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bringing the Crown to do him this great act of justice."

The death is also noticed of Capt. Maconochie, the inventor of the Mark System of prison

discipline, to which reference has already been made: "The Mark System is very much a question of common-sense and philosophy; but its amiable and unsuspicious inventor was unhappily the last man in the world to give it a fair trial. Twice he was permitted to hope that his principles would be faithfully carried out under his own superintendence; once at Norfolk Island, and again at the Birmingham gaol; both ended in failure, one in misery and dismay."

Capt. Maconochie.

On Friday, November 30th, the Royal Society Royal Society: two hundredth held its anniversary meeting, and the Athenæum anniversary. of December 8th gives a report of Sir Benjamin Brodie's address : "It was on the 28th of November, just 200 years ago, that several eminent individuals, who had previously been in the habit of meeting for the purpose of communicating with each other on subjects of common interest, assembled in Gresham College, and agreed to form themselves into a Society, having for its object the promoting of physico-mathematical experimental learning. When they reassembled in the following week, it was reported to them that what they proposed was highly approved by the reigning Monarch,

Procter's

who intimated at the same time his desire to do what lay in his power towards promoting so useful an undertaking. Accordingly, steps were taken for the incorporation of the Society, under a Royal Charter, that charter being conferred on them, in due form, two years afterwards."

The year closes with a review of the second Adelaide volume of Adelaide Anne Procter's 'Legends Anne and Lyrics.' The Athenæum had been the first "Legends, "to welcome her father's daughter, when she and Lyrics.' modestly came forward, saying, 'I too have been in Arcadia': thus, it is a pleasure, as real as rare, to declare that we find in her Second Volume progress on the first one. The first simplicity and tenderness, and natural avoidance of exaggeration, have neither tarnished nor changed; but Miss Procter's hand is firmer than it was; and some of the poems here collected or published for the first time (as may be) must and will take rank among the most complete and gentlest poems which we owe to women. We can hardly open the volume amiss. The best poem which it contains is one from which not a verse can be detached, yet which, by reason of its length, is unmanageable. A New This is 'A New Mother,'-a tale of the affec

Mother.'

tions, told with a tenderness, purity and total absence of affectation, that make express com

mendation of it not merely a pleasure, but a duty......" The devotional verses in this volume are of high quality; belonging, however, to the Breviary more than to the Psalter. There is a certain richness in the music of this Evening Hymn, which reminds us (to be fanciful) of the odours of a linden avenue in summer, or of a pine forest after a shower, when all that is left of day is a glow in the west :

EVENING HYMN.

The shadows of the evening hours
Fall from the darkening sky;
Upon the fragrance of the flowers

The dews of evening lie :

Before Thy throne, O Lord of Heaven,
We kneel at close of day;

Look on Thy children from on high,
And hear us while we pray.

The sorrows of Thy Servants, Lord,
Oh, do not Thou despise ;

But let the incense of our prayers
Before Thy mercy rise ;

The brightness of the coming night
Upon the darkness rolls :
With hopes of future glory chase
The shadows on our souls.

Slowly the rays of daylight fade;
So fade within our heart
The hopes in earthly love and joy,
That one by one depart :

Slowly the bright stars, one by one,

Within the Heavens shine ;

Give us, O Lord, fresh hopes in Heaven,

And trust in things divine.

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Evening

Hymn.

1861.

year.

Let peace, O Lord, Thy peace, O God,
Upon our souls descend;

From midnight fears and perils, Thou
Our trembling hearts defend ;
Give us a respite from our toil,

Calm and subdue our woes;

Through the long day we suffer, Lord,
Oh, give us now repose!”

The year 1861 opens with the announcement that "new books have poured upon us thick and fast for five or six weeks, and there is no abatement of the pleasant storm." The books inBooks of the clude the autobiography of Mrs. Delany; the autobiography of Mrs. Piozzi; 'Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV. and Victoria,' by the Duke of Buckingham; "Revolutions in English History: Vol. II. Revolutions in Religion," by Robert Vaughan, D.D.; 'Domestic Annals of Scotland,' by Robert Chambers; Garibaldi, and other Poems,' by M. E. Braddon; the first volume of 'The Constitutional History of England,' by Thomas Erskine May; the fifth volume of Lord Macaulay's 'History of England,' edited by his sister, Lady Trevelyan; the first and second volumes of the Life of William Pitt,' by Earl Stanhope; 'Silas Marner,' by George Eliot; 'Considerations on Representative Government,' by John Stuart Mill; Private Correspondence of Thomas Raikes with the Duke of Wellington'; 'The

Story of Burnt Njal; or, Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century,' from the Icelandic of the Njals Saga, by George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L.; the second volume of Buckle's 'History of Civilization in England'; 'Autobiography of Miss Cornelia Knight, Lady Companion to the Princess Charlotte of Wales'; 'Dutch Pictures,' by George Augustus Sala; 'Cavour: a Memoir,' by Edward Dicey; 'East Lynne: a Story of Modern Life,' by Mrs. Henry Wood; 'The History of Scotish Poetry,' by David Irving, LL.D., edited by John Aitken Carlyle, M.D.; 'The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,' by Walter Thornbury; the first and second volumes of 'Lives of the Engineers,' by Samuel Smiles; Thackeray's 'Four Georges'; 'French Women of Letters,' by Julia Kavanagh; and ‘Tom Brown at Oxford,' by Thomas Hughes.

On the 18th of May the reissue of Punch is The reissue of Punch. thus noticed: "A more interesting re-issue than that of Punch for the last twenty years can hardly be imagined. It is a republication, in the original forms, of a number of very choice books and poems, such as 'The Story of a Feather,' 'The Caudle Lectures,' 'The Snob Papers,' 'The Bridge of Sighs,' and the Bouillebaisse.' It is, also, the republication of a great series of social and political cartoons, some of which are not to be obtained in any other form. Some of the

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