We have received the annual volumes of the Leisure Hour
and the Sunday at Home. (Religious Tract Society.)—The chief serial tale of the Leisure Hour is " Senior and Junior," by Leslie Keith. This has been running through the whole year ; a shorter tale, from the well-known pen of Linda Villari, bears the title of "A Mountain Romance." This we can recommend to our readers ; the other we must own to not having had time to read ; but the author's name will be warrant enough for it. The miscellaneous contents of the volume seem to us to bo of more than common merit. We do not, indeed, quite like the way in which Dr. Wey- mouth has accommodated his learning to the supposed taste of his readers, in his " Day in Ancient Athens." The perpetual intrusion of the modern is wearisome. But there is much in- formation in it, and the sketch of the Prometheus is excel- lent. We may mention with special praise a series of papers on the " Sovereigns of Europe," illustrated with very good portraits; another series of "Biographies," including Adair' Sedgwick, James Macdonell, Lord Napier of Magdala, and Edwin Waugh, the Lancashire poet (a capital paper this, with characteristic extracts) ; " Natural History Notes," and "Heroes and Heroines of the Monthyon Prize." The magazine, we see, provides for its readers to a large extent by descriptive reviews of the best books of the day. One of the most interesting things in the volume is a table exhibiting the " Comparative Mortality in Different Occupations." The " Minister of Religion" heads the list, as the most successful in keeping death at bay, and the " Tavern-Servant " brings up the rear. The mortality among the last class is four times greater than that among the first. Gardeners come next to ministers, and are followed by farmers, agricultural labourers, paper-makers, stocking-makers, and schoolmasters. Medical men come low down in the list,—sixty-fifth in a total of eighty-eight. Book- sellers (probably including publishers) come fairly high (fifteenth), with lawyers three below them. Artists are in the thirty-third place, commercial travellers in the fortieth. Tobacconists are precisely in the middle. But where are literary men ? Probably too low to be classed. One of the serials in the Sunday at Home, " Not by Bread Alone," by the Author of " Occupations of a Retired Life," has been already reviewed in these columns. The other, " Fir-Tree Farm," we can recommend. It has a pur- pose—gambling on horse-races being the evil against which it is directed—but this is managed with skill. Dr. Alfred Schofield contributes a very interesting series of papers on
"Faith-Healing." He seems to have approached the inquiry with a perfectly unbiassed mind. Nor is he inclined to limit the possibilities of the action of a Higher Power on our human frame. But he has come, after a careful investigation of particular cases, to the conclusion that there is no authenticated case of healing of organic disease. Nerve and functional disorders are susceptible to almost any extent. But then, this has been a common ex- perience ever since such things were first observed. Faith in things quite ineffectual in themselves has long been known to work wonders. There is, for instance, the well-known story of Sir Humphrey Davy, who, in preparation for some remedy that he was about to employ, put a clinical thermometer into the patient's month. The patient thought that the thermometer was the remedy, professed himself benefited, and was actually cured by a few more applications. The one exception that Dr. Schofield has found is the case of a girl who was almost blind, but now can see some- thing, after her eyes had been violently rubbed by some one pre- siding at a faith-healing meeting. She could see a very little, but was so blind as to be helpless. Now she can see imperfectly, and can work for her living. Besides these papers, there is the usual variety of readable and instructive articles. " Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo ;" " Isaiah, Prophet and Poet ;" " Pundita Ramabai," with its information about the condition of women in India; and " Some Quaker Women of the Past," may be mentioned
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