This work was originally intended to give to the upper forms of schools an idea of the altered and, so to say, Niebuhrian aspect which Roman history has assumed. We think that the book, careful as it is, is too long, too peddling and minute, too wanting in striking generalisations to serve its purpose. After all, the charms of language and dramatic incident will attract more than mere conscientious care. Shakspeare will continue to give us our first ideas of English history; and we are afraid that the brilliant painting of Macaulay will quite unfit the nation's eyes even to see and recognise the existence of the more careful, more truthful drawing of Lingard. Dr. Liddell treats the traditions of the early civil history of Rome, so far as they are corroborated by customs, laws, and institutions, as authentic, and thinks that in the history of the first ages of the Republic there is a consistency of progress and a clearness of intelligence which make its authenticity the more probable assumption. In this he is opposed to Sir Cornewall Lewis, who treats the early Roman history, in its civil as well as military transactions, as entirely incredible, and unworthy of attention, till the age of Pyrrhus, when we can first securely refer to contemporaneous writers. The value of oral tradition in preserving the memory of historical events is still unsettled in the judgment of professed historians.

Travels in Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey, in 1809 and 1810. By the Right Hon. Lord Broughton. 2 vols. (London, Murray.) A republication of Hobhouse's travels, with emendations in the text, and in the notes illustrations and corrections drawn from the most important works on these parts published during the half-century. As might be expected in the familiar of Lord Byron, the first edition of this book abounded with remarks offensive to religion; and the emendations of the present reprint do not much mend matters. In spite of all that has been said and done of late years, Lord Broughton is still at a loss to guess what charms life can have for a monk in a cloister on the ridge of a rock security, he says, is not acceptable under such conditions. "Yet from amongst the varieties of human conduct, we may collect other instances of voluntary privations equally unaccountable, and produced, independently of habit or constraint, by original eccentricity of mind." Albania is one of those unchanging, half-civilised countries, for which a description of manners written half a century ago is equally true at the present day.

The Englishwoman in America. (London, Murray.) This "Englishwoman" is a Scotchwoman, who speaks Gaelic, but writes English in a ladylike manner. She avowedly offers us only impressions, not conclusions, concerning American and Canadian society; and this honesty of self-appreciation renders her book more acceptable than many others of the same class. It is unlucky, however, that the very reason which makes her think her stories and reflections interesting should make us think them tiresome—their being about herself.

Laura Gay, a Novel. 2 vols. (London, Hurst and Blackett.) This book, apparently by a novice in the craft-by one who "hath not been fed on the dainties that are bred in a book, hath not eat paper, as it were, hath not drunk ink”-is made up of a very novel view of English society in Rome, and of duties, feelings, and sentiments of parsons at home. We will give a specimen or two of its "utterances." A parson fell in with a sweet enthusiast, and in love with her beauty, and " sympathised so strongly with her religious fervour that it became his duty to marry her." Protestant fathers with fervid daughters, be

ware of poor curates with ideas of "duty" wandering so far beyond the legitimate" dearly beloved," and its introductory "wicked man!"

A religious-minded peer thus meditates on the ruins of the Colosseum: "Truth can only be pure objectively; for even in the creeds where it predominates, being subjective, and parcelled out into portions, each of these necessarily receives a hue of idiosyncrasy, that is, a taint of superstition, more or less strong," &c. &c.

Upon this the author remarks, "The intellectual disposition to analyse is both dangerous and unpopular, for it often leads to unsatisfactory results, and is always laborious.” We quite agree with her, and advise that so dangerous, unpopular, unsatisfactory, and laborious an inanity should be relinquished as soon as possible. She has mistaken her craft; she should quit Grub Street immediately for the more congenial realm of the nursery in Mayfair.

Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as applied to the Decoration of Furniture, Arms, Jewels, &c. &c. Translated from the French of Jules Labarte: copiously illustrated. (London, Murray.) M. Labarte's Handbook, which was originally only an introduction to a catalogue of his collection, has long been known to virtuosi. In its English dress, though betraying some marks of haste in getting up, it is a handsome and useful volume, almost necessary for our many amateurs of Gothic art. The technical processes of the different arts are copiously explained; and the chief works of the greatest masters in each are enumerated and briefly described.

The Past Campaign: a Sketch of the War in the East, from the departure of Lord Raglan to the Capture of Sebastopol. By N. A. Woods, late Special Correspondent of the "Morning Herald." 2 vols. (London, Longmans.) Unlike the brilliant correspondent of the Times, Mr. Woods has no elaborate criticisms on strategy, or speculations on the possible results of other plans than those which were followed. His narrative, too, has a certain tameness and want of colour; but it acquires a solidity and historical importance from containing the whole journal of Major Butler, the defender of Silistria, and a selection of documents from the private and official correspondence of Captain Christie relative to the losses in the gale of the 14th of November. Mr. Woods was not present at the final bombardment and capture of the Malakhof, but gives accounts of it furnished by some of his military friends. The volumes have considerable weight and importance.

Flowers and Fruit; or, the Use of Tears. By Cecilia Mary Caddell. (Duffy.) In nothing perhaps is the essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism more palpably apparent than in the topics selected for consolation at times of sorrow and trial, and the manner in which they are respectively treated. The Protestant, if he does more than appeal to considerations drawn from natural reason or a mundane philosophy, either has recourse to the mere subjectivities of religion, and sends the sufferer for support to his own inward reflections and introspections, or tries to raise and direct his thoughts and hopes to those general truths of revelation which from their nature have less in them of personal and immediate application. The Catholic, on the contrary, betakes himself naturally and spontaneously to the objects of divine faith, or rather to the one object of his love and confidence, an Incarnate God, and all He has done and obtained for men. A glance at the little work we have named above will show precisely what we mean. Except when Protestants have borrowed, or rather we must say stolen, like Jeremy Taylor, from Catholic sources, their "comfort in affliction"

God is

is of the cold, vague, unsatisfying nature we have described. far off in heaven, at a distance, beyond the stars; the Saviour is come down from the cross, and is gone they know not whither; about His Virgin Mother they know little, and care less; communion with the Saints they have none; grace with them is a name rather than a substance; sacraments are but signs of things absent, in which they individually have no part. They can but hope and trust and feel about in the dark; they have nothing solid, present, and evident to the eye of faith, on which they can fasten their gaze and repose with confidence. How different is it with the Catholic! He is taught to dwell on all the details of his Lord's Passion as if it were being enacted over and over again before his eyes; to sympathise and suffer with Him in spirit, as did Mary; to adore Him in every particular pang and ignominy He endured; to worship every drop of Blood that falls from His agonising Body;-nay, he has Jesus Himself in the Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus within his breast in communion; he has His Sacred Heart beating responsively to every throb of his own; a Mother who loves and can help him; an angel ever at his side; the examples and the intercessions of Saints and Martyrs to console and strengthen him. Such are the topics on which this little book discourses, addressing itself with much warmth and affectionateness to the hearts and consciences of all who have been "called to stand at the foot of the cross, whether by suffering of body or distress of mind." Its simplicity and earnestness fit it for the afflicted in every rank of life.

Five Years in Damascus, including an account of the History, Topography, and Antiquities of that City'; with Travels and Researches in Palmyra, Lebanon, and the Haurau. By the Rev. J. T. Porter, F.R.S.L. 2 vols. (London, Murray.) Mr. Porter, and a companion, the Rev. Smylie Robson, have employed their time in Damascus perfectly to the satisfaction of our statistical societies, whatever may have been their success in the missionary line. This, we suspect, was but small, judging from the savageness of their judgment of the Greek Church-which anyhow is incomparably better than their own. Mr. Porter is most offensive in his presumption and ignorance. He talks of the "blasphemous title, 'Mother of God;'" and is much shocked at a Greek picture of the last judgment, partly for its "obscenity," i. e. probably its naked representations of the horrors of the punishment of vices which English clergymen allow to flourish, because they are afraid of denouncing them openly, and partly because "numerous little devils, fearful in form and terrible in countenance, are seen mounted on the backs of spirits (!) and belabouring them with heavy sticks." Evidently the missionary is ignorant that Christians profess to believe a resurrection of the body. But even if the objects in question were spirits, so also are the devils; and then again there is no incongruity in representing both under material forms. Only fancy a man of Mr. Porter's astounding ignorance being sent out to instruct the Eastern Christians in their religion! We have no objection to his employment as an agent of the Geographical Society; but to recognise in him a Christian teacher is too absurd.

History of Christian Churches and Sects. By J. B. Marsden, Incumbent of St. Peter's, Birmingham. 2 vols. (London, Bentley.) These volumes furnish a good instance of the thick ignorance and stupid assumption which characterise almost all English works on theology. We have opened them in several places at hazard, and on every occasion our hook has drawn up some choice specimen of absurdity. The author

thus opens his account of his own sect-"England, Church of.—The origin of the Church of England must be sought in the primitive ages of Christianity." The reason why parsons can never acknowledge the true origin of their body is, that they must look in the wrong place for it. A few pages on we have this precious piece of morality. Sir James Mackintosh has discussed the question, whether the seizure of the monastic property in England was justifiable; Mr. Marsden thinks it is, on this ground: "if an action be right, all those subsidiary lines of action which are necessary for its completion are right also." That is, in the plainer language of antiquity, "let us do evil, that good may come."

Under the head of "the Church of Rome,” we find this delicious piece of history. "The institution of St. Dominic gave new features to the Church of Rome. Its progress must have astonished, if it did not sometimes alarm, the Papacy itself. For 666 years—that is, till the time of the Augustines and Mendicants—it went on increasing, till its wealth and power were incredible." We suppose the author intended St. Benedict when he wrote St. Dominic; but even then the passage is ridiculous enough for its attempt to foist in the "number of the beast," 666, as the amount of years from the institution of the Benedictines to that of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.

We have read through the author's account of the Universalists, or assertors of the final salvation of the whole human race. The beginning of the essay is characterised by a total inability to distinguish between the assertion of a purgatorial fire and the negation of an eternal punishment: the writer thinks that the universalist dogmas of the Paulicians would have excited but little opposition in the Romish theologians, with their then newly invented notion of purgatory, unless the doctrine of a final restoration of the lost to happiness had been connected with more offensive tenets. At the end of the essay, he treats the sect as quite weak in England, numbering only three congregations-one in Glasgow, one in Birmingham, and one in Liverpool; he never alludes to the school of Maurice and Kingsley; to the popular poets of the day, Tennyson and Browning; to the wide-spread philosophy of Carlyle, Emerson, and the transcendentalists, who have, in spite of Mr. Marsden's ignorance, so discreditable to a would-be historian, infected to the very depths the great body of thinking Englishmen, whether lay or clerical. Your modern Englishman would think any man a brute who refused to say that he hoped the dogma of eternal punishment was false. So much for his faith in this article of the creed;—faith in a creed which he detests, and which he hopes may turn out not to be true! We do not know a Protestant (except some of your bitter Calvinists, whose notion of the Gospel is, that it is the glad tidings of damnation to all men but themselves) who is not a universalist at heart.

Krim-Girai, Khan of the Crimea. Translated from the German of Theodore Mundt, by the Hon. W. G. C. Eliot. (London, Murray.) Krim-Girai, Khan of the Crimea in 1760, was filled with admiration for Frederic the Great of Prussia; he sought his alliance, prepared to make war on Russia in obedience to his request, and when Frederic's policy changed was almost persuaded to make war on the Austrians, whom he owned to be "a fine, generous, brave nation, whose sovereign never did him any harm." This consummation was, however, prevented by the policy of his suzeraine the Porte. In 1768 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Turkish and Tartar army, in the war which the Porte declared against Russia in consequence of the invasion of Poland. In this capacity he destroyed a hundred and fifty villages and

hamlets, took 20,000 prisoners for slaves, and innumerable cattle. On his return to his own country he was poisoned by a Greek physician. The book presents an interesting picture of a noble barbarian, and of the obliquity of the European policy of the last century.

Vagabond Life in Mexico. By Gabriel Ferry, for seven years resident there. (London, Blackwood.) This is a smart book, which pretends to be true, and is not. The first chapter tells us how a monk took our Englishman with him to hear the confession of a wounded bullfighter, and how Mr. Ferry heard all the man had to say; which we need not tell our readers turns out to be a very sentimental history. It is a pity that almost all the pictures of remote foreign life that now appear are disfigured with this outrageous mendacity, the effect of which is to deprive every single sketch and incident of every vestige of probability. Some things in this volume are no doubt true; but we will defy any one to say which they are. We are certain that the story of Perico, the Mexican vagabond," is not among the number. For the rest, we have not read them.

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Russia; its Rise and Progress, Tragedies and Revolutions. By the Rev. T. Milner. (London, Longmans.) We have heard of a judge who tried a joke, and reserved the point. Mr. Milner's writings have a similar weakness; he is a compiler, who succeeds admirably in grinding down every thing sharp and piquant into a very gruelly kind of consistence; he has the art of stopping short, quite unconsciously, whenever the author he is quoting is going to say something worth hearing; also, he has the judgment to use authorities that know almost as little of the subject he writes about as he does himself. It is as though the Russian Baron Raffamuffski should write an account of the "rise and progress, tragedies and revolutions" of England, using as the two sources of his information Miss Bungle's chronological chart of British history, and Count Smorltork's great work on English society. As a history, in spite of the prejudices of the writer, and his culpable subserviency to popular feeling, the book is colourless, weak, and vapid; though to those who know nothing of Russian history it may serve, in default of a better book, as an introduction to the study.

Dorothy: a Tale. (London, J. W. Parker.) If the author of this nouvellette is new at these matters, he or she has many of the elements of a good writer. Dorothy has a real character; a Cinderella in externals, but interiorly a clever young lady, who manages every body. A series of external events produces a very decided and probable change in her disposition, the progress of which is satisfactorily drawn out. The writer, having an eye to the heroine's comfortable settlement, does well in the last chapter to transform her lover from a soldier into a parson, as the clerical is certainly the most domestic and uxorious of all the professions. Lastly, the book is as full of marriages and deaths as a newspaper; there is also a fair sprinkling of births, sufficient for an ordinary chronicle.

Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers; to which is added Porsoniana. (London, Moxon.) A man must be both very brilliant and very original to make his table-talk of much literary value: Rogers cannot be said to have possessed in any great degree either of these qualifications; he aimed rather at being a kind of Mæcenas to poor authors, and a go-between for the larger fishes. The anecdotes in this book generally concern these acquaintances of his; and, like most anecdotes of literary men, fail to give us any very grand idea of the moral