of England rejects the Apocryphal books from the canon of divinelyinspired Scriptures. It has now become necessary that this subject should be treated fully; therefore he has stated the positive internal and external evidences for our rejecting the Apocrypha, having regard to the objections of Bellarmine and other Papists in favour of them.

3. In the third vol. the geographical portions in chap. 1, sect. 11, and the geographical index, have been corrected from the learned researches of the most recent travellers in Palestine.

4. The bibliographical Appendix, hitherto annexed to the second volume, has, at the suggestion of many possessors of the work, been detached from that volume, and now forms the fifth volume. The bibliographical information it contains has been brought down almost to the day of publication. By this greatly improved arrangement the several volumes are rendered more uniform in size, and each volume now embraces a distinct subject of biblical literature.

By abridging various portions, which would admit of being condensed, as well as by employing a small but clear and distinct type in various parts of the work, the learned and excellent author has been enabled to introduce not less than 150 pages of new matter without materially enlarging the volumes, and without any increase of price. The work now comprises nearly 3,400 pages,

The important article on the Apocrypha has been printed separately, under the title of "Supplementary Pages to the seventh and eighth Editions of an Introduction to the Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."

The eight preceding editions (during twenty-seven years and threequarters) consisted of 15,000 copies! How many thousand more have been sold in the United States we know not. We know that three sets of stereotype plates have been cast, printed copies from which are now selling at a very low price throughout the American Union.

ART. XVI.—The Worship of Genius, and the Distinctive Character or Essence of Christianity. By Professor C. Ullman. Translated from the German by Lucy Sanford. Chapman: 1846. WE must confess, that though this work satisfactorily replies to the arguments of Strauss and others, showing that the Christian idea of our Lord is the correct one, yet the bare canvassing and contrasting of the author's views of Christ with other men of genius is most painful to read. The worship of genius is like hero worship, to us a monstrosity. No gilding of the pill can divest this of its earthly flavour, and though Mr. Carlyle may be admired, we frankly confess we do not think that he is understood. The following extract will show, however, that Professor Ullman is much in advance of many his countrymen in his appreciation of the character of our Lord:

of

"If what has been said be true, and that it is so, millions, however differing in expression, will bear witness; if man requires not merely a worship of intellectual excitement and luxury, but an adoration which humbles, sanctifies, and morally regenerates him; if genius, which-in proportion to its elevation and purity points to its divine original-can indeed bear witness to the all-mighty, all-holy, all-loving One, but never supply his place; if Christ, though his endowments may be not unaptly compared with those of genius, stands, in his peculiar personal dignity, higher than all men of genius; if he alone can give the weary and heavy laden to drink of the waters of life freely, then the last hour has not yet struck, either for what we have hitherto called religion, or for the Christian faith in particular. The external form, the outward observances, may alter; the spirit, the essence must remain. The Ancient of Days will hold his rule; Christ will not descend from the throne which he occupies as the world-redeeming Son of God to take place, as an equal, in the ranks of men of genius; but, though he hold nothing alien to him that belonged to humanity, he will always remain the only one who, himself holy, could feel no shadow interposed between him and the God with whom he was united, and by whom he is, consequently, eternally glorified." (p. 47.)

The following passage is also not without great merit :—

"Kant, as is well known, arrived, by means of his metaphysical inquiries, at the result, that abstract reflection can attain no certainty respecting any thing divine, and beyond the limits of sense. Unaided theoretical reason may as probably deny God, as prove his existence. If God, the main object of religion, is to become a certainty to us, it must be by some other means. Thus, there is also a practical reason which acknowledges the absolute supremacy of the moral law, and strives after a moral perfection which cannot be realized in this world of sense, but also in some ideal spiritual existence. Hence follows the reality of the ideal, divine, eternal. But since virtue, which is unconditionally commanded by the moral law, constitutes the highest good only when united with happiness, and yet the insurance of this union rests not in our own power, we are compelled to believe in a supreme, intelligent, and moral power by whom this can be effected; and since the moral law also requires, in certain circumstances, that life should be sacrificed for virtue, we conclude hence the reality of some future state, in which self-sacrificing virtue will receive its reward. We thus obtain the fundamental ideas of religion-God and immortality, as the necessary results of the moral law, and of that internal consciousness which, by the disciples of this school, is considered the only means of certainty on such subjects. If it is my duty to be virtuous, there must be a God who rewards virtue, and an eternal life, in which that reward will be bestowed." (p. 79.)

The following remarks on the religious communities of Germany will not be read without interest by any interested in the great progression at present visible in that country:

Let

"One of our existing communities boasts especially of the Gospel, the other prides itself chiefly in a grand highly organized ecclesiastical system. Well, then, let each develope its own peculiar advantages, but at the same time let each endeavour to appropriate whatever is really excellent in the other. the one expand from its centre, and the other penetrate more deeply into the inward meaning of its external forms. Thus points of coincidence will assuredly be found; and whenever Time's dial strikes the mighty hour, then will this partition-wall also fall before Him who formerly overthrew a far mightier partition, and of two made one. But fall it will not, 'till the living Head of the Church enters upon his full supremacy, and in Him and his Gospel all differences are merged and reconciled." (p. 114.)

ART. XVII.—The History of Egypt, from the Earliest Times till the Conquest by the Arabs, A. D. 640. By Samuel Sharpe. A New Edition. Moxon: 1846.

·

A HISTORY of Egypt, such as the one before us, is somewhat misnamed, for the ' Connexion of Egypt with Greece and Rome' would be a far more fitting title. Of such a history, however, until we read the "dark hand" better, there is small hope. We differ from many explanations of scriptural facts given in this work, but subjoin the following as a specimen of the style :—

66 Already had the wise men of Egypt added the vain studies of sorcery and magic to their knowledge of the physical sciences; and they made use of juggling tricks to strengthen that power over the minds of their countrymen which they gained from a real superiority and knowledge. When they opposed Moses before Pharaoh, whatever miracles he worked they attempted to work, and in some cases with an apparent success. Like him they threw down their rods upon the ground, which then crawled about like serpents; and when they took them up in their hands, they again became straight rods. And at the present day, after 3000 years, their successors are still performing the same curious trick; they take up in the hand the naja, (a small viper,) and pressing a finger on the nape of its neck, put it into a catalepsy, which makes it motionless and stiff like a rod; and when it regains its power of motion, the cheated by-standers fancy that the magician's rod has been changed into a serpent." (p. 35.)

The mythological remarks, however, though rather Greek in tone, are often judicious. The following account of the alabaster sarcophagus in the Soane Museum, discovered by Beechey and Belzoni, will be read with interest.

"The king's tomb, near Thebes, is the most beautiful in Egypt; and as it escaped the search of the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs, it was, when opened by the enterprising Belzoni in our own days, in the same state of freshness as when closed on the death of its owner. After entering the side of the hill, and passing down a staircase of twenty-nine feet, through a passage of eighteen feet, a second staircase of twenty-five feet, and a second passage of twenty nine-feet, the traveller reaches a small room, from which he enters a grand hall of about twenty-six feet square, having its roof upheld by four square pillars: a few steps then lead into a second hall of the same size; and after passing through a passage and a smaller room, he enters a third and largest hall of twenty-seven feet square, and in a small vaulted room beyond stood the alabaster sarcophagus which is now in Sir John Soane's museum. The walls of these rooms, or caverns, are covered with painted and highly finished sculptures, and several curious fables. On the sarcophagus there is the conquest of the Eternal Serpent, the great enemy of the human race, whose conquerors bear along his lengthy folds in solemn procession. The god Osiris is there sitting to judge mankind, who are mounting up the steps of his lofty throne; and beneath his feet are the wicked men labouring with hatchets, as if condemned to work in the Egyptian gold mines. There are also seen the river which divides life from death, and the bridge of life, and the keepers of that important bridge; there also are the tombs of the dead, their doors, and the keepers of those doors.” (p. 43.)

The reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus will, however, be read in this author with deep interest, embellished as it is by a crowd of mathematicians, with Euclid their chief, Theocritus, Callimachus, Aratus and the various philosophic writers, and the Septuagint. The remarks on the fidelity of this version of the Holy Scriptures into Greek we think injudicious. Throughout, the Septuagint does not exhibit Hebrew idioms, but Greek. The following story of the "Hair of Berenice," wife of Ptolemy Euergetes, which commandeth more honour than falls to most locks, we subjoin:—

"It was while the king was from home upon this Assyrian war, that his queen Berenice, in Egypt, sacrificing a bull to the gods, vowed that if they brought her husband safe home she would cut off her beautiful tresses, and hang them up in the temple in token of her thankfulness. Euergetes soon afterwards returned a conqueror, and the queen's locks were yielded up to the knife, while the whole court praised her heroism. Conon, the astronomer, was then busy in noting the places of the fixed stars, and immediately grouping together into a constellation one of those many clusters which the earlier astronomers had left unnamed, he marked it out on his globe, and gave it to the world as the new constellation of the Hair of Berenice. Callimachus took the hint from the courtly astronomer, and, in a poem which we know only in the translation of Catullus, makes the hair swear by the head from which it was cut off, that it was against its will that it left the queen and was raised to the skies; but, what could it do against the force of steel? The poet and the astronomer have here been of use to one another; the constellation of Coma Berenices is known to hundreds who have not read Callimachus or Catullus, but it is from the poet that we learn why the queen's locks were set among the stars."(p. 209.)

The most interesting portion of this work relates to the literary splendour of the Ptolemies, and to that splendid cortège of all those writers who were most illustrious in critical and scientific researches under their reigns. Neither is the reign of Rome over Egypt without much that is further illustrative of her ancient condition. The Greek and Roman portions of this work are far more valuable than the more ancient, and it is almost to be regretted that it was not confined to that period. Since the possession of this country by the Arabs, Egypt has become the basest of nations; nor do we trace much symptom of national improvement under the sceptre of Muhammed Ali.

ART. XVIII.-Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent. By William Roscoe. 8th Edition, revised by his son, Thomas Roscoe. Bohn: 1846.

THE life of this merchant-prince is one filled with events of the most stirring character. The present work has a life of Roscoe appended to it, which is also, from the similarity of feeling and occupation between his biographer and Lorenzo, not without additional interest of its own. Few characters in the world's history have inspired

more interest than Cosmo de' Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent. The dreadful conspiracy of the Pazzi, which developed to the house of Medici the hate entertained to them by the Roman See, is most graphically described in this work; and the patronage of literature and art which this entire family exhibits, is one of the most extraordinary features of the age in which they lived. By them the liberties of the republic of Florence were preserved; by an illegitimate branch of their family they were extinguished. This family held an influence that raised them to alliance with the royal house of France, and the English Reformation may remotely be said to have arisen from them, and Clement VII. to have been no mean agent in its production. But the entire line never possessed a man that equalled Lorenzo. Elegant as Petrarch, brave as Marco Visconti, generous as a Medici, high-spirited as Dante, and as full of genuine feeling as Politian. To him Florence now even owes most of the objects that enrich her in the eye of the artist and the scholar; and to his son, Leo X., Rome is indebted for most of her magnificent structures, not excepting St. Peter's itself.

ART. XIX.-Euclid's Elements of Geometry, chiefly from the Text of Dr. Simson, with explanatory notes; together with a Selection of Geometrical Exercises from the Senate House and College Examination Papers. To which is prefixed an Introduction, containing a brief Outline of the History of Geometry, designed for the use of the Higher Forms in Public Schools, and Students in the Universities. By Robert Potts, A.M. London: Parker, 1846.

We have for years waited most patiently for some production on the Elements of the Alexandrian similar to this. Hudson, Montucla, and Barker had supplied some hints, but as two of them are rather weighty works, they have rarely been consulted as a manual, like the present bids fair to be. Our objection to Simson at school we well remember arose from the dry manner in which its abstract truths were placed before us. The least explanation of the history of mathematics, of its application and its utility, never reached our ears. Had we possessed a Euclid like the present, where the great bearings of geometry are fully explained, we should have been far earlier interested in its details. The introduction to this work is extremely valuable as a brief history of mathematics. At the end of each book of Euclid Mr. Potts has given a series of notes on the propositions, with many inferences from and extensions of the relative theorems, arranged them under convenient heads, and given directions for the right study of these little systems of parts of abstract truth. Such aid upon the second book, so little understood, as every examination proves, is particularly valuable. The algebraic enunciation is also given at times in the notes, which is highly valuable, but ought, we