Literary Reviews. carry out their views. We sincerely trust the Association will extend its influence and be multiplied by branches in every large town. The reformation of home will go far to cure many of the miseries, vices, and diseases which prevail, and save many a child from a premature death. If our readers peruse and circulate these pamphlets they will do a good work. The Magdalen's Friend. Edited by a Clergyman. London: Nisbet & Co. THIS is a monthly magazine issued in connection with the efforts now being made to put down or allay the Social Evil.' It is well edited and admirably adapted to its object. Danesbury House. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Glasgow: The Scottish Temperance League. 1860. A PRIZE of 100l. was given for this tale, which is 'illustrative of the injurious effects of intoxicating drinks, the advantages of personal abstinence, and the demoralizing operations of the liquor traffic.' These themes are strikingly portrayed in a well-told tale. The drunken cases introduced are decidedly bad; but they can easily be paralleled from real life. There is good writing, lively description, and fine delineation of character, with a wholesome moral in Danesbury House.' Anecdotes: Religious, Historical, and Scientific. By Matthew Denton. Third Series. London: Partridge and Co. 1860. WE have not seen the former series of these anecdotes; but the little volume before us contains some additions to the hackneyed list hitherto in circulation. If the book had possessed some arrangement, its usefulness for reference would have been enhanced. Should the author collect his three volumes into one, we commend this to his attention in order to make his collection permanently useful. Lectures to the Men of Liverpool. By Hugh Stowell Brown. Liverpool: Gabriel Thomson. 1860. THERE is a great amount of good advice amidst much loose writing and slang phrases in these addresses to the men of Liverpool. There is no doubt that they must tell upon the intelligent conviction of those who heard them delivered and on those who peruse them. Mr. Stowell Brown is sui generis, and 183 he fulfils his mission with much labour and singular adaptation. Schoolroom Poetry. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. THERE are some good pieces from our best poets in this compilation, but there is no arrangement fitting it to be a school-book. Some pieces whose authorship is well known are marked anonymous by this Educator! Summary of the Bill introduced to Parliament by F. Pigott, Esq., M.P., entitled, An Act for the Better Regu lation of Medical Relief to the Poorer Classes in England and Wales,' &c. &c. With a Commentary thereon, and a Letter to the Members of the Legis lature. By Richard Griffin, J.P., M.R.C.S., and L.S.A., Chairman of the Poor Law Medical Reform Association. OUR readers may recollect an article on this subject in a former number of this Review. The pamphlet before us is worthy of earnest consideration, not only by the profession, but by the Legislature and the Boards of Guardians throughout the country. It is high time that the position of medical men under the Poor Law were in a satisfactory state. Mr. Griffin has done much to promote this, and we trust he will realize his wishes in the passing of the Bill now before the House of Commons. Samuel the Prophet, and the Lessons of his Life and Times. By the Rev. Robert Steel, Cheltenham, Author of Doing Good: or, The Christian in Walks of Usefulness.' London: Nelson and Sons. 1860. THIS work is in its third thousand. A critic personally unknown to us but entirely devoted to literature has thus written of it: The volume before us does great justice to the illustrious prophet. Mr. Steel is a man of judgment, observation, and readingqualities which are turned to excellent account throughout the work. The volume deserves, and we doubt not will obtain, great and general favour.' For reasons known to many of our readers, we prefer giving this to any notice written at our own request. The Blood of Jesus. By the Rev. William Reid, M.A. London: Nisbet and Co. AN earnest and evangelical book, remarkably well suited to anxious inquirers quirers in the most momentous period of their lives. It is scriptural, practical, clear, and pointed, and cannot fail to be largely useful. Though a small work, it goes to the root of the soul's disease, and applies the balm of Gilead with a skilful hand. Scrub; or, the Workhouse Boy's First Start in Life. By Mrs. C. L. Balfour. London S. W. Partridge. THIS story, which is illustrated with a few woodcuts, is a happy effort of Mrs. Balfour's fertile pen. It may be appropriately placed in the hands of young apprentices whether out of the workhouse or happy homes. A Biographical and Critical Sketch of Dr. Beaumont, the eloquent Orator. By the Rev. Richard Wrench. London: Partridge and Co. 1859. THERE is cleverness in this sketch which would give effect to it as a lecture; but for a book much more is necessary. If the author publishes the others referred to in his preface, we strongly advise him to make one book of them all. Individually they would be ephemeral. A Temperance of Wine Countries. Letter by Edward C. Delavan, Esq., of Albany, New York: London: Alliance Depôt. 1860 THIS exposure of the fallacy and fatal policy of the Wine Bill of Mr. Gladstone ought to be in every one's hand. When so many have been deluded by the Chancellor's sophistry, a pamphlet like this will do much to open the eyes and convince the judgment of the candid. Love and Labour; or, Work and its Reward. By Kate Pyer, Author of 'Peace Stories for Children.' London Thickbroom and Stapleton. 1860. THIS is a most touching story, and fitted both to fascinate the attention and impress the hearts of the young. There is great naturalness in the description. Too many scenes of common life exhibit the dark side of this picture; but we rejoice to believe that there is a grow ing increase of the bright side also. Drink causes the shady, and abstinence the sunny side. Steyne's Grief; or, Losing, Seeking, and Finding. By the Author of Bow Garrets,' &c. London Tweedie. 1860. THERE are some entertaining scenes and good writing in this temperance tale. The influence of drink, and the evil of public-houses on working men, are most accurately traced. A good and skilled workman, after having been rescued from intemperance and misery, and made happy by the kind attentions, cheerful piety, and fond affections of an excellent wife, and after having started afresh in a new locality, is seduced by the publican, and becomes a sot, a cruel husband and father, and a wretched suicide. The trials and sorrows, the wrongs and insults endured at home, are told with power, and the death of the broken-hearted wife is related with much pathos. The fortunes of Cary Deering form a very painful episode in the whole. 'Steyne's Grief' is intended to represent the long, long agony of spirit realized by the drunkard's son in his career through life. There is, however, a haze of improbability about his sudden rise at last. We have much pleasure in commending this work to our readers. After Many Days. A Tale of Social Reform. By Seneca Smith. London. 1860. 6 THE Volume just noticed refers to the ravages of intemperance among the working classes. This conducts us to the upper ten thousand,' where the insidious vice has also its victims. It is true that drunkenness does not now characterize the higher classes as it once did, but it is not without its withering blight, wherever it is indulged. After Many Days' is a pretentious tale, and attempts to show the high social advantages of temperance. We have not, however, been so much interested in it as in the others before us, which aim less high but touch more keenly. Meliora ART. I.-1. Histoire du Merveilleur, dans les Temps Modernes. Par Louis Figuier. Deux tomes. Libraire de L. Hachette. 1860. 2. Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Sydenham Society. 1844. 3. Select Memoirs of Port Royal. By M. A. Schimmelpenninck. In three volumes. Longman and Brown. 1858. 4. Hours with the Mystics. By Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A. In two volumes. John W. Parker. Τ IT is impossible to gaze at the continual rise and swell in the waves of the sea, without being struck by its strange likeness to the mysterious action and reaction in human society. As each wave spends itself, how slowly and surely it gathers again, till, fed from hidden sources and imperceptible currents, it swells into a wall of crystal, and breaks in the culmination of its strength. Backwards and forwards ebb the impetuous tides, in alternate passion and rest; now the scream of the maddened beach, dragged back by the wave,' and now the lull after the frenzy is over. So the history of mankind appears, at first sight, to revolve in perpetual cycles, bringing round and round the same heartstirring crises of intensity and excitement, followed by the same monotonous periods of mental and physical stagnation. In one sense we may assert, that what has been will be, to the end of time. And yet we can never reduce this independent existence to a mere web woven out of the machinery of circumstances, or turn statistics into a horoscope for foretelling the future. History cannot be investigated by a tedious process of counting, for it will never exactly reproduce itself; but as no single face, and no one idea, are the same as other faces and ideas, so no fact is a precise repetition of a previous fact, and we must think out each event on its own peculiar merits. Events are illustrations of laws. Particular tendencies and peculiar stages of feeling are natural to humanity. Ultra spiritualism and gross materialism are two poles, between which a just medium should be found. Mankind has ever been leaning to one or other of these opposites. Phariseeism and Sadduceeism, the puritanical and papistical characters, are not new, nor will they ever be old. If, on the one hand, the cold formalism of the once saintly Sardis seems to be incorporated in human Vol. 3.-No. 11. nature, nature, so that each generation is in danger of staking its religion on mere dogmas and formulas, it may be said, with equal truth, that there is a tendency in society to that fanaticism which mistakes feeling for principle, and which is ready to rush to the most Utopian extremes. In 1853 (when walking and talking tables made their début in the civilized world), many sensible persons found it difficult to reconcile a widely-diffused and ignorant passion for the marvellous with the advanced philosophy and scientific research of the nineteenth century. Sober Englishmen seemed as if returning to that mania after dæmons' which distinguished the earliest dawnings of knowledge in pagan antiquity, and Pharaoh's sorcerers might have mocked at their childish puerilities. But a better acquaintance with the history of the past might have diminished this astonishment, and might have proved that such phenomena had taken place in all ages of the world. In 1859 a like sensation of alarm and disgust was aroused in some minds by the physiological accidents' connected with the 'revivals' in Ireland. Strong prejudices were entertained against these religious movements, on account of the bodily manifestations with which they were associated; and many of the more prudent amongst us were inclined to distrust the good, on account of the positive evil which followed it. The discussion has given rise to much acrimony and party spirit, and has been so well debated, that we are disinclined to give it more than a cursory notice. On behalf of the advocates of revivalism, it may be urged that strong feeling will produce a corresponding action upon the nerves and the brain, extending over the whole frame, and often agitating the body. Scripture sets no value on such bodily exercise,' nor can such excitement be proved to be genuine, till tried by experience, and tested by the rules of Gamaliel. Yet that such affections should take place during any excitement amongst the demonstrative Irish can cause no wonder, though it may teach us moderation and caution. The vaunted progress of our age is powerless to repress the excesses of natural emotion. Scientific information is only the possession of the few, whilst it increases the credulity of the many. The phenomena of fanaticism are confined to no nation, and limited to no time. They extend to both body and mind, occasionally producing the gravest results, such as catalepsy, convulsions, fainting fits, and even insanity. That these phenomena are propagated by sympathy and imitation is a fact proved by experience. At one time the excitement in Belfast assumed the grave appearance of an epidemic. Children in arms from six months old and upwards, were reported by their parents to have taken the infection, and the 'smitten' could be counted by scores. The danger of attributing such results to special inspiration, was, how The Revivals in America. 187 ever, recognized in time, and subsequent events have proved that the movement may be guided into permanent usefulness. In many places the outward face of society is changed by the improvement in morality; and sermons are no longer productive of physical disease. The evidence of an English writer attests the reality of the reformation in America, where the results could be imputed only to the direct agency of prayer.* Yet the physical phenomena of revivalism in its coarser forms are a painful burlesque on sacred and mysterious feelings. We have little occasion in our day to foster a morbid spirit of self-introspection, and to aim at increasing nervous susceptibility. The excesses of Mormonism may warn us against physical contagion. Religion, it has been said, should be associated with the soundest reasoning, and the highest development of intelligence. True revivalism consists in the service of the heart, and the strict performance of duty, rather than in a temporary effervescence of enthusiasm, manifesting itself in spasmodic shoutings and contortions of the body. After the application of such violent stimulants' (as Sir Charles Lyell remarked, with regard to the United States), there is usually a corresponding reaction. There is a tendency in all crowds to act upon sympathy apart from conviction, whilst the spirit of imitation will often nurture self-deception and hypocrisy. It remains for intelligent preachers of religion to discourage the symptoms of such dangerous contagion, and to avoid that unnatural exaggeration which may weaken the bodily organism of their hearers, engendering hysteria and mesmerism. The abnormal results of mental and physical excitement require the advice of the physician rather than of the divine, and might be generally cured by prudent discouragement. By far too much importance has been attached to these phenomena, which are nothing new, but have been fostered in all ages by those who sincerely believed them to be the result of divine agency, as well as by cunning impostors. From the curious results which attended the preaching of Tauler, down to the days of Jonathan Edwards; from the time of the dancing Galli, to those afflicted with Tarantism, there has been a striking uniformity in the pathology of these A cursory review of history will be sufficient to show that the annals of the past are replete with anecdotes of self-imposture, which was encouraged by the misdirection of the holiest and sublimest sentiments. In like manner the so-called miracles of mesmerism and spiritual communication are only the continuation, the almost inevitable development of analogous phenomena, which preceded them in the past; and may be explained by the instruc cases. *The Power of Prayer. A Revival in America.' By an English Eyewitness. 0 2 tions |