CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Dublin Review, for April. (Burns and Oates.)—The feature of this number is the editor's review (since republished) of Mr. Ffoulkes' "Letter to Archbishop Manning." Every ono must allow that it is an able, and on the whole, a successful attack. We may sympathize with Mr. Ffoulkes, but we cannot deny that he is a rebel. Logic and authority are against him. These passionate vindications of freedom and charity move us, but we cannot help fooling that they are out of place. What is this liberal thinker doing whore ho is ? It is impossible, knowing to what he is really bound, to give hint any help. The Dublin reviewer knows it, and presses it home without mercy ; if he had been a little more courteous, a little less free in his imputations of ignorance and stupidity, just saving an alternative of dishonesty, he would have been still more effective than he is. On one or two points ho lays himself open to retort. Has ho any right to excommunicate Mr. drfoulkes, as he practically does ? The Dublin Review is doubtless a great institution, but does it possess the power of anathema ? Can it say that this man or that is not a Catholic, that is to say, not a Christian, or, in other words, doomed, remaining as he is, except for "invincible ignorance," to everlasting perdition ? Has the power of the keys &scowled to an editor? There are other things on which issue might be joined with the writer. Why is it prirosterous to translate ixbacio'xir by "teaches explicitly " ? "To teach thoroughly," the lexicon says, which surely may mean to teach so that nothing should ho loft for others to teach ? And why, again, do we have Latin translations instead of the Greek originals "Externs," for whom tho article must be at least in part intended, have a partiality for originals, which is not diminished by any knowledge of Roman controversy which they may have acquired. The article on Dr. Newman is written with ability, and in a tone of appreciation and courtesy towards a Catholic opponent, which is the more agreeable after the very caustic assault on Mr. Ffoulkes. But we cannot help remarking on the total absence of anything like literature proper. The number contains little but controversy, direct or indirect, from beginning to end. Even the article on Dante, to which we turned with 601130 hope of relief, is not an exception. There is too much reason to believe that this is the temper of mind which prevails in at least the ruling party of the Roman Church. It is breaking more and more completely with all forms of intellectual activity. Supposing it can subdue to itself all the religious element in the world, bow can it expect on these terms to deal with the secular ?

Misread Passages of Scripture. By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.)—This is a volume containing nine sermons on passages that are often misunderstood, or that suggest common delusions. We very heartily wish that there wore more of them. The first discourse on "My kingdom is not of this world " exemplifies the general character of Mr. Brown's thought. He complains that the words are commonly read as if they moant that Christ's kingdom had nothing to do with tho world, was in a different sphere, and might be asserted without clashing with things secular; and he points out that they really mean that this kingdom does not come/rola or out of this world; that it has its strength from another source, though, at the same time, it is the ruling power in the world. And so our Lord's words to Pilate might be paraphrased thus :—" I am not of the world, my kingdom is not of the world, in the springs of its influence; it is essentially of Heaven, and from Heaven ; but it seeks the world as the

sphere of its influence, the field of its conquest, the realm of its rule." The last sermon, again, "The Law of Abstinence," on St. Paul's words, "II meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world atandeth, lest I make my brother to offend," is a specimen of the judicious application of principles to particulars. Mr. Brown says very justly "that the adoption of a rule of abstinence, in permanent deference to weak consciences, would simply transfer to the weak the regulation of the order of human life and the progress of the world." It is quite necessary that some protest of the kind should be made against a very common and very mischievous delusion. The "weak brethren" are a great deal too strong in the world. They set their faces as a flint against all originality of thought, especially in matters theological, and in small things how tyrannical they are! They would have us cut off our beards, drop our wine, our rubber, our pipe, in fact make existence look and feel as dull and flat as possible. Mr. Brown's style is vigorous and eloquent ; we could spare, perhaps, a little ornament. We are very sorry to learn from the preface that ill-health has hindered him from completing his work according to the original plan. We hope that the hindrance will be soon removed.

Five Years Within the Golden Gale. By Isabelle Saxon. (Chapman and Hall.)—The Golden Gate is the entrance to the harbour of San Francisco. The author records the impressions made by a residence in that city. Patting together what she states in the preface and the sentiments which she expresses in the course of her book, we conclude that she is an Englishwoman who has been thoroughly naturatzed in the United States. The simple confidence with which she exhibits her little Republican notions is very entertaining. "The aristocracy of all modern nations," she tells us, for instance, "is based upon stubble." This is possibly true, but it is not proved by the fact that a member of the old French noblesse was seen earning his living by playing on the violin. And, again, people wiser, if that is possible, than Mrs. Saxon have not reached the same certainty which she feels about the subject of costume. "The true mark of greatness," she magnificently remarks, "is perfect simplicity. The vulgar are no longer awed by that which it is not reasonable should overawe them." It is amusing, being, as we are, in the middle of a discussion about bankruptcy, to read the following :— " Failures of large firma are common. So wild are the speculations, ao vaulting is the ambition of the majority of business men, that this is a social feature no way surprising. Bankrupts usually find little difficulty in obtaining credit and re-establishing themselves in business. Frequently in other countries the worst sufferers by the husband's bankruptcy are his innocent wife and children. California has nobly provided for this class of victims by her 'Homestead Law.' By the provision of this law every husband can settle on his wife, by simply recording it as such, a homestead, which, with its necessary appurtenances, is secured from the demands of her husband's business creditors. This admirable law, like almost every institution originating in humane feeling, may have its abuses. What is there socially existing without ?" This is too admirable to need comment, and we can but recommend it to the notice of the Attorney-General. However, whether we are inclined or no to take Mrs. Saxon's advice in remodelling our institutions, we may say that she has written a pleasant, readable book, giving us a highly-coloured picture of life and manners in a very remarkable community, with some fair sketches of scenery. Of course, there are some good stories. This struck our fancy. A well-dressed gentleman addressed a shabby, seedy-looking man, 'I will give you a couple of dollars to carry my portmanteau for me as far as the Plaza.' 'Ton will?' said the man ; 'I'll give you an ounce [of gold] to see you take it yourself.' And the shabby man did it too ; the gentleman shouldered his portmanteau, and got his ounce, and his share of a bottle of wine which coat as much more. Wo observe a very emphatically recorded condemnation of the system of educating the two sexes together, which is the more worth noting, as Mrs. Saxon has, as we have said, a very decided leaning to all American institutions.

The Oxford Spectator. Reprinted. (Macmillan.)—These papers were quite worthy of collection. They are fall of real fun, ivhich is not the less amusing to old Oxford men for being local and technical, for savouring of the High Street and the Schools ; and they teach a wise morality very simply and unaffectedly, exactly in the way that a race very touohy about being lectured is not likely to resent. They are the work, it would seem, of three friends, of whom " C " is, we should say, the most humorous, " N " the wittiest, and " W " the best master of style, though hero indeed " C " often presses him hard. We cannot do hatter than give our readers a few specimens. This is from a dream told by "C." One of the figures "assumed the likeness of a leading speaker at the Union kt the end of the first period, which appeared a commendation of Mermoniam, the speaker's head fell from his shoulders ; the trunk, however, was still eloquent, and I thought the speech was little less convincing than before." "N" is troubled by these thoughts :—" How if there should be a Cambridge Spectator ? What if he should challenge me to some diabolical struggle to ba called an inter-University competition, and to settle, annually, our rival claims to pro-eminence? What would probably be my feelings if the newspapers should begin to give interesting notices of the health and doings of the competitors? The Cambridge Spectator yesterday partook of oysters.' 'The Oxford Spectator passed a good night and woke up smiling.' What would be the nature of this agonizing test?

In what strange unwonted dress should I be compelled to appear?" The ingenious thesis that the history of philosophy is very like an ordinary Oxford day is very well done, the writer accounting for his final glass of brandy-and-water by saying that" it is inspired by both Hegel and Tholes. Hegel prompts me to crave for spirit. Thalat influences me to temper it with water." Excellent, too, are the Socratic "Dialogue between the Spectator and a Proctor," "The Scheme for Disestablishing the Clarendon Hotel," and the essay on "Ella and Whist." We are glad to see a pungent rebuke to the absurdrundergraduate affectation of despising the academical dress.

Martyrs to Fashion. By Joseph Verey. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)—We are sorry that this writer has ventured into what he somewhere calls" the dreary waste of metropolitan criticism." Here at least we can offer him no refreshment. We can say, it is true, that the most prominent characteristic of this book is, so far as it goes, a pleasing one. It is easy to read ; we hasten to explain, mechanically easy. We always feel leniently disposed to a loosely printed novel ; the incidents may be improbable, the characters caricature, and the dialogue unlike to human speech ; but while the nature of things apparently requires that such novels should be written, and written in three volumes, it would be ungracious to forget that there are not many lines in a page, and not many words in a line.

One Year; or, a Story of Three Homes. By F. M. P. (Warne.)— This is a very pleasant, prettily written story of the fortunes of one Ursulo, daughter to a vagabond painter, a good girl, but wilful, who is punished and rewarded accordingly. The French home is very pleasantly drawn, though here and there, we think, with a little exaggeration. Ursule, for instance, declares that she likes the second floor "because it is nearer the sky." That is very well, but we cannot take in the conventional old maid's answer, "Nearer the sky! Is it possible ? Do I dream ? Do you talk of the sky which is so common that everybody can see it? And this, after all the care, the pains, I have taken to form, to give ideas." The two other homes are put in, it would seem, chiefly for a didactic purpose, though the fortunes of the heroine are ingeniously connected with them. A very good moral is preached, but we own to not caring much about anybody but Ursula. It is idle to protest against the practice of making marriage the end of a tale of life ; but it is too absurd to put under an illustration which shows the young lady saying "Yea" this explanation, "The End of Urside's Troubles."

Roberts on Billiards. (Stanley Rivera.)—Mr. Roberts gives us here a book which seems as likely to be as useful as "impersonal " teaching ever can be. His own extraordinary success in the game is well known, and it is achieved by management, rather than by the tours de force in which the older generation of billiard-players delighted. His greatest feat has been the making 101 consecutive "spot hazards" (that is, driving the red ball off the spot at the top of the table into a pocket), an achievement which, it is obvious, required the nicest management of "strength." This is indeed the lesson which he enforces most earnestly ; and the most practically useful part of his book is that in which he applies it to particular cases. A series of illustrations very neatly executed shows the player how he is to make the best of the balls when they are once well placed. Every one who has played at billiards knows what it is to have great expectations of a good " break" and to be disappointed. If he can only contrive to follow Mr. Roberts's laetriletione, he will find his aspirations fulfilled. The illustrations, it should be observed, give the lino on which the balls should travel after being struck, and any one who will actually practise the stroke with the instructions before him can hardly fail to get some good out of them. The volume contains besides a quantity of "padding," which will probably be acceptable to a number of readers. There are accounts of celebrated matches, anecdotes from Mr. Roberts's own experience, and stories illustrating the ingenuity of less respectable professors of the art.

A Table of the Aryan Languages. By Professor Atwell. (Williams and Norgato.)—This is a broad sheet exhibiting the various families of the Aryan languages, with their subordinate members. These families are given as six in number—Indic, Iranic, Bettie, Gresco-Latin, Slavon, and Teuton. To take the last, as being that in which we are more immediately interested, we have three subdivisions, old and middle High German, Low German, and Scandinavian. The second of these has nine members, —Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, English, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old Dial. Platt-Deutsch, Frisian, and Datelt,—those in italics being extinctand being printed in the table in red characters. Below a select number of explanatory facts are given, such as the date of the extinction of a language, the principal monuments of it lemaining, dm. Below theset again, we have verbal illustrations, exhibiting the numerals and some other important words as they are found in the principal languagesGrimm's law of the interchange of mute consonants is also given, with examples. Altogether, the table, for which Professor Atwood acknowledges his obligations to the works of Bopp, Grimm, Max Muller, IC., is a most useful thing. For the upper class-rooms of a school which suns to teach anything like philological scholarship there could not be a more serviceable map. Indeed, there is a great deal which even younger bor. with the help of a judicious teacher, might find interesting and intelligible. Porna.—Poems, by J. B. Selkirk (Longmans). We scarcely know !that to say about this volume. It is too good to permit us to tell the writer, without hesitation, that he ought never to have published it ; it is hardly good enough to warrant our advising him to publish again. His language is vigorous and often splendid even to excess ; his versification is melodious, and we shonld have said skilful, were it not that there is not unfrequently perceptible a falling-off in sense in the latter part of the stanza, where the difficulty of rhyme has to be encountered. Only the necessity of finding a corresponding sound to " good " could have induced Endymion to stoop to the colloquialism of "I had not stood The rapture of her love." Are we to attribute to the same cause such imintelligible utterances as,—

"An /Eolian lyre

On whose sweet strings the winds may laugh, or moan In passion tona of fire," and, "On her face

Thought wandered up and down in mystic chase Of richer flame."

Mr. Selkirk sometimes imitates, too evidently, we think, well-known poets. His "Euphrosyne," "Thalia," " Aglaia " recall some of Mr. Tennyson's earlier poems. Here we have a reminiscence of Alexander Smith :— "The tranchd ocean checheth at the stars

With hungry heaving waves."

Only Alexander Smith would not have employed the incongruous epithet tranced," which surely implies rest. And here, again, we have Edgar Poe in travesty :—

" and when gazing down the darkness of my life with maddeuing pain, Through the bleak and blinding rain,

I saw strange idiot lingers clutching upwards at my brain, Drivelling lingers clutching upwards at my brain.

"And I heard the whispered word come up the dreary realms of sadness, The hopeless realms of sadness, The unintelligible sound that hinted coming madness, The awful hint of coming madness."

On the whole, Mr. Selkirk is at his best when he is not so much poetical as didactic. The "Bishop returning from a Science Congress" is vigorous, as when he speaks of

"Bland concessions of God's power, His forethought and contrivance ; The maunderings of the pious hack 'Who puts creation on the bank.",e,

—Poems, by George Francis Armstrong (Moxon) leave onus an impression of greater power and promise. The writer has a style of his own. It displays, indeed, the fervent audacious rhetoric which distinguishes our youngest school of poets, but it has a sufficiently marked individuality. It wants finish and grace ; repose is a quality which it would probably disdain. Will the writer, whom we judge to be a very young man, excuse us if we advise him to mingle a little more thought with his passion, and not write anything down till ho is quite sure that he attaches a definite meaning to it ? We like "Among the Solitudes" as well as any of the poems. It begins with some vigorous lines :— "It was long past the noon when I pushed back my chair

In the hostel, slung knapsack on shoulder, and walked Through the long narrow room where the folk from the fair, Old peasants, deep wrinkled, sat clustered and talked In their guttural Gaelic; and out through the stalls Girt with marketers laughing, and groups here and there Of maidens blue-eyed, hooded figures in shawls Of scarlet, and wild mountain lads in long hair,

Rude carts, and rough ponies with creels; gaily passed

Up the street; through the starers and bargainers prest And asked of an idler my way; and at last Struck out on the hill-road that winds to the west."

And the horror of solitude and death which comes upon the traveller when he reaches the lonely moor is described with no little power.— Minor Chords, by Sophia May Eckley (Bell and Daldv), is a volume containing some pretty verses, showing some elegance of taste and sweetness of sentiment, but decidedly feeble, on the whole, with frequentlyoccurring weaknesses of execution. This is as favourable a specimen as we can find :— " Oh. hide the bier f—another year

Sings new-born life to bud and leaf,— Shall robins sing another And we grow eceptic in belief, Or lose our faith in life?

"Life tracts upon the robes of Death: Death's angel comes, but only wins, Till dawns the Resurrection morn. The day when that new life begins, The deathless life of love.

"Another spring the angels sing, While souls awaken to the light, Morn treads upon Night's dusky robes, Eternal Spring on Winter's blight, And glorious Day on Night."

How could any one who seems to have studied good models pass such a harshness as "only wins," which stands, we presume, for "only prevails " ?