this portion of his task great research. He has read closely, and read much, and has set the result of his studies forward, in a clear, distinct, and most impressive exposition. Having shown the correspondence between the eternal principle of marriage, and the Levitical prohibitions, he next proceeds to show their reason and their end. In doing so, he says:

"The law which restricts one woman to one man is yet a law which is designed to elevate both, to enlarge their sympathies, to expand their affections, to extend their being and relations, to put them in possession of those endearments which spring from domestic order and virtue, from mutual fidelity and love. This blending of their being-this reflection of each in the other, and of both in their offspring-are the sources of the most exalted happiness. Thus the restriction is the condition of family security and strength, of home and its clustering charities. The restriction is repugnant to many, but licence has no such acquisitions, and admits of no such felicity. It begins in blind waste, and it ends in individual and in relative want and corruption. The prohibitions, like the restrictions, are designed to secure the same end-the enlargement of pure family affections to the utmost extent possible on earth. By shutting out passion-that passion the satisfaction of which is allowable only in lawful marriage-they draw into the unity of home and family love the near kindred of either side; and thus the man obtains in the sister of a wife another sister, and the woman acquires another brother in the brother of her husband. The benefit is mutual, and it is of the highest order, the enlargement of pure love. In the innocent affection of the husband to the sister of the wife, and in that affection to the wife of the husband's brother, there is but an extension of their own reciprocal love, and they trust and rejoice in it, because it is an accession of union, and strength, and love, to them and theirs. Hence in family cares, and joys, and sorrows, the sister and brother on either side come in and mingle with these, and amidst these they breathe their native air. There is no distance or restraint, because there is no suspicion and no jealousy; and secure in a love which cannot be changed into passion, they share in unreserved confidence and in sweet intimacy the society of each other. Thus the home of the wife's husband becomes the home of her sister; and how often does this become the scene of her labours and the sanctuary of her devotion? In sickness she is the patient nurse; in absence she is the guardian of children and the ruler of the house. She is one of themselves; and because she is so, both she and they are familiar and happy."

We shall here close our notice of this interesting and excellent treatise. Those who hold what is generally regarded as the orthodox view of the question, will find the whole matter most satisfactorily dealt with, and their opinions explicitly stated, as well as amply confirmed; and those who array themselves on the opposite side will find arguments difficult to answer, and conclusions as difficult to gainsay. The author, with such a mastery of his subject, has done well to come forward at the present moment and lend his valuable assistance in the settlement of a question in which all grades of society are so intimately concerned.

"THE NEAR AND THE HEAVENLY HORIZONS."*

IN these, the days of "Essays and Reviews,"-which, with all their false philosophy, false philology, and false logic, have been eagerly adopted as the declaration and protest of thousands against the grand simple old creed of the Christian,-it is a right pleasant thing to meet with a book like this. No halfway halting, almost persuaded Christian, is Madame De Gasparin. She is utterly contented and heart satisfied with the scheme of Grace as, reading her Bible with no aids of learning, no help sought elsewhere than from heaven, she finds that scheme unfolded there. On the broad bosom of her fathers' faith she is quite content to float onwards to eternity. "I leave allegories to sages," she says, "knotty points to theologians. As for us, very little, very simple as we are, we want simple words, and are fain to receive them just as our Father sent them to us. One Book alone comes from God; one alone can reveal to us the secrets of God. It has its silences and its mysteries; but it never deceives."

Ye traitor Priests of Rugby and Oxford! that wear the livery of the Master that ye scorn, eating the bread of His household and spitting on the hand that feeds ye: Schoolmen whose learning is a snare to the weak and foolish only, and a pitiful delusion to yourselves, if ye put trust in it :-how brightly, delightfully shows this book of a woman's meditations about the heaven to which with a clear and steady eye she looks forward, beside your composite performance, whose most presumptuous aim it is to demonstrate faith to be an absurdity, and heaven a dream, and the happily rather large class of Gasparins lunatics! This woman at least speaks to us unpretentiously; and asshe speaks we may be allowed to note, ye reverend doctors of heresy and marrowless Masters of Arts,-not the making of one Tom Payne among ye-that her coiffure is clean and clear white as the snow; while your surplices-and they won't wash-are all bedabbled and dirty with the dishonoring stains of treason to the trust committed to you, and which ye swore at the altar of Him who was once your God to defend !

Strange, phenomenal contrast this; the weak undoubting woman; the mazed floundering sorely distraught Oxonians. She taking up and lifting high the grand last song of Emily Brontë :

"Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's hearts; unutterably vain ;
Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main-
To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by Thine infinity;

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality."

The Near and the Heavenly Horizons. By Madame De Gasparin. Alexander Strahan & Co., Edinburgh. Hamilton, Adams, & Co., London. 1861.

They performing to a new air what is after all a very old sad song, of which the mournful burden is

"The Bible's a myth; and that hoax is done;

We know nothing for certain, and hope we have none."

A dreary business, gentlemen, this no-faith of yours, reminding us of a sentiment, "most musical, most melancholy," we once heard Emerson utter,—" Man is like a sea-bird that alights on an islet of the ocean, and looks sadly back on the wilderness of waves behind, and sadly forward on the waste of waters before." It is not so. not like the tempest-driven sea-bird.

"Man's like the heaven-born eagle

That visits earth only to eat, and sleep, and die;
But whose delight is on his lonely wing

To climb the empyrean heights;

Batting the sunny cieling of the world.
Immortal man rushes right onwards
Up to heaven."

Man is

And yet, after all, is there one of us who, educated in the doctrines of Protestant Christianity, and afterwards cast into the world to fight its battles and mingle with those whose starting point towards what they think a manly character is disavowal of Bible truths,-is there one of us who has suffered the question of his belief among companions gifted and dexterous, found himself confronted with arguments which he feels instinctively are false, but which he cannot logically answer, and so feeling has been in danger of repudiating the beliefs of his childhood altogether, unable to bear the taunt that he is afraid to disavow what his reason is incompetent to prove or defend, is there any one moving in what are called "literary circles" who, trained in the "good old" faith, has not often found need, in the course of an evening's social talk, to summon all his manliness to stand up for Christ as the crucified Redeemer and Saviour, against some flippant rationalist who thinks it utterly unfashionable as it is utterly absurd to entertain any fancies "of that sort,"—is there one of us who, studious and taking heed unto the great concern, has not found himself in the conflict of metaphysical opinions, compassed about by the great mysteries of being and to be-bitterly lamenting that ever he was so placed by circumstances as to have been stimulated to doubt what the best in life and best in death of his kindred and friends-as they lived and died before him-never saw cause for one moment to question? Who that has ever come through any mental struggles of this kind, but has envied the lot of those who, in the sheltered nooks of life, have never been reached by cutting winds from off the icy shores of infidelity?

From such a book as that before us the sceptic may learn what a glorious dream-if it be nothing more-this our Christian religion is. Say that it is a dream and nothing more. It is no opium ecstacy in which our faculties are arrested and our hands are stayed from working; we build houses, and ships, and write books, and buy and

sell notwithstanding of our belief in revelation, just as does the most illuminated professor of rationalism. And it is cruel to be asked to part with the old traditions that we have delighted in all life long, while we have nothing given us to supply their place. Oh rationalists, we must believe something! Yours is a railway avowedly without any terminus. We certainly have hope of reaching one on our line, and the scenery en route is very beautiful.

Were this merely a volume of sentimental rhapsodies, we should not have taken pains to introduce it to the reader. We recently heard the observation made, that in point of literary value, religious literature was the lowest of all the kinds of it. We showed cause otherwise, of course, and yet how much foundation there is for the taunt it is impossible to deny. One or two recent works with heaven for their theme-perhaps owing their inspiration to Madame De Gasparin-are ineffably silly, to say no more, but have found large acceptance with what is called the religious public. And if a writer has, or can affect the proper whine, nothing is so easy as to write a popular and profitable religious volume. There is our good friend, the Rev. Dr Humming, who frequently, we have no doubt, has made more by the publication of one weak, pretty well written book, than probably the Twelve Apostles collectively ever possessed during all their days. Among his many volumes, however, we look in vain for one that evidences the same power of imagination, the same knowledge of nature and of the soul, as does this beautiful work from a woman's pen. Nor do we disparage the Rev. Doctor. We shall be asked perhaps what this book proves. The question is absurd. "Proofs," says Madame de Gasparin, "are for sceptics." We receive the book as, in these days of cold and heartless scepticism, an unanswerable declaration of the all-sufficiency of the Bible read in simplicity, to fill the heart with perfect happiness and peace, and to inspire it with the noblest impulses that can sway an immortal human being.

First of all as to the "Near Horizons." It is in this pleasant strain that in her preface our authoress invites us forward. "I do not possess very much. If you have kindness, some love for God's nature, the dower of capacity for simple pleasures, come let us take our way through this meadow, by the side of that stream; we two together, our fortune is made." And so through many chapters forming the first half of the volume, and each an episode, we are pleasantly led on. At the very outset we find this exquisite description of nature as— let the reader mark—it is, not in this country but in the South :

"Spite of storm and frost, the April days-beautiful lengthening days, pressing back with both hands the shades of morning and eveningmarched on young, triumphant, crowned with lilacs; while, at the touch of their fingers, the hedges, the apple-trees, the ground, burst into blossom. And now summer was at hand; her warm breath was already felt on the butter-cup-covered meadows; while, from the neighbouring mountains, from the snowy summit of the Jura, came still a keen, reviving breeze, the virgin kiss of the departing spring.

"In our country each flower in succession has its own absolute reign. The sun, looking through the windows of the fantastical dwellings assigned

to him in almanacs-the sun, according as he inhabits the sign of the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, or the Scorpion, covers our valleys, far as eye can reach, with white crocuses, then yellow primroses, then hyacinths, then lilac-tinted cardamines, then golden ranunculuses. There is almost always one sheet of colour, splendid in its uniformity. It is true that in March, by the hedge side, balmy violets and fumitories; along the brooks, and at the foot of the oak-trees, rosy white anemones; do what they can to blossom in tufts. The observant eye may, indeed, detect them in their nests, but they do not affect the general aspect of the valley, which always presents a dazzling carpet of one single shade, till towards the end of June it is enamelled with every hue, radiant with every kind of brightness, each flower opening, displaying itself, scattering fragrance on its own account. "There is, indeed, in May-at the very time I was taking this particular walk-a short season when green is the dominant tone; a harsh, crude, uncompromising green, without any softening touch of red or yellow, or any delicate silvery light. This green is somewhat oppressive, I might almost say sad.

"It was so that morning. The grass I walked on had such a glaring brightness; the leaves of the hedge, whether hawthorn leaves, sweetbriar, willow, or alder, were all so varnished and brilliant, you can hardly look at them. On the mountain side, the bright verdure of the beech so prevailed over the sombre foliage of the pines, spread so lustrously and positively on every side, rose so boldly up to the pasture-land, itself so decidedly verdant too, that, apart from the cupola of snow upon the very summit, one could see nothing but this intense green, which seemed to repress thought.

And yet there were the walnut-trees, the great walnut-trees, which were not green. They, at least, protested; opening out, at the extremity of their smooth, whitish branches, bunches of purple and aromatic leaves.

"Then there was the brook, whose perfectly pure waters ran over a now smooth, now stony bed, sometimes encountering a little moss-covered block, round which they broke, singing those eternal songs that ears like mine could listen to by night and day.

"Then, again, there were the bees; young bees of a lighter brown, a more delicate velvet; inexperienced, lost in some flower-chalice, intoxicated, and overtaken, far from the hive, by the dew and the evening chill.”

There is a charming sketch of an old peasant, Lisette, who lived in a dream of the old time, and to whose mind, while she watched the cows she tended, thoughts of Jacob's flocks and Leah, and the wondrous ladder, were present often, and whom no divine manifestation of the supernatural would have astounded; so habitually "she moved and lived, calm and thoughtful in the realms of faith." The reader must seek out Lisette for himself however. Here is a passage very characteristic of Madame; clever, forcible :

"Do not be alarmed, I am not going to treat you to theology; not that I despise it, but I should be awkward at it,-Lisette, too. For my part I hold in reverence all who lead a life of thought, theologians as well as others. To eat, drink, sleep, dress well, and to-morrow die, has never prepossessed my fancy much, nor Lisette's either. To go through life like a great burly drone, knocking up against flowers, burying his proboscis in their cups, without looking or wondering at anything, without even inhaling the perfume of the blossoms he pierces, then when evening comes to die congealed beneath the leaves, or to be killed in a matter-of-fact way by a bee who has done with him,-whatever may be said for it, neither Lisette nor I find any sense or any poetry in a course like this. But dreamers-I do not mean by