27 NOVEMBER 1869, Page 21

The Student's Book of Common Prayer, by William Gibson Hamphry,

B.D. (Bell and Daldy), is a prettily got up prayer-book, with tasteful adornments of rubrics, &c., and also furnished with an historical and explanatory treatise. In this we have information about the origin of the various parts of the Liturgy ; the Latin originals of such collects as were taken from old service books are given ; in fact, the reader has in a very small compass pretty well as much as he wants to know about the history of the book, and without finding much that is new will miss very little that is useful. One thing we must bog him to note, that, much as our services owe to the ancient liturgies, some of the most beautiful of the collects, those, for instance, of All Saints' Day and Easter Even, were the work of the Reformers. Dr. Littledale and his friends still use, we believe, these prayers ; might not this thought suggest some moderation in the language which they use about their authors ?