"A German vessel may be known by the beautiful national melodies which the crew sing in harmony; a Dutchman by the clatter of wooden shoes; a Frenchman by vociferous chatteration; and a ship that sails from our own dear native land may be recognised by our national curses and bad language in general.' Russian vessels are known in a fog by the smell; "their boats and crews are the filthiest, frowsy, shaggy, ragged, shockheaded sea-vermin that ever stank upon the waves."

The following notes on Swedish churches add another testimony to several which have been quoted in the Rambler to the same effect:

"In Swedish churches one looks in vain for any trace of religious reverential feeling. ... Royal pews, tombstones, and inscriptions in honour of the king, are made so much of, that they seem to say in the words of the Psalmist, He is thy Lord God, and worship thou him!' It is customary also, except during service, to wear hats in church; the doors, with a possibly needful, but certainly not seemly caution, are locked at the beginning of the sermon, and there you must sit nolens volens to the end; and lastly, notice of skalds, or public hunting-appointments is always given in church. Imagine a clergyman in Northamptonshire rising and saying, 'I give. notice that Lord Fitzwilliam's hounds will meet on Monday at Stanwick Pastures; on Wednesday at Bythorn Toll-bar; and on Friday at Croxton Park.

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(We may observe parenthetically that we can imagine such a thing very well. We knew a church in old days where one of the lords of the manor used to cause notice to be given of court-leets and courtbarons, where the tenants were invited to repair to do suit and service before a bailiff smoking his pipe in the back-parlour of a wayside public-house.) But to return to Mr. Hughes:

"A traveller in Sweden pines for one of those solemn beautiful little chapels which we find in foreign lands by the wayside, on the mountain-pass, by the cataract or the ford, where holy reverence and devotion are expressed in every simple feature of wood and stone. But such things may be sought for in vain in the Church of Luther; and I must admit, that those of our own chapels which I have seen in Sweden quite keep pace with the religious feeling of the land."

Several extracts concerning the war, and the loss of our naval prestige by our extreme anxiety to keep our ships out of range in the Baltic, might be made; but we can recommend the whole volume as amusing, and, in comparison with the general run of books, even solid. Mr. Hughes is evidently a practised writer. He is the author of one of the best of the "Cambridge Essays."

A Treatise on Algebra. By B. Sestini, S.J., Professor in GeorgeTown College. (Baltimore, Murphy; London, Dolman.) Another effort of the Jesuits to enslave the human race. No doubt, as we learn that the education of the Austrian people is now to be "handed over to the Jesuits," this volume will be employed for the demoralising and degrading the souls of young Germany. Wonderful to relate, however, we have not discovered that F. Sestini has any where contrived to insinuate Popery by means of x, y, and z; but perhaps that is because the present volume does not treat on what mathematicians call "impossible quantities." Not even a Jesuit, it is clear, can teach Popery by means of algebra; though we have seen it assailed in a Protestant book on arithmetic. Seriously speaking, F. Sestini's book is extremely well done, though possibly a little more technical in its occasional phrases than is absolutely necessary. Somehow or other, it gives us the idea that its author has a most intense relish for his subject; he seems to feel the force of a formula with the sort of keenness of gusto with which a

musician hears a symphony of Beethoven's, or an artist studies the miraculous aerial perspectives of Turner. The volume is also well turned out, in the way of printing, paper, and binding.

Brambletye House. By Horace Smith. (Parlour Library. Hodson.) Horace Smith's best novel, and a good one in itself. We have a very agreeable impression of its perusal when it first came out.

Agamemnon the King. From the Greek of Eschylus. By W. Blew, M.A. (Longmans.) That Mr. Blew possesses one requisite for the translation of Æschylus-a capacity for writing animated and sonorous verses-his own "Prologue" to the present version abundantly shows. Such a rendering of the Greek into English as will convey to the unlearned reader an adequate conception of the extraordinary Michel-Angelesque grandeur of the original, is, we need hardly say, all but impossible. Eschylus is one of the most untranslatable of poets. He sung as Michel-Angelo painted; and who could produce the superhuman effect of the frescoes on the Sistine roof by any description or any device of copying? Mr. Blew's translation, if not impossibly Eschylean, is at any rate a very creditable and interesting effort. Half the volume consists of notes and illustrations, mostly in the way of parallel passages from other poets, for which, like many readers, Mr. Blew has quite a passion. The book is altogether the work of a scholar and an intelligent admirer of the great tragedian.

The Last of the Arctic Voyages; a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance, under the command of Capt. Sir E. Belcher, in search of Sir John Franklin, during the years 1852-3-4, with Notes of Natural History, &c. 2 vols. (London, Lovell Reeve.) The last of the Arctic voyages does not add much to our knowledge of the northern regions, except a few discoveries in natural history, and tabular views of temperature, rise of tides, and growth of mustard-and-cress. The writer is evidently under the greatest anxiety to prove himself in the right in his disputes with his officers, into the particulars of which we suppose he is precluded from entering in a book "published under the authority of the Lords of the Admiralty." The consequence is, that the narrative is disfigured by a querulous tone, and an undercurrent of general inuendos and charges against almost every body under his command, and by a selection of orders and other documents which have no value except as enabling him to make out his case. Neither the style nor the matter of these two large volumes seems to us to be satisfactory. However, we must except from this censure the notes on natural history in the appendix.

The Ballads of Ireland. Collected and edited by Edward Hayes. 2 vols. (London, A. Fullarton and Co.) As a whole these ballads are disappointing; many of them are not the true national songs of Ireland, with their racy humour and their quaint expression, but a set of dandy drawing-room imitations, in few of which do we recognise the true Irish spirit. Perhaps the political ballads come nearest to the vulgar ideal, with all their naive exaggeration and brag, which have been so well parodied by Thackeray. Several of the rest are lovely songs, tender, pathetic, or fanciful; but only Irish inasmuch as they were written (generally) by Irishmen.

Western Wanderings, or a Pleasure Tour in Canada. By W. H. G. Kingston. 2 vols. (London, Chapman and Hall.) Mr. Kingston is the author of six other works, besides two et-ceteras; yet he does not seem a very judgmatical writer. For instance, he thinks the points of

his speech after the last day's dinner on the voyage out worth preserving; they are, 1. a hope that the stars and stripes may ever float peacefully by the union-jack; and 2. that he felt towards Americans as towards brothers. Half an hour after, land was in sight. He gazed on it with intense eagerness. "It was America, with its interesting past, its magnificent present, its glorious future." We wonder whether the past, present, and future of America looked like the twenty centuries that were caught spying the French army from the top of the pyramids. We certainly do not wonder at the eager gaze, considering the rarity of the spectacle. At p. 188, vol. i. we have a notice of the sentimental girl that married one of the men exhibited as a red chieftain in Catlin's exhibition in London. She went out with a piano and a variety of elegant furniture; she was a fine, handsome, intelligent person. She sang and played well; indeed, her great delight was music, and it was her sad and only solace when she reached, not the rustic palace of the great red chief, but the miserable shanty of the rough half-caste carpenter, her husband, to instruct the young squaws in such music as they were capable of learning. She had died two years before Mr. Kingston's visit to the Sault Ste. Marie. Such was the end of novel-reading.

In another place we are told that "every inch of the ground" (of a new settlement) was rough with logs, fallen trunks, great and small branches, chips, stones, planks, and other sawn timber." This reminds

us of a proclamation of the Mayor of Weymouth, on occasion of a visit from George III., inviting the townsmen to remove all stones, cabbagestalks, wheelbarrows, and other vegetables out of the streets.

In justice to Mr. Kingston, we must own that these slips are not fair average specimens of his book, which is tolerably amusing, though somewhat spoony (or, as he calls it, rose-coloured); but this he excuses on the ground of the present tour having been his wedding trip-valeat quantum.

The Life of Henry Fielding: with Notices of his Writings, his Times, and his Contemporaries. By F. Lawrence. (London, Hall and Virtue.) This is a biography of the great novelist who wrote Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, written in the same manner as Mr. Forster's successful Life of Goldsmith, and presenting the subject of the memoir in relation to his times and contemporaries, so that his works and character may be estimated by the standard of his age. Mr. Lawrence is a very fair critic and historian, and writes with the intelligence of an enthusiastic admirer; though he has none of that kindred genius which enables Mr. Thackeray to present so vivid a picture of his predecessor in his volume on the English humorists.

Cambridge Essays. Contributed by Members of the University. (London, J. W. Parker.) This, like the corresponding volume of the Oxford Essays, which we noticed in a former number, is intended to be an annual contribution to our periodical literature. The subjects on the whole are such as have present interest, and they are handled in a more practical and experienced manner than those in the Oxford volume. The first essay, on the Life and Genius of Molière, gives a very complete picture of the French dramatist and his works; but is also somewhat pedantic. The second, on the English Language in America, is singularly meagre. Galton's Notes on Modern Geography, though amusingly wanting in precision in definitions, is practical and businesslike. The next essay is not so good; but the rest of them are longer, more complete, and more carefully executed. The essays on the Relation of Novels to Life, and on the Future Prospects of the British Navy,

are able and interesting; as also, the last, on Classical Education, a subject that was well treated in the Oxford Essays. Altogether it is an able volume.

Eastern Experiences; collected during a Winter's Tour in Egypt and the Holy Land. By Adam Steinmetz Kennard. (London, Longmans.) There are so many writers who have a profound knowledge of the antiquities and inhabitants of Egypt and Palestine, that the casual tourist cannot expect that his observations should be treated as new pieces of information, or should be valued by any other standard than their liveliness and capability of amusing. Mr. Kennard's experiences may be recommended on these grounds, as well as for the absence of that flippant and infidel tone which generally characterises the narratives of Protestant visitors to the Holy Places. On the contrary, he seems to have gone to Palestine with somewhat of the spirit of a pilgrim; though he owns that his devotion was marred by the crowding and squeezing and hustling which he underwent at the hands of his brother palmers.

Mexico and its Religion; with Incidents of Travel in that Country. By R. A. Wilson. (London and New York, Sampson Low, and Harper.) This is a know-nothing book, containing the most abominable accusations against the monks and nuns of Mexico, which Mr. Wilson pretends to have copied from a work which he thus describes:

"I learn from the preface of a book in the Spanish language, which I purchased at Mexico, entitled The Voyages of Thomas Page, that a Dominican monk of that name, the brother of the royalist governor of Oxford under Charles I., was smuggled into Mexico by his Dominican brethren, against the king's order, which prohibited the entry of Englishmen into that country. As a missionary monk he resided in Mexico, or New Spain, eighteen years. On his return to England, he published an account of the country which he visited, under the title of a Survey of the West Indies. This being the first and last book ever written by a resident of New Spain that had not been submitted to the most rigid censorship by the Inquisition, it produced so profound a sensation, that it was translated into French by an Irish Catholic named O'Neil, at the command of the great Colbert. From this expurgated French edition the Spanish copy now before me was translated... I have since found a black letter (!) copy of the original, printed in London, 1677; but I have concluded to use the translations (from the Spanish) as furnishing a more official character to the picture therein drawn of the grossly immoral state of the clergy and of the religious orders."

The first would-be translation from this Dominican book is a picture of the cell of the "Prior of Vera Cruz," which we are informed was richly tapestried and adorned with feathers of birds of Michoacan; walls were hung with pictures of merit; tables covered with rich rugs of silk; sideboards heaped with China porcelain; vases and bowls standing about, containing preserved fruits and most delicate sweetmeats, &c. &c., certainly "most foreign to the poverty of a begging friar."

After this our readers will of course not be surprised to hear that the catalogues of the library of the British Museum, which certainly cannot be deficient in any English book which ever "created a prodigious sensation," or was "translated by order of Colbert," make no mention whatever of this "Thomas Page," nor of his Survey of the West Indies, nor of any O'Neil who translated it; nor, in short, do they give the slightest cue to the discovery of any such work as Mr. Wilson pretends to have found with such facility. Of course, the whole thing is a malicious hoax; and we will not trust ourselves to characterise either the

unprincipled blackguardism of the author, or the blind bigotry of the publishers, who probably made no sort of inquiries concerning the character of the book they were about to launch upon the waters. Sufficient for them that it was against Popery. Such an end, of course, sanctifies any means.

FOREIGN LITERATURE.

De l'Art Chrétien. Par A. F. Rio. Tom. 2. (Paris, Ambroise Bray.) This second volume of M. Rio's popular work embraces the Lombard schools of architecture, sculpture, and painting; namely, those of Milan, Bergamo, and Lodi, together with those of Cremona and Ferrara. In chapter xvi. the author gives a short sketch of a theoretical work on architecture by Averulino, better known as Antonio Philaretes, the Florentine architect of the magnificent Ospedale Maggiore at Milan: the book still remains in Ms. ; but we hope that M. Rio's notice of it will lead to its early publication.

The Efforts of Protestantism in Europe, and the Means which it employs to pervert Catholics. By Mgr. Rendu, Bishop of Annecy. (Paris, Louis Vivès.) This little book may be divided into three parts: an account of the machinery by which the Bible-societies and Protestant associations attempt to sow doubt and disunion among Christian communities; a series of conversations, in which their pretensions are controverted; and an exposition of Catholic doctrine, with especial reference to the points assailed by Protestants. The book is a manual intended for the use of the author's flock.

Descriptive and Historical Notice of the Parochial Church of St. Eustache, at Paris. (Paris, Dentu.) St. Eustache is the grand expiring effort of Gothic art in France; for the cathedral of Orleans, though later, is but an insipid imitation or tasteless restoration of the ruined church. But in St. Eustache quite new principles are for the first time acted upon,-principles which might be made as fruitful as those which gave birth to the other well-known and well-defined styles of Gothic architecture. We do not say that these principles are analysed or even hinted at in the work before us; but any work is worth mentioning which is calculated to call the attention of men with eyes in their heads to perhaps the most magnificent and imposing of the churches of Paris. The profits of this book go to the poor of the parish.

Life of the Reverend Mother Emily, Foundress and first General Superior of the Religious of the Holy Family of Villefranche de Rouergue, Diocese of Rodez. By Léon Aubineau. (Paris, Louis Vivès.) This is an order comprising two kinds of sisters: the enclosed, who educate children; and the tourières, who are employed in the ministrations of charity outside the convent. The narrative is an example of the true endogenous growth of the productions of grace. In England, with human calculation, we define what we are to do, we provide money and means for the external instruments; and we think that the living spirit must come when it is called. In France the living spirit is first allowed to develop itself, and to gather round it and assimilate the circumstances and instruments which are required for its external manifestation. It is as difficult to build up a religious institute as to build a living tree; the one grows by the secret operations of grace, as the other by the mysterious forces of nature. Neither will suffer the control of human calculation and prevision.