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sories wrought out with pathetic simplicity, it becomes a dramatic and powerful picture. It is not the tale, however, that constitutes the chief interest of the volume, but the asidepassages where the womanly soul of the writer breaks out in lamentation of the woes that overrun our Christian land, describing with vehement and almost prophetic tones, the wrongs and misery-the blinding tears and bloodless deaths, that waste and blast the helpless, oppressed, tempted, fallen women of our large towns, and imploring with an earnestness that must awake the stoneyhearted confessor of Christ to witness and work against those evils in trade and social life that wreak such woful consequences on the Weak and Fair.

THE SIDEREAL HEAVENS. By Thomas Dick, LL.D. 6th Thousand. London:

Ward & Co., Paternoster Row. DR. DICK has for many years been, perhaps, our most popular writer on subjects connected with astronomy. The present work in its successive editions cannot fail to sustain his very high reputation. The matter is good, and our knowledge of the science brought up by it to the present year. The illustrations are very beautiful; and the whole forms a very cheap and valuable compendium of starry science.

A VISIT TO THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. By Sir John Bowring, LL.D., F.R.S., late Governor of Hong Kong, H. B. M.'s Plenipotentiary in China, &c., &c. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1859.

In the course of a few weeks' holiday from the cares of his colonial government, Sir John Bowring paid a short visit to the Philippine Islands, during which it is evident his time was not wasted, but devoted with characteristic energy to observation of the capabilities of the soil and climate, and of the manners and customs of

the people. In this he was greatly assisted by the advantages he enjoyed "from immediate and constant intercourse with the various authorities, and the most friendly reception by the natives of every class." The result is a most pleasant and readable book, containing a vast amount of informa tion connected with the present con dition and prospective resources of these hitherto little-known islands.

Although these islands are a Spanish colony, the number of European Spaniards settled here is very small indeed compared with the natives and mixed races. The entire population is supposed to be about four millions, of whom 1,787,528 are native Indians, paying tribute, and 78,400 are mestizos and Chinese tributaries. The remainder, of whom the number is necessarily uncertain, are natives not under government, inhabiting the mountains. The principal part of these are Pagans, although there are many exceptional cases. For instance, in the island of Mindanao, there are many Mahone dans, "probably of Malayan descent." The enmity between these and the Spaniards is constant and deadly.

There is an interesting account given in the chapter on "Population and Races" of some inhabitants of the remote mountainous regions of Mindanao-" a race in the very lowest stages of barbarism, I cannot say of civilization, for of that they present no trace. They are said to wear no garments, to build no houses, to dress no food. They wander in the forest, whose wild fruits they gather by day, and sleep among the branches of the trees by night. They have no form of government, no chief, no religious usages of any kind. I saw one of the race who was brought for sale as any wild animal might have been, to the governor of Zamboanga." Yet it is clearly and satisfactorily proved that these people are susceptible of cultivation, civilization, and Christianisation.

On Ethnology, Sir John holds some remarkable and certainly original

views. Instead of agreeing with the general tendency now in vogue, to trace all varieties of mankind and of language to one common origin, or (with some) to a few defined types, he goes so far as to imply that the varieties now observed are few in number compared with those that originally existed; and that the same is the case as regards languages. "I believe there are more varieties of the human family than have hitherto been recognised by physiologists, amongst whom no affinity of language will be found. The theories current as to the derivation of the many varieties of the human race from a few primitive types will not bear examination. Civilization and education will modify the character of the skull, and the differences between the crania of the same people are so great as to defy any general law of classification. The further back we are enabled to go, the greater will be the distinction of types and tongues ; and it will be seen that the progress of time, and commerce, and knowledge, and colonization, has annihilated many an independent idiom, as it has destroyed many an aboriginal race (p. 167.) One remarkable fact adduced with regard to the wild races, is the great separation of the toes, enabling the foot to be used in great part as a hand. Were this proved to be an original endowment, it would certainly go far to support the theory of diversity of race. We think it scarcely necessary, however, to state that we in no degree acquiesce in our author's ethnology.

The established religion is that of the Romish Church. As to the wild natives and the Mahomedans De Mas advises that the Spanish Government should buy them and convert them! and employ them in agriculture.

The great characteristic of the national manners and customs is strange enough. Cock-fighting; its prevalence is beyond all description. The passion for it is "a delirium, and no law can check the number or the duration of the fights: . . there are

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Tobacco constitutes the staple trade here, rice is also grown very extensively, and sugar to some extent, but the climate is not particularly favourable to general agriculture, being specified in a Spanish proverb as "six months of dust, six months of mud, and six months of everything." Indigo and spices might be grown to much advantage, but they are neglected. The forest trees seem destined to form a considerable part of the riches of these islands. is found here, and coal, but of inferior quality. The chapters on commerce, education, and government are full of instructive matter, and the most valuable suggestions; but they must be read entire to be appreciated. Altogether the work is most interesting and instructive, though largely made up of extracts and sentimentsnot always acknowledged-from other writers. It is also agreeably illustrated with good lithographs, and forms a valuable contribution to our knowledge of tropical countries with their associated habits and capabilities.

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our beloved allegorist. We have not noticed this edition during its issue, believing we could render greater service to its spirited publisher when it was completed, and we could inform our readers, not that certain felicitous improvements were projected in this edition, but that they had been made. What these are we can best indicate in the words of the editor, Mr. Gilfillan--"Among the learned, to whom the presentation of an antique page forms no barrier, but acts often as a zest, there are few poems in our language more admired than The Faerie Queen,' but to the general reader, the old spelling is felt to be so repulsive as to make the work appear a sealed book." We have felt the difference in reading a page of this emended orthography, as compared with the old, to be great as the difference between the medal rough and discoloured by rust, and when burnished and clean. The work done by Mr. Gilfillan for Spenser had been done long ago for Shakspeare, and now Spenser is as easily read as his great contemporary. The explanations given of obsolete terms are neither prolix nor meagre ; usually one word suffices, and the glossary being put at the side of the page, the reader glides along without the slightest interruption. Every obstacle being now removed to the full enjoyment of our glorious romantic poet, the flower of chivalry, we trust that every student of our language and literature will now avail himself of the privilege. The introductory essays by Mr. Gilfillan are worthy of his high name: one exhibits the construction and moral of the allegories of the several worksanother, the life of the poet-a third, a dissertation on his poetry; all of them graphic and instructive. The type is doubtless familiar to our readers, and will be no mean charm to them when they indulge in the luxury of buying and reading this standard edition of Spenser.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH HUNT. Á New Edition, Revised by the Authe with further Revision and an Introduction by his Eldest Son. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.

THIS is a charming gossipping volume, written in Leigh Hunt's happiest style. Its entire length is a long picture gallery, where the portraits of his friends are preserved, and our host, in taking us through, kindly interweaves with his talk pleasant reminiscences of the hours he spent with each of them. The greatest literary men of the past and present age are thus introduced and described to us. Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Campbell, Shelley, Carlyle, and Dickens. Leigh Hunt was intimate with them all, and here, as in a magical mirror, we see them pass before us, in the vraisemblance of life, along with a number of others, their associates and friends. Leigh Hunt's vapourous religious sentimentality hangs like a mist over portions of the book, damping and darkening the reader's mind as it did the author's. Otherwise, a pleasanter railway or after-dinner companion could not be desired.

THE PUBLIC SPEAKER, AND HOW TO MAKE ONE. By a Cambridge Man. London: James Nisbet.

IF the title-page were an advertisement, stating what the author wanted to know, we could direct him where to get instructions how to make a public speaker; but we warn our readers not to expect such instruction from this book, which only asks and does not tell how; unless this advice be sufficient which we give in three words what our author expands over 120 pp. Query,-How to make a Public Speaker. Answer,-Resolve and be.

MAURICE'S SOCIAL RELIGION, exemplified in an Account of the First Settlement of Christianity in the City of Coerludd. By the Rev. Matthias Maurice. Seventh Edition. Edited by the Rev. F. Nicholas, Professor of Theology and Church History, Carmarthen College. London: Ward & Co.

A reprint and revise of a quaint, rich, old, unforgotten book, written by a contemporary and neighbour of Doddridge. Being a Welshman he reproduces an old Celtic city into which Christianity is just introduced, and illustrates the constitution and working of the apostolic churches from the fictitious history of the young church in Coerludd. The framework of the narrative is cumbrous wood-work, for the Rev. Matthias was no cunning workman in words or fancies; but the matter enclosed is solid and precious. Like bullion-boxes, inside the rude carpentry there are pure and weighty ingots. Further, there is a severe realistic manner about the Puritan's fiction, which gives it an amazing hold on the imagination, so that these early Christians, despite their Welsh and unpronounceable names, excite deep and growing interest as we read of them.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

AFTER Mr. Hawthorne's long residence in this country, many of his admirers no doubt expected from him some work embodying his impressions of English scenery and English life. Liverpool, with its intense business energy and its entirely modern character, was scarcely a fitting home for the poetic or the romantic, but there were phases of its life of which we should all gladly have received his impressions. Picturesque glimpses of scenery there are too in its neighbourhood, as Mr. Hawthorne learned in his wanderings on the New Brighton shore, and among the Eastham woods, where the dreamy,

absorbed demeanour of the romancist not unfrequently puzzled the quiet Cheshire country people. We mus own to a feeling of disappointment that after a silence of several years Mr. Hawthorne should make even Italy his first theme. He has written his name after those of De Stael, and Tieck, and Andersen, and many others from lands not Italian, who have made Italy the home of their ideal creations. Some curiosity must be felt as to the manner in which an author who succeeded in drawing a veil of old-world mystery and romance even over Boston can avail of the exhaustless materials which lie heaped around the Capitol and the Coloseum. We must frankly declare our opinion that the attempt has not been successful, and that the Romance of Monte Beni* will not add to the fame of the author of the Romance of Blithedale. Mr. Hawthorne seems to have concentrated in his latest work all the peculiar defects even of his best productions, and to have diffused over it less of his peculiar charm of thought, and style, and touch, than are apparent even in the slightest of his previous efforts. It is scarcely possible to arise from the perusal of this book without a feeling of disappointment and a sense of wasted genius.

Mr. Hawthorne is unquestionably a man of genius, and of characteristics thoroughly unborrowed and original. When his name first became known in English literature, a place among the foremost of his own art was readily and justly accorded to him. There appeared something in his writings which indicated the latent existence of a power yet to be developed and made profitable to the world. With the lapse of time it seemed almost certain that this vagueness and want of purpose would crystalize into clearness and well-directed force.

"Transformation: or, the Romance of Monte Beni." By Nathaniel Hawthorne. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.

It is not surprising that Mr. Hawthorne's earlier works aroused the attention of a public languid from very satiety of novel reading. There was genius in them entirely peculiar, and almost inexplicable. Hawthorne took his reader with him into the centre of busy, bustling, and modern Boston, drew his magic circle, spake his conjuration, and the very spirit of the antique arose in gloom and cloud upon the scene. In his descriptions of some old Massachussetts family name, or some Governor's council chamber, the very soul of the elder world seems to descend and hold communion with the reader. Occasional glimpses, too, of a gentle and tender feeling revealed themselves. The opening chapter of the "Scarlet Letter," describing the little custom-house of Salem and its officials, was as quaint and genial as if it were a lost leaf from the essays of poor Elia. But there was a power in the "Scarlet Letter" rarely united with such quiet pathos. Scarcely is there in literature a contrast and a junction more terribly dramatic than those which separate and yet link together the Puritan preacher and the branded wearer of the fatal symbol. Is it not Maclise's painting of the play-scene in "Hamlet," in which the artifice of the painter has caused the shadow of the stage-murderer to fall across the chamber right upon the figure of the fratricide King? It is thus that in the "Scarlet Letter" the shadow of the degradation and the guilt of the lost woman darkens the form of the preacher, and seems to mark out a black space upon which those two beings stand alone, appallingly distinguished from the pure brightness all around.

The "Blithedale Romance," in many respects the best, was surely the saddest of the author's productions. It is a dreary retrospect of enthusiasm uselessly expending its powers, and prematurely expiring : passion misdirected, and turning back to prey upon itself: principles the most unselfish and exalted worked

out without judgment, and either de generating into melancholy monomania or breaking out into a wilder madness.

But the author ought to have growa to something still better, artistically and morally. The defects of previ labours would have been compensated had the interval of years which fol lowed the publication of the "Blithedale Romance" been the precurser of a work wholly healthy and manly in tone, and which while developing to the fullest the high imagination and the spiritualized feeling of the author should borrow no unreal, delusive, and disappointing attrac tions from the morbid, the mystic and the supernatural. Such a work the "Romance of Monte Beni" emphatically is not. It has all the special defects of its predecessors, and not many of their peculiar merits.

The "Romance of Monte Beni" is at least original in its structure. It is the story of a being almost entirely animal in its origin, developed into emotion, painful struggles, and final exaltation by the remorse which follows a sudden deed of crime. In the old classic legend the higher life lights up in the animal nature at the first glimpse of human beauty. In the German story a soul enters the sprite-form of Undine with the visitation of human love. In Mr. Hawthorne's novel the nature of the Faun grows humanized and ennobled through the painful medium of remorse and despair. It is not difficult to see how the story gradually de veloped itself in the author's mind. Mr. Hawthorne when gazing on the marble Faun of Praxiteles in the sculpture gallery of the Capitol fell into his peculiar and dreamy meditations upon the mythic nature of the being who held that strange place between man and animal, having some of the form and some of the character of each, capable of a higher joy and love than the one race, incapable of the aspiration, the sorrow, the exaltation of the other. The strange desire seized upon the author's

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