Servians, and Bulgarians, among whom the Turks hold here and there a few scarcely visible spots. They are emphatically rari nantes in gurgite vasto, and how they can expect to hold possession of such an immense territory, in which they are scattered only as specks, is astonishing. Apart from all questions of justice, it seems to us inevitable that they must yield their claims, and retire into Asia, where they are at home.

-The Church before the Flood," by the Rev. JOHN CUMMING, D. D., has been reprinted by Jewett & Co., of Boston. It consists of an able series of dissertations, on topics suggested by the Bible history of the period before Noah,—such as the Creation, the state of Adam, the Curse, Abel, the first Martyr, the Primitive Wickedness, the Flood, &c. &c. Dr. Cummings writes with unusual vigor, and being of the sect of Christians known as evangelical, has no compromises with Romanism, High-Churchism, or Infidelity.

-Messrs. Gould and Lincoln, of Boston, have issued, with an introduction by Dr. HITCHCOCK, an interesting speculation on the "Plurality of Worlds." The position assumed by the writer, is that the common opinion as to the planets and fixed stars being inhabited, is a mistake, resting his argument on the fact, that the material conditions of those bodies are not adapted to the existence of organized life. All the planets beyond Mars, he says, excluding the asteroids, are in a liquid state, though not from heat. Their distance from the sun, besides, is so great, that the light and heat there could not sustain organic beings, such as exist upon this globe. On the other hand, of the inferior planets, Mercury is so near the sun, that human beings, like ourselves, would scorch in it; while Mars and Venus are the only planets apparently capable of comfortable residence. As to the "fixed stars," which are supposed to be suns, their periods of revolution in their orbits are so enormous, that it is altogether out of the question for any sane man to think of living in them; some taking fifty, and others a hundred years, to turn round, which nobody but a Methuselah could stand. Meanwhile, in respect to the satellites assigned to those stars by conjecture, let their existence first be proved, before we undertake to lend them inhabitants. Thus, the author goes on depopulating the universe, and making this little earth of ours, which some have affected to despise, the most considerable theatre of the creative operations

Dr. Hitchcock only partly adopts the

conclusions of his author; he sympathizes with the main purpose of "painless extinction," as it regards our sister planets, but yet retains some bowels of commiseration for the fixed stars. He thinks it rather incredible, that amid the countless bodies of the universe, only a single globe, and that a little one, should be fit to be the home of rational and immortal creatures. Moreover, he wisely suggests, that the organism of beings in other spheres, may be adapted to their external condition, and that if they live in a world of gas or water, they may have gaseous or ethereal bodies, and that those bodies may be better instruments of intellectual use than our heavier clods. Does not Revelation, too, speak of angels, "who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation," probably referring_to some of the stars. At the same time, Dr. Hitchcock strongly recommends the book to men of science and clergymen.

Our own opinion is, that as we mortals have a great deal to do on this earth, and a very short time to do it in, it is becoming that we should leave the stars to settle their own business, at least until they shall have given us some more authentic intelligence than we now have as to what they are at.

ENGLISH.-If a volume of poems by John Shakespeare were discovered by some sagacious Collier and it were announced that John was a brother of the famous William, there would be an interest felt in the work quite apart from the value of the verse. Can two prophets come from Nazareth? Let Mr. Frederick Tennyson answer. He has just published in London a volume of poems called Days and Hours: and however much a reader may wish to avoid remembering Alfred, it is impossible for him not to see that Frederic has not forgotten his great brother. The new singer is the oldest brother of the Laureate. There is nothing that can be called direct imitation in his volume, but such lines as the following are strictly in the modern style of which Keats was the first, and Alfred Tennyson the best, illustration:

"Through the gaunt woods the winds are shrilling cold,

Down from the rifted rack the sunbeam pours, Over the cold grey slopes, and stony moors; The glimmering watercourse, the enstern wold, And over it the whirling sail o' the mill,

The lonely hamlet with its mossy spire, The piled city smoking like a pyre, Fetched out of shadow, gleam with light as chill" This is not a distinct, although a care

ful picture. It has not the irresistible melody, which, in poetry, seems to give the color and meaning to the words. Our meaning will be illustrated by comparing with this landscape of Frederick's, that one of Alfred's in In Memoriam, beginning

"Calm is the moon without a sound."

In this poem the dull, sad, autumnal landscape stretching slowly away with "lessening towers to the sea, is as perfect as poetry can make it. And it is so perfect because the sentiment of the spectator is so intimately blended in the description with the thing seen. This raises it from being a mere description, which would correspond to an imitation of a natural scene in painting, and leaves it a work of art. Mr. Frederick Tennyson's poetry is impalpable and impersonal. He indulges in prosonification to a degree quite beyond general sympathy, but the warm human feelings do not play along his pages. He is a cultivated, pleasant singer-an agreeable versifier. But the want of some reality, something more substantial than graceful revery is felt on every page. The difference between a poet and a man of poetic feeling, ready talent, and fine cultivation, who writes verses, could nowhere be better illustrated than by the Days and Hours of Frederick Tennyson, and the In Memoriam, or the carlier volumes of his immortal brother. We quote a poem from this volume, and a favorable specimen for our readers:

L

Three hours were wanting to the noon of day,

When long-haired Zephyrus flying from the sun, O'er the green-wooded uplands winged his way, And left the plains where freshness there was none; Amid the western clouds, and shadows grey

He thought to slumber till the day was done, And up he clomb into a realm of wonder, With towers and domes, and pyramids of thunder.

IV.

The glassy ripplets first began to throng
Each to the smooth shore like an eager hound;
Then a faint murmur like a whispered song
Crept o'er the tawny sands; and then a sound
Of a far tumult waxing near and strong;

And then the flash and thundering rebound,
Of powers cast back in conflict, and the moan
Of the long-banded waters overthrown.

-The amiable wife of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has printed another novel, called "Behind the Scenes," which, of course, is meant to let us into some more of the secrets of her husband's character and conduct. There is not much story in it, but a good deal of malice, which in the estimation of many, will compensate for the want of interest in other respects. The hero Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars, is the great novelist; his friend the Right Hon. Issachar Benaraby, can be no one else but Disraeli,-Lord Redby is the anagram of Lord Derby, and Mr. Carlo Dials is our old acquaintance Charles Dickens. They are described with all of Lady Bulwer's peculiar penetration and malignity, which sometimes, however, rather overshoots the mark, from excessive veheHere, for instance, is a portrait of her liege-lord:

mence.

"In the adamantine chain of Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars' selfishness, to the links of which, the complex miseries of OTHERS are ever appending, you develope the apparently contradictory, but perfectly compatible, vices of intense meanness and parsimony, with extreme ostentation and extravagance, which are the usual concomitants of the self-worshipping sensualist, and which is a true type of what our present social, or rather anti-social system, with its intellectual fiorettori, can, and but too often does, produco, namely, a solid block of vice, gnarled with villany, but veneered with virtue! (?) and highly varnished with HYPOCRISY, which in these days of pretension and of SHAM, is a far more marketable and popular commodity than the rococo genuine article of unvarnished excellence."

She intimates in another place that the distinguished writer is indebted for his translations of Schiller to a certain Fraulein Göthekant, a German governess, ugly as sin, as all governesses are in the eyes of suspicious wives,-because he cannot himself utter "a single guttural of that most bronchitial language,"-meaning German. Here also is a fling at Disraeli:

"Mr. Issachar Benaraby was a gentleman of Mosaic extraction, quite as clever in many things as Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars, and much cleverer in others: such as oratory, cool, off-hand impudence, and invincible good-temper; and, being equally unshackled by any shadow of principle, he got on briskly, with a sort of trade wind in society; while his more saturnine friend had often to tack and labor at the pumps to weather the storm his own execrable temper and overbearing spirit had raised. Mr. Benaraby's polit

ical opinions (at least for the time being) were conservative; but his principles (?) were decidedly freetrade, as they were open to, and available for, any and every market where they could fetch their price. He began his career by a diametrically opposite road to his friend; for, whereas Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars winced under and could not brook the slightest merriment at his own expense, but tried to awe every one into an overwhelming deference for his august person, Mr. Benaraby more wisely preferred the 'short cut to popularity, and rather sought to be laughed at than otherwise, being of Cardinal de Retz's opinion, that—

'Qui fait rire l'esprit, est Maitre du Cœur.'

And, besides, he was well aware that if he devoted his exterior to the laughing hyenas of society, and allowed them their mirth at all his ruffles and his ringlets, and the other tomfooleries of his costume, it only made his wit and wisdom, by the force of contrast, tell with double effect, like the withering political sarcasms of the Neapolitan Policcinello,' which come trebly barbed from so unexpected and grotesque & source."

Of Dickens, we have this account, with which we close our selections of scandal:

"

Opposite to him sat, as if not quite at his ease on so fine a chair, and in so aristocratic a room, a Mr. Carlo Dials, another star of the literary hemisphere, who, having graduated about the streets, his pavé pictures were unsurpassed; he had obtained the sobriquet of the Aldgate Aristophanes-the pothouse Plutarch would have been more appropriate. Like the rest of Mr. Ponsonby Ferrars's clique, he thought to redeem by printed morality and philanthropic fine sentiments the practical immorality of his own life, and the arid absence of all good feeling. He was not agreeable in society, as he always, like the beggars, appeared to be keeping any stray good thing that he might chance to pick up till he got home, when it was duly booked:' or it might be that his hair, of which he had an immense profusion, overlaid his brains, and that that made him appear stupid."

-Miss MITFORD appears, in the evening of life, in a new volume of tales, entitled "Atherton, and other Tales," which appear to have been written under great physical disabilities. About two years ago, she was thrown from a pony-chaise, by which accident she was so crippled, as to have been obliged to keep her room since, almost unable to rise, or lift one foot before the other. Even in writing, she was obliged to have the ink-glass held for her, in order to enable her to drop the pen in the ink. Yet, in this enfeebled state, she composed Atherton, by far the longest of any of her stories. It is a wonderful instance of the power of the mind over the body. We do not see that it is inferior, in any respect, to any of her previous writings, while it is marked by many of the same characteristics, the genial descriptions of English scenery and country life, the natural and hearty sentiment, the quiet touches of feeling, and the cordial sympathy, with

genuine character. As a story, it has few incidents, which are rather affecting than animated, but the conversations are always lively, and the moral tone excellent. The heroine, Katy, a farmer's daughter, who suddenly becomes a princely heiress, the gossiping mother, Mrs. Bell, the noble old matron, the grandmother, the kindly old bachelor lawyer, the embarrassed noblemen, are all drawn with remarkable fidelity and discrimination of portraiture. The other tales have already appeared in one of the English annuals.

His

-Few writers on musical subjects are better known than HENRY F. CHORLEY, long the musical critic of the London Athenæum, whose most recent work is called "Modern German Music: Recollections and Criticisms." It is a record of experiences obtained during several visits to the north and south of Germany, in the study of the art in which he is a distinguished connoisseur. opinions are freely expressed. and will not give satisfaction to all classes of critics ; but they are always intelligent, and seemingly unbiased. He thinks Glück the greatest of opera composers, compares Handel to Shakespeare, discovers defects in Beethoven, and does not quite share in the orthodox admiration of Mozart. But the reminiscences of Mr. Chorley are more agreeable than his criticisms, especially those relating to his beloved friend, Mendelssohn. Here is a description of the great composer, as he first saw him:

"I thought then, as I do now, his face one of the most beautiful which has ever been seen. No portrait extant does it justice. A Titian would have generalized, and, out of its many expressions, made up one which, in some sort, should reflect the many characteristics and humors of the poet-his carnest seriousness-his childlike truthfulness-his clear, cultivated intellect-his impulsive vivacity. The Ger-. man painters could only invest a theatrical, thoughtful-looking man, with that serious cloak which plays so important a part on the stage, and in the portraits of their country; and conceive the task accomplished, when it was not so much as begun. None of them has perpetuated the face with which Mendelssohn listened to the music in which he delighted, or the face with which he would crave to be told again some merry story, though he knew it already by heart. I felt, in that first half hour, that in him there was no stilted sentiment-no affected heartiness'; that he was no sayer of deep things, no searcher for witty ones; but one of a pure, sincere intelligence-bright, eager, and happy, even when most imaginative. Perhaps there was no contemporary at once strong, simple, and subtle enough, to paint such a man, with such a countenance."

-We had begun to think that Dean Milman's "History of Christianity" was to have no sequel, when we were surprised to see one announced, under the

title of "History of Latin Christianity; including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. It is a continuation of the old work, inasmuch as it begins with the period of time in which the former closed, but it is still a complete work in itself. A brief introduction, going over the history of the religion in Rome, during the first four centuries, in which much use is made of the recent

ly discovered " Hippolytus," is a fitting connection of the two books. By Latin Christianity, the author means the Christianity which was adopted in the city of Rome, and then spread over the greater part of the Roman world, distinguishing it from Greek Christianity, which was the first form which the religion of Jesus took during the years of its promulgation. Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, he regards as the chief founders of its doctrine and discipline. He describes at large the character and influence of these men, and the modifications which were gradually introduced into the ancient faith by the institutions of the Roman world. His narrative is always clear, though diffuse, and sometimes eloquent, while his opinions are unusually liberal for one who occupies a post of high dignity in an established church. The principal events have been already treated in English by the masterly hand of Gibbon, and in German by Mosheim and Neander; but Dr. Milman is so fine a scholar, and such an agreeable writer, that his history may be welcomed as a valuable addition to the literature of the period.

-It is impossible not to suppose that the English are direct descendants from Nimrod, for they are the "mightiest hunters" on the face of the earth. Not only at home, but in the remotest regions in which man can live, they manifest this controlling propensity. They shoot on the Moors, they shoot in Scotland, they go to Norway to shoot, they penetrate Africa to shoot, they cross the ocean, and visit our western prairies to shoot, and they ascend the mountains of Asia to shoot. But, what is better than the shooting, they describe the countries through which they shoot, and furnish the world with admirable volumes. One of the latest of these is COL. MARKHAM'S "Shooting in the Himalayas," which is a journal of sporting adventures in Chinese Tartary, Thibet, and Cashmere. It is written with much animation, and, though it does not pretend to be any thing more than a book for men who may have a fondness for hunting tigers, conveys a VOL. III.-43

vast amount of entertaining knowledge to the general reader.

FRENCH. -M. ALFRED NETTEMENT has prepared two volumes, called a "History of Literature during the Restoration" (L'Histoire de la Littérateur sous la Restauration "), which traces the movement of ideas in France, from the beginning of the present century to 1830, and forms an admirable complement to the numerous political histories of the same period which have lately been published. Few epochs are more interesting, and none more important to a full understanding of our modern intellectual tendencies.

M. Nettement begins his work with the great literary reaction which marked the advent of the present era, when Chateaubriand, M. de Bonald, and Joseph de Maistre, laid the foundations of the new monarchical and religious school in France. He then describes the literary condition under the empire, which issued in two rival philosophic schools,-that of spiritual rationalism, under Roger Collard, from whom came Guizot, Villemain, Cousin, and Jouffroy; and that of catholicism, under M. Frayssinous, from whom came the later catholicism of Lamennais and others. The author then describes the poets of the period-Hugo, Delavigne, Alfred De Vigny-each of whom he characterizes at length. Passing to the historians, he analyzes the merits of Guizot, Thiers, Miguet, &c., and then the political writers, such as Canel, Paul Louis Conria, when he concludes with a view of the theatre, and a general estimate of the intellectual value of the age of which he speaks. M. Nettenient is a clear and vigorous writer, but quite too conservative in his sympathies for our taste.

-"The Desert and Soudan" (Le Desert et le Soudan) is the name of a new book of African travel, by Count D'ESCAYRAC DE LAUTURE, recording the adventures of some eight years' wanderings in the immense plains which stretch from Algiers to the 10th degree of latitude, and are called Sahara, or Soudan. The volumes contain, besides the usual incidents of travel, some new and original observations upon Islamism, and a curious study of the different races which people North Africa. In respect to the latter, indeed, nothing seems to have escaped the author. Their manners, their religions, their politics, and their past histories, have been analyzed and grouped with patient observation and skill. The influences of climate upon the instincts, habits, and laws of nations,

give the writer occasion for remarks which will be found, we think, useful illustrations of the steps by which mankind advances from barbarism to civilization. The style of this work is clear, a Frenchman can hardly write obscurely,lively, and precise, but better in its scientific than in its narrative parts, which are too reserved and succinct.

-A young gentleman-M. DE FERRIERE LE VAYER-who was secretary to the French embassy to China, has given the results of his visit to the Celestials, in a work called "A French Embassy in China ("Une Ambassade Française en Chine"). We should rather say, the results of his observations, than of his official life, for there is little diplomacy, and a great deal of actual life in his book. It cannot be said that there is much which is new in his book, and what there is, seems to come with more authenticity from one in his position, than from ordinary travellers.

-M. EMMANUEL DE LERNE entertains us with a study of men who are not only great men, but lovers ("Amoureuses et Grands Hommes "), and thus parades the attachments to women of Molière, Goethe, Richelieu, and others, in a kind of sketch half romance and half biography. Like all specimens of "amphibology," as Col. Benton has it, it is somewhat disagreeable, an uninstructed reader not knowing two thirds of the time what is romance and what truth. For our part, we detest this mingling of truth and fiction, and greatly prefer an entire and downright, to a concealed or painted falsehood.

-Luther is for the most part remembered only as the great religious reformer; but M. A. SCHEFFER, of Stuttgardt, presents him in a scarcely less important light, in an account of his labors in aid of popular education ("De l'Influence de Luther sur l'Education du Peuple"). He shows, that the same strong arm which shook the walls of Rome, was equally efficient in pushing forward the enlightenment of the masses.

He organized schools even more rapidly than he disorganized churches, seeing in the former the surest and best means of supplying the place of the latter, and of securing in perpetuity the advantages of the immense movement he had in hand.

-One of the best books on Russia that we have read, is by M. CHARLES DE SAINT-JULIEN ("Voyage Pittoresque en Russie"), who appears to have spent many years in exploring the domestic life of the Muscovites. As his title indicates,

he has little to do with the politics of the empire, though he does not neglect to glance at it now and then; his descriptions consisting mainly of pictures of popular manners and external aspects. What goes on from day to day, among the pcople, is what we learn from him, and not the supposed secrets of cabinets and policies of the Czar. His travels begin amid the splendors of St. Petersburg, and end (where the travels of a good many Russians themselves end) in the icy solitudes of Siberia; but on the way, we are taken over Finland, as far as Torneo, the most northern city, thence to Archangel, where a grand snow-storm is brilliantly described; then down to Moscow, the ancient fortress of the Czars, then along the course of the Wolga into Central Russia, to Astrakan and its fairs, to Kazan and its fortress, and finally to the Caucasus, and its mysterious mountains. As a study of the various races embraced in the Russian empire, this book has great value, and we are sure must have been written before the recent war was declared, it is so free from the prejudices which every Englishman and Frenchman holds it to be his duty to express in re gard to the Russians.

et

-A second volume of M. SAINT MARC GIRARDIN'S Recollections of Voyages and Studies (Souvenirs de Voyages d'Etudes), is not as strictly uniform as the first, to which we have formerly alluded. It opens with Celtic Traditions, then passes to Friendship among the Scythians, next to a picture of Barbarous and Feudal society, next are a series of chapters on Christianity among the Germans, and finally a miscellany about Gregory of Tours, the Romance of Reynard the Fox, the Danish tradition of Hamlet, the Pucelle of Chapelaine and Voltaire, and a dissertation on the right to labor. These several subjects are from pieces contributed to the daily papers, and are treated somewhat popularly, yet with unquestionable learning.

GERMAN. Any one who looks into the Moriscoes in Spain (Die Moriskos in Spainen), of A. L. VON ROCHAN for an interesting history of the Moorish domination in Spain will not be disappointed, but he will do better to refer at once to Gount de Circonet's Histoire des Mores Mudejares et des Morisques, from which the greater part of it is translated directly without acknowledgment. Indeed the translation in many parts is so faithful that typographical errors and all appear in the German version just as they stand