CURRENT LITERATURE.

Prayer for Peace ; or, the Evils and the Moral Uses of War. A Sermon preached in St. Michael's Church, Highgate, on Rogation 'Sunday, May 10th, 1885. By the Rev. D. Trinder, Vicar. (Began Paul, Trench, and Co.)—This is a very just and manly sermon on a subject of considerable difficulty which Mr. Trinder seems to us to treat with great judgment and wisdom. Mr. Trinder feels to the utmost the horror of war, and the wickedness of unnecessary war ; but he also appreciates fully the occasional needfulness of war, and points out bow absolutely untrue it is that the Christian Gospel required those who embraced it to give up the calling of a soldier. 'Of the moral uses of war,—when war is really necessary,—Mr. Trinder speaks with great discrimination.

Glimpses in the Twilight. By the Rev. Frederick George Lee, D.D. {Blackwood and Sons.)—Dr. Lee makes in his Introduction an impartial attack on his critics, and on many other people who do not please him. Dr. Liddon comes in for some severe treatments not only for his sermon about Darwin, but also for his "denial of the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," an accusation which is scarcely relevant to the matter in hand. The Spectator is treated with leniency, being told that the proposition that "there must always exist for believers in the immortality of the soul a certain primG, facie probability that they should revisit the living " is "incompatible with firm faith." This is indeed a little perplexing. If Dr. Lee can establish, as he certainly labours to do, that the dead do revisit the living, will he have secured a position "incompatible with firm faith ?" If the probability is "incompatible," what about the certainty ? It would be easy to ridicnle Dr. Lee's book, and his indiscriminate readiness to believe gives many opportunities, but we prefer to be silent. Some of hie stories are well known, some are new, many are very curious. Whether Dr. Lee's readers will be converted we know not, but they will certainly be a little startled now and then.

Representative American Orations. With Introduction by Alexander Johnston. 3 vols. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)—The editor has de tracted from the literary interest of this book by his anxiety to justify the title "representative." But he cannot be blamed, seeing that the object of his work is, as he announces on the title-page, " to illustrate American political history." To readers at this side of the Atlantic this subject has, comparatively, less interest. These, therefore, will not see why Mr. Preston Brook's " oratiou," justifying his assault on Mr. Sumner, was included in the collection. But though it has no literary value, it is not unimportant as one of the incidents in the "Anti-Slavery Struggle," among the illustrations of which it finds a place. The first volume contains four sections relating to the earlier history of the States ; the second is devoted to that mentioned above. This reaches into the third, which also contains "Secession," "Civil Reconstruction," and "Free-trade and Protection." We may quote the rather too ornate peroration from the last of the speeches ranged under this heading, "Tariff for Revenue Only," by Mr. Frank B. Hurd, Speaker in the House of Representatives, February 18tb, 1881 :—

"Let American adventurousness and genius be free upon the high seas, to go wherever they please, and bring back whatever they please, and the ocean will swarm with American sails, and the land will laugh with the plenty within its borders. The trade of Tyre and Sidon, the far-extending commerce of the Venetian Republic, the wealth•prodncing traffic of the Netherlands, will be as dreams in contrast with the stupendous reality which American enterprise will develop in our own generation. Through the humanising influence of the trade thus encouraged, I see nations become the friends of nations, and the causes of war disappear. I see the influence of the great Republic in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and the oppressed in every land, under the moderation of the arbitrariness of power. Upon the wings of Free-trade will be carried the seeds of free governments to be scattered everywhere to grow and ripen with harvest of free peoples in every nation under the san."

The Roots of Faith; being Essays on the Grounds of Belief in God, and in Criticises of Scepticism and Agnosticism. By Sitanath Datta. (Calcutta : G. C. Ghosh, SI Baranasi Ghosh's Street.)— Gleams of the New Light ; being Essays Expository of some Leading Principles of Pure Theism, Distinct and Practical. By Sitanath Datta (Calcutta).—These two pamphlets contain assays implying a great deal of lucid thought and study, by a man of no small power. The former presents us with a compendious defence of a species of theological idealism, and the latter with the application of this idealism to the spiritual life. The metaphysical pamphlet shows that Mr. Datta's avowed study of Dr. Martineau has been thorough, and not without great influence on his own mind. The pamphlet containing short spiritual essays is, however, to our mind, the more original, though not perhaps the abler of the two. The two essays on " Why can't we love God ?" for instance, are both simple and telling, and read very like the counsels of some of the Catholic saints. Still more is this the case with the little essay called "An Aid to Communion." We can hardly believe that essays so spiritual and so thoroughly Christian in tone can come from a man who is not destined before long to become an avowed Christian. But there is no avowed Christianity in these pages.

Stories and Anecdotes of the Civil Service. By G. Swinburne King. (Griffith and Farran.)—There are some fairly amusing stories in this volume, though there are a good many which have very little point or humour about them. We are carious to know whether the writer belongs to the examination or pre-examination days. We certainly find "sigillum officium."

A Bird's-Eye View of English Literature. By Harry Grey. (Griffith and Farran.)—Beyond the fact that it gives about 300 names of authors, with dates that are presumably correct, this book has, as far as we can see, no merit. What human being can be the better for being told that Lord Clarendon " wrote A History of the Rebellion,' which contains some cleverly executed descriptive portraits and his own biography " ; or that Isaac Barrow " was the author of Lectiones Optics,,' Lectiones Geometricre,' and other mathematical and theological treatises " ? Books of this kind, which make the unwary fancy that they know something, are nothing less than mischievous to the interests of education ; and this, we see from the title-page, has reached its fourth thousand.

The History of Reform. By Alexander Paul. (Routledge and Sons.)—Mr. Paul does well to rescue from oblivion the "brave men who lived before Agamemnon ;" the Duke of Richmond, who in 1780 proposed that every commoner in this realm should have a vote ; and Mr. Flood, who about twenty years afterwards advocated the giving of household suffrage to the counties. Mr. Pitt's scheme was a very poor affair compared to these propositions. Rotten boroughs were to be bought by the nation and extinguished, and an accumulating fund was to be established which was to tempt other boroughs to give up their rights. Thirty-six such boroughs were named ; and £1,000,000 was divided into thirty-six shares. It was calculated that a share would some time or other become so large that the borough could not resist it. Was there ever anything more grotesque ? The main point of Mr. Paul's book is devoted to the reform proceedings of 1831.32, of which a spirited account is given (bat why "Sir Charles Wetherill" ? and how did the Bristol mob come to burn "the palace of the Bishop of Bath and Wells" ?) Then follows the story of the Reform Bill of 1865, which did not pass, and of those of the two following years with which the Conservatives "dished the Whigs." An appendix gives extracts from the speech with which Mr. Gladstone introduced the Bill now before Parliament.

The Art of War in the Middle Ages. By W. C. Oman, B.A. (Blackwell, Oxford.)—This essay (which obtained the Lothian prize last year) is an excellent contribution to the study of its subject. Mr. Oman takes in a period of more than eleven hundred years, having extended the range of the "middle ages" as far back as A.D. 378. Ho begins with the battle of Adrianople, in which he sees a significant victory of cavalry over infantry, an ascendancy which, he says, "was to endure for a thousand years." This is, of course, a round number, for the Swiss pikemen at Morgarten and the English archers at Crecy brought this ascendancy to the ground. It is difficult to choose any part for especial praise when all are so good ; bat we may mention the chapter on the Swiss, including two centuries of their military history (1315-1515), from Morgarten to Marignano, as being particularly instructive. But the student may learn much from all. The familiar scenes of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, of Falkirk and Bannockburn, receive a new light from Mr. Oman's

lucid explanations. In matter and style this essay shows promise of the author's future eminence in historical literature.

Mythology, Greek and Boman. Translated from the German of Friedrich Nosselt, by Mrs. Angus W. Hall. (Kerby and Endean.)— This volume comes recommended to us by a dedication to Royal personages, and by a frontispiece which gives us the photograph portraits of two young princesses. It is difficult to see the appropriateness of this, except it is meant to signify the class of readers for whom the volume is intended. It may be allowed, indeed, the merit of being unobjectionable, and of course it contains plenty of information. It does not attempt, however, a scientific or even systematic treatment of the subject, and much of it is devoted to matters which, however interesting, are not strictly mythological,—the story of the voyage of the Argo' and of the siege of Troy. The translator does not seem well acquainted with the classical languages, and the spelling is rather confused. Ilymenaeus, Jambe, are specimens. Who was " Carnabon, one of the Getaen kings " ? And what is meant by " The Caryatides or Graces" ? We know of no meaning for the word " Caryatides " which connects them with " Charites." For this the translator can hardly be responsible.

The Uncanonical and Apocryphal Scriptures. By the Rev. W. R. Charton, B.D. (Whitaker.)—Mr. Churton prefixes a general Introduction, in which he gives a brief account of the literary and ecclesiastical history of the Apocryphal books generally, and supplies a special introduction to each book. He has added alternative translations, and a few, we should say too few, marginal notes. Everything is useful as far as it goes. But too much has been attempted for the limits within which the work had to be compressed. Mr. Deane's edition of the " Book of Wisdom" (published by the Clarendon Press four years ago) is a better model of what should be aimed at by any one who desires to do something for the Apocrypha. Several of the books may be safely neglected, or at least postponed, till the more valuable and interesting have been adequately discussed.

In and Out of Fashion. By Richard Davis Perry. 3 vole. (Hurst and Blackett.)—If Mr. Perry desires to interest his readers in a heroine, he must make her a little less pronounced and forward in her coquetry. Maggie Delamere goes beyond the line of permissible flirtation, and verges at least on behaviour which materfamilias commonly describes as " bold." What are we to think of a young lady of whom we read that, " through a system of ingenious manoeuvres, she succeeded in finding herself on the water with the Colonel [her undeclared lover, it is hardly needful to say] as her sole companion" P Mr. Perry is not more happy with his other characters. His plebeians are exceedingly vulgar ; his aristocrats more vulgar still. With these latter, indeed, he works Sir Leicester Dedlock's metaphor of the "Floodgate " to the utter weariness of his readers. Not Dickens himself at his very worst has such tiresome

repetition. Now and then, especially when we are introduced to rural society, we get an occasional gleam of humour. The farmers

and peasants talk a dialect which we cannot recognise, but they are occasionally amusing. The Conservative fete, where "there was plenty to oat and drink if the demonstrators chose to pay for it," is a fairly amusing description. On the whole, we cannot praise In and Out of Fashion.

Tales and Poems of South India, from the Tamil. By Edward Jewitt Robinson. (Woolmer.)—Mr. Robinson was, we believe, for many years a missionary in Southern India, and he appears to have spen,t much time and labour in the study of Tamil literature, the result of which is garnered up in this volume. Twelve years ago the author published a book entitled "Tamil Wisdom," of which the present work is an enlarged edition. With a modesty unusual perhaps in men of letters, Mr. Robinson has adopted this title " in admiration of Professor Williams's " Hindu Wisdom," published afterwards." The tales here collected are the fruits of a civilisation far more ancient than our own. " They show the superiority of the Hindus in civilisation, thought, and culture, to the inhabitants of other heathen lands, and the delicacy and difficulty of the Evangelist's work in the Tamil country." That work demands a familiarity with the language which only men blessed with a peculiar gift of acquisition can possess, and the writer gives amusing illustrations of the mistakes occasioned by a little knowledge. Tamil literature is purer the further back it is traced ; and it is needless to say that Mr. Robinson's translations from the "Cural " and other popular Tamil works appear as selections. They serve to show the highest moral standing-point of the Hindu, and will recall to the reader much contained in the precepts of the Old and New Testaments. They will remind him, too, of the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. A portion of the book is devoted to literature for Tamil children, who are equal in capacity to Europeans, but inferior in the playground. No woman of any race, says Mr. Robinson, is more devoted to her children than the Hindu mother ; and he observes that when the women of India are Christians, the whole country will tarn to Christ. "At present, in moat places, they are the greatest

hindrance to the conversion of their more educated children." We may add that Mr. Robinson's metrical translations from the "Cural," and other Tamil literature, are more curious than poetical.

Lessons in Domestic Science. By F. M. Gallaher. (Browne and Nolan, Dublin).—This small volume is compiled by its authoress—for we conclude that it is the work of a lady—with the excellent intention of providing a manual of household science suitable to the great mass of girls whose sphere lies at home. The attempt is a brave one; bat the authoress has essayed far too much within the space she has allowed herself. The book is good as far as it goes, being correct in its statements of facts, and contains a great deal of information, but of too" snippety " a kind to be very useful. For example, it is useless, in our opinion, to attempt to comprise the important subject of " Water Supply and Drainage" within four and a half pages, and to expect any real good to result. We venture to say that there are very few girls who would gain any adequate idea of a "siphon-trap " from the description in the book before us. To write on each a topic as this without diagrams is waste of time. We must confess to having little liking for these highly-condensed works. The week's routine for a general servant, given on page 240, would require one of special construction, or at least a Chinaman.

The Wreck of the 'Nisero,' and our Captivity in Sumatra. By W. Bradley. (Sampson Low and Co.)—The ' Nisero,' a British steamer, went ashore on the coast of Sumatra in November, 1883, and the crew were carried off by the Rajah of Tenom, who held them as prisoners, in hopes of obtaining concessions, in return for their release, from the Dutch, with whom the Achinese have long been at war. The affair, it will be remembered, excited much interest at the time. All the attempts of the Dutch to get the men failed, and the only result of their bombardment of the Rajah's town was to drive the captives further from the coast, and enrage their guardians. The unfortunate men suffered great hardships, and lost seven of their number from ill-treatment and the malaria of tropical jungle and swamp. The remainder were only given up, having been detained ten months,. after long and delicate negotiations, successfully conducted by Mr.. Maxwell, who acted as British agent in the difficulty. Mr. Bradley,. who was second engineer, gives a clear account of what the crew underwent. His little book is a very creditable production, and is written in a natural manner, with conciseness and vigour.

Boors RECEIVED.—History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff, D.D. (T. and T. Clark.)—This is a new edition, revised, the two volumes before us taking in the period 590-1073, beginning, that is, with Gregory I., and ending with Gregory Treatise on Gout, Rheumatism, and the Allied Afflictions, by Peter Hood, M.D. (J. and R. Churchill.)—The Englishwoman's Year-Book for 1885, by "L. M. H." (Hatchards.)—The Calendar of the Royal University of Dublin, 1885. (Alex. Thom and Co., Dublin.)—The Calendar of the University College of Wales,1881-5. (J. E. Cornish, Manchester.)—Congres (1885) : Societe Nationale des Professeurs de Francais en Angleterre. (Hachette et Cie.)—We would direct special attention to the admirable paper on "The State and Prospects of the Study of French in England," the last work of its lamented author, Professor Cassel.— Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb (Green and Heath, Boston, U.S.), is an edition intended for the use of schools; a few verbal additions have been made, and Measure for Measure left out entirely.—The new volume of " Morley's Universal Library" is The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, by George Cavendish, together with Thomas Churchyard's Tragedy of Wolsey, a poem of about 500 lines, written about a quarter of a century after the Cardinal's death.—The Forest Trees of North America, being Volume IX. of the "Tenth Census of the United States, 1880," illustrated with sixteen wellexecuted and clearly-printed coloured maps by Professor C. S. Sargent. (U.S. Census Office.)—Dramatic Notes, 1883.85, by A. Brereton. (D. Bogue.)