scenery is the fruit of a ten month's leisurely exploration, and not of a flying visit; indeed, there is abundant evidence, in the Oriental spirit with which the chapters are permeated, that the author has travelled and lived long enough in the East to acclimate his tastes and heart, and enable him to describe scenery and manners, not from the senses, but from intimate and vital acquaintance.

Mr. St. John is a good observer, and a capital scene-painter in words. His style stands half-way between that of Bayard Taylor and Mr. Curtis, the "Howadji,"-fragrant always with the sentiment and dreamy associations of the East, and yet showing you a clear picture of the landscapes and the modes of life that met his eye. In several of his chapters, the author has gracefully interwoven some of the traditions concerning Egypt, which the lower classes have preserved, and many wild stories, told in the huts, that are of near kindred in spirit and poetry, with the marvels in the "Arabian Nights." We have seldom read more spirited, acute, and felicitous descriptions of foreign manners than Mr. St. John has given; in fact, the only reservation we make in the expression of satisfaction with his narrative, relates to the filth of the modern Egyptians, and to some features of moral corruption among them, which his pen has presented a little to clearly, and with more raciness of diction than a sensitive disgust and a conscientious abhorrence would naturally indulge.

The political moralist will read such books as these with perplexity and disquiet. They raise the problem of Providence with its darkest face towards us. They tell of the sorrows, the wrongs, and the awful degradation of millions of the lower classes of our race. Our thoughts revert from Mr. St. John's pages, to the narrative of the oppressions of the Israelites, ages ago, for the agricultural classes seem to remain in precisely the same relations to the government, as under the Pharaohs. And yet our author, who is something of a philosopher, sees the social and civil doom of the lower orders of Egypt, in the very configuration of the land. The geography of the Nile country, he thinks, demonstrates the necessity of despotism as the political law, though he believes and shows that a wise and beneficent absolutism would raise the lower classes, in a comparatively little while, out of the tyranny of famine, pestilence and war, which now desolate them. We are assured, that in fifty years the population has fallen from three and a half millions to barely two millions; the chief cause being forced labor and scanty food.

Mr. St. John has no reverence for the interpreters of the hieroglyphics. He does not believe that a single sentence has, as yet, been translated from any monument without the aid of invention, and declares that no two pretended savans, or "Egyptologists," have agreed in their renderings and chronologies. Dr. Lepsius, especially, is speared, and besides the vandal depredations on ancient monuments

which other travellers have ascribed to him, our author accuses him of forging a cartouche on the breast of a statue, in front of the great temple in Carnac. Our readers will see, therefore, that the volumes are interesting, and will not regret that we have called attention to them.

K.

17. Regal Rome, an Introduction to Roman History. By Francis W. Newman, Professor of Latin in University College, London. Redfield: New York, 1852. pp. 182.

The name of Mr. Newman is sufficient guaranty of the value of this book to all critical students of Roman history. He differs with Niebuhr in regard to many of the conclusions of that great scholar, concerning early Rome, and throws out the present work, small in compass, but packed with learning and acute discussion, as a contribution to the efforts which scholars are making to place Roman history on a firm foundation. The peculiarity of Mr. Newman's book is, an attempt to show how much of the composite Roman character is due to Sabine, Latin, and Etruscan elements, which were its principal constituents. He discusses, too, the origin of the Roman language, and gives some very valuable tables of analogies between Celtic, Greek and Latin words. Almost everything valuable in Regal Rome, the author traces to the Sabines, who, he thinks, really conquered the Latins, and introduced better blood, manners, and institutions, among the coarser and hardier founders of the imperial city.

K.

18. Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling. By the Author of "Visiting my Relations." Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. New York: C. S. Francis & Co., 1853. 16mo. pp. 323.

The first ten chapters of this work consist of casual reflections, and criticisms on prominent passages in the course of daily reading; now a meditation on the doctrine of foreordination, from a series of facts in relation to society, given in the Edinburgh Review; now a lengthy dissent from some principles of Mr. Emerson's philosophy of life; and again, some thoughts drawn from a text in the Memoir of Margaret Ossoli. The prevailing cast of the meditations is religious, and the last six chapters contain a connected religious autobiography, as it were, the recorded growth of a spiritual experience, through the aid and obstacles of certain dogmas, the direct influence of great preachers and sermons, and the reactive operation of some features of modern society. The conclusion is quite catholic; and the author's experience of the bigotry of many religionists, who were perfectly sure of their ground, and certain that all who do not occupy it are the destined colonists of the pit, dictates the following conclusion; "The very essence of fanaticism consists in taking our stand upon some particular doctrine, and-forgetting how limited and low our

knowledge is likely to be of the full bearing of that doctrine-the legislating from it for all the world; and, though purblind with prejudice, and cramped with bigotry, still supposing that we are seeing and judging in the freedom and impartiality of the Spirit of Truth." Every book is welcome that will impress upon sincerely religious people the truth, that there is a wide difference in spiritual temperaments, and that certain doctrines which seem barren to one class, are the very bread of life to another, thus pointing us, from the practical side, to the breadth and comprehensiveness of religion, and making us to see that it, somehow, includes and harmonizes the vital principles which underlie the coarse dogmas of the most erroneous

sects.

K.

19. Philosophers and Actresses. By Arsene Houssaye, Author of "Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century,” etc. In two volumes. Redfield, New York, 1852. 12mo. pp. 411, 406.

If our readers wish to know the moral formula for the contents of these volumes, we advise them to consult the notice, in this Review, of the "Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century," one or two numbers back. The name, however, of the present work is deceptive. The gay author considers all men as Philosophers, and all women as Actresses, and so considers his title-page sufficiently honest for chapters devoted to anecdotes of Voltaire, Scarron, Chamfort, Chenier, Vandyck, &c.; criticisms on Plato's Republic, and the story of Abelard and Heloise, and now and then an original romance of his own. If it is worth while to know anything of what French society has been, these volumes may be serviceable. But, on the whole, we should recommend scientific farmers to buy up the whole edition to enrich the soil. In that way, M. Houssaye's works might furnish some wholesome nutriment. It would be a good investment too, for the farmers.

20. Discourses on the Christian Body and Form. Junior Minister of the West Church in Boston. Nichols, & Co. New York: C. S. Francis & Co.

K.

By C. A. Bartol, Boston: Crosby, 12mo. pp. 376.

It affords us unalloyed pleasure to recall our memories of the first reading of this book, and to commend it to others. Many of our readers will see at once, from the title, that it is a sequel, or complement, of a former volume,-" Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life," which received an appreciative notice in our pages. The author, desirous of doing elaborate justice to his cordial convictions of the worth and power of the divine framework, the ordinances, institutions, and symbols, that hold the spirit of Christianity, has devoted these pages to the endeavor. thought, will see how naturally and and shallow ritualism, while all the

Every one that follows his easily the writer avoids a stiff fervor of his feeling, all the

riches of imagination, and the ripe fulness and delicate grace of his diction, conspire to set forth his reverence and gratitude for the providential media that have saved the gospel from dissipation. To such an eye as Mr. Bartol's, the vessels of grace are all translucent, not standing in the place of spiritual truth, but interpreting and spreading it, like transparent shades, while they defend it against the unsteady gusts of speculation, and give it a constant home in the cathedral of history.

We can find no words so fitting and beautiful to convey our impressions of the author's treatment, as his own, in the concluding essay, that it should not be counted ill to undertake a delineation of Christianity in strokes at once firm and flowing; to seek the solid breadth of ideas, without the rigidity of dogmas; and to present the Church, not according to an unyielding pattern, like an iron frame and steel points to get the fac-simile of a human face, but in the free posture and expressive feeling of a portraiture made by the pencil, instead of the cold and dull daguerreotype." It is not the bones, the empty eye-sockets, and the fleshless skeleton, which so many theological anatomists and unimaginative church-men give us for the substance of Christianity, that this volume presents, but the clothed body, beating with life, and the countenance, beaming with various expression as it falls upon the sinner, or the saint, the soul needing encouragement, or the cowardly and faithless will.

Accordingly, in addition to the discourses that relate to the ordinances and their uses, and to the need of the church organization as the body of Christ, there are several sermons on the relations of Christ himself to human nature, and the necessity of love for him and communion with him, to the clearness of our religious convictions and the health of the heart. Perhaps the greatest stress is laid, in the volume, on the personality and offices of Jesus, as still the body of the Christian religion, and the fountain of influences such as abstract truth cannot inspire in the soul. One cannot read such sermons as those here given, on "Christ our Passover;" "The Presence of Christ;" and especially, "The Voice of Christ's Blood," without feeling the superior richness in nutriment, for the religious nature, of the spiritual sentiment with which a liberal Christianity invests the Scriptural symbols, to the harsh and definite dogma and the sacrificial accuracy in detail, which the Orthodox interpretation. insists upon. In this respect, we regard the latter sermon, "The Voice of Christ's Blood," as one of the most valuable contributions that have been made for a long time, to the spiritual literature of liberal Christianity. We would speak, too, of the sermon, "What the Christian has to live and to die for," as one of the sweetest hymns, although it falls into rhythm to the soul, and not to the ear-which Christian faith has ever sung in trust and triumph over the grave.

The last ten sermons relate to the general theme by real inward affinity, though not so clearly by their verbal titles, at first sight. They show the form in which Christianity has set before us the great problems of philosophy-such as evil, death, heaven and hell, immortality, and the kingdom of heaven,—and the solution which, by the spirit of Christianity, must be given to them. In all of these discourses, the central idea of the gospel, rather than the developement of it by a hard and interested logic into minute controversial details, is the writer's aim. We most heartily commend this book to our readers, as a treasury of devout thought and sentiment, and as a witness of the ample material which Christian truth affords for the exercise of a reverent imagination, and of how much such an imagination contributes to the efficiency of truth.

K.

21. Putnam's Semi-Monthly Library for Travellers and the Fireside.

No. xviii. The Eagle Pass; or Life on the Border. By Cora Montgomery.

No. xix. Walks and Talks of the American Farmer in England. By Fred. L. Olmsted. With wood-cuts. Second series.

No. xx. A Book for a Corner. By Leigh Hunt. Second series. No. xxi. Table Talk about Books, Men and Manners. From Sidney Smith and others. Edited by Chetwood Evelyn, Esq.

No. xxii. Pictures from St. Petersburg. By Edward Jerrmann. Translated from the original German by Frederick Hardman.

It will be seen from these titles that Mr. Putnam's series keeps up its character for variety and entertaining interest. The first of the books mentioned here is valuable as a transcript of life on the Mexican border, and a denunciation of the inefficiency of our government in protecting its citizens from peon slavery to Mexicans, on account of debt.

The second introduces us to village life in England, and contains some very useful directions for a pedestrian tour in that country.

The third we have already noticed in speaking of the first part. The fourth is a compend of some of the wittiest and wisest sayings, and some sparkling anecdotes of modern geniuses. Number five is one of the most interesting books of the season; a picture of St. Petersburg and Russian high life and manners, from a German theatrical manager who was patronized by the Emperor and had ample opportunities to see the Russian side of human society. Those that would like to have a good opinion of the Czar, may read this book and be sure that it is not the author's fault, if they do not henceforth believe him to be a wise lover of human progress, a devoted friend of his oppressed subjects, an imperial philanthropist hampered by his own nobles ;-in a word, St. Nicholas, rather than