PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Lyra Sacra. By the Rev. B. W. Savile. Published by Messrs. Longman and Co.—A very excellent selection of religious lyrical poetry, chosen from the literature of all Christian countries with tact and judgment. The compiler evidently considers that something beyond mere piety is necessary to constitute religious poetry, that bnght thoughts and vivid words are as valuable in the bard of Chris- tianity as in the poet who selects less lofty themes. Mr. Savile might -do an acceptable service to the public and himself by editing Milton's translation of the Psalms. It has never, we believe, been given to the public in a separate form. Quips and Cranks. By Thomas Hood. London and New York : Routledge, Warne, and Routledge.—The fact that Mr. Hood is the on of his father appears to have done him at once both good and harm. On the one handit has, he tells us, gained him the friendship of some of those who regarded the late Thomas Hood with the affec- tionate admiration that he so well deserved; and on the other it is clear that it has induced him to waste an appreciable .portion of his 'tune and energy in attempting to acquire a style of writing for which he has no special qualifications whatever. For no other reason that we can possibly imagine, except that his father was perhaps, the most brilliant and original punster that ever lived, Mr. Hood feels it to be his duty to make puns too ,- and accordingly, in the present volume, as well as in the notes which he contributed to his father's Memorials, he acts up_to his conviction in a very painstaking and conscientious manner. Unfortunately all his pans are as laboured and as depre.ssing in their effect, as the vast majority of his father's were spontaneous and irresistibly comic. A similar mistaken sense of duty has led him to scatter about the present volume a number of would-be comic woodcuts, mostly drawn by himself, of which the best that can possi- bly be said is, that they are not much worse than a few of the least happy productions of his father's pencil. And what renders these attempts even less acceptable than they otherwise might have been, is the tact that they are sown broadcast over the pages of a book, by far the greater portion of whose contents is, despite the airy sportiveness of its title, of a more or less serious or sentimental description. Mr. Hood's comic power is certainly no greater, nor is his sense of humour any keener than that of at least ninety-nine out of every hundred men of ordinary ability and education. We have met with only one ob- servation in the whole of his book which is calculated even in the slightest degree to provoke a laugh, and that is not Mr. Hood's ow, being, in fact, a remark made by a lunatic, on seeing a treadmill in action.—" If you set men to go up steps, let 'em go up steps ; but if you let the steps come down to meet 'em, why its encouraging idle- ness." At the same time the present volume affords abundant proof that Mr. Hood possesses a considerable power of writing sentimental verses in a very pretty and graceful manner; and we trust that he
will allow us to express a hope that, both for his sake and our own, he will for the future confine himself exclusively to compositions of this description. Above all, let him never again lay himself open to such a charge of affectation and bad taste, as might fairly be based upon the frontispiece to the volume now before us.
The Near and the Heavenly Horizons. By Madame de Gasparin. Edinburgh: Strahan and Co. ; London : Hamilton, Adams, and Co.— This is a collection of what, for want of a more precise designation, we suppose we must call religious meditations. The only difference be- tween the Near and the Heavenly Horizons is, that in the former the author's reflections are conveyed through the medium of some simple story of actual life, while in the latter they are permitted to stand alone. We gather from her book that Madame de Gasparin's home is on the slopes of the Jura; and that, wherever she may be, she occupies herself mainly in works of charity. Her meditations would probably fare badly if examined by what she calls "the demon of analysis, the bad angel of our age:" but they are pleasantly and genially, if some- what mystically, written, and evince a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, and a warm sympathy for suffering of every kind. Church Rates and Convocation. A Letter to His Grace the Arch- bishop of Canterbury. By. a Clergyman. London : Hardwicke.—T4e only Compromise possible in regard to Church Bates. By a Former Member of the House of Commons. London: John Murray.—The titles of both these pamphlets hold out hopes that their authors have something worth hearing to communicate on the subject of church rates. The clergyman, however, is rather vague. His proposition is simply to reform Convocation in the following manner. Let it be no longer an exclusively clerical body. Let all clergymen, and those lay- men who have paid church rates for not less than one year, have votes for the election of a body consisting of sixty-eight clerical, and sixty. eight lay members (one of each for each archdeaconry), and twenty- eight archdeacons (one for each diocese) ;- and to these members let the House of Commons add twenty-eight of their own number, all of whom must be bond fide members of the Church of England. To this body entrust the general management of ecclesiastical matters. What- ever acts it passes must go up to the House of Lords- and no bill can be brought before it until a select committee of the Commons have reported to their own House that the measure falls within the province of Convocation. We presume that the Clergyman is of opimon that an assembly so constituted would possess, ex officio, an instinctive faculty of settling the church rate question; for he does not give the slightest hint of the measures which he wishes to be adopted on this subject. The ex-M.P. is somewhat more explicit. He wishes to leave the levying of church rates precisely where it is at present, in the hands of the vestry; and simply proposes to make its payment, when levied, entirely a matter of choice. The only distinctive feature of his scheme is that he does not wish to make any alteration in the existing constitution of vestries, so as to confine the government of the Church exclusively to those who are willing to pay for its support; an act of liberality which, he conceives, would go far towards extinguishing religious differences, and conciliating adverse. parties. We should scarcely like to endorse his statement that this is the only compromise possible; but at any rate we prefer the layman's scheme to that of his clerical brother. The Adabetical Gazette. First Quarterly Part, 1861. London: Adams.--This publication, which is simply a reprint from the Gazette of the lists of bankrupts, insolvents, assignments, sequestrations, dividends, certificates, dissolutions of partnership., notable suspensions, &c., from January 1, to March 25, 1861, both inclusive, is des. ed for the benefit of the mercantile world, to whom it conveys a
amount of useful information, at the low charge of 6d. a quarter. Cassell's Illustrated History of England. Text by William Howitt. Part XV. New Series. Cassell's Popular Natural History. Part XXV. Cassell's Illustrated Family Bible. Part XXIII. Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper. April, 1861. The Ladies' Treasury. April, 1861.—We have received the foregoing batch of periodicals from Messrs. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, of Ludgate-hill. The History of England comprises the period from 1791 to 1797. In the Natural History, the present number of which commences the subject of birds, the illustrations, though very good, are scarcely equal to those in Mr. Wood's well-known work. 'the Family Bible has got about half way through the Psalms, and the illustrations are unusually good. The principal features of •this number of the Family Paper are a romantic sea-side story called "Meghom; or, the One Error," by Ritter Bell; a tale by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, entitled "The Pearl of Orr's Island ;" and a series of papers on the present state of America, by Mr. Cassell himself, which are very well and carefully done. The Ladies' Treasury contains some pretty illustrations, and a large amount of miscellaneous matter. The English Cyclopcedia of Arts and Sciences. Part XXVI. and XXVII. Conducted by Charles Knight. London: Bradbury and Evans.—Mr. Knight's aamirable Cycloptedia is rapidly approach- ing completion, the numbers now before us forming a part of the last volume but one of the entire work. The most important of the numerous articles which they contain are those on Sanskrit and Saxon Language and Literature, Schools, Sculpture, and Ships, Shipbuilding and Shipping; in all of which—as, Indeed, throughout the whole volume—the information given is carefully carried down to the date of publication. • Chambers' Journal. Parts LXXXV.—LXXXVII. London Edinburgh: W. and It. Chambers.—Chambers' Journal is so univer- sally known that it is scarcely necessary to do more than chronicle
the fact that we have received the numbers for the three first months of the present year. Mr. Pavn's story, "The Family Scapegrace," which was commenced at the 'beginning of the year, and is not yet finished, is very amusing.
The Armenian Origin of the Etruscans. By Robert Ellis, B.D., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge; and Author of "A Treatise on HannibaPs Passage of the Alps." London: Parker, Son, and Bourn.—Mr. Ellis's position is that the Etruscans are descended, not from any member of the Northern divisions of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan race, but from the Armenian branch of the Southern division of that race. The dialects akin to the Armenian have been obliterated in Europe and Asia Minor by the spread of the Greek language, until it was only in the original seat of the race, in Armenia itself, that a representation of those dialects survived. Mr. FAR, bolding with Dr. Johnson that "language is the pedigree of nations," bases his con- clusion chiefly upon a comparative study of several Eastern dialects. He appears to have got npliis case with great care; but his arguments can only be followed and thoroughly appreciated by the few whose philological studies have taken the same special direction as his own.
Front Death to Life: Bible Records of Remarkable Conversions. By the Rev. Adolph Saphir, South Shields. Edinburgh : Strahan and Co. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.—The title of this volume is a sufficient index to its contents. It is a collection of discourses, which do not appear to have been actually delivered from the pulpit, the texts of which are taken from the most striking narrations of con- version in the New and Old Testaments. Of course, a book of this class affords no hold whatever to literary criticism. Bases of Belief: an Examination of Christianity as a Divine Revela- tion by the Light of recognised Facts and Principles. By Edward Miall. Third Edition. London: Hall, Virtue, and Co.—On the ap- pearance of the first edition of this work, we expressed a very favour- able opinion of the fairness and candour of its author, and of the cha- ritable spirit in which he had discharged the task which he had assigned to himself. The same qualities, unfortunately so rare among theolo- gical disputants, are conspicuously displayed in the preface to the pre- sent volume, in which he states his reasons for republishing his work in a cheaper form. His object is, as will readily be imagined, to pro- vide an antidote to the celebrated Essays and Reviews. Unlike the great majority of those who object to that book, though he heartily condemns the speculations which it puts forl h, he carefully avoids including its authors in the same condemnation. "It is," he says, "much to be regretted;that men, earnestly professing that they accept Christianity as a spiritual showing forth of the divine character and will, should be set down as unbelievers because they repudiate the customary process by which the great majority of their fellows reach the same end.. . . . It is hardly wise, it cannot be kind, to set up a shout of execration, the only effect of which must be to prevent their re- tracing their steps to less dangerous paths, and to drive them farther and farther from the conclusions from which we could have wished they had never departed." We heartily commend these passages to the con- sideration of the bishops and clergy of the Church of England; ac- companying our recommendation with a hope that they will abandon the vituperation in which they have hitherto exclusively indulged for the more respectable and effectual task of refutation. The hfuseunt: a Quarterly Magazine of Education, Literature, and Science. No. L April, 1861. Edinburgh : James Gordon London: Stanford.—This publication is designed to supply what hit.% for the last few years, been a desideratum in English literature—a periodical work to be devoted mainly to the discussion of questions connected with education. The number before us appears to promise well for the success of the undertaking which it inaugurates. The majority of the articles which it contains are ably written, and bear no marks either of hastiness of composition or crudeness of thought. The best of them is, to our mind, the essay on "School Punishments," by the Rev. James Currie, of Edinburgh, who offers a temperate and very able opposition to the total abolition of corporal punishment, as a means of restraint in exceptional cases. Although we cannot expect light reading in a publication of this description, perhaps the contents of this number are somewhat heavier than is required by the strict necessities of the case. We may, perhaps, look forward to an inter- mixture of somewhat lighter !natter when Dr. Brown and Mr. Hannay, whose names we observe on the list of contributors, take the field.
The Twelve Great Battles of England. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co.—The author of this volume is particularly anxious to dis- abuse the public mind of the possible notion that he started with any preconceived idea whatever as to the number of English battles which deserve to be called specially great; and to impress upon them the fact that, on a full examination of the military annals of his country, he found that the number of such contests was no more nor no less than a round dozen. The battles which he delights to honour—of which, be it said, he gives a very sufficient account—are those of Hastings, Falkirk, Bannockburn, Crecy, Poictiers,Alincourt, Blenheim, Rami- lies, Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo. He dedicates his volume to the volunteers of England, and concludes with a special address to that bodY, in which he insists upon the importance of their qualifying themselves to act, not only as riflemen, but also as regular infantry. Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall, taken afoot. By Wilkie Collins, Author of "The Woman in White," &c. New Edition. London: Bentley. — Although the ten years which have elapsed since the first appearance of this book have rendered its title somewhat of a misnomer, Mr. Collins has, wisely we think, determined not to christen it afresh, rightly considering the preservation of the individuality of his work as a matter of greater importance than the slavish adherence to literal correctness. At the time when the first edition of the volume was published, the name of Wilkie Collins was less universally known than it is at present, and so was a some- what less sure passport to public favonr ; and it is possible that some of our readers may not be personally acquainted with the work before ns. They will find it a pleasant and straightforward account of a very interesting country. A postscript to the present edition contains an account of a yacht-voyage to the Scilly Islands.
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