ties are seen to be full of the highest beneficence-the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents, and singles out the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated, as the victims of an epidemic." And this is the way in which "the stern discipline, which we see at work through all nature, is a little harsh that it may be very kind." No doubt, as the author says, "there are many very amiable people who have not the nerve to look this matter fairly in the face." We confess ourself to be of the number; and most devoutly do we pray that we may ever continue to be so. And in speaking of the entire class of "unfortunates," whether "widow and orphans in the distress of poverty and destitution, the sick and lame, the insane and idiotic," he says, let them alone and "they die; it is best they should die;" it is but a "part of that process" by which "nature is weeding out those of lowest development." In this way, as he holds, “nature is securing the growth of a race" which "shall both understand the conditions of existence and be able to act up to them." “Unquestionably," says he, "there is harm done when sympathy is shown" to these unfortunate persons. Nay, he characterizes those who do such things as "sigh-wise and groaning-foolish" people, who would" bequeath to posterity a constantly growing curse." Let it, however, be understood, that we regard these conclusions as resulting rather from the Philosophy that underlies the Evolutiontheory, and which Spencer has assumed as a means of setting it forth and explaining it, than from that theory itself. As we have already said, in the articles referred to, we have no objection to the Evolution-theory, regarded as a high generalization of Science, and as a divine method; provided only it recognizes GOD as a Creator, a Sustainer, and a Providence interposing in nature's course and working out, through its changes and evolutions, moral and spiritual ends. And we have endeavored to show, in the articles referred to, that the system is absurd without such a recognition of something out of, and above, the mere process and subject matter of the Evolution. We close this notice with saying again, that we thank the author for giving us in advance such a frank and full exposition of the prinples to which, in the practical departments of life, his "New Philosophy" may be expected to lead. No sensible person will be slow in accepting the inference that in any system which leads to such results, there must be something that is radically and fundamentally wrong. And that which is wrong in this case, is, manifestly, the Atheism,— the denial of the personality of God, and the fact that He has made a special Revelation of His will in the Bible; and that other equally important fact-He exercises a Moral Government over His rational creature man. This, however, pertains to Mr. Spencer's theory of "Evolution" and "Universal Progress," rather than to the fact of such an Evolution or Progress; and hence, can never be inferred or proved, by any amount of facts or illustrations that may be adduced to prove the fact itself. LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. Author of "Napoleon at St. Helena, and Sir Hudson Lowe," &c., &c. In two Volumes, with Illustrations. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1865. Small 8 vo. pp. 364, 341. Cicero is known mostly among the great mass of educated men by the few Orations of his which have come down to us, and which will always be read as a classic, for the purity of their Latinity, and the almost matchless beauty of their style. Mr. Forsyth, with the aid of rather scanty materials, has prepared a very agreeable, and, to scholars, instructive volume, giving us all that is capable of being known of the early, private, and domestic life and education, of this really great man. But Cicero has another claim upon the attention of thinking men now;—a claim which gives, not only to his Orations, but to his conduct and character, the very deepest interest. He lived at that terrible period, the down-fall of the Roman Republic; and he was a leading actor amid the scenes of that bloody drama. He loved the Constitution and the Republic, and he sealed his devotion with his blood. He was, we think, more of an orator and a rhetorician, than a statesman; yet he was a true patriot; and the great weakness of his character was, in that he did not, and could not, appreciate, in all its enormity, and its weakness, the deep moral and social corruption of the times in which he lived. The portrait which Louis Napoleon has drawn of Cicero, in his History of Julius Cæsar, should be studied in connection with this Life of Cicero, by Mr. Forsyth. Napoleon praises Cæsar, at the expense of Cicero. Cicero loved his country too well to become a tool to the ambition of an unprincipled despot. Despotism triumphed, because national virtue was lost. The Life of Cicero, from the time when, at the age of thirty-one he was elected Quæstor, down to his assassination, was so closely identified with the history of the Republic itself, that it has more than a personal interest and importance. The sketch of the Catiline Conspiracy, for example, in connection with which Cicero played so active and noble a part, and in which his policy contrasted so strangely with that of Julius Cæsar, as to the punishment due to the leading conspirators, is full of meaning to us, as American Republicans, at the present day. Is history to repeat itself, here and now? Read the story of the briberies, the embezzlements, the perjuries, the social corruptions at Rome, and then let the answer be given. The only question is, whether there is public virtue left amoug us sufficent to save the Republic. The enterprizing publishers, Messrs. Scribner & Co., deserve the thanks of the reading public, for the large number of really valuable books which they are constantly issuing, as well as for the neat and substantial style in which their works appear. Next to the luxury of a good book, is the dress in which it is clothed. The volumes before us, without being finical, will suit the most fastidious. THE ILIAD OF HOMER, rendered into English blank Verse. By ED- 1865. A new translation of the Iliad of Homer in English verse, needs no apology to those who know the history of previous attempts in this line of scholarship. Pope's grandiloquent and glowing pages fail to give the spirit and meaning of the original, simply from his want of thorough acquaintance with the language, and his reliance on a French translation; while Cowper, though more faithful to his author, is dull and tame, and is now almost universally neglected. The Earl of Derby, encouraged by a previous effort at translation of Ancient Poems, which included the first Book of the Iliad, has now finished the entire work. It is an "attempt to infuse into an almost literal English version, something of the spirit, as well as the simplicity, of the great original." In his Preface, he gives his reasons why he has adopted the "Heroic blank verse, and has avoided that "pestilent heresy of the so-called English Hexameter." While our Greek scholars, and those who keep fresh by constant reading their knowledge of that language, will of course go to the pages of Homer himself; yet many, as we believe, will be glad to welcome this translation of the Iliad. The translator, himself a fine scholar, a man of severe taste, and England's great, perhaps greatest orator, has found in the great poet of antiquity a theme worthy of his best efforts. He has re-produced Homer, with all his wonderful genius and versatility, more faithfully than any translator before him. The speeches of the great actors in the drama, Ulysses, and Nestor, and Agamemnon, and Achilles, are given with wonderful fidelity and power. We need not urge to the study of Homer, the Shakespeare of antiquity, the great uninspired poet of the world, the man whom Sophocles, and Euripides, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Cicero, and Virgil, hailed as their master. Besides, there was more in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, than the mere story of the wars of gods and goddesses, and the strifes of earthly heroes. They know little of Homer, who do not read in his immortal poems a great meaning, higher and deeper than all this. Such a work as this, from the Earl of Derby, and the "Studies of Homer and the Homeric Age," from such a man as Mr. Gladstone, are fruits of English scholarship worthy of all praise. Surely a nation is not in the decrepitude of age and decay, when her noblest statesmen seek relief from the cares and labors of public life, in such diversions as these. HISTORY OF JULIUS CESAR. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 463. 1865. The real object of Louis Napoleon in writing this History, he himself avows, in the following words :-"This aim is to prove that, when Providence raises up such men as Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, it is to trace out to peoples the path they ought to follow;. 26* VOL. XVII. to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era; and to accomplish in a few years the labor of many centuries. Happy the peoples who comprehend and follow them! Wo to those who misunderstand and combat them! They do as the Jews did, they crucify their Messiah; they are blind and culpable; blind, for they do not see the impotence of their efforts to suspend the definitive triumph of good; culpable, for they only retard progress, by impeding its prompt and fruitful application. 66 In fact, neither the murder of Cæsar, nor the captivity of St. Helena, have been able to destroy, irrevocably, two popular causes, overthrown by a league which disguised itself under the mask of liberty. Brutus, by slaying Cæsar, plunged Rome into the horrors of civil war; he did not prevent the reign of Augustus, but he rendered possible those of Nero and Caligula. The ostracism of Napoleon by confederated Europe, has been no more successful in preventing the Empire from being resuscitated; and, nevertheless, how far are we from the great questions solved, the passions calmed, and the legitimate satisfactions given to peoples by the first Empire?" We have given this extract entire, because it is the key to the whole work. It shows the design of the author in writing, and it is the gloss by which the work itself is to be interpreted throughout. We are not among the number of those who worship at the shrine of either of the Napoleons. We believe that there is a God in History; but we do not therefore believe that Providence sanctions and approves any and all of the designs and measures of men whom God allows to appear upon the stage of human events, as His scourges, His instruments to accomplish His wise and beneficent ends. The Cæsars and Napoleons are not, always, and of necessity, "Messiahs;" as Louis Napoleon so blasphemously would teach us; nor is it either "blind," or "culpable," for the "peoples" to ask for their proper credentials, before they will be quite ready to bow down their faces to the earth, and to be trampled in the dust by every military despot who may be able to ride into power for a little while on the storms of public anarchy. Napoleon III. seems to forget that Napoleon I. was the "man of destiny" at St. Helena, as truly as when Europe trembled at his name. If the Empire of Cæsar, restored to his nephew, lasted for five hundred years, it does not follow that the Empire of Napoleon I., restored by his nephew, Napoleon III., is to last for an equal period. To show that this does not follow, or rather to show that this is a wild and an impious delusion, and that the indications of Providence all point in a different direction, would not be a difficult task. But this is not the place for such an exposition. The Emperor has been gathering materials for such a work for ten years. Aside from his ambition to shine in the world of letters, he undoubtedly seeks, in this History, to establish himself and his Empire in the confidence of the civilized world. He greatly mistakes the spirit of the age in which he lives, however, if he hopes to escape the sober, candid, searching judgment of those who, as he will find, are more than his peers in the realm which he has now presumed to enter. Non omnia possumus omnes. The style of the work is open to the severest criticism; but how much of this is due to the original, and how much to the translation, we cannot now determine. The enterprizing publishers, who have the honor of presenting the work to the American people, have done it in the most appropriate style, and in a manner worthy of royalty itself. HISTORY OF THE ROMANS UNDER THE EMPIRE. BY CHARLES MERIVALE, B. D. Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. From the Fourth London Edition. With a copious analytical Index. Vol. VII. New York: D Appleton & Co. 1865. 8vo. pp. 569. The present volume reaches over a period of a little more than a hundred years, from the accession of Vespasian, A. D., 71, to the death of Marcus Aurelius, A. D., 180. Hoping soon to review this entire and noble work, or rather, to present certain phases of Roman · Civilization, which the author discloses to us, in their connections with and bearing upon that higher and divine element which was so soon to appear upon the stage, and play its part in this great drama of the world's history, we will not leave this concluding volume of Mr. Merivale, without once more asking attention to this new contribubution which the author has made to our standard literature. His charming style, the ease with which he moves among the mighty elements of power at that great epoch, his felicity in narrative, his tact in analysis and discrimination, his calmness, and the impartiality of his conclusions, his unity of plan of which he seems never to lose sight, in the multiplicity of detail,-all this renders his pages most attractive and satisfactory to the reader. We wish that he had, as he at first intended, continued his narrative, until he had presented before us the Religion of the GOD-man, enthroned as the ruling element at Rome. He might, at least, have shivered to atoms the unfairness and sophistry of Gibbon's famous fifteenth and sixteenth Chapters. But he leaves off where Gibbon begins. The Analytical Index, at the end of the volume, is very full, and is of course invaluable. TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ASIA: Being the account of a Journey from Teheran across the Turkoman Desert, on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand, performed in the year 1863, by ARMINIUS VAMBERY, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Pesth, by whom he was sent on this scientific mission. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865. 8vo. pp. 493. The author, a Hungarian, impelled by a love of linguistic science,already master of several European and Asiatic languages,-determined to ascertain whether the Hungarian language is to be referred to the Finnish or Tartaric branch of the Altaic stock. To decide that question, which of course is not one touching philology alone, he spent several years at Constantinople, a resident in Turkish houses, and a frequent visitor of Islamite Schools and Libraries, until, he says, he was transformed into a Turk, nay, into an effendi, or civil functionary. Further to prosecute his researches, he resolved to visit Central Asia, a task of no small difficulty, where, as he says, "to |