demonstrative kind; still we are so impressed with the abundant reason that the denomination has for self-congratulation, that we are disposed to regard all his expressions of it with very great leniency.

But Dr. Tefft's exhibition of his satisfaction is so amusing that we must beg pardon of our Methodist brethren if we attempt to give our readers some idea of the grandiloquent way in which he delivers himself. We have no doubt that many of them have already laughed quite as heartily as we have ourselves over the Doctor's glowing periods. In attempting to do what we wish, we feel most keenly the embarras des richesses, and have the most profound sense of the need of space in which to spread forth the subject and do justice to the eloquence of the author.

The Doctor begins, quite early in his book, with comparisons between his own denomination and others, as an easy way of enabling his readers to comprehend the magnitude and importance of the Methodist body. Now though comparisons are generally considered somewhat odious, we are not at all disturbed, and only allude to them in order to show at what an elevation the Doctor starts on his career. He says, for example, of Congregationalists, that all the members of their churches taken together, in all the states and territories of the Union, only make an aggregate, which can be taken ten times out of the ranks of American Methodism, and still leave as many as compose the whole Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. Then, kindling as he goes, he tells us that the largest ship ever built on this side of the Atlantic was designed and constructed by a Methodist; that the largest private printing establishment in the United States is the property of Methodists; that, in fact, "in every department of handicraft, and in all the joint labors of the muscles and the mind, Methodism stands higher than any other order of religious people in this nation."

Still all this is only preparatory! It is not till he reaches the fourth chapter that the Doctor fairly gives the reins to his enthusiasm. There he enters upon a full exhibition of the "intellectual rank and power of Methodism in America." He calls the roll of the princes and potentates of the denomination! He tells us of an instructor, of Irish birth, who is now in one of the Methodist educational institutions of the country, who at the age

of forty years was a groom in the stable of a hotel in New England. Of him he says:—

"In hearing the recitations of his classes, if a pupil asked the meaning of a word, he would launch out into such a sea of references to the classics where the word was used, that the inquirer was oftentimes more astonished than instructed. In making his classical citations, which would run up from half a dozen to twenty-five or thirty at a time, he would always give the context of the places cited in the original language, and generally would give the book, chapter and page of the editions which he read. He was, in a word, the most thoroughly educated classical scholar, as I think, on this continent; I do not believe, indeed, that either Porson or Bentley were capable of the feats of scholarship performed by him." p. 164.

He describes the attainments of another Methodist, who is "wonderfully familiar" with the literature of the leading European languages-one who is now occupying himself with "brushing the dust of centuries from the libraries of the great literary capitals of the Old World."

"He could sustain any critical opinion he might advance by any quantity of apt quotations from the modern European classics, now reciting Schiller, or Goethe, or Klopstock like a literary German, next pouring out passage after passage from Petrarch or Dante, as if he had spent a long life in perusing the Tuscan poets, then inundating his listeners with successive floods from the Castilian fountains, like an enthusiastic Spaniard, and so ranging through the languages and literatures of the refined nations of Europe, from London to Leipsic, from Leipsic to Rome, from Rome to modern Athens, and from one period of the histories of these various literatures to another, as if he had given sixty or seventy years to the study of the authorities relied upon by Hallam and Sismondi." pp. 164, 165.

Further on, we find a most rapturous eulogium of a gentleman for whom we have a sincere respect, whose name, therefore, we will not even appear to trifle with, by mentioning it in this connection. We think we can hear him exclaim, "Save me from this friend!"

"His speciality is patristic literature, and in this department he has no equal in this country, though he stands at the head of quite a school of younger men who are walking in his footsteps. His Delineation of Romanism, a work published in the United States and republished in Great Britain, has been pronounced, on both sides of the Atlantic, the most learned and able portraiture of Popery, and the best argument against its absurdities, since the days of the great Protestant struggle carried on by Selden, Usher, Grotius, and their insular and continental fellow-combatants. His time has not been entirely devoted to this field of study. He has written many other volumes of vast learning, among which may be mentioned his Sinfulness of American Slavery, in which

he exhibits his minute and deep scholarship in the civil and canon law of classical and ecclesiastical Rome, quoting the Corpus Juris Canonici, as well as the Pandects and Novels of Justinian, as familiarly as he would his catechism. He has owned for years, and has with great diligence perused and studied, the leading authorities cited by Gibbon in his history of the Decline and Fall of Rome; and he is the only man in this country who would be capable, at this moment, of reviewing critically that great performance, and of pointing out the places where its author's skepticism caused him to twist his authorities to the prejudice or dishonor of Christianity. He is so full of this kind of lore, that he can scarcely write a newspaper article, or get warm in conversation, without betraying the depth and breadth of his knowledge in this department. But his information is abundant in every other field of learning. I was once with him in his own garden; and I asked him the name of a tree near which we were standing. He at once gave me its common name, then the Latin name, and from this he proceeded to talk of trees' not only like a Solomon, but as if he had done nothing in his day but to study all the standards in botany from Linnæus to the last of the modern school-books. He is a man who has mastered the circle of human knowledge, in the same sense as the eulogium is applied to such characters as Milman and Guizot of Europe, but for whom no suitable comparison can be found among the scholars of this country." pp. 165–167.

Of another distinguished Methodist of whom also we ask pardon for this reference which we make, Dr. Tefft says he has recently given a work to the world, on Chronology, in which "he has exhibited proof of his having exhausted the subject in his preparatory examination of it"!

"He has looked profoundly into every system of chronology, and into all the methods of recording the march of time, ancient and modern, from the halfauthentic, half-mythical tables of the Egyptians and Oriental chronologers to the Olympiads and the Urbs Condita of the Greeks and Romans, and from these to every successive school of the Saturnian science to the current moment. Neither Usher, nor Hales, nor Sir Isaac Newton, nor Father Pouciet, nor Ideler himself, has ever surveyed the whole subject of epochal history with greater diligence or more patient research; and yet, the writer of this rare work has given the greater part of a long life to the practical duties of a regular Methodist preacher.” p. 176.

But we have already far exceeded all reasonable limits. We have only room to say, in conclusion, that we advise all who wish to have a right hearty laugh, to purchase this book and read it! There is much that is really well worthy of the serious consideration of all Christians of other denominations; but the naivete of the exultation in Chapter IV surpasses anything which we have ever met before.

SCIENCE.

LECTURES ON THE PHYSICAL FORCES.*-It is a common opinion that men of high scientific genius, who are absorbed in profound original investigations, are but ill adapted to teach the simple elements of science. And this opinion, it must be confessed, is, to a certain extent, well founded. But Faraday, one of the first experimental philosophers of the day, and one of the most acute and successful explorers of the subtle forces and laws of nature, is an entire exception to the rule-as is proved by the little volume before us; in which—or rather in the Lectures, of which this is a report he stoops from the high position of interrogator of nature and instructor of philosophers, to the humbler, and doubttless more difficult task of explaining and illustrating the several forces of matter to the comprehension of the young.

The volume is made up of verbatim reports of six extemporaneous experimental lectures, with which a juvenile auditory was entertained and instructed by Dr. Faraday during the Christmas Holidays, a year ago. It is well illustrated with cuts, and embodies, in clear and familiar language, expositions of the laws of Gravitation, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, Heat, Magnetism, and Electricity, with the correlation of these forces, and a chapter, in conclusion, on Light-house Illumination and the Electric Light.

The book is, of course, purely elementary and untechnical, and is well adapted to give the young an insight into the leading principles of Natural Philosophy, and to awaken in them a taste for physical science. That it comes from one of the leading philosophers and most popular lecturers of the day, will give it additional interest, as an authoritative exposition of the topics on which it treats.

* A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter and their relations to each other. By MICHAEL FARADAY, D. C. L., F. R. S., Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, Royal Institution. Delivered before a Juvenile Auditory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, during the Christmas Holidays of 1859-60. Edited by WILLIAM CROOKES, F. C. S. With numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper [For sale in New Haven by T. H. Pease. Price

& Brothers. 1860. pp. 198. 55 cents.]

TRANSLATION OF THE SURYA-SIDDHANTA.* It is more than a year since we called the attention of our readers to the commencement of this work, in a notice of the first number of the sixth volume of the Journal published by the American Oriental Society. That volume has since been completed by the publication of a second number, in which the same work is resumed and carried on to its conclusion, occupying more than two-thirds of the whole number. The entire translation, with the notes and the appendix, extends to three hundred and fifty octavo pages. We learn that a separate edition (apart from the other contents of the volume) has been struck off, and that copies can be obtained from the Society's agents;-in New York, from John Wiley, 56 Walker street.

Our former notice described the work as a highly important contribution to the history of astronomy; and now that we have it before us as a whole, we can repeat the recommendation with a more confident emphasis. It will be remembered that the translation was first made, and materials collected for a commentary, by Rev. E. Burgess, while living as a missionary of the American Board in Western India. The work, however, as it lies before us here, proceeds from the Publishing Committee of the Society, and has been prepared for publication by Professor Whitney: the counsel and assistance also of Professor Newton are acknowledged in the Introduction. The subjects of the opening chapters were given in our former notice. In this continuation we find the following titles: Of Eclipses, and especially of Lunar Eclipses; Of Parallax in a Solar Eclipse; Of the Projection of Eclipses; Of Planetary Conjunctions; Of the Asterisms; Of Heliacal Risings and Settings; Of the Moon's Rising and Setting, etc. The most important of these subjects is that of Eclipses, which, beside the explanatory notes, is illustrated in the Appendix by two examples, an eclipse of the moon, and one of the sun, calculated in full according to the data and methods of the Sûrya-Siddhânta. But a more interesting subject, perhaps, is the Asterisms, or, as they are generally called, lunar mansions. These receive here a learned and elaborate discussion, in which they are compared with similar systems of the Chinese and Arabs, and probable

* Translation of the Sûrya-Siddhânta, a Text-book of Hindu Astronomy. From Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. VI.