fine poetry and fine music—a marriage hitherto far too rare among us.

The 'Window,' then, is a 'circle of songs,' twelve in number, describing the hopes and fears of a lover parted from his mistress, and uncertain what her reply will be to the great question he has asked her.

In the first—'On the hill'—he stands on the slope of the valley which separates his home from hers, and as he looks across the distance sees the flash from the window-pane of his love:—

He knows the window of which the flash has thus come to him, and is familiar with all the charm both of what surrounds it, and what it enshrines:—

The flowers are there, but their mistress is gone:—

The winter comes, but our lover holds out in spite of the season:

and it passes, and spring-time comes, with

At last he can bear the suspense no longer—

The letter is sent, and no answer comes; and then he despairs, as he well may, and in the 'wet west wind' of the spring he wishes himself dead:

The answer is still delayed:—

But at length it comes:—

and its tenour is obvious, from the rapture of the reader—

the rhyme to 'Why' being of course 'Ay.'

After this the progress of things need no telling.

The last song of the series is too fine and too even a union of fancy, feeling, and art not to be quoted entire—

Surely these songs, even in the fragmentary state in which we have been forced to give them, will be recognized as the work of a great master, by everyone who has the feeling and the fancy requisite for any appreciation of poetry, and are surely as worthy of Mr. Tennyson's genius as Shakspeare's songs are of his, or the lyrics in 'Wilhelm Meister' of Goethe's. They are full of the old exquisite art that has endeared the songs of the 'Princess' to so many thousand hearts. We find here, as in those and other old favourites, those lovely and indescribable touches which seem to paint in sound or air the very things they name—the

the

There is the alliteration that is so magical because so seldom used—

There are the familiarity with nature and the accurate observation at once so characteristic of English poetry and of Mr. Tennyson's muse—

There too the hundred links of connexion which bind the twelve songs into one golden chain—the constant references to the 'light,' or the 'blaze,' or the 'flash,' or the 'window pane,' which form the keynote of the whole; and lastly the human sentiment at once so deep and broad which fuses the whole into poetry in its noblest sense—all these proclaim the deep and abiding worth of this unpretending series of lyrics.

The Shakspearian ring in one or two of them (especially in No. 8), is as obvious, though in a different vein, as in any of the well-known lyrics in the 'Idylls of the King.'

It will be obvious that we do not agree with those who regard Mr. Tennyson's last effort as 'a trifle from beginning to end.' Slight in texture it may be, but slightness is not triviality.