The Pillar of Fire ; or, Israel in Bondage. By
Rev. J. H. Ingraham. (Virtue Brothers.)—This is one of the many well-meant attempts to convey instruction through the medium of fiction that read more dreary than the drealiest manual. Syrian princes and others are employed to pass to the reader in a series of letters all the information that the author has collected on the subject of Egyptian antiquities in the time of Moses. The whole of the Scripture narrative is done into Johnsonese English by these unhappy correspondents, and supplemented by voluminous extracts from modern authors. Moreover, the Queen of. Tyre and the King of Damascus are supposed to take an interest in modern controversy ; the latter is gravely informed by his son that the death of Joseph took place, not seventy years, as he had supposed, bat sixty-five, before the birth of Moses, and so the number of years in the prophecy, &c. Here is a specimen of the style in which Moses addresses his friend Sesostris ; he has just discovered that he is not the son of Pharaoh's daughter :—" Since writing the foregoing, my dear Sesostris; —for such is the familiar title, notwithstanding the present difference in our rank and position, that you condescendingly permit me to make use of in addressing you—" This sort of writing is really more incongruous; than the old pictures of the patriarchs in the costume of the last can- tary, and as the present work is only the commencement of a series, we think it necessary to enter a vigorous protest.
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